Giant slayer

tell me about it. I hope all you londoners are going to be voting for bonking boris for mayor and get that little toaster Ken out!

they look like the lower level cameras on the first link. The circular shaped ones with the bimmer style shark fin aerial. The differences on the A40 ones is that each camera is a pair with one pointing into the traffic and one pointing vertically down, and they extent out on arm over the 3 lane road instead of a cross. coming into london the set is on the Gatso just after the Hoover Building coming away from london it is above the Gatso that is after the Hanger lane underpass where the Hanger lane traffic joins on so watch out!

not sure if anyone who is local has also seen these pop up or any others in the country but i think there is a new type of speed camera on the A40 - London. on the A40 just north of the Hanger Lane gyratory where the existing Gatso cameras were on both carridgeways they through up a post above them a few weeks ago and it now has cameras on it. I will do my best to describe it as i havent been able to get a photo. the posts has an arm on it which holds five sets of cameras. Each of these sets consists of 2 cameras (or some sort of device that looks like a camera) with one pointing straight down and the other pointing in the direction of the oncoming traffic. The cameras look like normal CCTV video cameras but circular in shape somehow. It is interesting that the 2 poles are positioned right next to the gatso camera on either carridgeway even through the gatsos are not level with each other on the dual carridgeway. But it cant see how it could be using the Gatso white road markings because the camera point into the traffic (ie at the front number plate) not at the rear of the traffic. I dont think they are traffic information cameras as there have always been a few of the blue poles with them on on the road. It is also not anywhere near the congestion zone so i wont be to do with this. What i was thinking is that these cameras might take pictures of who is driving the car with all this controversy with people taking other peoples points from pictures taken with a GATSO. would of thought it would be a put in a truvelo type which can be pointed into incoming traffic. Any idea what these things are that we have paid for with our road tax but not been told about??? they are on may way into work too!!

he is picking it up on thursday so i will see it then. the insurance is not that much at all considering engine size. The interior looks great doesnt it. He says it has white stiching which you cant pick up in pictures which can only look great. like 166's because of their rarity but never been sure about the front profile. looks like it is about to cry! the superlusso's are brilliant car. he reckons with the body kit it would of rolled out of the showroom for £35k so 5k is a steal for something in the same class as a 5 series! Think alfa's reliability is a bit overblown nowadays (obivously not going to touch our nippon reliability) and i would trust one over a ford, vauxhall, french or korean garbage and a new merc anyday. The specialist garage network is outstanding. If i get this job in wales i would consider make an offer for his 155 to suck up the miles between west wales and london that i would have to do every week.

my mate just sent me a text telling me he has bought this beaut! http://www.stgeorge.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=pub.review&carid=889 pretty tasty!

cold it be the oil cooler openning up. I know it only open at a certain amount of revs?

HDMI, component (ie RGB) or VGA are the only ways to carry a true HD signal. Would depend what other connections you need to have. Would like to upgrade to sky HD too but did you know you have to pay £300 for the box? bit steep if you ask me.

that documentry was proven to be incorrectly researched and the producer and channel 4 were threatened to be taken to court. But it doesnt really matter on the exact content of the program as man-made global warming cant really be proved either way, but it was good to have a program that opened peoples eyes that there was another side to the story other than the propaganda (and that is exactly what it is with out any scientific backing) we are getting bombarded by from coporations, the press and government everyday.

all this global warming stuff gets on my goat. I remember the exact time it all fired off was summer 04 when Blair said it was going to the top of his agenda and some global conference. It sounded wierd at the time as green issues had been tainted with the hippie brush since the days of the rainbow warrior etc in the 90's. Since that moment it has escalated into every other news story and now advert (showing the new power of the "Green" pound) has been on global warming however no further solid evidence has come out supporting that it is man-made. I think it is one of these government scare tactics, like Micheal Moore was saying about Al-Qaida in his film, to keep the populus down. as far as green issues with motoring and being guilty about driving a zed 2 of my stongest thoughts about this are; 1. the "carbon footprint" of the energy and raw materials used to build a new car will always be massive compared the CO2 expelled from the exhaust at any point of the cars lifetime. The amount of energy required to forge a solid iron engine block is astronomical as is gearboxes and drive shafts etc. that means recycling old cars is always preferable to buying a new Prius. Also the prius has 2 engines so double the energy required and also think about where all those heavy metals and chemicals needed from the battery come from and how they are processed!! 2. The other point is a very sore one for me and that is the monstrosity of poncy 4x4's!!! we have some pay-off from our low mpg/ high CO2 emissions and that is performance and speed. The 4x4 has the same fuel economy and it is just for show as well as being highly dangerous and space blocking things. I hate 'em! They get the same road courtesy from me a Prius drivers, ie they dont get let out at junctions (unless driven by a hot women!). Just my contribution to the urban revolution!!! I could go on all day about the farce that is "global warming" and feel i have good back up as i have a science based engineering degree which included sections on environmental engineering (thankfully before all this kicked off becuase i bet the syllabus is hell now!) and work in the oil and gas industry so i have a feel for the true scientiffic impact of theese things, something i feel the newspapers and the guy on street complaining about it dont have. my work doesnt make me biased in anyway becuase i am my own man with my own opinions.

it was the green/red wire. Gave it a snip and it no longer dims when the lights are turned on. Rest of the clock is fine. tested the voltages with a multimeter before. yellow: constant voltage black: earth Green/red: 12V when lights turned on causing it to dim blue/wht: not sure. recomend it. can now see clock when you turn the lights on when it starts to get dark. Simple to do and can reconnect the wires at a later date if you dont like it.

didnt they use one of those weighing machines to gestimate how much money was there? pretty major boob by the professional cashier so wouldnt feel that guilty about it. Were you putting her off with "come to bed eyes"??

