Posts filed under 'Automotive'
September 4th, 2006
I’m at work and feeling ill, my throat is itchy, my hands cold, my eyes tired. More…I got up at ten to eight so I was really late for work. The project manager returned from leave today so that probably didn’t give him a very good impression of me, not that I particularly care. I didn’t use my deodorant today and I smell a bit although I have to admit I quite like the smell of my own sweat. It’s very different than the kind of stench you get from others. Maybe because of my diet?
It really annoys me when people stare. Little kids, old men, women, everyone stares except for the shabaab who just stop doing what they’re usually doing i.e bothering females. There was a time when I couldn’t go anywhere without feeling uncomfortable due to someone or the others unflinching gaze and I honestly used to feel like going around with a shemagh wrapped around my face. That’s changed now though, I do get the occasional looks by the old men, children do stare at me in the Masjid and sometimes, like yesterday at IKEA, you do get a girl who’s strangely fascinated by a short heavy bloke with a long beard and long hair and speaks English, sort of like an English speaking yeti dwarf. Point of all this? No point, just wanted to point out that pointing and staring is not good, end of point. Point.
My dad calls me up at work the day before yesterday and tells me that he’s flying out the day after. Nice timing dad, I’d wanted to send a few things for my sister, her husband and her father in law but I didn’t have any time to buy the stuff. My sister is pregnant with her first child and the delivery is expected to be sometime in November or December. Please make dua that everything goes ok.
What I don’t get is why cars don’t have trash cans, really, why not? I mean what are you supposed to do with the tissue paper you’ve just sneezed in or the sandwich wrapper from a fast food takeaway? Do you chuck it out the window? Do you let it slip to the floor and pretend that nothings happened? Do you hold it in your hand until you find a garbage skip? Why? I know it’s not hard to put a small garbage thing in, my Volvo had one, but that’s only because I hadn’t payed the optional third cup holder. Why should my rear car passengers have a cup holder while I’m being forced to hold a snot filled tissue paper in my hand while I drive? And even the way I drive anyone would be mad to attempt to drink or eat anything while seated in the middle row of my car. My dad does but that’s because he doesn’t really care what he gets on my car seats and I can’t ask him not to do it.
I have managed to find a solution to this problem but that requires quite frequent trips to IKEA and having to buy useless junk.. I use their large wonderful plastic carry bags as trash bags. 
The bags from IKEA are quite large and stiff so they don’t tip over and they don’t collapse. The bag just sits there behind the front passenger seat with it’s mouth open, waiting to receive my snot filled tissue paper and when it’s filled up after a couple of weeks I simply toss it in a skip and pay IKEA another visit.
Another really annoying this is why, why aren’t hooks in the boots of cars standard? Why can’t you have hooks protruding from the roof of jeeps so you can hang bags that should not be tipped over, like, for example the sizzling fish I bought yesterday at ‘The Red Lobster’ I placed the bag in the floor well in front of the front passenger seat and it fell over at a bend, I reached out and placed it upright only for it to tip over again so do you know what I did? I held the bag up with one hand and steered with the other, very safe.
Anyway, people annoy me, they seriously annoy me. Why are so many people just a bunch of half wit morons who refuse to think or even to try and understand what the other person is saying. The moment someone labels you a chauvinist, a sexist, a racist, an anti Semite or whatever other ists exist out there, you know that they’ve closed their minds. And why should people be spoon fed or else they go and make the most absurd connections possible instead of expending the effort required to make logical connections?
To illustrate my point let me give you an example of this kind of absurd connection making. I was debating a sister, in a very respectful manner, the issue of equality between the sexes. I insisted that there can be no equality because we are biologically different and that we have been created to play different roles which require different rights and obligations. In order to show that this does not mean anything bad I said that I refer to this as “positive discrimination”. To further prove my point I tried pointing out that western society, that is purportedly so equal, itself practices this act of positive discrimination. Why can an 18 year old vote and not a 17 year old? Why can an 18 year old drink and not a 17 year old? These are laws designed by the west because they feel that anyone under 18 should not have these rights because it is not appropriate. What about Allah ta3la who has given Men and women different rights because He knows what is suitable for whom? This sister saw red because she assumed I was comparing women to ‘minors’, I was doing nothing of the sort, I was simply pointing out one of the fallacies of western thought, and so she blasts me. She says that she thought individuals like myself were an urban myth and that it’s depressed her to find out that I actually do exist. Will I attempt to clear these misunderstandings? No and I have let her have the last say because I’ve had it, if you refuse to think logically or to provide sold reasoning for your arguments then I will stop debating and will simply smile and nod my head as one would do when a small child tells a tale.
