Sifaan

that's true, but kind of gives the impression that Kelvin is an indication of the brightness... Kelvin is actually the "color temperature" of the output; however, at higher colour temperatures the light output (in lumens) does reduce; but light output also depends on power rating of the bulb and even manufacturer variations; i.e. there's no guarantee that a 4300K will always be brighter than a 5000K.

bumping up your posts is fair enough if you had a question that went unanswered, but what are you trying to achieve here?

interesting about replacing the dryer; I'm in touch with a mechanic at a citroen dealership in australia, and he says in 10 years of working with citroen's he's only replaced the dryer twice. of course, their usage (only summer?) may be less than ours and that maybe has a bearing. Or could it be that whenever oil is added locally (together with gas recharge) it is a hit and miss measurement (since most people don't seem to have/use an evacuator) and the system ends up with too much oil? BTW in case anyone is interested in servicing AC compressors, found a Sanden service manual here

deja poo: The undeniably eerie feeling that you've seen all this shit before.

thanks for the offer Don; let's see what the AC folks say tomorrow...

well, it's a Sanden SD7V16 compressor (*) so I guess it shouldn't be too hard to track down a replacement. (the numbers supposedly mean 7=cylinders, V= vertical mount 1=1" fittings 6= 6 groves in pulley) According to Sanden website, this is a "Variable Displacement Piston Type" compressor the guy at Frontier said the problem is similar to when engines develop undercompression. (*) Either the 1211 or 1242 model (as yet not sure which - could also be that 1242 is the compressor only while 1211 includes the clutch and pulley mounting). Edit - on the compressor it says model 1242

Update - took the car in to Frontier as they have the evacuation machine. hooked up pressure gauges to the AC system and... there is a residual pressure of about 150 PSI; when the car is first started up, pressure rises to 250-270 range, then reduces gradually until ~200 PSI. If we switch off the engine and restart, pressure again rises to 250ish and then reduces. The diagnosis from Frontier is that there is a problem with the compressor. It might be worthwhile to remove the compressor and oil it (this seems to somehow be different from oiling in the refrigerant line) but they are not sure if that would solve the problem. Also the labour charge for doing that (evacuate gas, remove compressor, regas) might be wasted if it turns out that there is a problem in the compressor. So they recommend to take it to a garage specializing in ACs (and who could also fix the compressor once they remove it, in case that is a viable option). Presumably what has been happening is that the duration the compressor "holds" has been reducing over the last few months, and perhaps we haven't really noticed it as most of our driving is short runs. Even when checked about 2 months ago, it probably held long enough @ 250 for us to think the gas pressure was OK (and besides, we were looking to see if the gas pressure was there, not if the compressor was able to sustain the pressure). Assuming it is a problem with the compressor, is it worthwhile investigating the repair option or am I going to have less brain damage with a replacement?

could it be something to do with insurance? e.g. if a customer's car only has 3-rd party coverage, the garage people may not want to take it for a test run (they'd be screwed if there was an accident), so this may be a way of getting their own insurance to cover it??

well, war/terrorism was never covered by the "full insurance" premium anyway - you had to purchase an additional cover for that (and now you don't). any actuarian types on AL who can explain why it's going up?

hmm... never thought about that... quick search (for "car etymology") turned up:

well, same argument could be said for stuff like auto-headlights - what's so hard to turn it on when it gets too dark? ditto auto-wipers, memory seats, etc. For some things, e.g. auto headlights, could argue that they are safer, because they take user error (forgot to turn on lights) out of the equation. OTOH it's just more things that can go wrong with the car. Anyway, men tend not to have too many things in their pockets so finding keys is not a challenge; but sheesh, the number of times I've seen my wife scrounging around in her handbag to find the keys.. End of the day, car makers have to show some "features" to convince people to upgrade their rides

was that the total, or just the premium? with j********i ~9 months ago, for 2m the basic premium was 45k, less 25% NCB... after adding flood, riot, charges, taxes and whatnot it came to 49k.

well, I think the system was more to do with the idea that you never have to take the key's out of your pocket/purse - to lock/unlock the car or to start the engine. Wouldn't make much sense to have smart keys for the door, and then still fish it out to start the car. however, on the reliability angle, I found this post on a forum (almost a year old now):

Maybe it automatically makes the owner Gay (or more Gay = Gayer?) because it's in a mini condition?

