What made you happy today?

[reymondos]

This Sunday morning drive in my Alfa Sider really made my day.

[ramjet]

Well, I'm a step-grandfather to 5 - 4 girls and 1 boy, but as of today at 12:00 I am a grandfather to a little boy. Will be seeing him and my daughter & her partner Dom tonight after work, so will post a pic up later. Looks like he will be called Logan.

[esprit s2]

Bought myself an engine stand! Now I'll be able to rotate my lovely engine and give the underside a good clean too.

[Günter]

so it's open again ..problem with the rear hatch mechanism solved (-for now)

[basalte]

Yesterday (ooops) , drove to Gateway Services on the M1 and back in the Elite 2.2 with the usual traffic queues near to home, if anything the temp needle showed the engine keeping on the cold side - made a nice change !

Just need to get the other headlight coming up (lined up for tomorrow) and- touch wood-might even make it to the Ace Cafe Monday.

[richardvg]

Good for you Kimbers...............

[Kimbers]

John Carter, (the movie..not the man) made my life awesome for just over 2 hours.

[reymondos]

A lovely early morning drive with two Lotus owning friends. The weather today was spectacular.

Unfortunately my Seven had drained its battery so I had to take the Spider. Bugger.

Edited March 18, 2012 by reymondos

[GavinT]

Discovering a final edition V8 lives 1 mile from my house. Sunday jollies just got a bit more fun.

[Iconic Ride]

That's amazing, Gavin. Between the two of you, you've chronologically "bracketed" the production run.

One mile. What are the odds?

[Nelly]

Drove the Esprit for the first time in nearly three years!!!!

(OK it was only in first gear out of the workshop onto a trailer, but it still counts!)

Edited March 19, 2012 by Nelly9000

[dodgy]

heard the hedgehog sneeze that lives in my hedge, so pleased it wasn't that the fox i saw was carrying off last night in it's mouth

[andydclements]

The rear dampers arrived for the gold Excel Monday, only approx 4 weeks since I ordered them (so partially happy).

[bingoking]

Esprit passed it's MOT again today and I had a test drive in an Evora S IPS while I was waiting!!

[Vulcan Grey]

Happy that the Principal Engineer (PE) at work agreed with my fatigue life calculation and disagreed with an engineer who believed that my design would fail. The other engineer has a masters degree in mechanical engineering, specializing in finite elemental analysis..... but apparently doesn't doesn't understand what he is talking about when it comes to metal...

Have a design that uses a high preload in a titanium TI-6AL-4V ELI structure, and a very tiny alternating stress. The usual rule of thumb calculations assume that the alternating stress is a large fraction of the mean stress, which is what the engineer with the masters is assuming... The problem is that my design relies on yielding the titanium to achieve a reliable clamp load, and remove compliance (similar to a car engine with torque to yield head studs) so the one time loading results in a very high mean stress and the usual rule of thumb Goodman, Gerber, and Soderberg lines are meaningless... Since my preload is a one time loading, in a mostly compressive stress condition, the possibility of fracture is very low. The alternating stress is so low that the fatigue life will be infinite...

So just when I thought my design was safe... another engineer loaded the crap out of it (wasn't paying attention) and put a ~4.8 million psi load on the titanium.... resulting in a hardened steel ball being extruded through the titanium! I had to laugh:-P

[Iconic Ride]

Does this mean that brass balls are now passe'?

[Vulcan Grey]

Brass bass wouldn't stand up to the squeezing... Maybe Tungsten though! Tungsten balls would be pretty impressive

[Mark Blanchard]

Reading an article about F1 in the Newspaper today and seeing Lotus in the constructors championship next to Ferrari. It's been over 20 years since I last saw that.

[Iconic Ride]

Ferrari? Ferrari who?

[andydclements]

Wahoo.

The red Excel passed the MOT test with no issues, no advisories either.

[Boots]

We have just bought our 17 year old his first car (106) and I'm NOT teaching him to drive. I have got the Valium on standby for John

[Bloodnok]

Got my two post lift installed and working! Very happy. The MR2 was a sacrificial lamb for the first lift. I want to make some adapters to use with Lotus so I don't crush the jack points (mine are still in good nick) before I try it. Not crawling around with floor jacks is going to be great.

[richardvg]

Reading an article about F1 in the Newspaper today and seeing Lotus in the constructors championship next to Ferrari. It's been over 20 years since I last saw that.

Remember that if Lotus had Schumi in their team ....Ferrari would be swimming in a pool of Lotus exhaust fumes.They can take that gimme for now

[ramjet]

Just won the bidding on an Ensoniq ESQ-1 synthesizer.

[ramjet]

And now I have picked it up.