Alfashark

Amen! Best to ask for thoughts and examples on, then make your own mind up and don't ever show them the finished results...

Comes down to where and how they were operated... The Tonkas and Jags got a quick smearing of Desert Pink and then got throw into the desert at Mach fuck, down in the weeds with a lot of grit in the air so they got sandblasted on all the leading edges/pointy bits. Some of the chaps over your way use a Pledge furniture polish sealant, watered down with thinners and wash the whole thing with it which can bring out panel lines with just the right amount of depth.

More scope to dirty it up a bit with the pink too. Get a look at some of the Tornados in theater back then and someone like you could have a field day with the weathering...

If I can find the pod, and that fucking awful camo can be removed without rooting the panels, I'll hit with a coat of Hemp (Tamiya XF57, or Humbrol 168 for those playing along at home). If the panels don't clean up well, it'll get a dose of Desert Pink and can represent Teasin' Tina which is on display at Bruntingthorp - No one is quite sure why it was painted in D.P as it's quite a different colour to Hemp but presumably someone thought that since the Tornados, Jaguars and Buccaneers wore it while giving Saddam a good tickling, the tankers keeping them fed must have worn it too. For reference, Hemp: And Desert Pink:

Had to do a bit of digging, but I found the old duck... Missing a refueling pod from the starboard wing, and the centerline unit is missing as well - No doubt in a box somewhere. The thing that passes me off most about the whole saga is the time I spent masking off the cockpit glazing and it appears he removed this and had a half arsed attempt at doing it himself and then hit it with the Dark Green again.

Ahh! You've definitely got your eye in then. I never did a lot with that Badger, because it was a lot of shagging about compared to opening the tins of Humbrol's finest and getting work with the brush. Your weathering is outstanding - Miles above my ability/patience.

@CarolsHusband what's your airbrush setup like? I'm starting from scratch, but I used to have a fucking ancient Badger and ran it off aerosol supply.

As mentioned last night, I was all fizzed up to get on with something... Boxes are buried somewhere in the garage and that's a bridge too far for me in my current state. What I do have somewhere out there though, is a 1/72 possibly Matchbox H.P Victor K2 with a bad history - I picked it up in a 90% complete state years ago from a mates old man and he'd cocked it up rather badly. I rescued it and spent a lot of time slowly wet sanding the horrific paint job off and re-scribing a lot of panel lines and recommended he blow it over with an airbrush in Hemp for the upper surfaces and RAF Light Aircraft Gray on the underside which would bring it to represent one of the Victor tankers in the Gulf War. A year later I saw the "finished" result where he'd attacked it with RAF Dark Green/Medium Sea Gray camo by brush, someone had knocked it off its shelf and a wing was broken off, the fin had collapsed and the undercarriage was MIA so I swapped him a box of beer to permanently rescue it. Pics to follow, but I've yet to start that restoration.

15" will fit, assuming you use the VW calipers - Going up to the 312mm discs will require 16".

288mm is a common VW disc size if that gives you a place to start mixing and matching from.

25kg for $12-$13 at any farm supply outfit...

Waikato Uni had their Geology? department Hiace vans running on it - Again, throwing in a small quantity of dead dino juice every couple of weeks for good measure.

The old Audi 5-pots did similar, well as best as they could given they were using K-jet to fire the juice in... Tiny butterfly covered a surprising amount of pedal travel, then pulled the big one open with more pedal.

Oh absolutely agreed! Interesting that there is some very specific wording in there relating to the damage being inflicted on our roads, eg: Heavy transport vehicles. So make the big boys pay more and be done with it.

Pretty tight now, it's just the extra shagging around with the RUC admin that created headaches for us. Funnily enough, RUC changes and submissions are on the cards... RUC has the potential to be coming to all motor vehicles in the future, with not a lot of talk about reducing the excise tax on juice either. In fact, more discussion about using the revenue created to fund non-road things. https://www.transport.govt.nz/consultations/road-user-charges-consultation/

The Honda CR-Z is common enough too, a bit like a 2nd gen CRX with middle aged spread. Hybrid and manual... https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/honda/cr-z/listing/3481476335 I considered one briefly, but then my Golf appeared and that was the end of that.

Aaaaand FWIW, I pinched the Niro for my last night shift this week as my radar sensor for the cruise control on the golf threw a shitfit on my first night and managed a 3.7L/100 average on the 105km round trip - That's 0.1 better than the EX and SX trims are rated and 0.7 better than ours is rated at.

Now that's an entertaining challenge! Generator in the boot, lead taped to the door and plugged into the front? Wife's Niro went in for the 15k service last week - Comment in the general notes section on the invoice "Tires set to 40psi on handover, reset to 36psi". Get fucked! 40 cold is what let's you get to, and exceed the rated fuel consumption, without feeling like you're punting a whale carcass around corners.

You'll see the wipers twitch like that on shutdown/ignition cycle - It's to do with stopping them sticking when it's freezing outside. Also, unsure on a Mk5, but if the wipers are in the fully parked position, you can't lift them up to the service position to change the blades.

Most of that is standard equipment, but there can be a lot of mix and match. A good session with VCDS/OBDeleven can enable of lot of stuff as long as the controllers and modules are of the same p/n as the car that the long coding has been copied from. My car, and the wagon before that, didn't have "teardrop wipe" enabled - if you give the windscreen a squirt, the normal wiping happens, then they park and about 10-20 seconds later, a single wipe occurs to get the usual dribbles off. No matter how many times I entered the coding for it, it wasn't happening - Controller module was a slightly earlier suffix.

I'd have preferred leather, but wasn't willing to compromise on xenons with the amount of night driving I do - There just aren't enough NZ new ones running around with xenons + leather. In saying that, one did pop up on TM while I was hunting for the right one - Rough as fuck and had done a squillion km with hopes and dreams being the biggest maintenance consumable.

Just a stock '14 GTI ex-Japan. Cost slightly more than the average on TM at the time, but came with a 5 year warranty and 3 years free servicing. Handed over $95 to have the stereo changed to NZ/Aus region to pick up our frequencies.

It's worse on diesels with a DPF as it creates a vicious circle: Oil flashes off and some gets burnt -> DPF starts to load up -> DPF pressure differential calls for a regen -> Regen alters injector timing and quantity to raise EGTs to burn off soot loading -> Higher EGTs create overall higher engine temps and increase oil temp and rate of oil flashing off... Added to that, the povo-spec petrol engines of that era (Anything less than the 2.0 turbo) can be absolute dogs with oil consumption. 1L between the bottom and top markings on the stick - My Mk7 is a gnat's cock under the full mark after 5000km, so it's safe to assume it's not got any Castrol in there. 50-60,000km for the pump should be fine assuming it's not a Chinesium knock-off

Also, has the HP fuel pump been done yet? The cam follower is a consumable, so for the sake of a little extra work every so often, it's worth changing.

Keep an eye on the oil level with that Castrol - It's good when it's in liquid form, but it tends to flash off as vapour a bit easier than the Penrite or Liquimoly equivalent. My wagon had a bit of an appetite for oil on Castrol and after asking a few questions on an Oz based forum, others had found the same. Did a service each with LM and Penrite and the level was much more stable.