RANT - Smog alarm

So today we had / are having Smog alarm in Belgium.
In short the air quality is poor and to solve this we're going to drive at 90kph instead of 120kph on the highway.
Since I have a 140km commute, this has a big impact on me, and this gave me a lot of time to think this through.
Here are some random remarks

• It causes the trucks,which usually drive on the right lane to drive in the middle. As everybody knows, trucks are limited to 90kph, so setting the limit for everybody at 90 will cause a messed up situation. You'll have your "cautious" drivers doing 85 on the right or middle and trucks overtaking them. 
• All the media hype you get the last days makes people ignore the signs along the highway. So even on places where 120 is still allowed you'll have the white van man blocking you. Which might not be such a big deal if you only have 15k to drive. Me on the other hand was rather annoyed. 
• If instead of having 99% diesel cars on the road, we had more petrol engines we would have less pollution. Way to go politicians in pushing for diesel. 
• On a side note, has anybody who drivers an "ecological car" ever achieved the claimed consumption ? On my 10 year old diesel, which is supposed to be very un -eco I commute using only 5.5l/100km, beat that. 
• Wouldn't it make sense to make everybody's commute shorter by trying to get rid of the traffic jams ?
• Wouldn't it make sense to make commuting by train more pleasant and efficient. I simply don't get why I need to spend about an hour extra for the same distance when taking public transport. Let alone why trains can have delays. They only have 1 track, no other cars on it and the trains stations have been the same since ages. But hey, i'm getting side-tracked. 

Oh well ... I'm not looking forward to the trip home :-/

RANT - iCoyote update woes

Last week I got a nice popup on my phone telling me about the new version of iCoyote.

I went ahead and installed the new version, all 37Mb of it. (why should a program with just one function be that huge ??)

Ever since I first used it, I long for the old version. Call me old or retro minded but the old version of was just plain better. OK it didn't look as fancy but at least it did the job and didn't make me feel like throwing my phone out of the window. 

Now I have to cope with

• A screen that's stuck on full blast since the night mode doesn't work. Sure it works in the settings screen but once you're in the main app it goes back to blinding. 
• A broken mute function. If I want it to shut up I really want it to be silent. So no beeps to tell me how far I'm away from the radar, nor overspeed beeps
• Sound that's always on media, even though the settings are set to notification. Since my podcast is set to mute on notifications of other programs, it now happily keeps on chatting when iCoyote makes a sound. Combine this with the previous point a d you have a very annoying bug. 
• An indication  telling me I'm doing mph instead of kph. Hello iCoyote people, we have metric here in Belgium. Luckily the speed is in kph, so at least I don't have to constantly re-calculate my speed. 
• Nag screens. Every time it tells you there is a vehicle stopped or a mobile radar it asks you to either confirm or decline its presence. This is all well and good, were it not for the nagging sound every couple of seconds followed by a obnoxious buzzer if you fail to answer. Sometimes I prefer focusing on driving rather than fishing for my phone to answer a question.

In short, I want the old version back.

And as a closing thought it would be nice if the iCoyote people actually listened to their customers. Given the number of 1 star ratings they're getting on Google play lately, one would think they'd do something about it, or at least have send some communication out into the world. Guess again.

I'll have to give Waze a test-drive.

COTW - GT86 - BRZ

It's been a while since I've written something here. Come to think of it, I really must stop starting my posts with this sentence. The way to go might be to post more frequently, but I don't seem to manage it lately.

Anyway, off to the meat of the post, the car.
I present you the Toyota GT86 / Subaru BRZ. This car should need no introduction, unless you spend the last years under a rock or you have absolutely no interest in cars (what ARE you doing here ??)

So there you have it, I've got the successor of the celica on my mind. It's a proper sports car in such that it has the engine up front, the driven wheels at the back, a low center of gravity and the proper amount of doors, being 2.
In the last couple of years I haven't seen a negative review. Most of them go something like it's a brilliant and fun car to drive. If you really twist the reviewers arm they say it could do with some more power for track use. Since I've driven it once many moons ago, I can concur.
Living in Belgium, a country without any form of car culture, (there are no tracks, you can not modify your car - even something as small as changing a bulb for a led is frowned upon and the bulk of the cars have a 1.6l diesel up front for tax reasons) I would even go as far as saying the 200hp is plenty for day to day use.
The only mod I might consider is having a set of different size rear rims so that I can "recycle" cheap tires at the back :-)

I've been checking out list prices for second hand ones and they've fallen as low as 15k. So depending on the funds that rest me after our apartment is done this might be an option. Fingers crossed.

