That's only for one years personal use (and waterstamped), normally students get that free. The version the uni has to buy is $700 + 175 a year. The full commercial version (there is no option for private use) would be $1500 + 375 a year, rather pricey if you only intend to draw a couple of pretty maps with it.
Take your plugs out, check their condition and any deposits on them.
Check there is a gap and that is the same on each plug, modern plugs are nearly always pre-gapped correctly so I wouldn't worry about measuring it if you don't have a set of feelers ready, it is possible that bits of debris in the engine can hit the tip and reduce the gap (I got away very lightly when the Lada deposited a nut from its carb into the engine and other than regapping one of my plugs didn't seem to cause any harm, maybe it's still jammed in there somewhere
).
Rub them down with a wire brush and always give them a wipe down or use an air line to blow off any bits of grit before you put them back in. Then rest each plug so it is earthed (ie. touching the block) and crank the engine over, look for the sparks and if one is weaker than the others you've found the problem.
Check there is a gap and that is the same on each plug, modern plugs are nearly always pre-gapped correctly so I wouldn't worry about measuring it if you don't have a set of feelers ready, it is possible that bits of debris in the engine can hit the tip and reduce the gap (I got away very lightly when the Lada deposited a nut from its carb into the engine and other than regapping one of my plugs didn't seem to cause any harm, maybe it's still jammed in there somewhere
).Rub them down with a wire brush and always give them a wipe down or use an air line to blow off any bits of grit before you put them back in. Then rest each plug so it is earthed (ie. touching the block) and crank the engine over, look for the sparks and if one is weaker than the others you've found the problem.
Well I'm not too sure what some of you were playing but I loved it.
Sure the driving physics may not be perfect but they're a damn sight better than the original Mafia or GTA, anybody using a steering wheel is missing the point. It looks stunning and is oozing with details, the tyre smoke and graphical movement of the cars looks a lot more convincing than GTA and is it just me or is there tyre deformation?
Sure the driving physics may not be perfect but they're a damn sight better than the original Mafia or GTA, anybody using a steering wheel is missing the point. It looks stunning and is oozing with details, the tyre smoke and graphical movement of the cars looks a lot more convincing than GTA and is it just me or is there tyre deformation?
You can't beat Mount Gay rum and Tescos have started selling it 
I get the Solidworks license administrator.
A - 2 (4)
B - 2 (3)
C - 1 (4)
D - 4 (2)
E - 1 (5)
F - 2 (1)
G - 1
H - 5 (5)
I - 1 (3)
J - 1 (5)
My opinions of classic Fiats are in brackets
B - 2 (3)
C - 1 (4)
D - 4 (2)
E - 1 (5)
F - 2 (1)
G - 1
H - 5 (5)
I - 1 (3)
J - 1 (5)
My opinions of classic Fiats are in brackets
Problem is if you don't understand the principles you can't verify your solutions. CAD breeds stupidity and failure if not used correctly, it's really quite scary how easily small human mistakes can lead to wrong conclusions. For example wrongly constrained or poorly meshed FEA models produce results of different orders of magnitude.
Stress is bad but for true masochists.
There's still more than enough power for you to kill yourself there.
You only just passed GCSE maths though so assuming you actually tried to answer the paper you are far bellow the average successful engineer in terms of natural ability and understanding of maths for your age. If you want to have any hope of becoming an engineer you will have to be able to hack maths at a level far beyond A-level, which itself is a huge step up from GCSE.
Failure is hard to accept, especially when it hits you for the first time. I'm afraid in the eyes of most in the engineering world (which like it or not is academic) you are currently a spectacular failure, if you don't want an opinion don't ask for it. Although it isn't an easy step to take your best hope may be to retake your GCSEs whilst it is still not too late, it would take some real balls to accept this is what you have to do but it would be far more helpful to your future than doing a countless number of pseduo-engineering courses.
What do you want credit for? Bumming around and failing? Do something credit worthy and maybe you'll get some credit. It is possible for those who have failed to get decent grades to recover and pursue a good career either as technicians or engineers but it requires above average maturity, motivation, intelligence and sense of purpose (none of which you seem to exhibit yet). From your situation you're going to have to try doubly hard to get anywhere in life.
Then what's the point in doing them then? I know someone who went to Brunel who now works in Halfords, would he not have been better to just go straight to Halfords?
Double negative there, try reading what you write, if you can't master your native tongue no one will take you seriously.
Mechanical engineering courses are general. They teach you a wide variety of subjects to a useful degree, although you'll probably specialise in the third (and fourth) year.
BSc courses are not engineering degrees, they cover similar subject range and seem superficially similar but do not go into the maths. A good BSc (and there is much more variety in them than accredited engineering degrees) will leave you with a basic idea of the concepts that engineers use and are able to be of assistance to engineers but not really be able to think for themselves. Having said that technicians in highly skilled roles such as those who lay strain gauges can earn more than a chartered engineer doing highly skilled, specialised but incredibly boring jobs.