July 22nd, 2006
Assalam’alaikum
I haven’t been updating my blog recently because I’ve been so busy at work and then in the evenings I usually have to take my sister out.
I live for the weekends really. A full time job can be hectic but I’ll tell you something; It’s WAY better than any institute of higher education. Why you ask? Well you see, if you’re not in a position of responsibility, and I’m not, you can leave all your work and related worries behind at the office. But not at uni; there your work follows you wherever you go. Now I go home and just chill, nothing on my mind, nothing bothering me.. except my stomach.
About the car.. I’ve bought one!!! 
It’s a 1998 Land Rover Discovery in olive green. I paid more than the market price but man it’s beautiful. It looks and sounds amazing, it’s engine is very smooth and there are no creaks or groans. But it does suffer from your typical Land Rover problems; It overheats when it’s stationary with the air conditioner on and when I go over a few MPHs it feels like I’m driving a marshmallow. This car has the biggest turning circle in the history of mankind and add to that a front bumper that extends way beyond the front of the hood and a huge bull bar that you can’t see from the cockpit and you have a BIG BIG problem. I’ve learnt to avoid taking U turns and I’ve had to give up my fast food habit because it finds it difficult to navigate the treacherous obstacle course that is the modern fast food restaurant drive thru. It’s steering feels very heavy when the car’s slow and much too light and wobbly at speed, the brakes feel as if they’ve come off a 1980 Royal Enfield Bullet and the accelerator pedal has more travel than an oil well derrick.
But I love it, it’s so amazing to drive, so fun, so brilliantly awesome. The V8 makes a lusty sound that just makes me want to keep the pedal floored the whole time. The sound is not raspy like the Japanese cars nor is it the deep growl of the American V8s, it’s more of a smooth throaty murmur.
I need a few parts for it and knowing that the dealer here has the most outrageous profit margins ever, I’m relying on our dear brother yusuf a.k.a ‘heartsofgreenbirds’ to get them for me. I asked him to find a pair of rear light guards (pic here as well) and he did… in a scrap yard. The only problem is that the guy at the yard wants sixty quid for them, 60 QUID! That’s almost as much as Land Rover charges for brand new ones. I also need fabric floor mats for the front rows, rubber floor mat for the load space, leather gaiter for my 4WD transfer case gear stick and hand brake and a cup holder tray. Apart from the OEM stuff I need a compass, altimeter, thermometer and clock all rolled into one; preferably something that has a backlight and connects to the mains. So if anyone can procure these parts for me I would greatly appreciate it; my budget for everything is about 60 quid.
I also intend to buy running boards, roof rail, fog lights, search lights, CB radio and a 4-6 ft antenna. I’m also thinking of buying a good winch for when I get bogged down in the sand; the only problem is that when you’re in the desert there’s not much you can do with a winch because there’s nothing to latch the towing strap onto so I think I’ll leave that for the last.
And don’t think for a moment that I’ll be wasting money on brand new parts, no… I buy a lot of parts from the scrap yard. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest accident rates in the world and many of them are serious. That means there are tons of cars just lying around in junk yards, waiting for their parts to be picked clean by vultures such as myself. I obviously don’t buy everything from there; just cosmetic stuff or accessories like spoilers, alloy wheels, bumpers, roof racks, running boards etc… I make sure that the parts are very clean or at least can be fixed so that they don’t look too old. The very good thing is that two of the three cars I’ve had have been cars which not many people drive because they’re generally expensive to maintain, that means I can easily get the parts I need because I’m one of the only few vultures who are interested in that car. HAH!
July 14th, 2006
Assalam’alaikum
I need to buy a car within a week because I destroyed my old car.
The gearbox is gone and the engine, where it meets the gearbox, has deformed and leaks oil. The suspension is not very far from collapsing, the front axle has bent and the steering wheel… that’s a very long story. And all of this can be attributed to my brilliant driving style.
And so I need to buy a new car sometime within the next few days. I travel a lot and also do a bit of offroading so I need something that’s comfortable, reliable AND capable. Not a very tall order; there’s the Nissan Patrol, Landcruiser, LX470 (which is really just a landcruiser in slightly different clothes), G55 and I can’t think of any others… but they’re all very expensive cars and don’t lose much of their value over time. I can probably buy a five year old S600 for less than how much it’ll cost me to buy a Landcruiser from the same year. Keep in mind that a brand new S600 costs almost 3 to 4 times as much as the Landcruiser.
