keltik

It's really hard to compare the quality of Chinese cars to another brand, I don't think you can fairly say they are x years behind any more - they just have different problems.

The focus seems to be a good looking product that has lots of features to get ahead of the competitors. Longevity of materials used doesn't matter any more. Germany has plastics that self grenade when the warranty expires and French engineering is an acquired taste... so China having cars that fall to bits quicker than some isn't a deal breaker.

Janky instrument clusters and dubious infotainment systems don't even matter now since most manufacturers have dropped the ball. 

The refinement of the driving experience is where there's still some work to be done. I think if I was blindfolded and had to tell to if I was driving a Haval H6 or a Kia Seltos/Nissan Xtrail/VW Tiguan etc just from the dynamics, I think I could do it. 

But most people don't give a shit. They are stoked to buy a car with more features than the neighbors for 20k less.

The used car market is where this stuff will really show its ugly head. I think Chinese cars will depreciate like BMWs for quite a while. 

It's bad enough we're advocating EVs on here. To be recommending Chinese ones... Is this a step too far? 

Btw Im no racist, I hate most of chairman mao's cars for completely defensible reasons i.e after sales support is generally shit.

Getting better every year tho

Also I think the white island race is coming back this year. I don't enjoy the longer races but I should do it. 

It's another type of sailing that's important to learn.

Race report - Open Series; 

Had 20kts on the way to the start line, decided to run 1st reef in the main and #2.5 jib.  Then it started gusting up to 25kts so we went to the 2nd reef.

On the first leg of the course, the wind dropped a bit so back to 1st reef.

Second leg of the course we got stuck in a wind hole trying to avoid the current around Matakana. 

While the wind was low, we got the full mainsail out and changed to the biggest headsail. Then a puff took us out of the wind hole and we started screaming up the harbor. 

The wind picked up to 20kts again and this is where the biggest mistake was made. I called for the #4 jib which is useful for 30-35kts. 

Partly because it looked like there was more wind to come (and didn't want to repeat the disaster from that last windy 2 handed race) and partly because it would be a lot quicker to set up than the #3 or even the #2.5.

The wind had a few 25kt gusts but never got worse than that. So to use a metaphor - I'd shifted down to 2nd gear expecting a big hill and ended up running out of revs on the flat. 

We lived with it until the next mark when we did another sail change back to the #2.5.

By this point, Howzat, Rascal Tom and Bondi Tram had pulled well ahead. We were left battling with Synergy and La Vida to the finish. 

Lessons learned: 

On a day with a shifty unpredictable wind. Stick with the #2.5 or #3 jib up front. Realistically they can handle 15-25kts without drastically affecting performance.  It's way quicker to reef the main to keep things under control rather than trying sail changes.

That wind hold behind Matakana has caught me twice now. Don't do it again. 

Still, even at 6th-ish place - it was better than being at work or watching telly.

Race report - 2 handed: 

Light wind forecast, put up the big headsail and compensated for lack of boat speed with good tactics.

Making sure we were in the tidal flow when it was with us and staying as close to the shallow as possible when it was against us. 

By the half way mark, we had made it to the middle of the pack and then the wind died. 

Howzat took a different line to everyone else and crept along the Matakana Island shoreline. Very slowly making progress against the tide. 

With 1 knot of boat speed against 2 knots of tide, it's a losing battle where we were.  So I dropped the anchor and watched everyone float backwards past us.

As the wind filled, I lifted anchor and gave it maximum effort to the finish line. Howzat had snuck into first place but we managed a solid second place. 

Very happy with the outcome, to be the second fastest boat around the course (including A division) really shows how effective the anchoring strategy was. Probably would have finished behind La Vida without it. 

Next open series race is this Sunday, very excited to see what we can do.

8 minutes ago, kws said:

(Whats up with the boot shape?). It's not the most efficient design, on the 1st gen at least.

If I recall correctly, 1st gen had the charger in a hump behind the back seats. Second gen moved it to the engine bay.

17 minutes ago, Regan said:

sorry for getting ‘triggered’. Will find another thread. 

I thought we were having a nice discussion.  I haven't seen a lithium mine. I also haven't seen an oil rig. Honestly I don't know the answers.

You came into the EV thread to tell a bunch of people they are wrong then have a sulk when there there might be more to talk about

26 minutes ago, Regan said:

Shit isn’t efficient and is detrimental to climate in every way. What it takes to get rare earths and lithium does more damage than an oil rig and emissions could ever do

You might be right, but I don't have any good reliable unbiased data to show the overall efficiency of oil prospecting, building and maintaining an oil rig, extraction, building a refinery, refining, creating barrels and tanks for storage, transport across the planet in a ship built for that purpose, all of the people that need to be employed to make this stuff happen and final consumption in a 50% (at best) efficient engine...compared to the EV pipeline of extracting fancy dirt for batteries

It's a complex equation. But the second we find a cleaner battery technology, EV will immediately become the clearly superior technology

1 hour ago, igor said:

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to tie the RUC rating to the gross vehicle mass for everything as we do now for diesels? 

I guess it all depends what we want to incentivize. Tie it to weight classes and EV's get penalized.  Meanwhile a KP starlet gets a really good rate. This pushes up the value of older or smaller vehicles and reduces demand for newer safer product.

Before long we're all driving Maruti A-Stars and losing legs in frontal crashes.

You could try and tie it to some kind of synthetic rating taking into account safety, mass, well to wheel energy efficiency.... But that's getting difficult for retarded politicians to implement before they crash and run from police or go shoplifting and quit etc.

