Pete-M

I'm a "car guy". I'm the person who often only hears from people when their car has an issue. Would I describe myself as a motoring enthusiast? Er, probably not, even though I went to a cars and coffee this morning. I like driving, love going on mad road trips across continents. I like that cars can enable me to do that. Do I want to spend a day chatting about the infinite reliability of the 'misunderstood' K. Series with a bloke who thinks everybody else is wrong because he's got one he inherited from his Aunt Mabel and it has never let him down "and it has only done 33000 miles". No. I'll tolerate him politely for 5 minutes and then go and entertain myself watching wallpaper fade while his engine slowly mixes oil and coolant. Lots of my pals are mechanics. We get on great, we don't talk cars other than "this is playing up", "it'll be the doofer valve manipulator behind the glove box, arse to get to", "cheers".

Mini - Boxster brakes & raise ride height, wire up heated seats, reinstate aircon. C32 AMG - replace crank sensor, tailgate and give it a good service. Golf V6 - replace suspension, service engine and Haldex, replace rear calipers and hatch. Then possibly sell.

Started the year with the C32 AMG, Golf V6, blue Mini Cooper S (R53) and a diesel Jaaag X type 2.2d Sport Premium. Blue Mini cracked its cylinder head and was returned to the trader I bought it from. It was replaced with the grey, tweaked to 230ish bhp. R53 Cooper S JCW 210. This has taken on daily duties. It has also got through rather a lot of my money as I've fitted new tyres, Bilsteins, a full heated leather interior, armrest and upgraded a few other bits. Suspension is too low on it currently, as soon as I find the specs for JCW springs I'll chuck 'em on. It is also due a brake upgrade. C32 has a faulty crank sensor. It's a bugger to replace so I'm waiting for the weather to improve. I have the sensor, but don't want to use the car in winter anyway so that can wait. Need a tailgate in 744 silver if anyone has one. It'll run but only until the crank sensor warms up. SORN Golf is awaiting a full service, new rear calipers, a Haldex service and a set of Bilsteins + H&R springs. It has been off the road for four years, just waiting for a round tuit to arrive. I've also sourced a rust free tailgate for it, which took a while. Which means I can finally de-tint the rear windows. Circular Tuits are currently out of stock, but I think I'll use this for a while this year and then flog it. Runs well, sounds lovely, currently SORN. X type was sold. Probably too cheaply, but I really don't get on with the diesel X type. Like the V6 AWD jobs, but the diesel ain't for me.

It's Ronnie Pickering day. 7 years.

Well, yeah.

Mini fixed. I'll bring it to the next thing. 20220719_115246.mp4

Has the steering shut up? Nice to meet you.

No worries, dude. Was nice to put a face to the name.

Enjoyed it, especially catching up with a few of you I've not seen for about a decade. Great fun.

I'd have been there by now but the timing chain tensioner on the Mini just failed. Obviously it chose to do it just after I'd put £50 in fuel in. Will be there in a bit... not in Mini, obvs. received_600423041651984.mp4

Go on. I'll come along. It's my mum's part of the world.

The difference is remarkable if you actually bother to do it. I don't normally bother, but this time it actually worked!

Reverted to night owl mode. 3am this morning and I've just spent the last hour learning about audio time alignment. It's because I'm one of those people who reads manuals when he buys something. I like to see if things can do cool stuff. This led to me sitting in the car at 3am measuring the distance from my ears to each speaker in the car. With a tape measure, a pen and paper, and some audiogeekery website with a magic calculator that works out how long sounds will take to get to my old cloth ears. It's literally to do with the speed of sound. Anyway, it turns out there's nearly a millisecond of delay between sounds from the left front speaker and the right front reaching my head. A millisecond isn't much in the grand scheme of things admittedly, but if you can delete that delay by adjusting the speaker timing to compensate then things mysteriously sound much better (to the listener whose ears are in the correct listening position). Anyway, it turns out the stereo in the car can do this voodoo, but it is hidden deep in menus nobody other than people like me ever look at. It works, too. Better than I expected it to. It isn't even a particularly modern or expensive unit. It's a £130 Alpine CDA-193BT job. As the car has a DAB aerial but no DAB radio I'm guessing they've taken the good stereo out and got this from Halfords or summat. This is what happens when you RTFM.

I was thinking this a while ago so I did the right thing and bought a Mini Cooper S (R53). It's quick enough to be fun and corners ludicrously well. Mine does have sorted suspension though. I paid slightly over £2k for one with nav, leather, cruise, xenons etc.