Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

It's with the mechanic now for MOT and service. Needs a fair few bits and he was all for it when I suggested looking for OEM/cheap bits to get it working. I did ask about the other rear caliper and he said it was fine.

Frustratingly, some little shit fully smashed my driver's door wing mirror off last night when the car was parked by the station, it was driver's door side to the pavement, so presumably some bored teenager.

Sure the sliders aren't siezed? Is it the hand brake part of the caliper?

Be interested to know the make the ebay caliper and where it came from.

How much is a rebuild kit? Including the rubbers for the sliders.

No pics, no proof!

Great news though

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New power steering pump, £603. Bugger.

I think he's tried to sort sliders/pins last couple of years I've brought it in and it fixes it for a bit but he's saying it's finally had it. I trust him, so will go for it.

The various ebay calipers appear to claim to be Lucas, SAS and (IIRC) TKW.

Seem to recall reading somewhere that the actual original ones Skoda use are Lucas?

Bloomsbury Free Parking, gawd bless the peoples republic of Camden.

Yeah will get to it provided it doesn't blow up on the first whiff of the angry pedal!

In that case it is probably the sliders again. That is just the caliper not the mount too.

Sliding pins are a real pain. Do skoda (VW) supply a grease?

Not a clue! I'm not so hot on repairing cars. :)

I can just about manage my bikes but dicking about with something that could endanger others feels a bit much.

not much help - but my rears on the octavia have always given me problems, as per you , mechanic always manged to keep them running but last service i had to have one of the rears replaced - mines no VRs - but for sure it wasnt replaced with OEM , i have the bill in the car but i'm not sure it will have the make on it - VRs would be a higher rated calliper anyway?

Maybe not, fwd so rears don't do much as there is a bias valve so more rear breaking with more weight in the back

I’ve got a squeaky lobber in anticipation.

I'd got into a bit of a fugue with the specification of the 911 engine - we have a range of options in terms of stroke, from short-stroke (72mm) 3.4 litre screamer to 4.0 litre long stroke (85mm) stump-puller.

The head design, valve size, cam profiles, compression ratio and so forth were all dependent on what we picked here.

The engine designer was asking me what to use - and I was getting somewhat frustrated because every answer I gave ended in further "well, this trades off with this, which trades off with this".

We weren't getting anywhere, basically, so I decided to change how we were working.

Rather than me choosing a stroke I've set some goals and asked Mike to pick whatever combination of stroke/cam/valve/etc would get us closest to them. They are, in no particular order:

• 8,200 rev limit
  
• Peak power delivered ~7,800 rpm
  
• Enough torque for a road engine in a (fairly) lightweight sports car
  
• 400 bhp
  
  

Whether that's delivered from 3.7, 3.9 or 4.0 litres I don't care.

I'm very interested to see what specification comes back.

Will it sound like this? :oP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a95n7XH-uA8

Peak power delivered ~7,800 rpm

Why so close to the red line?

This question has no nuance to it, I have no idea about such matters and am curious.

In the MG, the power comes in nicely at about 3.5k and the redline is (I think) at about 5.5k ( @BRM ?) Pretty sure peak power is not up at the 5k area.

No way. Redline well beyond 6750. The prob with that engine is oil starvation above 7k, not the crank letting go. You’ve got the dunk results to see where peak power is.

Why so close to the red line?

400 rpm between peak and cut is fairly standard, and there's no point in more RPM if they don't deliver - may as well shift once the engine has done it's best in that gear.

Hard to say, it should sound fairly interesting - ITB's, lwfw, equal length manifolds and a low restriction exhaust.

I'd go stump puller - it'll likely still rev much harder than the stock motor and it's a street car. Big torque on the road is always more fun, more often.

I agree with you that logically torque is the thing, and the AMG's (tiny in your terms) 5.4 V8 delivers this in spades.

To me a sports car should be about revs though- that and the accompanying metallic howl.

If it sounds good - and it will on ITBs - then it'll sound just as good at 8krpm as it does at 9. I'd go for the 4 litre as well as long as it'll hit 8krpm reliably.

Man I LOVE a high winding, big cam race motor, yowling away. I guess you're looking at over 400hp though? How often are you going to get to wind that out on the road?

Both will be awesome, I just reckon big cubes will be awesome more of the time.

And if you've got fully-programmable fuel mapping, chuck a load of extra fuel in a 0-5% throttle between 6 and 7krpm. Lovely burble on the overrun.

Syvecs is the plan.

Shortening up the gear ratios (a lot- the Porsche box is loooong) is going to have to happen.

Came across this while procrastinating and thought it might be useful for the mx5 owners and inspiration for others without a boot

From: https://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=564259&page=1