On 19/06/2025 at 14:50, locost_bryan said:

Clamp down on fbt so double cab utes get taxed as perks unless they're genuine work vehicles used purely for work.  When managers have to justify paying fbt on a $60k Ranger for a supervisor's personal use, instead of a $30k Yaris, things will change.

The fbt ute loophole is long gone as far as I'm aware. 

Nobody wants a small car because they suck. It's that simple. Bigger and heavier drives better and has more room for activities

Put RUC on everything and tie the rate to the safety rating and fuel economy of the vehicle.

Race report; 

A bit short handed with only 3 crew.  In 5th place coming into the final leg of the race - tacking through the Pilot Bay channel with boats moored everywhere.

Synergy was 50m ahead, they launched their spinnaker and pulled another 100m ahead. Here's my best attempt at recreating the drama. (Yellow line is Extract Digit, finish line is the bottom right corner).

Synergy went wide around the first yellow mark and got stuck in a wind shift near the base of the mount - which meant they couldn't run as tight an angle to the wind as us. By point number 3 we had pulled level with them.  

After number 4, we were alongside and fully intended to give them room to avoid a moored boat, but as the racing rules did not oblige us to make room for them - they dipped behind the moored boat and lost time against us. 

We finished 50m ahead of them. 

Lessons learned: The boat 'points' (sails close to the wind direction) really well in it's current setup. The time lost by running the smaller jib in the harbor is easily made up by the faster tacks and better pointing. 

The finishing order was almost exactly in order of boat weight from lighter to heavier. On a light wind day, you've gotta do something amazing to make 4ton of boat competitive with a 1ton sport boat.

Old man's C30 with the T5 in it is about to hit 400,000kms. Cockroach confirmed.  It's a great platform. Had owned since new and serviced as required. Has needed new shocks, inner CVs and some coolant hoses. Never had to open the engine or trans.

He loved it so much in fact he bought a Jap import v50 2.0 and hates it.  Has a Mazda L series engine mated to a Ford power shift trans. It will not make it to 400,000kms. It will not make it to 200. Every time I drive it, I pray it catches fire to end everyone's misery 

Another brand I won't mention throws "engine oil deteriorated" codes if it calculates low oil viscosity. 

The calculation is based on engine oil pressure vs temperature vs rpm.

So a slightly blocked oil pump strainer = lower oil pressure = fault code when the viscosity is actually ok and the oil pressure is high enough that it won't trigger other oil pressure related fault codes.

Tonight's fun little project was making the fog lights a more pleasing color. From the original yellow on the passenger side to the new almost white on the driver's.

No LED bulbs here.  It would too hipocritical to use them after swearing at other road users for years.  Settled for some stupidly priced Narva globes.

Still looking for a car to replace the wife's Fielder hybrid. Tried a CT200H the other day but it was an F sport and had too harsh a ride. Tried a F sport IS300h and yeah, too hard. Not a big fan of the IS interior either.

Open series race report. 

The crew did a great job, we were a little conservative with tactics but still managed to squeak out a win. A great photo finish 2 seconds ahead.

The final 2 legs of the race against Rascal Tom were excellent fun. Forget the win, it was a mint day on the water! 

Finish time is the important bit on that results chart. Corrected time only applies for a couple of the competitors.

Had a little bit too much sail up by the end of the race but managed to hold onto it. 

I think I'm underestimating the difference a cooler air temperature and higher humidity makes.  20kts wind speed on a hot summers day is significantly different to 20kts in winter.

Really, I need to reef the main a little earlier.

Next job will be adjusting or replacing the lazyjacks to make this easier. What are lazyjacks? Find out in the next post

You're going to love a hardtop cabin you can shimmy into when it starts pissing down.  Dog will also love it for nap time

I guess surface area is more related to effective service life than anything else.

Might have to replace it every second engine instead of every fifth.

Absolutely smoked it.  1st by a decent margin.

Now to keep that up for the rest of the series

Robert Dunn would definitely be on OS, I like his style

17 hours ago, dmulally said:

Nothing too exciting this weekend. Started on the planking which I really need to extract the digit and get done. 

😉

So this means I have successfully remained in the drunk cruising division, very nice - great success. 

Synergy get to start at 12 because they missed the handicapping race. I think that means they can't score points for this one.  

Nice to be starting within a few minutes of the boats I know we are competitive with. It's going to be war.

With only 3 crew we might not fly a Spinnaker, but if we do get 25kts of wind - that won't disadvantage us much.

4 months later, time for another lift and wash. 

Before; 

After;

Seals for the drive leg still haven't arrived but the oil looks good so I think we'll go a bit longer before needing to change it.  The header tank must be working. 

One problem to solve was a persistent vibration since the last time we took the propeller off.  In general, 3 bladed folding props are dynamically balanced and are stamped with numbers to make sure they go back into the hub in the correct spot...but my 2 bladed prop doesn't have any markings and the manual for it doesn't state anything about installing them in a particular spot. 

Anyways, took both blades off and weighed them.

20 gram difference.  It seems they must be balanced with the hub.  So having the positions flipped would potentially introduce a 40gram discrepancy.

Now we're back to butter smooth power delivery and the vibration is gone. 

Sunday is the first round of the winter open series. Looking like 25kts of windy rain and I've only got 3 crew.  Sailmaker has recut the main and that's made a vast improvement.  Can't wait to try it in anger.

Handicap times haven't been released yet, will be interesting to see how much of a head start my good mates on La Vida and Synergy will have.

Can't speak for a leaf specifically, but that is a thing. The lock barrel is connected to the door lock actuator electrically rather than mechanically on quite a few different cars.  

Had some kind of Opel/Holden product with a dead flat battery on the transporter years ago. Someone had to crawl under it, take the splash shield off and get some jumper cables onto the starter motor to give it power.