For those interested in old cars.

[big jim]

One of my pet hates is the word ‘detailing’ when it comes to washing cars, when you see the lengths some people go to when cleaning cars i have to laugh, mine gets washed at the local hand car wash is its lucky and a muck out once I run out of cup holders! 

[russ p]

52 minutes ago, big jim said:

One of my pet hates is the word ‘detailing’ when it comes to washing cars, when you see the lengths some people go to when cleaning cars i have to laugh, mine gets washed at the local hand car wash is its lucky and a muck out once I run out of cup holders! 

 

I must admit I'm not keen on the D word. I do like to keep mine clean and polished mainly for protection of the bodywork but I'm useless at glass cleaning 

There are a lot of products on the market these days making cleaning easier with stuff to clean the bodywork without actually touching it which at this time of year stops you getting swirl marks 

[alastairq]

1 hour ago, russ p said:

but I'm useless at glass cleaning 

 Following on from a tip I got from  someplace [and subsequently spotted on Youtube]...I have tried using steel wool to clean my auto glass. [0000 type]

seems to work, gets a lot of the grime off....but I get easily bored with rubbing and polishing.

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

 Following on from a tip I got from  someplace [and subsequently spotted on Youtube]...I have tried using steel wool to clean my auto glass. [0000 type]

seems to work, gets a lot of the grime off....but I get easily bored with rubbing and polishing.

Be aware it can cause microscoring of the glass surface, and as a consequence can play havoc with night vision through the windscreen.

[MrWolf]

I used white vinegar on wadded up newspaper, mostly to remove tobacco smoke stains, works on plastic headliners too. 

[big jim]

Any thing to remove stiletto heel indents? 

[MrWolf]

Just now, big jim said:

Any thing to remove stiletto heel indents? 

 

Yes, hold an electric kettle under the affected area and re stretch the plastic...

[big jim]

Thanks, asking for a friend 

[boxbrownie]

34 minutes ago, big jim said:

Thanks, asking for a friend 

That’s a relief, I thought they were your high heels.......

[big jim]

They would have to be very very strong heels 

[alastairq]

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

Be aware it can cause microscoring of the glass surface, and as a consequence can play havoc with night vision through the windscreen.

Note, I said 0000 grade, which is almost silk-like to touch. Micro scoring will occur with much heavier grades, but 0000 will simply take off the film that normal cleaning processes leave behind.

[boxbrownie]

53 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Note, I said 0000 grade, which is almost silk-like to touch. Micro scoring will occur with much heavier grades, but 0000 will simply take off the film that normal cleaning processes leave behind.

OK.......yes I did see what you wrote, but I wouldn’t even touch the screen with wire wool.....of any grade......carry on 

[peanuts]

8 hours ago, big jim said:

One of my pet hates is the word ‘detailing’ when it comes to washing cars, when you see the lengths some people go to when cleaning cars i have to laugh, mine gets washed at the local hand car wash is its lucky and a muck out once I run out of cup holders! 

another americanism brought to the fore by all the modded car progammes from the US now all the cool kids use it to look like there down with all the lingo init 

[MrWolf]

Although the way to create a modded car in the UK nowadays is take one c2appy old Subaru, Corsa or Golf, cover it in superglue and ramraid Halfords.

For the full effect you should empty McDonald's skip into the car, you should also chain smoke the cheapest most pungent weed possible and on no account should the car be taxed, tested or insured.

There's no point, you never had a license anyway! 

[peanuts]

1 minute ago, MrWolf said:

Although the way to create a modded car in the UK nowadays is take one c2appy old Subaru, Corsa or Golf, cover it in superglue and ramraid Halfords.

For the full effect you should empty McDonald's skip into the car, you should also chain smoke the cheapest most pungent weed possible and on no account should the car be taxed, tested or insured.

There's no point, you never had a license anyway! 

you missed off the festival quality sound system  playing a single bass track on a loop whilst the exhaust pops and bags with a cacophany of flames to match 

[MrWolf]

11 minutes ago, peanuts said:

you missed off the festival quality sound system  playing a single bass track on a loop whilst the exhaust pops and bags with a cacophany of flames to match 

 

I didn't want to sound like I was being judgemental...

So I missed out other must haves such as prior driving convictions, a large tin pipe or two stuck under the rear bumper that looks like the extractor chimney from a kebab shop. (Also known as a fa2t cannon). Custom race seats (or playstation gaming chairs) that means that your stupid Lego man hat is the only thing visible above the door. 

