It is/was a 1.3CDTI Limited Edition (the cheapest little diesel I could get on finance at the time). Depending on what the insurance company value it at, I'll either get something like a little Polo or fix the 106D I used to drive (which leaks, and pops out of gear, and has damage from when someone drove into my Dad...)

I'm fine, as was the driver of the other car.

I was turning at a green light, and had assumed the light was for my direction only (there wasn't anyone coming the other way at the time), then he came over the crest of a bridge in the other direction and collected me. He admitted that he was travelling faster than the speed limit, so hopefully they'll take that into account a tiny bit instead of lumping 100% of the blame on me.

So this happened yesterday...



3 month old car and the insurance company have written it off...

When I get the cheque I'll be paying off the finance and using the leftovers to buy an old car to run into the ground on my daily commute. Much more my style than a new car. Any suggestions for a mega efficient (60mpg+) old car?

Quote from Intrepid :

I don't think there were any decent deals on the table from ITV or C4. It was Sky or nothing decent at all.

Bernie has been able to suckle on the tax payers tit for fair too long whether it be through heavily inflated broadcast rights costs (via the BBC) or overly priced race fees. Time for F1 to grow up and f1 fans get a reality check. F1 isn't a sport for the masses... it's a sport for the top .0005% in society. F1 to sky is a perfect marriage. You want to watch it and partake in it as a fan... pay for it.

doesn't matter if it's a bad move for F1. it's a good move for those who do not wish to have their taxes subsidise a sport exclusive to the most wealthy in society. It's about time the BBC actually realised what they were supposed to be.

F1 should be available for the masses. There's a huge shortage of engineers in this country, and one of the main reasons is that a lot of people don't understand what engineering is, or how it can be cool. Most of the people I studied with would say that they were drawn to engineering by F1/motorsport (or jet planes). Taking it away from the general public will slow down the number of people getting interested in engineering even more, which will have serious affects down the line.

Quote from Stefani24 :

May this be a step towards a new possibility of even winning energy?

No

Quote from Inouva :

I take a example that was used in some thread about this matter


If someon stole your car, the company should give you a new one?

This isn't asking for a new one. This is asking for his back. If someone stole your car, should the thief be allowed to keep it or should it be returned?

In my opinion this is extremely harsh of Victor. Everyone gets conned in some way at some point, to say it's his fault for being conned is terrible, no matter what occurred.

Having an experience like this forces people to learn about the risks, and refusing to return his account just rubs salt in the wounds.

Graduated this year, now I´m working as an engineer, travelling to races to support teams/manufacturers/organisers with data acquisition/analysis systems. When I´m not travelling I work with teams and manufacturers on new applications.

Quote from Myffe :

Also its really annoying if qualiflying is rainy and race is dry, you cant change your car setup before the race. Srsly whats the ****ing point in that?

That's the rules, and keeping it in the game adds realism. Try looking at the weather forecast before you fix a setup.

Quote from adamlfs :

Take it you haven't checked any screenshots or videos yet?

Spins can't be recovered by stamping on the brakes, i've already tried it.

Wheels for each car are now the correct ones for each team, they look great.

Not really, I'm working at Estoril and I don't get much time to get on the crappy hotel Internet.

If they've sorted some of the issues I'll probably pick it up after payday. I enjoyed F12010 for a laugh, and KERS/DRS should make it more involved.

Will people ever stop coming to this thread to talk out of their arses? It's for appreciating cars, not crapping over them. If someone wants to drive a modded Mazda (which I think is awesome looking, even though things like that aren't normally my cup of tea), it's their business.

Anyway, I'm here with a new addition. I'm keeping the BMW, but a new job means commuting, which isn't a good idea in a 36yr old car that gets 30mpg. Needing a very economical car quickly meant I had to go with whatever was in stock at the dealers around me.

I ended up with this. Don't be fooled by the amazing looks, it's a 1.3 diesel (though it has the body kit and suspension of a VXR). Handles like it's on rails, goes like it's dragging an anchor. Brilliant to drive on twisty roads (more fun to drive a slow car fast, and all that)

Can you still recover from every spin by grabbing the brakes to flip yourself back straight?

Also, have they given the cars the correct cockpits? It really bugged me that all the cars had the same wheel last year, it looked extremely out of place in the Red Bull.

What's damage like?

Quote from Intrepid :

... and where's your actual evidence to back that up? Totally unfounded

for all you know not-so-free-to-air broadcasting could be drawing engineers away from more profitable and productive ventures and into F1.

Why should F1 enjoy a state-supported monopoly of motorsport broadcasting? For all we know a more competitive market could bring about different motorsports which have less regulatory constraints. I don't know, and neither do you the possible negative/positive consequences of not-so-free-to-air broadcasting of F1

The link between F1 and engineering is clear, including the F1 in Schools competition. Young people need to be shown that engineering can be cool an exciting, no matter what area they go into. Many of my friends were first drawn to engineering through F1 and motorsport, and then pursued other engineering areas (aerospace, defence, automotive, etc).

I don't have any idea what you're on about with the whole state supported monopoly thing. F1 isn't the only motorsport on the BBC, and other free to air stations play major motorsport series. Besides, the regulations are what makes F1 such an attractive series, unregulated motorsport leads to ridiculous costs to make cars even less relavent to road cars, and working within such strict regulations is a great engineering challenge.

The reason F1 has thrived compared to, say, LMS or Indy is because it's better run with exciting racing that's easier to follow for the average viewer, not because of some government conspiracy.

Quote from Mustafur :

Either way its not your ''right'' to watch f1, and if it ends up such a failure a so called 'free to air channel' will naturally take its place, unless they add some more regulation to already near socalist british TV market.