any insurance company that expects to return a profit to shareholders cannot afford to be replacing old parts with new all the time. if you insist, they will release their "depreciation" table for you. I have insurance with j********i (can't comment on them as I haven't had to make a claim yet) and this is their Owner's Contribution rate for Motor Cars. (They sent me a scanned doc and I typed out the part relevant to cars).

then wtf did you open this thread for?? excellent justification to purchase a diesel car. enjoy whatever you end up buying and incidentally please let us know the registration number of it.

if you're asking from the context of trading, either of them would be more than sufficient to understand quarterly/annual financial statements. probably CIMA would be better overall because it has more of a management angle than just accounting. however, you might be better served by doing courses that investment advisors @ broker firms do - neither CIMA or ACCA will give you the info on all the ratios/charts used by traders. I don't what's available locally, but I know one guy who left for a 2 year program in the UK. You might also consider a degree in Finance.

but they charged you extra to insure your battery, didn't they? did you figure out what you were paying extra for??

well, seems consistent with what the A/C place that has (but no longer uses) the machine said. and can you post / PM the contacts of this guy? do dryers need to be replaced at a certain interval? I take it they are not replaced in Sri Lanka but they are replaced in UK?? well... ~8 months ago, the clutch on the AC compressor was replaced (it was not engaging at all), and after that A/C worked fine but after 2-3 weeks cooling was pretty much non-existent. Took it to the place that fixed the compressor and they said the gas was low; topped it up and it worked great. (decided not to go down the test-for-leak-with-nitrogen route at that time) I can't remember the exact value, but I think they said 200-250 was the pressure they aimed for on the high side. Around 2 months ago A/C again wasn't working too well, so thought I'd check the pressure when I took it in for service (@Frontier), but it was about 250 (kPA?PSI) and they said pressure was fine; at that time checked the pollen filter and it was really dirty. Replaced the filter about a week later and things were good for a while again, and now again giving problems. So I'm not entirely sure if there is a leak (how did it hold @ 250 for ~6 months and then leak in 1?). At the time I felt that it was the dirty filter that was causing the poor performance. Is it possible for refrigerant to leak if the covers on the valves they fit the gauges on to are not closed properly? one advantage of an evacuation machine is that it will tell me pretty accurately how much gas was in the system; and before doing that I'll check the pressure as well - if it's dropped below 250 then it means the leak happened recently (I think). If it hasn't dropped - the weight from the evacuator should prove to be interesting reading edit: the compressor safety cutoff on the C5 is 27 bar (~390 PSI) and it will cut-in again only when pressure drops below 20 bar (~290 PSI), so that really shouldn't be kicking in normal operating conditions (~250 PSI).

I thought he meant that they decided not to buy the car

called up a few places, one place said they don't have the machine because it's too expensive; another place has the machine but they no longer use it because they had problems because of reusing the evacuated gas; so they just release any existing refrigerant and then pump fresh (but they did say they could sell by the weight) why do you not recommend reusing refrigerant? Interesting take on it, but I'm now even more confused. Isn't the pressure cut off a safety thing, with the regular compressor cut off being managed by temperature sensors? to quote my online-translated french PDF (a training manual): Citroen C5, 1st gen

can't comment on the rest, but that story's fake (urban legend): http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp http://spanish.about.com/cs/culture/a/chevy_nova.htm

A/C gas refilling, whenever I've seen it being done, has involved a thermometer in the airvent and monitoring the pressure while infusing gas into the system. However, the "correct" way (at least for my car) appears to be to refill to a particular weight (625 +/- 25g in my case). Even the workshop manual gives the weight, not the pressure. Of course, even if you measured the gas going in, this would only work if you knew how much gas there was in the car, which supposedly involves extracting all the gas using some machine, and then refilling. apparently there's some loss in this process, but generally speaking you'd pay only for the additional gas used (apart from labour charges, etc.) I guess this system would also really make sense for certain kind of repairs (where otherwise all the gas would be lost). anyway, my question is - does anyone know of any places that have the machine to do this?

so buy a car with automatic transmission. you're considering shelling out on a 520d and you're worried about this?? unless you drive really a lot, the money you save (upfront purchase, insurance and maintenance) on a petrol will pay for the extra cost of fuel (for most cars, don't know specifically about BMWs).

First you wanted to replace the engine, then the bumper, now the gearbox... (except maybe the bumper) these are not plug and play like computer parts. If you have so many issues with the stock 320d, maybe you should find a different car.