4 wires in the socket at the back of the digital clock: blue/wht, yellow, black, green/red. I guess i can test which wire controls the dim with a multimeter but i dont have it on me and was wondering if anyone knew which one it was.

I am not sure i reset it properly. which of the TPS connectors do diconnect? the black one directly connected to the TPS or the grey one that leads to the bottom of the TPS? Do i need to remove the yellow idle connector when i do this reset (in the words of Shalamar) "Second Time Around"?

Sorry for not letting you know last night Mark but got this sorted. realised the plug you guys where talking about to test the voltage is the GREY one going to the bottom of the TPS not the BLACK one going straight into the TPS. Adjusted it to cock-on 0.45V and i now have a more civilised idle of just over 1k revs. When i got it to that i just bolted it down but i was wondering which gives the higher & lower revs is it more voltage for higher revs or more voltage for lower revs?? ie is 0.45V giving me high idle and if i went to 0.5V i would get a slightly lower idle. What would this cause (apart from slightly better mpg)? Will still bring the car round to you Mark once the O2 sensors are done for another conzult if that is cool with you?

cheers mate. I will give you a bell. I will try not to keep you too long. I always enjoy the blast back from your place through barnes!

tonight? i can live with it for a bit if it is a trouble. O2 sensors going in Friday morning......hopefully i will have it back for the weekend. The guy at the garage said it should take long if they are reasonably accessable......I said, "yeah, it should be fine". GOOD LUCK BOYS!

i was told that the reason you see sportsmen eating bannanas (like tennis players do) is because they are high in potassium and that stops you cramping up (high impact sprint sport like tennis is espeacilly vunerable esp when it is played in the sun = sweating out of natural salts). I doubt 2 a day does you any harm unless you have kidney or bladder problems and probably does you more good than not eating 2 bannanas a day. But like these nutritionists always say it is best to vary what you have as much as possible to make sure you are covering all basis.

i have deffinetly done something to the idle since fiddling with the TPS last night. I cant really drive about with a 2k idle espeacilly in london where i am idling at traffic lights most of the time. Besides, it is looking nice out today so i will give it a go tonight to try and get the idle back to normal with the position of the TPS. will let you know how it goes.

should be a relatively easy mod. I want to disable the dimmer of the dash digital clock so it stays on the top brightness when the lights are turned on. I am guessing it is just a single wire that needs to be chopped but anyone any idea which one and if it is simple as that?

Yeah Mark used his conzult and saw my TPS was a bit out. He told me to wait until i get my O2 sensors done then we would have another look at it but i can be an inpatient sod when i get the afternoon off work and it is nice outside!! i can mark where the TPS is now but that is not going to help me because the current position is giving me 2k revs at idle! I guess i should just turn it until i get respectable revs at idle and do the final adjustment with Mark and the Conzult. What is usual idle revs? about 900?

middle pin measured against batt neg terminal gave 12V. Did i use the right setting on the multimeter......?

there are plenty of threads on adjusting idle but there was nothing wrong with my idle before i started monkeying around with TPS and need to find out how to get my TPS back to normal without the aid of conzult and without touching the IACV.

Thanks Dan. Not 100% sure what you mean about this bit: that sounds a bit tricky! Do i first turn it to the low rev point as a start point then rotate it until just before the revs increase? Is this correct. 1. Does it affect things that i have already set the TPS to an incorrect level? 2. Do i need to do the reset before i start because what i have done already or just when i have finished? 3. Does the car need to be warmed up?

tried the middle pin. dont think it could be meter calibration as it is showing 12+ volts! it is also a digital meter so probably unable to slip like anolgue gauges. As far as i remember, every time i have checked for a voltage most places on the car it reads out 12+V more or less (expect when it is going to ground and stuff like that) am i using the wrong setting on the meter? It is just the volt reading in 20's i think. I am a bit electronically incapable to tell the truth. Tried all the other settings on the meter to see if there was anything that resembled a 0.45 - 0.5 signal but the ones i found that changed when i moved the TPS werent in the above range. this is the exact multimeter i have: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=44679&criteria=multimeter&doy=18m7 The mode i had it on which read 12+V was the 3rd round to the left of OFF. The probes where plugged in to the middle and right sockets. but like i said i tried every combination of setting and probe configuration i think.

I used this thread to adjust my TPS last night as a recent conzult showed it was slightly out of the ideal range. http://www.300zx.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=83683&highlight=TPS I do not have a conzult so tried to make the adjustment using a voltmeter also described in the thread. When I connected the voltmeter to the neg battery terminal and the middle pin of the connector I got a 12+V signal. I could not find a voltage that showed anything similar to the 0.45 – 0.5 V range using all the settings on the volt meter and all the combination of pins in the connector and neg terminal. I tried a bit of guess work to adjust it by trying to get it in the middle. I followed the reset procedure and now I have a really high idle (just below 2k) but no other noticeable affects. Can someone point me out how exactly to measure the current with a voltmeter? If not I will just adjust it until I get a satisfactory idle and wait until I get another conzult to adjust it to the correct parameters.