SA Dealers News and opinions about topics in general

Living Bridges in India Have Grown for 500 Years (Pics)

Images via Atlas Obscura

Some of the smartest, most sustainable engineering feats were discovered hundreds of years ago, and many have gone unacknowledged. For evidence, take the bridge growers of northeastern India. Planning 10-15 years in advance, they build what may be the most sustainable foot bridges in the world — by literally growing them out of living tree roots. These bridges are extremely sturdy, reach up to 100 feet long, and many are at least 500 years old…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

Posted under Uncategorized

Starting on page 24, there is an article on servicing the valves on a VW beetle, it’s still surprises me that technicar did these articles, as these days it is almost impossible to find any articles covering the details on servicing your car.

This article continues to page 31, detailing the process with photos and provides more information than some manuals I have seen recently. Quite impressive, if I had owned a beetle I would have definitely been interested.

Page 33 has an article on how Caltex developed their new fuel, Boron. It details the 3 groups that the development scientist split the performance characteristics into,
Group A: Apparent Immediately
Group B: Apparent Immediately or After Extended Use
Group C: Apparent After Extended Use

Pages 34 through 37 are a road test on an MG TC Midget, and includes a bit of history on the MG car company, and a few nice (even in black and white) phoos of the car which had been restored over a period of a year and at a cost of R1,000!

That’s all I have time for, but will try and work through the rest of the magazine as soon as I can.

Posted under Uncategorized

Over December I went to visit my dad and he had a box of magazines that his brother had gotten from his son, who in turn had gotten it from a friend.

And in this magical box of magazines was a collection of a magazine by the name of technicar. I have issues ranging from December of 1969 through to December of 1973, unfortunately with a few issing in between.

The 1969 December edition will have set you back a whole 25 cents, with subscription rates of R2.50 for twelve issues.

The editorial highlights the fact that many South African motorists do not take advantage of the fact that their cars are fitted with safety belts, it goes on to refer to safety belts as an accessory, accessory? Seems in 1969 not only was wearing a safety belt not compulsory, but cars did not even come out with them as standard equipment, can you imagine!?

New cars that got a quick review were the Alfa Romeo Spider 1750, a VW campmobile, which is based on a Kombi but made for people who go camping and a quick overview of the Porsche 911 Series – which was imported by Lindsay Saker Motors and if you wanted info on getting yourself a Porsche, you had to send them a letter.

There is also a reprint of an article on maintaining the ignition and fuel systems on a car (no electronic ignition or fuel injection mind, this was 1969), the article was first published in a Shell technical bulletin.

A Ford 2M 2500S was reviewed after it had tuned by Superformance, which I gather was run by Basil van Rooyen. The modified car got top marks with the modification costing R253.40 excluding fitting. I guess that the Rand was worth a whole lot more back then.

On page 20 and 21 there is an article asking if supercharging is the answer.

Yes all that and we are only on page 20, I can’t help but feel that this magazine has a great deal less ads than modern motoring magazines.

That’s about as much as I can squeeze in now, I will try and cover the rest of the December 1969 issue soon.

Posted under Uncategorized

So the wifey went to got fetch her mom for a visit and I had to do something to keep the little one entertained. I looked on Zwartkops website and saw they had a trackday. Whoohoo free entertainment!!

The wifey packed a bag for the kiddie the night before and on Sunday after the obligatory McDonalds breakfast we were on our way.

Thankfully Zwartkops has a nice layout and as a spectator you can choose a number of different places to sit and watch the action.

We first stopped off at the kart track where a few guys were throwing their karts around the track and global warming or not you have got to love the smell of two-stroke in the morning!

We made our way to the seats above the pits, where the next photo was taken,

As you can see he was more interested in the sweets his mom packed in than the bikes! Below is the best result from a number of attempts to photograph bikes in motion, guess you can’t really hope for much with a point and click camera.

The Suzuki GSX passed us as we were walking in, it looked so good I thought I should take a photo, it’s really good to see bikes of this age in such a good condition, give me hope that one day my son could appreciate (hopefully) the more classical bikes.

Another interesting bike we saw was the Suzuki RGV VJ 23, if I remember correctly this came out just before major legislation clamping down on emissions, this is probably the second one I have ever seen, don’t think many made it to South Africa.

Also interesting was a GSXR in Rizla colours, it even got my sons attention.

We walked around a bit an come upon a workshop with this Tazz rally car parked outside, seems quite well done,

outside the same workshop was a Triumph (Stag I think, not too sure),

and a Porsche that looks like it’s not going anywhere soon.

Last thing we did was pay a visit to the play area that Zwartkops has for kids, even though it was quite hot he had some fun playing on the slide and in the sand pit

I am surprised by how many bike seemed to be dedicated track bikes, I went on a track day years ago and almost all of those bikes were road bikes.

Posted under Uncategorized

So a while back my wife decided to go pay her mom a visit, naturally she took the Tazz (our other car being a Ford Ikon with a noisy power steering pump).

Unfortunately on this trip the Tazz ended up not being as reliable as it has been for almost 10 years, so after some neglect and a lack of a sevice in a long time the cam belt broke, leaving the wifey stranded. Luckily our insurance has a free tow in service, so the car was brought back to the house and pushed into the garage.