After careful consideration I narrowed my choice down to a second hand car. From second hand cars I had the Mercedes ML, Range Rover (old shape) and the Land Rover Discovery (Series II). I couldn’t buy a Merc because although it’s sort of comfortable car it’s not exactly capable and considering traditional Merc “reliability” I decided I wouldn’t enjoy being stuck in the desert because the engine had fallen out.
The Range Rover is a very good car but in my budget I would only be able to buy the old shape and compared to the new one it looks extremely dated. It also has so much character that it would really hurt to take it into the desert.
And that left me with the disco, series II, 99-02 year models specifically. I’m looking for one with the 4.3 V8 and all the option. The 99-02 models because they’d be cheaper than the 03-04 year models but exactly the same except for the front lights, grill and bumper; all of which can easily be upgraded. The 03-04 also have a newer 4.6 V8 which I can try to live without. All that said, the Disco is not without it’s problems, I’ll have to spend a lot of time and effort making it desert worthy and I also hear that the Series II discos are not very reliable. Any thoughts? Would I perhaps be better off if I bought a Series I disco instead of the II? HELP!
And before you mention it, I don’t particularly care about mileage nor about how it handles in the corners. As long as it doesn’t try to kill me everytime I go over 100 mph I’m fine.
June 21st, 2006
I’ve never really been that fond of Ferraris. There’s nothing I can put my finger to but they’ve always just slipped through, pun intended. The only decent car they had during the time I was growing up was the F40 and it wasn’t as spectacular looking as the Lamborghini Diablo or the Mclaren F1, it wasn’t as powerful or as sleek as the Jaguar XJ220 nor was it a legend like the Porsche 911. It was a very beautiful car but it was just so… generic.
Even after I grew out of that stage and Lamborghinis started feeling very vulger I still didn’t find anything even remotely attractive about Ferrari. This was around the time Porsche destroyed the 911s design so I simply tuned out of the European sports cars and turned to American muscle. The sting rays, generals, vipers and the saleens. And as ever, Ferrari were not even on my radar.
But last year that changed because I saw something so awesome, so mind blowingly brilliant that if there was one car I could buy that would be it and it is the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.
It’s a 2+2 grand tourer with a 5.7 L V12 engine that develops 533 hp and does 0-100 in only 4.2 seconds with a top speed of around 315 kmph.
And Ferrari have done it again, they unveiled a new model to replace the 575, the 599 GTB Fiorano. And it’s gorgeous. Just look at it; it’s so absolutely stunning. It is probably the most beautiful car today, along with the Mercedes SLR that is.
It has a 6.0 litre V12 that puts out about 612 hp and does 0 - 100 in just 3.7 seconds.
And here are some really cool links for you, a Ferrari Enzo that became airborne and tore it’s rear end off and on why the Mclaren CLR became airborne and flipped over several times during the 99 Le Mans.
June 20th, 2006
Yes yes ’tis true and yes I’m about 3 days late but never the less, a Diesel powered Audi, the R10 won the 2006 Le Mans endurance race! It was the LMP1 category winner as well as the overall winner. So is this the dawn of a new age in Motorsports; the age of the diesel? After all even Peugeot announced that they will race a diesel 908 in next years Le Mans. Perhaps but it’s not that simple.
Diesel engines are bigger and heavier than their petrol rivals; this is because it has a seperate compression chamber where air is compressed to a very high pressure and temperature before diesel is introduced and this mixture ignites without the benefit of a spark. You can imagine how strong the chambers need to be to compress the air so much that it reaches 900° Celcius as happens in a diesel engine.
Diesels also have a much narrower power band than petrols, they usually red line at around the 5,000 rpm mark compared to the usual 6,500 to 8,000 for petrols. The old honda S2000 actually redlined at 10,000 rpm, 10,000!
What diesels have going for them are a much better fuel economy and lots and lots of low end torque. Couple that with a twin turbo and you have a very good combination.
The Audi R10 has a 5.5 litre V12 and puts out about 650hp, which is A LOT. Even so, it’s about the only supercar in the world I don’t want to drive. I’ll stick with my petrols and they’ll have pull out my finger nails before I drive that thing. Diesels are good for trucks, serious 4×4s and for those cheapskates who value fuel economy over performance. I mean one of the joys of driving is hearing the sound of the engine revving to a lusty 7,000 rpm. What do you get in a diesel? TAK TAK rRRRR (gearchange) rrRRR. That’s disgusting; that’s almost like listening to Darth Vader singing ‘A is for Allah’. And that’s the problem with electric cars as well, they don’t sound right… actually they don’t sound at all. Drive down an empty highway at 80 miles an hour and cut the engine, that’s what electric cars sound like.
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