Your fleet running reports

[PaulJ]

Not my fleet but a friend has just taken delivery of a 2-year old Cayman GTS and is very pleased with it, other than finding it too noisy. He is apparently going to remove the door cards and put some form of sound deadening inside.

I'm skeptical but it's his motor.

I'm currently on a Cayman GTS 4.0 and I think it's a little too quiet... Or maybe I'm a little deaf after 50 years of noisy cars!

[Ascender]

Unrelated to consumer rights (although I agree with everyone saying stand your fucking ground) but I have found that I often look at the car when walking away and go "ooh" and take a snap.

It has more good angles than I expected.

That spec really is spot on, the wheels are the icing on the cake. And rare as anything. I wonder how many they actually made which found their way to the uk.

[Ascender]

A few hundred miles in the M3 today to run in a new place, then go and extract a large tree stump for my folks, so was glad of the big boot, but also the intelligent cruise control. Roads were absolutely rammed with long processions of cars and campers doing a max of 30 mph on the corners, so just sat back and accepted it was going to be one of those days.

[Beany]

Unrelated to consumer rights (although I agree with everyone saying stand your fucking ground) but I have found that I often look at the car when walking away and go "ooh" and take a snap.

It has more good angles than I expected.

That spec really is spot on, the wheels are the icing on the cake. And rare as anything. I wonder how many they actually made which found their way to the uk.

Not many:
https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/b ... .0si_coupe

270-odd at peak, currently a shade over 200 taxed, although how accurate HML is is debatable.

Although guess what I saw the other weekend on the other side of town? Yeah, Black Z4 3.0 Coupe

[Sundayjumper]

I had to make a trip to Reading today to collect some (bicycle) wheels and that made for a nice little jaunt. Car is much better now. No more rattling but I’m convinced there’s more road noise than before.

I also realised we’re rapidly approaching its 25th birthday ! Originally registered on 13th July 2000. I should buy it a cake or something.

[Mito Man]

The tractor seems to have got a slow puncture as I parked it in fine and now it has a totally flat tyre. It was the right hand tyre and leaning almost on the right hand garage wall. Couldn’t access the valve so slowly reversed it out and the tyre came off the bead. I’m now watching videos of people spraying wheels with lighter fluid and igniting it. I may be saying goodbye to my eyebrows tomorrow.

In other news I had more of a poke round the 760 and discovered some ‘quirks and features’ - not sure how many of them are engine specific though. It has 3 batteries. 2 in the boot and 1 in the engine bay. These are powered by 2 alternators. There are also 2 coolant reservoirs and 2 ECUs. The wiring is all held together with cable ties. Not the fancy automotive ones but the cheap one time use ones. I thought maybe someone had been in there before but looking at the launch images they’re the same, and all cut a bit long so you can slit your wrists on them. Perhaps an element of being more hand assembled than usual.
There’s a lot of orange thick cables all over the place like an EV/hybrid even though it isn’t

The BMW display key - seemed like it wasn’t ever used and not even paired to the car. Found a wireless charger you stick it in which paired it. Seems like a bit of a gimmick, lets you walk your car forwards and back from outside
- excuse the gasp
Also it turns on the car for 15 minutes to precondition it. Possibly the biggest FU to the environment possible!

Oh, found some new V12 badges in the boot. Maybe if you ask for them debadged BMW just throw them in but the back isn’t debadged so seems odd. Might fit them.

[Simon]

The tractor seems to have got a slow puncture as I parked it in fine and now it has a totally flat tyre. It was the right hand tyre and leaning almost on the right hand garage wall. Couldn’t access the valve so slowly reversed it out and the tyre came off the bead. I’m now watching videos of people spraying wheels with lighter fluid and igniting it. I may be saying goodbye to my eyebrows tomorrow.

In other news I had more of a poke round the 760 and discovered some ‘quirks and features’ - not sure how many of them are engine specific though. It has 3 batteries. 2 in the boot and 1 in the engine bay. These are powered by 2 alternators. There are also 2 coolant reservoirs and 2 ECUs. The wiring is all held together with cable ties. Not the fancy automotive ones but the cheap one time use ones. I thought maybe someone had been in there before but looking at the launch images they’re the same, and all cut a bit long so you can slit your wrists on them. Perhaps an element of being more hand assembled than usual.
There’s a lot of orange thick cables all over the place like an EV/hybrid even though it isn’t

The BMW display key - seemed like it wasn’t ever used and not even paired to the car. Found a wireless charger you stick it in which paired it. Seems like a bit of a gimmick, lets you walk your car forwards and back from outside
- excuse the gasp
Also it turns on the car for 15 minutes to precondition it. Possibly the biggest FU to the environment possible!

Oh, found some new V12 badges in the boot. Maybe if you ask for them debadged BMW just throw them in but the back isn’t debadged so seems odd. Might fit them.