Bath don't offer any motorsport engineering course, and I can't find any of the BSc technology courses that you would be planning to do offered by them either. The engineering degrees offered by Bath are MEng only and have high entry requirements (three As IIRC), in many ways I wish I had considered applying to Bath now, I didn't because I wasn't expecting to get the grades I did.
Then go and get a job working on cars then, if that's what you want to do. You don't need any qualifications beyond GCSEs to start working for a motorsport team, although some will be dubious about employing someone who has failed so badly at school. Once you're working for a team they'll often encourage you to go to a specialist college and do courses relevant to what they do, this will allow you to progress with a secure job, much better than doing general courses.
I've worked with people who have been to such colleges, they make good mechanics but don't seem to have gained much and certainly the brighter ones reckon they'd have been better learning on the job than attending a college doing a course like these.
You've not read what he said, nothing about designing cars and no guarantee of a job.
They'll teach you a little bit about fixing cars, though as you'll most likely end up as a road car mechanic you'd probably be better off doing a more conventional road car mechanic's apprenticeship.
What you're failing to see is that GCSEs are a qualification, they aren't meant to show how well behaved you were in school (although they often do), they show whether you understand the required grade of knowledge in the subject that a 16 year old should have (in your case clearly not).
A university degree takes A levels as the base and builds on them, it assumes you were able to cope and learn at the rate expected to do A levels in the usual two years. An undergraduate degree is a natural progression from A level so as a result a greater level of independence and rate of learning are expected.
The courses you are on about aim to take extra years to slowly bring you to the required level to enter uni, this is fundamentally flawed, because once you're at uni you'll be expected to work like everybody else, which you just won't be able to do. Not everybody can do physics and maths beyond GCSE level, even those who get A* struggle, my college refused to take anybody with less than an A (exceptionally Bs) at GCSE onto physics or maths, and with good reason. The idea that you can't even pass GCSE applied science (which is already dumbed down) and want to do what is an applied physics and maths subject is ridiculous.
They're next to a race circuit so you get hands on experience as a mechanic, on a course that is designed to produce mechanics, technicians and fabricators but not engineers. Silverstone also has a similar course, nothing wrong with them but don't expect to be designing anything or using them as a spring step to an engineering degree. Brookes also has a college tied to it (Cherwell Valley) and sells the premise that you can move onto to do an engineering degree, but the actual success rate of this is pretty much zero. There are plenty of engineering foundation years and most will be recognised by other unis, if you can't get on one of those give up.
In exceptional circumstances when it is accompanied by 4 As... not exactly Sam's situation.
Very true, when I started my course the lecture hall had less seats than students in it. They said that by the end of the first year there would be plenty of room and they were exactly right, the number of people that dropped out within the first few weeks was amazing. I would have thought we are nearing 50% drop out now at the end of my second year, and having just had exams that were much harder than in the first year I wouldn't be surprised if a lot more people drop out. Engineering courses are very high stress and require a great deal of commitment, but it is a reflection of what the career at the end is like, if you want to doss about for three years then walk into a well paid job do business studies
I highly doubt your friend has 1 or less GCSE passes, assuming he's a Plymouth one of the entry specifications for that course is "English Language, Mathematics and a Science subject at Grade C.".
Brookes require 5 GCSE passes to get onto the foundation course, with two GCSEs you are going to struggle in life and I wouldn't bother trying to go down an academic route of any kind, go get a job at Kwik Fit or do a vocational course, it would suit you a lot better than trying to waste time and money either doing a meaningless foundation degree or actually managing to get onto a real course that you can't handle.
Give up? From what you've said I see no evidence that you've started anything to give up.
That's all great until you try and apply for a decent job, employers ask for a sum of your GCSE grades or ask you the number of A*-C passes you have, answering that you have 2 GCSEs will get you immediately discredited from any interview, they can afford to be picky.
IIRC your dad works in salvage which is a pikey led industry and certainly isn't engineering, contacts help to an extent in engineering but people often mistake simply knowing people with effective networking.
Here's where you are wrong, public exam results are clear cut and universal, degrees and higher education qualifications can be wishy washy and are hard to determine the integrity of, likewise experience can be bullshit. If you haven't got a B in Maths and and a C in English your application to any vaguely technical job is going to be thrown in the bin, recruiters use grades as the first filter when going through CVs, if you haven't got them they won't read the rest.
No you are very thick, a C is generally considered a pass at GCSE. I didn't exactly work hard at school for various reasons but still ended up with 5As, 4Bs and a C without trying very hard.