3D printers - The jungle out there

Ok, I've been ogling 3D printers lately. They're just way too cool, so I want one.

The last couple of days I've been searching the net to see what the options are. After about half an hour googling I was ready to give up. There are so many options out there, it's mind bogging.

We need some criteria to narrow this down

• I want to print ABS, so I'll need a heated bed
• Price should be about 500$
• Self-replicating printers sound way to cool not to have one
• I want to tinker, so a ready-to-print is out of the question
• Build volume should be at least 200x200

This pretty much narrows it down to a RepRap. So we have the "brand" now the model. 

Given the fact that the Mendel is known to a colleague of mine, who's willing to help out and print parts, that's the model sorted as well. 

So now we have brand and model, you'd think you're there. But hell no, there's still half a dozen variations of the model and most of these have a couple of iterations. I'm getting the feeling of being sent to square one. 

After some more googleing I found the one that I want. Combining the above criteria with a pinch of "but it's preeeeetyyyy" I came to the conclusion that I want a RepRap Mendel Prusa i3 with a laser-cut Melamime frame i.e. this one

Now that's the model down, next hunt is about learning about hotends and electronics to find out which one i want / need. But that's for a future post. 

COTW - Toyota Supra MK3

Since I seem to start every post with "it's been a while" I'm thinking this should have been a COTM feature.

After this, on with the business at hand. This car of the week has a rather famous name, Supra. But instead of the one we all know from the fast and the furious, it is an MK3. The one that looks like a mid-size space ship designed in the 80s.

So why would one want one of these ?
Well first of all it has pop up headlights, which add an instant cool to the car.

It's been made over a quarter of a century ago, which means you can get it as an old timer, making the road tax bearable. How does 75€ sound instead of 7600€.

Now on to the car. Of course it's rear wheel drive, it has 2 doors, 4 seats and an inline 6 which used to have 280hp when it rolled from the productionline some 25 years ago. That should be enough to make the 1600kg beast move swiftly.

The inside styling is splendid. Have a look  :

COTW BMW Z3 coupe 2.8

Been a while since i've posted something. Recentely I've been thinking a lot about the Z3 coupe .. again. You might remember my older post on the Z3M coupe, which ended up in me realizing that a 3.2l engine with 320hp would rather kill my wallet when it comes to taxes.

As you may or may not know, the Z3 coupe started it's life as a "humble" 2.8l(M52B28). This makes the taxes bearable, while still giving me the gorgeous looks of the Z3 coupe and the playful oversteer handling resulting form a not so sophisticated rear axle that has to cope with some 190hp.
As an added bonus, there are loads of upgrade possibilities since this is a rather early version of a car that got some nice goodies in it's future life.
- a 3.0 M54B30 engine
- a 6 speed gearbox (from a Z4)
- stability control through an uprated ESP
- a S54 M engine
- some nice big brakes from the M version
And the list goes on, so for a tinkerer as myself it's the perfect car. Now if only it would have 4 seats, so that I can take the occasional friend along for a ride it would be perfect.
 

WTF Blackbird indicators

The other day a dashboard light gave out on the Blackbird. The one that lights up the speedo from 0 to about 200, creating some interesting moments when driving past speedtraps at night.

Needless to say, this needed to be rectified as soon as possible. Instead of just going to the local bike shop and getting me one of those 3 cent incandecent bulbs I decided it's the perfect opportunity to make the change to the 21ste century and install LED lights. So I went to the local parts store called ebay and ordered me some LEDs from China. A week later I found a small package on my doorstep and the repair could start.

Yay Chinese LEDs 

Reading the repair manual, i realized getting access to the instrument cluster meant removing the complete fairing. This is going to be a long one, but hey.
After removing the better part of the fairing i found a wire running from the left to the right indicator with a junction in the middle going to the instrument cluster, so some further investigation was necessary.

Upon opening my rear view mirrors to get  to trace the wire I found this :

Yes, that's a dasboard light glued, well actually siliconed, on the indicator bulb. The connections are soldered and isolated by thin air. I'm actually rather surprised the installer didn't just tie them together with a nice bow in the wire :-/ 

It does however answer the question to why my indicators were always sort of on. 

But there's always a silver lining, it gave me an idea for another project. How does changing the indicators by some LEDs sound. Ok, I agree a bit ordinary, so I'm going to get myself some smoked indicator lenses and some nice 2-tone LEDs. this should give me some white DRLs and orange indicators.

So there you have it, the blackbird is slowly making his entry into Greg's World :-)