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How to find the right shop to repair, repaint or restore your pride and joy can be a very hit and miss affair - often with large amounts of money being paid for sub-standard work.
What follows is an article written by a former panel beater and gives a good system for not getting ripped off.
If I had seen this article sooner, I would have avoided a very costly mistake.
http://www.autobody101.com/content/articles/confessions-of-a-body-shop-owner/
"Anybody know of a good body shop in (enter your city name here)?", "How do I get my body shop to work on my car?", "My car is being held for ransom!", or just simply "Body shop Blues". I'm sure you have all seen topics similar to these posted. Gentlemen, my name is MARTINSR and I was one of those dirty rotten bastards that would keep your car ten times longer than I promised.
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From a discussion on XFalcon.com regarding Suspension Geometry.
The other thing is, you
want to get your roll centre RC and centre of gravity COG as close as
you can to the same point. Don’t get these two confused. The RC is axis
the suspension causes the body to rotate on. The COG is the centre of
the mass of the car, doesn’t even matter if the car is on its wheels or
not.
This is only correct for a very special case not associated with
normal passenger or competition vehicles.
The amount of body roll is proportional to:
(cornering force) x (height difference between the RC and the COG)
If the roll centre is below the COG (as is usually the case), the body
leans away from the corner.
If the roll centre is above the COG, the body leans into the corner.
If the roll centre is at the same height as the COG, there will be zero
roll.
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OZZYISMS
By
ANNIE WARBURTON
Some time ago a press release landed on my desk alerting me to the
forthcoming
annual conference of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of
Psychiatrists.
Such an august event would normally be spoken of by PR hacks in
appropriately
solemn tones, but in this case, to my delight, the pitch was: ‘Take
a geez at the amazing stories on offer here’.
A geez!(As in gissa geez!(the shorter version of give
us
a geezor geezer)at that!).How long since I’d heard that
unmistakable
Australianism used in everyday speech? Not since my schooldays, I
reckoned.
Like many people, I sometimes fear that our unique vernacular is in
danger
of being swamped by American slang, and it cheers me no end to see and
hear the indigenous usages revived.
How I cheered when the Queensland government declined the offer
of 'Yo! Way to go!' for a slogun for it's tourism . 'Ow I ongcored!'
Barry Humphries did his bit for the cause a couple of decades ago
when
he resurrected moribund expressions such as cobber and stone
the crows, and devised some new twists on old standards: May your
chooks turn to emus and kick your dunny down!
Chook. Dunny. Bonzer words! It was sometimes said
that
Humphries was ridiculing the culture of his birthplace by putting these
classic Australianisms into the mouth of that archetypal yobbo Bazza
McKenzie.
In fact, its colourful slang is one of the things Humphries most loves
about Australia, and he has said so.
And I agree with him. Australian slang is wonderfully ironic and
robust,
and even if Humphries succeeded in reviving bonzer, cobber,
and stone the crows only fleetingly, chook, dunny,
and bloke seem to have an enduring appeal.
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Political language -- and with
variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists
-- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give
an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment,
but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can
even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some
jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno,
or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.
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Dear Technical Support,
18 months ago, I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from DrinkingMates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble.
However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound turned off.
To make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as LadsNightOut 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9.
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The Zurich Axioms were originally given to the world by Max Gunther in his book of the same title.
What the Axioms Are and How They Came to Be
excerpted from The Zurich Axioms, by Max Gunther
Consider the puzzle of Switzerland. This ancestral home of mine is a
rocky little place about half the size of Maine. It has not one inch of
seacoast. It is one of the most mineral-poor lands on earth. It
possesses not a drop of oil to call its own, barely a bucket of coal.
As for farming, its climate and topography are inhospitable to just
about everything.
It has stayed out of European wars for 300 years, chiefly because,
in all that time,there has never been an invader who really wanted it.
Yet the Swiss are among the most affluent people in the world. In
per capita income they rank with us Americans, West Germans, and
Japanese. Their currency is among the world's soundest.
How do the Swiss do it?
They do it by being the world's cleverest investors, speculators, and gamblers.