I started stripping the car the next day, being a Sunday, in the hopes that no valves were bent, but as soon as I had taken off the tappet cover I realised that this would not be a quick and easy fix. When the cambelt broke the piston hit a valve forcing it up, which in turn broke the rocker, I later saw that 2 rockers had been broken.

So grudgingly I removed the head, and phoned Steves Auto Clinic’s cylinder head division to find out how much it would cost to have the damage repaired.

The head was sent in and a few days later I got the head back all nice and shiny and new. Boy was it clean!

So clean in fact I felt obligated to take pictures! From the top,

On the inlet side,

On the exhaust side

and showing the valves, the head was incredibly clean, leaving me wondering what method they use to get all the crud off.

As the car is used primarily for city driving the pistons had years worth of carbon buildup on them. I used a wire brush to get the carbon buildup off the top of the pistons as well as to clean off the remnants of the old gasket on the block.

Photo above shows hoe much better it looks, was so chuffed I took another picture!

Not too bad….

Once I had the block mating surface fairly clean I proceeded with getting the cylinder head on

What you were supposed to see in the above photo is the marking used to set the cam timing, were supposed to…..

Cam chain tensioner replaced even though new does not feel very different from the old one.

No gasket was supplied for this in the set I bought, and I noticed that a sealant had been used when I removed it, so I got some high temperature gasket maker, made by Bostik. This seemed less ‘oily’ and much easier to work with than the ‘Car’ silicone sealant also made by Bostik.

Now I don’t remember if I had had enough for the day (I work kinda slow) or if this was just checking where things go.

One thing I realised is that when I had taken the head off I had taken it off with the carburetor attached. When I replaced the head I did so with the carb removed, which made work more difficult because it’s a real pain trying to get bolts tightened in the small spaces you have to work in when the head is already bolted down.

It took another weekend before I had the car completely assembled and running again, and by then I was too tired to take pics, I just wanted to get done!

What is unfortunate is that I had to go and buy a new torque wrench (got it the cheapest from Litt’s Motor Spare in Kempton Park), mine seems to have ‘disappeared’ when we moved, probably along with my Black & Decker drilling machine, that was older than me.

So the service I was planning to do got pushed forward by a few weeks, and costed me a whole lot more! Lesson I won’t neglect my car again.

Posted under Uncategorized

Jacqui Marie

Originally uploaded by Jay in Houston

Errrm… yes flickr.com has a few nice pics… of bikes

Posted under Uncategorized

That wackhead on 94.7 is crazy, Tuesday on the rude awakening they played a prank call that wackhead recorded claiming to be Todd from the Democratic Party in the USA.

So he phones Malema up and says he is going to connect him to Barak Obama, which in this case is just a bunch of sound bytes strung together.

Later Tuesday the Times (I think) newspaper contact Malema where he denies ever having recieved the call!

Now this morning I hear on the radio (again on the rude awakening) how their political correspondent recorded another guy from the ANC confirming that Malema did in fact recieve a phone call, no one seemed to have realised that it was a prank call!

Me thinks this is a hornets nest and is going to get big and nasty!

Posted under Uncategorized

Everyone has wanted to sell a car at some point and in the age of Internet auctions, there are more options than ever when it comes to selling your car whether it’s an ’05, ’78 or a ’20. With this ever expanding world of options comes the need to make delivery after you’ve sold the vehicle and that requires a car transport service.

Depending on the auction service, you can list that shipment of the item is completely up to the buyer’s discretion or offer a method of transportation to fold into the final price.

The first is often more preferable to buyers because it allows them to shop various car transporters themselves to find the one that suits them best. However, if you decide to fold the cost of the shipment along with a hand picked transporter into the auction of your car, there are some things you need to do.

First, you need to narrow down your selection of transporters in some fashion that incorporates not only their price ranges but also their reliability and service records. Remember, that by folding in the selection of the transporter to the auction, you are in some way taking responsibility for the shipment both before you deliver it to the transporter and after.

Second, to simplify the matters with regard to the auction, make sure you have all the information about your selected transporter at hand. Include this information in the auction information. When buyers look through potential cars to buy on auctions they are as concerned about the cars they are looking at as to how they might get there.

Some buyers may not want to use the transporter you have selected; you may or may not wish to include that as an option to turn down on the buyer’s part.

Finally, when you are ready to list the car as well as the transporter information, be sure to include a series of price quotes from the transporter from the car’s location to major hubs on both coasts, the mid-west and include both upper and lower sides of the coasts, mid-Atlantic and so on.

This will allow the buyer to guess based on their proximity to one of those locations what the cost will likely be. Always be sure to list that the quotes are not exact and are not final until the buyer’s shipping information is received.

It may seem like more work than it’s worth to go through all of this prior to listing the car that you want to sell, it will pay off at the auction’s closing. As the seller, you simply wait to confirm where the car is being transported to and confirm a final quote from the transportation company.

Once the seller receives the payment from the buyer they can get the car to the transportation company of their choice and not have to worry if the buyer chooses a transporter that will be a hassle for you the seller.

While most buyers and sellers work in fairly cooperative relations in order to receive the item sold and the payment for the item, sometimes having the game plan set will save a lot of time.

Discover vital information and advice about car and auto transport services. Find out what you must do, and what you must not do. Click http://www.auto-transport-101.com/

Posted under Uncategorized