Sorry to break it to you but smart people run the world, earn more and achieve more than stupid people because they are smarter and better. Anybody who feels scared of smart people is particularly stupid.
Without meaning to be harsh if you can't get As or at the very least Bs in GCSE maths and physics without trying then there is no hope of ever getting an engineering degree or working in any kind of motorsport design role. The few who do get far without the conventional education route still performed well at school however much they disliked it or try to play it down.
The Castle Coombe Formula Ford championship is a budget championship for amateurs on a very tight budget. I think it also has an age cut off on the chassis so by definition the college can't be designing a new car, simply running a car with a competent driver and a large budget isn't terribly impressive, any club racing championship can be fairly easily won by those who choose to race in a series they can be competitive in when everybody else can only just afford to run a car in the series.
This kind of course will help you to become a mechanic, however, you could get the same jobs without this qualification. Your lack of decent GCSEs will make any potential employer think your stupid though and if you don't do anything about them will be a big barrier to any career path.
Sounds like you're going about it the right way, make sure you get an IMechE accredited course. An MEng is a higher qualification than a BEng + MSc, only the MEng qualifies for the entire academic requirement for chartered status. The MEng also works out cheaper as you can get a student loan for the whole time (although sponsorship/other loans is possible for an MSc).
Don't bother posting about things you've got no clue on.
Product design is hugely helpful, those who didn't do it really struggle to get to grips with producing technical drawings, very important and somewhat glossed over. Having a better grasp of design concepts and background knowledge on materials selection is also very helpful. Those who haven't done it are pretty much useless in group design environments, taking far too long to do anything, struggling to communicate ideas and coming out with ridiculous design suggestions.
Further maths would be helpful if you can manage to do it with your A levels, it would take a lot of pressure off at uni, I wish I had done it for AS now instead of business studies, which was useless and so boring that I ended up with a B.
You were given the chance and by your own admission threw it away by messing about, what you don't seem to realise is that further education requires a lot more effort than school, and unlike at school or college by the time you go to uni nobody cares if you don't do any work, you'll just fail and drop out like a lot of people.
Currently what I'm driving about in, very underrated, make fantastic little rally cars. My dad thought I had gone slightly mad when I told him what I had bought to replace the Lada! They're tough, very well engineered and have the high build quality you'd expect from a Volvo. The 1.4 engine that I've got is a nice gutsy engine that like to rev. I would avoid the 1.7, not as nice to drive and you'll only end up paying more in fuel and insurance to go a bit faster in a car that isn't about going fast. Clio engines (including the Williams) drop straight in so there's no point in modifying either of the standard engines if you want to go fast, the gearbox and diff unit looks like it has come off a racing car, and as it is shared with the 360 is good enough for competition use with the 1.4 engine. The propshaft is the weak link, it consists of a single aluminium tube with no supports and splined ends mounted in a rubber. I broke mine recently on a LWRNAM (for the ralliers), though I think the knackered engine mounts caused it by letting the engine move too much moving it out of line with the gearbox.
It only costs me £471 to insure as a competition car with unlimited rally miles, 5000 non-competition miles and no restrictions on modifications.
One is a popular exciting hot hatch, the other is a Japanese saloon from an era when they built totally soulless cars that left the driver disconnected from the driving experience. Naturally aspirated FWD Imprezas are used on the road rally scene (where turbos and 4WD are banned) but they usually use the turbo stage rally cars as the base and the 2.5 Legacy engine.
There's no point in insuring it then.
I would disagree, although I think Brunel and Oxford Brookes are the only two institutions in the country (possibly the world given the number of international students we get) that offer a motorsport course that is a genuine IMechE accredited MEng mechanical engineering degree.
The Rover 200 makes a better base, you still get the K series without the silly bodykit and higher price tag. They make truly horrible road cars, they're popular on 1400 Endurance rallies because the engine makes them the fastest car possible within the regs.
Both Brunel and Oxford Brookes offer year long foundation courses that allow entry onto the BEng/MEng programs, by far the quickest way to get onto a decent degree, they don't require A levels, they take an awful lot of people onto them who aren't cut out to do engineering so if you can't make the cut to get onto one of them then I would give up.
To be brutally honest doing a BSc like the one you're planning to do won't help at all and will count against you when you finally get to the stage of trying to get a job, likewise those who spend years retaking/changing degree courses.
I'd argue to the contrary the company (non-motorsport) I've secured a placement with took a great deal of interest in the road rallying and oval racing I've done, a personal project shows the ability to organise, manage and see things through that working for a company doesn't necessarily show.
A much better approach would be to do a foundation course to get onto a proper course, Brookes have an open day on the 12th June, that I'm working at come along and have a look.
Not by any means, however sadly it has become an acceptable front for race hate groups, a couple of the facebook groups that I feel rather embarrassed to know people in:
'...It's funny how our flag offends you but our benefits don't!!!...'