Same garden hose as us.

Also,

[Beany]

@Mito Man I demand to know who made the slight "oooh!" noise when the car started moving, was it you or yer dad?

Be honest

[jamcg]

The tractor seems to have got a slow puncture as I parked it in fine and now it has a totally flat tyre. It was the right hand tyre and leaning almost on the right hand garage wall. Couldn’t access the valve so slowly reversed it out and the tyre came off the bead. I’m now watching videos of people spraying wheels with lighter fluid and igniting it. I may be saying goodbye to my eyebrows tomorrow.

In other news I had more of a poke round the 760 and discovered some ‘quirks and features’ - not sure how many of them are engine specific though. It has 3 batteries. 2 in the boot and 1 in the engine bay. These are powered by 2 alternators. There are also 2 coolant reservoirs and 2 ECUs. The wiring is all held together with cable ties. Not the fancy automotive ones but the cheap one time use ones. I thought maybe someone had been in there before but looking at the launch images they’re the same, and all cut a bit long so you can slit your wrists on them. Perhaps an element of being more hand assembled than usual.
There’s a lot of orange thick cables all over the place like an EV/hybrid even though it isn’t

The BMW display key - seemed like it wasn’t ever used and not even paired to the car. Found a wireless charger you stick it in which paired it. Seems like a bit of a gimmick, lets you walk your car forwards and back from outside
- excuse the gasp
Also it turns on the car for 15 minutes to precondition it. Possibly the biggest FU to the environment possible!

Oh, found some new V12 badges in the boot. Maybe if you ask for them debadged BMW just throw them in but the back isn’t debadged so seems odd. Might fit them.

Will it still let you walk the car about if you park at full lock?

[Mito Man]

@Mito Man I demand to know who made the slight "oooh!" noise when the car started moving, was it you or yer dad?

Be honest

My dad

[Mito Man]

Will it still let you walk the car about if you park at full lock?

Not a clue. You can see it jiggle the wheel a bit in the video but not sure how much it will do.

[Beany]

Outstanding. My dad made similarly....delicate noises when I showed him what the Puma could do on a backroad.

Which was weird coming from a 70 year old stuck in his ways

[Mito Man]

Today’s shitshow to sort out

Was a bit of a puzzle. Can’t jack it because the wood chipper is attached. Can’t remove the wood chipper because it’s at an angle and the 3 point hitch is under tension. So about an hour pissing about with a jack to level it with bits of wood before I could remove it to jack the tractor.
The inside tyre wall had a rather large gash in it. Forgot to take pictures but I just slapped a patch or two over it. If you’re gonna bodge something, might as well bodge it to the max.

Next was the small matter of remounting the tyre. Never done it in my life so sprayed half a can easy start and hit it with one of those long handle garden weed propane burner things. It’s a good thing it has a long handle because I think I overdid the easy start. It was an impressive explosion that almost made me shit myself.
But it’s back on and seems to be holding air.

Only put 5 psi in and then liberally coated the patches in adhesive again before I fully inflate it.
At this point the tyre is held together with just glue and hope.

[integrale_evo]

Just stick a tube in it, it’ll be alright.

When you said tractor tyre I thought you meant a proper big tyre

Probably didn’t need the explosions, get it sat square and an air line with a half decent flow would pop it on. I guess setting fire to stuff is more fun though!

[John]

I’ve got one of these for popping tubeless bike tyres onto the rim, you fill the tank up to 120psi or so and then release it into the tyre in one shot. No idea if you can get larger ones but it’s never failed to work on my bikes and is very satisfying

[V8Granite]

You can also wrap a ratchet strap around it in the middle
Of the tyre and it can pop the bead back on with an airline connected at the same time.

Dave!

[mik]

No idea if you can get larger ones

[Mito Man]

A rare example of a bead seater being used for its intended purpose rather than being used to unseat a coworkers pants

[Sundayjumper]

Probably one for Mito & Tim the JLR pervs - I'm feeling very tempted to try one of these in the Disco:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006959618796.html

It works by hijacking the Nav function. Press "Nav" and the screen switches to Carplay. Press "Nav" to exit and the car returns to all the standard menus. Sounds good and has been recommended by some folk on the Disco4 forum but I'm cautious as, you know, people on the internet are morons. However £100 is not the end of the world if it doesn't live up to expectations and I'd probably recoup that by putting it back on ebay. They seem to be £300+ from UK sellers.

[John]

The Ducato gave me an airbag message warning yesterday but didn’t put on the airbag light, weird. The airbag ecu going pop is a common failure on the Ducato, apparently caused by voltage spikes. I’ve got a code reader that’s capable of reading airbag codes so I’ll get that plugged in at some point and that should tell me if it’s new ecu time. They can be repaired but it doesn’t seem to last from reading online and a brand new ecu is “only” around £300 from Fiat.