Jonathan

In the interest of safety. Those that fitted the PUK bushes to the front upper wishbone arms, check they're still secure. The PUK ones do not have a bonded outer component and that means the upper wishbone arms are free to slide back and forth. Mine were about 1/2 way to falling off and only held in place by a heavily buckled snubber washer - a strong deflection or braking could have ripped the arm free. Interestingly 2 MOTs and services failed to recognise this... Those parts were removed and binned, replaced by Lotus' own polybush which has a bonded inner and outer shroud and must be pressed into the upper wishbone arms with only slightly more force than just finger and thumb ! If I were doing the car again I would use Lotus only parts and know they have been correctly engineered and tested for the vehicle.

Definatly interested, if I had the cash I'd buy two ! Anymore info on this so I can have an depth read up or contact directly ?

That is superb !!

To be fair John, in Rob Davies defence he probably hadn't a clue what happened - I've seen 5 deaths at old warbird events and I'm glad I didnt see another. The way I see it when the skyraider smashes into his underside the Mustang pilot just thinks 1 thing, getting out - the canopy goes almost right away as the plane starts to lose control. It looks like it regains but I just wonder how much he's thinking get out whilst he still can. I've seen it all before, people try and rescue manouvers that you'd think are possible in modern and similar sized prop planes and end up never getting out becuase these old birds are not anywhere near as capable as the aircracft the pilots are used to flying. The guys in the Fairy firefly and the Mosquito that crashed there tried to rescue their manouvers and didn't walk away. As sad as it is to lose a plane like that, I think he done the right thing and covered his ass.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013219/Pilot-Rob-Davies-escapes-WW2-fighter-mid-air-collision-airshow.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_A4xdGFXoE&feature=player_embedded Watch on HD and you can just see his chute deploy.... .....whatdya reakon 300 feet ?

My girlfriend's boss was the one jumping out of the Mustang. Seen too many deaths at Duxford so I was very happy to see that they both walked away from this - bloody lucky the skyraiders wing didn't fold either !!! Strange way to peel off if you ask me....

Cool, did you see the XJ13 rep ? There was a half tidy Miura in the padock as well, and a Lotus 11 - quietest I've seen Brands in years though, was the FoS was on the same day ?

Im going Sunday - we usually go every year, but mainly this year for the E-Type celebs. If the weather is good it'll be great !

LOL never stopped me in the past... "Thats not a knife.... ....that's a knife" In the past 10 years we've had 3 people try to break into our house, each when I've actually been in with the lights on etc. You'd be amazed how complient people become or how quickly they sober up, when faced with such a thing (or the rather impressive gladius I have as well). The closest I've come to using it was on a huge fella that broke into our back garden with a large black carryall and 2 crowbars saying he was from the water board trying to find a manhole cover....when I suggested he leave, he said he was gonna call the police becuase I had threatened him in my own back garden, by the time I had stopped laughing he had gone. Just as Roger quite correctly said, knives are often used in reverse by the agressor, as many weapons are. The prob is with a knife is you only have a short range, if you've never used one (or had bayonet training) they can be as much a danger to you as them. It's a scarey thing to pick up a knife in hopes the assailant will run away only to find they keep coming at you - then to find that you've armed youself without the courage to carry it through. Thing is most poeple see a 30" blade with a purpose point to it and just forget what they came for, defusing the situation without need to ponse about with silly things such as knives that largely are not designed to do anything more than chop anyways.

LOL, we used to do a lot of night photography waiting up until the day time whilst in observation posts, don't be harsh on yourself its a very very very common whoops. The camera should have an Auto ISO setting, if that helps but sometimes only works on M(anual) mode where the processor needs to know the shutter speed and apature to calculate the correct ISO. Unless you're shooting moving objects at night just go for a tripod and a remote push button trigger, set on wide aperture and slow the shutter speed right down. A neat trick on the tripod at night is to cover the lens with a piece of card, fire off the shutter and then remove the card from the lens - that stops the light entering the camera before the shutter has finished shaking the camera and prevents any motion blur on long exposures. Best way to learn = mess ups.

Looks like the Scare Yourself days have been ditched (or spend £400 on the lvl 1 Elise) Sad, they were excellent value for money.

Here's one - just doign the coolant and noticed I'm not getting the full amount of liquid out when draining. Tried blowing down the pipes and noticed the heater matrix is 'blocked' Checked the control and its broken on the dash - repaired and modified it so it wont break again but the pipe is still very very tough to blow down. 2 possible issues 1) more than likely the matrix is blocked (possibly for a reason, ie it's leaking) 2) the thermostat valve operated by the bowden cable isnt being operated and stuck in 'cold' setting preventing flow Car's never really got hot hot so I'm thinking either one of those issues is a dead cert. Been under the dash etc and lost the cable behind the heater assembly Question : any tricks to see whether the valve is operating so I can rule it out. I would use force or some kinda release agent in the matrix but its a bit silly if it's just the valve. The bowden cable DOES spring back if you over push it, but thats not conclusive enough for me.

I think it's def worth doing both, the inlet is well out so youi might as well get them both in, in for a penny in for a pound. I really struggled with whether to do mine, cash is very tight atm and I really just wanted the car back on the road for the small mileage I will likely do - next opportunity I will definatly re-shim. This is what winds me up though about C services and some garages - they say the clearances were done but me not being a complete mug do you reakon that 2 of my valves have dropped 2-3 thou over 3,000 miles.... ? At least DIYing it you can have a record of whats done and KNOW it has been done and done propperly.

The tollerance is an optimal window, there really is only 1 right answer. Either way, above or under the valve is gonna follow a different profile than intended. Having said that mine clearly has issues on the exhaust (clearly mine were not checked past C service which is why I do it all myself). I could have done mine this time around, but I wanted the car back and running - I'll probably sort it later as I dont think I'll get that many miles in the mean time. I'd say if you're gonna set the things up go for upper tollerance, so 12 and 7 thou

Just done this job on mine. Specs were : Valves back>front 1/1000" (exhaust 11/9 8/13 12/12 11/11) (inlet 6/6 6/7.5 6.5/6 6.5/6.5) Tollerance = 10-12 Exhuast, 5-7 Inlet Mine is and always has been a bit tinkly and I assume this is the 9''' and 8''' under tollerance. I was gonna have the tower off this time but considering my mileage I thought I'd skip it (right or wrongly) Over tollerance....I thought that'd be a bad thing cus the valve would not have time to operate correctly esp at high rpm. Nor would it follow the cam profile correctly - depends on how far you wanna take it out of spec.