And indeed, I now have one :-)

Post #176,136 by ben_tilly 9/24/04 10:49:53 AM Reply	And indeed, I now have one :-) And pleasant memories from dinner with Alex and Brenda. They are getting a motor home and intend to do some travelling around the country, so it is possible that they will meet others in a while. Cheers, Ben About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Post #176,526 by a6l6e6x 9/27/04 1:09:13 AM Reply	It was great to finally meet you in person. That thought goes back to my lurking days on IWE. The Thai place you picked had great food. The only way to have improved it, would be if it had been quieter. But, one has to expect the hub-hub at a popular place. Yes, my wife and I decided to get a motor home. We used have a travel trailer when our kids were school age (20-30 years ago). There are still a lot of places to see in the US, Canada, and Mexico and we'd like to be traveling off and on at least 2 month a year. What we're getting is a Class-C motor home which more or less looks like beer or appliance delivery truck with windows. We've ordered it from the manufacturer and expect to get it at the factory in February. We get a half day inspection/orientation session at that time. To avoid California sales (7.75%) taxes we get to be passengers in the motor home as it is driven by an ICC approved driver to Nevada or Arizona. Technically, we cannot reenter California for 90 days after that. Californians must have used a variety of schemes to try to avoid the tax. :) Anyway, North Carolina has a sales tax cap of $1500 on motor homes and that's bad enough. The part I'm not looking forward to is flying to California with one-way tickets while carrying extra luggage and an excitable dog. Alex "If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." -- Philip K. Dick, US science fiction writer
Post #176,530 by Ashton 9/27/04 3:02:32 AM 9/27/04 3:06:45 AM Reply	Peripheral thought (Whatever the red tape, it's Fun to pick up wheels at a furrin factory.) Each time was an adventure - why, at the very factory gate! in Trappe, a cyclist damn near committed seppuku - before mine eyes. CA qualifies as furrin.. fer you Yankees ;-) Dunno what your automotive lore is; apologies if this is all old stuff - thought occurs: engines just don't like to be broken-in at a constant speed. Pity you cannot cruise it around on short runs with stop/go for first 100 miles or so, etc. Those are most critical, abating after a few hundred. Maybe you can prevail on the driver to at least close throttle periodically, for several seconds == this uses engine vacuum to suck a tad more oil to the all-important piston rings. If these don't bed in properly (while the Indium flashing on main/rod bearings is also getting micro-polished), wearing off the high-points on the adjacent surfaces smoothly - nobody I know has found a way to 'correct' that, subsequently: it always burns a bit of oil. You'll be a long way from assembler.. without a "serious" fix-it case, if later oil loss rate turns out to be ~ marginal. Maybe driver can simply change speeds by 10 mph pretty often during first few hundred..? ie. anything but steady cruise at limit. Ah well, never had to break in a motor home; just assume the physics is the same - and only Rolls (used to?) run-in their engines with a dry-sump fixture - constantly supplying fresh filtered oil, as the speed/load is altered progressively: customer could gas it from Day 1. RHIP. (Maybe too, you can investigate that "wings" thingie posted, linked about a week or so ago - claims several-% fuel savings on a New-Beetle test bed - and that the idea can be scaled-up to boxy shapes.) We have to keep zIWE-Lab at the chuckling-edge of New Stuff! Sounds like a fine Hobbitt adventure. moi Edt: replace Upanishads with be Edited by Ashton Sept. 27, 2004, 03:06:45 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #176,536 by Meerkat 9/27/04 4:46:19 AM Reply	I read a great 'running in' story just this morning. In the latest issue of the imaginatively named car magazine, 'Wheels'. It was 1984, and Toyota were launching their lightly-facelifted Corona. To do so, they loaded a bunch of journalists into 20 brand-new just-off-the-production-line Coronas, pointed them toward Alice Springs (basically the centre of the country) and said 'Go forth, young men!' There's no web link(The Wheels web site is marketing-only ans associated with CarPoint. Hrmph.) , and I guess typing in the full article would not be the appropriate thing to do. But to cut a long story short, the lack of a running in period caused the diff oil to break down and escape as a sulphrous stench emanatine from the rear of the vehicle, follow shortly by various scary grindy graunchy noises. And that wasn't just the grinding of the PR guy's teeth. Of course, the journos did drive these poor things at their 161km/h top speed pretty much the whole way (point of note, you can get a 1984 Corona up to 168 if you slipstream 8 of them in a convoy), so it was of course their fault. But still, not the best way to introduce a new model range. (For the record, my 1980 Corona also topped out at about 161 km/h, depiste having a differeny body/engine/transmission...) Anyway, fab magazine, highly recommended if you're at all interested in things with wheels and tyres and engines and stuff. Er, unless their bikes. Two out of three people wonder where the other one is.