This book is about betting to win. |
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INSTABILITY
Straight line instability: general
• Rear wheel toe-out, either static due to incorrect (or backwards) setting, or dynamic due to bump steer or deflection steer
• Vast lack of rear download or overwhelming preponderance of front download
• Wild amount of front toe-in or toe-out
• Loose or broken chassis, suspension member or suspension link mounting point
• Dead shock absorber
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RIDE AND ROLL RESISTANCE-SPRING
Too much spring: overall
• Harsh and choppy ride
• Much unprovoked sliding
• Car will not put power down on corner exit – excessive wheel-spin
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REDLINE REVHEADS
It is amazing how many uneducated drivers rev the car to red-line (or beyond) in each gear trying to extract maximum performance.
Most road cars are tuned for mid-range engine torque, therefore excessively high engine revs just waste fuel, make more noise and damage components without increasing acceleration.
In fact many computer controlled automatics will out accelerate the manual version of the same car if the manual car driver has no idea where the optimum gear shift points are.
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1.
"Loads of overtaking is boring. You go fishing and you catch a fish every ten minutes and it's boring. But if you sit there all day, and you catch one mega fish, you come back with stories that you caught a fish this big (indicates a big fish), intead of this size (indicating a small fish)"
- Eddie Irvine on the lack of overtaking in F1.
2.
"You know you're in trouble when the first person to get to you after a wreck is carrying a beer"
- NASCAR driver, Jimmy Horton, speaking of his accident at Talladega in 1993.
3.
"The car is such a dog we should have tied it to the fence"
- Dick Johnson, former Australian Touring Car Champion, discusses an obviously less than brilliant vehicle....
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A mechanic was removing the cylinder heads from the motor of a car when he spotted the famous heart surgeon in his shop, who was standing off to the side, waiting for the service manager to come to take a look at his car.
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The time has finally come...
How many men does it take to open a beer?
None. It should be opened when she brings it.
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"Life may not be the party we hoped for... but while we are here we might as well dance!"
Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.
I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner
that fateful night in an effort to cut back.
From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.
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The Garage Logic website:
http://www.garagelogic.com
has a neat concept called Cylinder Index taught by the Institute for Cylinder Appreciation:
CYLINDER INDEX
The total number of internal combustion cylinders in your possession.
Vehicles, gas powered equipment, marine & aviation all qualify.
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- You think the primary purpose of wings is to PREVENT flight.
- You take your helmet along when you go to buy new eyeglasses or check
out cars.
- You feel compelled on a road trip to beat your previous best time.
- You are happiest when your street car's tires are worn to racing
depth and the wear bars are showing. |
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The Australian National Anthem is "Advance Australia Fair"
Words and music composed by Peter Dodds McCormick
Advance Australia Fair was proclaimed Australia's National Anthem by the Governor - General on 19th April 1984
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THE NEED FOR SPEED, a column by Garry Hoyt
In the realm of sailboat design, multihulls have long been
the Rodney Dangerfield of the sport. Now, it's time they received their just due.
TIME FOR RESPECT
0ne of the persistently amazing things about the sailing scene is the inordinate amount
of time it takes for clearly sensible ideas to penetrate into actual sailing practice.
Leading in this
category of stubborn resistance in the face of irrefutable performance facts are the
sailing world's longstanding and deep-seated suspicions, misgivings, and prejudices about
and against multihulls. |
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First, some useful info:
-
Under full throttle, a Top Fuel dragster engine consumes 1 1/2 gallons (5.7 liters) of
nitromethane per second.
A fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the
same rate with 25% less energy being produced.
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Amidships:
Condition of being surrounded by boats.
Anchor:
1). Any of a number of heavy, hook-shaped devices that is dropped over the side
of the boat on the end of a length of rope and/or chain, and which is designed
to hold a vessel securely in place until
(a) the wind exceeds 2 knots,
(b) the
owner and crew depart, or
(c) 3 a.m.
2.) A device designed to bring up mud samples from the bottom at inopportune or unexpected times.
3). The thing rotting in the bilge of every racing yacht (unseen).
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Although cats are the best and most wonderful creatures on this
planet, they are quite bizzare...
After Conspiring with the Cats
Association for Taking over Earth (CATE), I have managed to steal some
Top Secret information about the mysterious the guardians of the
underworld.
This is their rules of life (that every cat MUST stick to)
in order to take over the world!
But how these rules will help to
achieve their objectives still remains a total mystery to humans.
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