First three lines of the description:
'For the sake of England,
Underdog of Europe,
Can we bring back some pride? BNP'll'
431,244 members!
'if england shirts get banned in pubs so should turbans + head scarves !!'
126,376 members!
It's funny how the groups focus on making racist jibes that have no relevance to the story they are trying to blow out of proportion. I won't be wearing an England shirt this summer because I don't want to be associated with the 563,743 people who either believe in neo-Nazi racial extremism or who were stupid enough to be duped into voting for them.
3/4 of the population are illegal aliens (obviously non-white, most likely dirty Muslims in the eyes of nasty little racists) yet 70% of Croydon's population is white?
I live on a street that is largely Asian at my end and Caribbean at the other, I'd still have thought 50% of the street is white though. I feel absolutely safe walking about at night where I live. The only race of people I do fear where I live is the pikey, always flag waving, always white and always trying to off load anything they can into the back of their transit pickup, they stole somebody's garden knomes recently!
A couple of streets away you get into the predominately white area full of the typical 'they took our jobs' EDL/BNP/NF flag waving scum. If the majority white population actually tried giving others a chance you'd find they're mostly perfectly nice people a lot of whom speak better English than you and are about as interested in blowing you up as claiming your benefits. It's the legal immigrants working and paying their taxes that allow the white benefit club to sit outside the local all day.
If you persecute your minorities then of course they're not going to like you, if you beat a dog with a stick do you not expect it to bite? This ridiculous 'patriotism' is a much bigger threat to our country than Muslim extremism. The simple folk have turned from being the school bully to trying to orchestrate genocide, of course they're too stupid to succeed but cause a lot of damage in the process.
18 threads, 56 posts I think a new thread per 3 posts must be a new record!
The Monoposto lap record had an average speed of 112mph! The Tatus won't be as quick but would still be severely held back by that speed restriction at a track that consists of exciting fast bits with a couple of boring slow bits. Even the Mazda would be touching that speed restriction.
You're not going to have to worry about understeer on a driving experience day, whichever car you choose you won't be anywhere close to its limits. It doesn't really matter what car you first drive on track with, the slower and more straight forward behaving car the better. Finding your feet on a track (which no amount of karting, sim racing or road driving can really help you with) takes time in any car. Even the average trackday driver in a Porsche or Caterham (who usually own their cars and have a reasonable amount of experience/confidence) will be holding up a good driver in a standard hatchback. In fact on a wet track day at Silverstone recently a Ford Galaxy was lapping as quickly as anything else.
The faster the car you choose the more out of your depth you will be and you won't gain a lot other than to say you've driven whatever car. The race driving instructors I know say that driving experience work is mainly about self-preservation, in 4 laps in a Cayman they'll be solely trying to stop you killing them. Generally they don't like experience days involving powerful cars at fast tracks, which is understandable really as the danger to them is very real.
I would definitely take the 14 laps in the MX5, the longer you have with an instructor the more you can demonstrate you're not going to do anything stupid and gradually begin to take a decent line and up your pace a bit.
If you haven't paid for anything yet though I wouldn't book an experience day at Thruxton, short of Goodwood, it's the fastest track in the UK and your instructor will be very aware of this and will be naturally more cautious about what he lets you do. I would try and go for one of the airfield based days or a slower track, although they may not be as exciting as Thruxton, you'll be able to get on your feet quicker and won't scare your instructor so much. Try and get as much time as possible, it really doesn't matter what car you're driving, an old shitbox would make a far better car to learn in than the current top spec MX5.
The faster the car you choose the more out of your depth you will be and you won't gain a lot other than to say you've driven whatever car. The race driving instructors I know say that driving experience work is mainly about self-preservation, in 4 laps in a Cayman they'll be solely trying to stop you killing them. Generally they don't like experience days involving powerful cars at fast tracks, which is understandable really as the danger to them is very real.
I would definitely take the 14 laps in the MX5, the longer you have with an instructor the more you can demonstrate you're not going to do anything stupid and gradually begin to take a decent line and up your pace a bit.
If you haven't paid for anything yet though I wouldn't book an experience day at Thruxton, short of Goodwood, it's the fastest track in the UK and your instructor will be very aware of this and will be naturally more cautious about what he lets you do. I would try and go for one of the airfield based days or a slower track, although they may not be as exciting as Thruxton, you'll be able to get on your feet quicker and won't scare your instructor so much. Try and get as much time as possible, it really doesn't matter what car you're driving, an old shitbox would make a far better car to learn in than the current top spec MX5.
I can't really see any great need for the changes, the new Abbey looks nice and the run into the complex is better from the club circuit, but the loss of Bridge is a shame and it just seems to be adding distance to an already very good track.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG