Monday 30 September 2024

Horse Karen

 They say it's the 95% of lawyers that give the rest a bad name. Something similar happens for motorcyclists. Those with loud exhausts, dazzling headlights and poor road manners give the rest of us a bad reputation. This week I saw something similar with horseriders.

Horses can be quite temperamental and easily startled, and they're not excellent in traffic, so those of us with motor vehicles are taught to pass them wide and slow. Last week I was on Dartmoor in my sports car. I was on a winding road with a 30 m.p.h speed limit and I was already going slower than that when I saw a horse coming the other way. My exhaust is loud so I switched off the engine and put the car in neutral to coast past it. My brakes and tyres can be squeaky so I decelerated gradually and coasted quietly past the horse at around, I would guess, 10 m.p,h.

The rider, rather than waving her thanks to me, was red faced, gesticulating wildly, and shouting at me to SLOW! DOWN!

Richard "Reputational Damage" B

Monday 23 September 2024

Side Quest

 Last week I met one of my team for the first time, he'd come to Plymouth from Lancashire for a company celebration. What's odd is that I, one of my colleagues, and his girlfriend are all NPC's. His girlfriend asked him to bring back a memento of the Westcountry - ideally a plush seagull. His colleague knew exactly where you could buy one - the Students' Union shop, and I was able to walk with him to the S.U. shop.

This is a straightforward fetch-quest from an unimaginative video game. His girlfriend is the quest giver, his colleague is a helper character, and I'm either another helper or the map.

Richard "Non Player Character" B

Tuesday 10 September 2024

Dyno

 My Caterham has been to the dyno and it's good news all around. The replacement lambda sensor is working correctly, and it's fuelling correctly.


Everybody is very pleased with the engine rebuild, and it's making more power than the advertised power when it was new.


In the top graph the blue line is power, the red line is torque. the bottom graph is air:fuel ratio. What's interesting is that it's enriched at low revs. This is probably to make it easier to drive in traffic, but it might be a childish ploy to make it pop and burble on the overrun so it sounds like a racing car. Or something to do with the way they're tuned the variable valve timing.

They think the most important bits of the process were skimming the head for slightly increased compression, 3 angle valve seats, and careful valve grinding.

Richard "chef's kiss" B

Friday 6 September 2024

Caterham Lambda Sensor

 I have a Caterham Seven with the 1.6l "Sigma" engine.

The original lambda sensor was Ford 1351337 These are now unobtainable or fiendishly expensive. I have replaced it with Ford 1327547. The sensor and the plug are identical, it's just that the cable is a bit shorter.

I can now say with confidence that the new sensor is functionally identical too, because my car has just come back from the dyno and it's fuelling correctly.

Richard "I hope this helps someone" B

Thursday 5 September 2024

Dyno

 This week my car goes to the dyno to find out how it's running. As I understand the procedure they're going to strap it down on a rolling road and measure the speed and power at the wheels at various different throttle settings and loads. They're also going to do an exhaust gas analysis because there are some questions around the lambda sensor and the fuelling. If things don't go as I hope, then I'll be charged (handsomely) to find out that the engine rebuild (for which I paid the same people a king's ransom) hasn't solved all of my engine problems.

Richard "fingers crossed" B