Introducing George

[Arragonis]

If you mean these



That is the new taxi, the TX4. The original Taxi was designed and made by BMC (Austin) who then sold out to a private company LTI (London Taxis International) who continued to make them. They updated it a few years ago to the TX4.



A few people run them as every day cars (you can sneak up bus lanes etc. ), Stephen Fry drove one round the USA a few years ago for a TV program.


(Click for story)

[Sykomor]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Video of one side of my daily grind - silent so you don't have to listen to my music

I am fortunate to experience a hundredth of the traffic i see in your video. The big difference is speed. I can average about 50 km/h (30mph) without being a hazard and I loose about ten minutes that way on a total of 40 km (25miles). Still I hope to gain some speed with bigger tires.

... and I wouldn't dream of using the built in radio ... Antenna long gone.

[Arragonis]

Well, had a fun week so far.

Monday - discovered puncture so had to change the wheel and put the tyre in for repair. It was cheap but changing it in the gale force winds and rain wasn't fun.

Tuesday heading for work to collect the wheel and the windscreen gets hit in the corner with a stone, which my the time I made it to the next corner was a crack about 8 inches long.

And now having had the winter flu jab yesterday, I have flu - or what feels like the flu

[320touring]

ach, sounds like a pretty rubbish week..

Chin up, that Aygo must be a helluva lot easier to jack than my e34

[Arragonis]

Yeah, also noted that the SG2 calibration has gone again - funny as I'm sure it hasn't been unplugged and the battery hasn't been disconnected even when the screen was replaced.

[Sykomor]

Sorry to hear about your mishaps. How about puncture spray for the future? The spare wheel was the first thing I removed.

[Arragonis]

I did remove it and then noticed my PC bag fell through the floor so I put it back in - actually only the day before

[Arragonis]

Santa brought me a new engine for George, I suspect it will make him an EV albeit with 2 AA batteries the range and speed may be limited.





After a slight issue with the camshaft assembly, it is up and working.



Not sure what HP it is rated at but I suspect not much as it only runs for 6 seconds at a time and the sparkplugs are LEDs. Worryingly this new engine is not massively smaller than George's real engine...

Merry Christmas everyone

[Arragonis]

PS - Quick update with George.

I haven't posted about things for a while mainly due to life imposing restrictions on time - mainly Christmas and work, but I have tried a few things. Firstly the Nostril blocks didn't make any different on or off to the intake temps (as reported by the SG2), so I added a sort of WAI by adding some tubing between the area of the exhaust manifold and the intake tube for the standard air filter mechanism. Again no difference to the inlet temps. I think the research this guy made seems true (note the C1 is a badge-engineered version of the Aygo - same engine etc.).

While driving to work today, I did some checking on the intake temperature on my Citroen C1. Intake air temperature is very important. The ECU determines the amount of fuel to inject based on 3 important variables:

Pressure in the intake manifold
Engine speed (RPM)
Intake air temperature

If the intake air temperature is hotter, the air contains less oxygen. Fuel and air should be mixed in fixed proportion to get best combustion. The ECU regulates this continuously. So when the intake air is warmer, less fuel is added and the engine will produce less power.

So today the outside temperature while driving to work was about 15C. While looking at my scangauge I saw the intake air temperature.

It was 34C. Which is quite a lot higher then the outside temperature. This could mean 2 things. Either the air being sucked in to the intake track is warm or the air gets heated up while in the intake track.

I already ruled out the first one. I added a hose to the point where the engine picks up air and routed it to the gril. No difference in air temperature.

So when arriving at work, I removed the air filter cover, and used my IR thermometer to check the temperature of the valve cover directly underneath the air intake:

45C

So I think that explains the higher intake temperature. This is a shame, because power is wasted by the increase in air temperature. Every 7C rise in temperature costs more then 1% power. Adding over 15C to the air temperature equals to more then 2% power loss. Sounds like something worth fixing.

It seems to me that even with a WAI the intake temp is already higher than it can be made via blocking things off or adding more tubing, so I'm off this idea. Which is a shame as I would like to see if a WAI could work - the jury seems to be at best "out" on that one - Sentra-SE has done some tests already.

I'll refit the nostril blocks at some point, and the lower grill block is in place for faster warm ups now that the cold is here.

[320touring]

Nice one on the engin build!

Interesting to hear what you're saying re the WAI- I imagine the electronics used to meter air intake in your engine are too complex to be fooled by the "hot air" arguement...

Mine,on the other hand...