Ultimate goal is a pregnant 14 year old girlfriend who you can use to ponce off the state when your gangsta empire is going through a dry patch...

 

Did I miss anything? 

[5 C]

18 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

 

I didn't want to sound like I was being judgemental...

So I missed out other must haves such as prior driving convictions, a large tin pipe or two stuck under the rear bumper that looks like the extractor chimney from a kebab shop. (Also known as a fa2t cannon). Custom race seats (or playstation gaming chairs) that means that your stupid Lego man hat is the only thing visible above the door. 

Ultimate goal is a pregnant 14 year old girlfriend who you can use to ponce off the state when your gangsta empire is going through a dry patch...

 

Did I miss anything? 

A quantity of whipped cream dispenser canisters, which you chuck out of the window when emptied, along with the remains of your McDonalds/KFC/kebab as you speed along the road late at night on the way to nowhere in particular.

[MrWolf]

Damn, I forgot about the nitrous sniffers! Luckily they're not clever enough to be able to use it in their engines, the wrong wheel drive four bangers would turn into grenades.

 

On second thoughts, that might stop them from breeding...

[Northmoor]

This all reminds me of the trip home on the bike from work one evening, sat behind a ropy modded Corsa or something which was clearly struggling to idle (I could hear the PHAT exhaust even over the engine I was sitting on); I could tell the driver actually needed to keep blipping the throttle to stop it stalling and the smell of unburnt fuel was pretty powerful.  How I wished I could have told him I could make his car run better for less than a tenner; it's called fitting a new air filter.

[PhilJ W]

Better still offer to fix it for him for £200 and just remove the air filter.  

[MrWolf]

Always makes me laugh when you get one of those chipped motors on a decent stretch of road and they are misfiring and overfuelling like mad by about 80mph.

[MJI]

I used to like it when warm hatches picked on my old Sunbeam.

 

Similar acceperation until I hit power band and they hit rev limiter.

[big jim]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

Always makes me laugh when you get one of those chipped motors on a decent stretch of road and they are misfiring and overfuelling like mad by about 80mph.

ive just had the cat refitted to my Mini as I couldn’t stand the popping and banging that happened when I fitted a sport manifold that had a decat fitted, (there are pics in the modern classics thread), admittedly it’s not fuelling properly yet, it’s going back to the tuners in the new year for a proper custom remap, it’s currently putting out 195bhp but it should get to about 220-230 when mapped properly with a smaller supercharger pulley fitted 

[MrWolf]

They don't like you fiddling around with new cars, do they? All that emissions control garbage is just so that they can get you burning low quality fuel, its octane topped off with all the stuff that's now banned in other products. Most of the tuning I have seen at the budget end of the market is more about image and noise than actual performance. It's one reason that I prefer old cars that you can work on yourself. You know what you're getting, the money you've spent has all gone on the car, not someone else's profits. 

I'm convinced that a lot of the idea behind the tech we use on modern cars is more about planned obsolescence and screwing a few more bucks out of motorists when the speak and spell under the bonnet inevitably goes pop. 

Always fancied fitting the period Shorrocks supercharger kit to a Triumph Herald, blowers are good fun. 15 years or so back I helped a friend build a Chevrolet 396 big block with a GM 6-71 supercharger to go into a road legal 1964 Chevy Nova 2 door hardtop.

Yet still the McDonald's car park racing car club thought that they stood a chance.

[big jim]

My Mini is a later model supercharged one which has Teflon coated blades and is about 10bhp more standard than my early model one that I scrapped last month 

 

The old mini had a superchip bluefin fitted and was putting out about 230-240 crank BHP with all the same mods my new one has (my mechanic swapped them off my old car) however on the new one I’ve not bothered with the superchip and I’m going to spend on getting it properly mapped, the only other change I’m going to do is bigger injectors, the map is a by bitronic and will cost me about £480 to be done but will be set up on a rolling road at a mini specialist in Cambridgeshire (1320 mini) and it will custom to my car as opposed to the generic ‘superchip’ which when last dyno’d you could see by the graph it wasn’t getting enough fuel at the top end of the Rev range

 

the chances are the new one will be less BHP than the old one but have more go as it’s going to be fuelling right (with no pops and bangs)