It's nothing to do with whether it's my right to watch it, my point is that F1 draws children and teenagers to an industry that is in dire need of new engineers. This country is suffering a massive deficit of new workers in STEM industries, and having F1 free to view was at least drawing some in, making it in our country's interests.

F1 isn't just a bunch of rich people playing with cars, it's a major driver of advanced miniature/high performance technology, and draws a huge number of people towards engineering as a career.

Without exposure to F1, I (and many of my friends) would never have got into engineering. The "cool" side of engineering is never shown on free TV, and F1 is right at the forefront.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

I knew I'd read it in a decent source. These ratios below are taken from A Graham Bell's Four-Stroke Performance Tuning (Second Edition). It's the bible as far as I'm concerned and I would recommend anyone serious about engine tuning to have a copy of this book for constant reference.

Starting - 1-3:1
Idling - 6-10:1
Low Speed Running - 10-13:1
Light Load Ordinary Running - 14-16:1
Heavy Load Running - 12-14:1

Some engines run AFRs of 30-40:1 under idling, sometimes higher. Not race engines, mind, but we're not talking about them.

I've always wondered this as well, and I think it's something that can't easily be answered with just "this is how it is".

I had always held the belief that WOT acceleration, then dropping to the lowest possible RPM for cruising. However, this theory was ruined when I discovered that my MR2 got considerably better mpg when at 85 compared to 70. 85mph had the engine speed very close to that of peak torque, which is what I attributed the improvement to.

I haven't added anything useful to the discussion.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Yup true.

I just think it should be whoever has the highest votes. You shouldn't need to be everyone by a certain %. If Bob has 51% of the votes, Bettie has 30%, Peter has 10% and Alejandro has 9%, then Bob should win.

There shouldn't be "first or second" choices. It should just be "who do you want to win" and whoever has the highest votes....wins.

Simples. Been that way for many years in many areas of life and it's how democracy is supposed to be.

Ideally though I'd like there to be a public vote on every decision, such as whether we are to be in the EU, whether we should spend this money on taxes, whether we should do this, or that, or whatever. Because as a democracy it should be run by rule of the majority of what the people of this country want.

It hasn't been that way for many years, because FPTP isn't like that. There's no proportionality, look at the percentage of seats each party has compared to the number of votes received.

AV and FPTP are both bad systems, but if we don't get a change now, then most people will consider the issue closed, and we'll never get the chance to change to a more suitable system such as STV.

Quote from pärtan :

But it can't judge the line along the track which is an important factor.

Yes it can. It's not hard to find the desired racing line and compare the variations between ideal and real.

Quote from War :

IRL there are judges. Only speed is measured by a speedtrap. Everything else is done by humans. And why ruin a thing that works?

You could drift with alot of speed, have good angle and be good at clipping points, but if the ride looks wonky and sketchy it won't be as good as someone drifting smoothly. It's like figure ice skating.

But adding speedtraps to some points would be a good idea.

Because objective is always better than subjective. It's the same reason why people want goal-line technology in football or Hawkeye in tennis. Remove human error/bias.

If you have speed, angle and position you can also find the rate of change of any of those things, which can be used to show how smooth the driver is.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I need to get round to reading up a bit more on this. Are there any decent unbaised sources about the advantages/disadvantages of both methods?

I read through the Wiki pages on both for a while.

It's obvious to me that FPTP isn't a good solution, we had a "winning" government that 2/3 of the people in the country didn't support, and it results in parties that do get a large number of votes countrywide getting no seats.

AV isn't perfect, but it could shift power from two huge parties.

STV would be the ideal though

I happened to be at a drift competition the other day (which was crap, but that's not the point) with friends, and we didn't like the subjective nature of drifting (one of the major problems most people have with it). We decided it wouldn't be difficult to produce a properly objective scoring system for drifting, to remove the reliance on human judges.

• Angle can be measured using a slip angle sensor, either optical or GPS based such as a VBOX II
  
• Speed can be measured using the same GPS based system
  
• Distance can be measured using a sensor at the designated clipping point/other car, or again using the GPS data (knowing the track outline)
  

The peak/average readings can then be assigned values and entered into a formula to return a score.

Seeing as we can't vote for a true PR, I'll be voting for AV. It's still a slight improvement on FPTP, and a step towards a proper voting system.

(you should probably change your thread title, seeings as it's not AV vs PR)

It needs a bit of work: There's quite a bit of rust (nothing structural) and the engine could do with a rebuild.

I plan on taking it off the road when I graduate, and getting something bland like an ECOnetic Fiesta while I do it up. Either that or I'll sell it and buy a Porsche 914 (decisions...)

Less arguing over tyres, more cars

Yeah, those guys made an amazing HD video of their car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLVatWqhjPM

Quote from MAGGOT :

3 years and you get a degree? Bastard!

What degree do you get from your program? Is it actually just a BA (Bachelor of Arts)? I'm still miffed I get a BAT (Bachelor of Applied Technology and Industrial Design, with an automotive specialty) instead of a BID (Bachelor of Industrial Design).

I gotta say, I'm pretty stoked about thesis. Or I was, anyways, now I'm nervous. A week and a half left and I'm nowhere near done...

3 years is pretty standard in a lot of countries, UK included. The studying is a lot more condensed. For example, I had 36 hours a week of lectures at the beginning of my first year.

Quote from MAGGOT :

Ah I'd love to be on an FSAE team

Are you at uni? See if they've got a team if you are.

Otherwise, why not put your 'master skinnerz' skills to good use, and see if you can get a livery on an FSAE car?