Post #176,541 by Ashton 9/27/04 6:06:35 AM Reply	Yeah.. the lore has changed lately. Ever since my first 'new' thingie - a Lambretta motor scooter.. everybody had "an idea" of how to break in stuff. Lately though, a mini-science has developed, abetted by cheap borescopes and real measurements (especially by racers and others who Like tearing things apart just for the hell of it). Me lazy. It seems there's a Right-way to break in disc, drum brakes (pads or rotors+pads), as well as some accelerated ways to bed-in a new engine, or one with just particular parts changed. This-all makes sense on the microscopic scale, natch -- it's just that many old husbands' tales persist too. At least I know whom to ask, but doubt I'll be doing this to anything 'new' again. Big penalty for that new-car smell. (Fortunately my now 10-yo wheel-set appears to have been done well, and I hope it will continue via its sexy synthetics diet; I hope never to See its guts!) moi
Post #176,583 by a6l6e6x 9/27/04 1:08:18 PM Reply	These drivers do this all the time. The factory gives them break-in instructions just in case. The chassis is a Ford E-450 with 6.8L V-10 "Triton" engine. I suspect we'll suck the California gas supply dry before we leave. :) Actually, only 55 gallons. Speaking of gasoline, I had a brand new experience (in San Bernardino) while in California. While trying to figure out where to pay for the gas with a credit card, a Hispanic guy comes over with small container asking for a squirt of gasoline! A new way to panhandle. Anyway, it turns out only debit cards and cash work at this place, so I left. Alex "If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." -- Philip K. Dick, US science fiction writer
Post #176,556 by ben_tilly 9/27/04 11:37:55 AM Reply	Solution to the extra luggage problem Send it ahead UPS. I'd suggest to Arizona or Nevada. (If UPS is slow, you don't want luggage stranded in CA when you're not supposed to go back in.) That doesn't help with the dog though. I'm glad that you liked the restaurant. Cheers, Ben About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Post #176,558 by deSitter 9/27/04 11:47:14 AM Reply	Recommended venue Black Canyon of the Gunnison outside Gunnison, CO. Most spectacular thing I ever saw next to the Cliffs of Moher in Western Ireland. -drl
Post #176,586 by a6l6e6x 9/27/04 1:17:03 PM Reply	I know what you mean about the Black Canyon. My family camped there in 1974. It's a quarter mile straight down to the river. The Grand Canyon, while a mile deep, cascades over many miles. Evokes totally different emotions. Alex "If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." -- Philip K. Dick, US science fiction writer
Post #176,587 by deSitter 9/27/04 1:19:50 PM Reply	Exactly! I've camped on the rim. There is definitely a pucker factor invovled with the BCG that is not there with the GC. -drl
Post #176,600 by boxley 9/27/04 4:34:55 PM Reply	ahem, dog... too bad Im so far away Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 48 years. meep questions, help? [link\|mailto:pappas@catholic.org\|email pappas at catholic.org]
Post #176,608 by a6l6e6x 9/27/04 5:10:50 PM Reply	Rofl! Alex "If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." -- Philip K. Dick, US science fiction writer

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