Hmm, I'll need to try that on the test install. I just put it down to something crashing and restarting before it was quite done updating all the tables.

I would have replied sooner but I've been getting a server error every time I've tried the 'opening time' section since my last post.

That's 'cos Gilbertd broke it :-D

The site's now on a server with a bit more memory (gone from 256MB to 16GB, that ought to do it). So the random crashes when it eats all the RAM should be a thing of the past...

I'm sure it hasn't escaped your attention (although it seems to have slipped right by the mainstream news outlets) that it looks like we're going to end up with the Investigatory Powers Bill signed in to law after all, despite a lot of opposition from all sides. This is likely to have an extremely damaging effect on Internet security, and of course your right to privacy.

What you could do - join the Open Rights Group, write to your MP (unfortunately this really does need to be bits of paper with writing on, emails won't even be read. Can't hurt to send an email too, mind), and tell as many people as you can to find out exactly how dangerous this bill will be.

What this means for this site - There's a very limited amount of information that would be available, if I was asked to provide it. It is likely that if I was required to provide information to some government body, I would not be allowed to reveal that fact. This has not happened. Your passwords are stored as a hash, which is why you can't get your password emailed to you, only a link to reset it (yes, that's broken right now, I know). Passwords are saved using an industry-standard PBKDF2 function. Your password is pretty safe.

You'll notice that there's a little green padlock beside the address bar. This site uses an SSL certificate for encrypting internet traffic, provided by StartSSL. It uses a 4096-bit certificate with 256-bit key - this means that each connection is set up with an immense key, which then creates a shorter key that is only used for a brief period of time before being replaced. Your web traffic is pretty safe.

Now go and poke your MP to stand up against the IP Bill!

It looks like the server tossed its cookies as it was saving the last post, and didn't quite finish updating things properly. I'm working on improving things a bit there.

If it was sucking water into the engine then as Richard says the piston would look steam-cleaned. The plugs would also look steam-cleaned on the affected cylinders, and those would be most likely the rear two (and apparently, for some reason it's usually number 8 cylinder - it certainly was on mine).

You'd also have the temperature gauge shooting up after a short drive - if it's staying bob on in the middle it's likely okay.

If the liner is slipping (mine was, the previous owner had thoroughly roasted it) then when the engine is hot at idle you'd get a ticking noise at twice the rate that a tappet would tick at, that goes away a little off idle. Don't confuse it with the terrifyingly slipped-liner-like noise that the evap purge valve makes :-D

New rad tomorrow and the heater matrix will be bypassed as long as I sign a disclaimer (whut?) in case I crash due to a misted screen.

Electrically-heated, remember?

Still, I'll have at least 2 more engines to work on once this one is done for the other 2 RR's at the workshop... I probably won't do full build threads on them, but I can send you photos of shiny engine parts direct to your inbox.. maybe I could set up a subscription service for it...

Pay-per-view streaming video. Hmm, revenue stream for the site... :-D

They sound like the same aftermarket ones I got. The threads were totally different and they use a completely different sensor technology.

I'm surprised you even got them to fit!

PS: How do we contribute ??

Well, V8 Developments do these lovely engines, you know... :-D

When we bought the domain name a few of the regulars just sent money to my personal paypal address. Now I'm okay with that for a one-off quick fix type thing but if I was going to "officially" solicit donations for running the site I'd probably set one up specifically for it. Or, maybe Patreon or something similar, I don't know.

As for commercialising things, if we had enough users and enough traffic that I actually needed to throw money at hosting I'd probably be looking into selling merch. We're a long way off from that, but the more I think about it the more having some merch for sale sounds like a good idea :-)

Fuck commercialising it. If people are happy enough to chip in a few quid here and there to pay for the domain name and maybe even a bit of the hosting bill I'm happy enough. If the site becomes large and busy enough that it actually needs significant resources to run, I may need to work something out.

Getting some analytics on would let me see which pages are being hit a lot (and therefore, what could be optimised) and which pages aren't really being looked at (and maybe work out why), among other things. Right now things aren't too busy, but since updating the forum software (when the new banner appeared) the database has had about five times as many queries as it did before (just under five million, compared to about a million on the old version). Part of this is down to the forum software working a bit harder, but the site has definitely got busier :-)

I'm thinking about sticking some analytics on the site, quite likely Piwik (Google is well down the list - I want control of the data, not some shady company). I'm seeing quite a lot of visits from not-signed-up folk and it would be interesting to see how they're getting on with it - as well as the regular users.

If there are significant objections then I won't, though. I know some people don't like "web tracking", but I figure since you've already signed up you're at least somewhat happy to hand over some info.

The only thing I'd leave off is the gearbox service, that always seems to precipitate gearbox problems.

Just to be clear, as the owner and main admin of this site, this post is hugely and completely offtopic and I want to see more like this.

Pressure Switch Stuck High is nearly always the driver pack. What's happened is, it's tried to fill an airbag, couldn't drive the appropriate solenoid open (but there's no way to detect that) so the pressure in the tank didn't drop, didn't see the pressure switch change state when it expected and got a bit freaked out.

If you use the RSW software you can use the height-setting page with the up and down buttons to test the solenoids and driver pack. When you raise or lower a corner you should hear the solenoids going, "tack tack tack tack", like that, about half a second apart. If you get "tack ... ... tack" with about a second gap in the middle, that corner solenoid isn't being driven. If you get "... tack tack ..." then the raise or lower solenoid isn't being driven.

Every single solenoid driver I've pulled from a breaker has had at least one intermittently faulty channel. It's probably why the vehicle was scrapped, weird untraceable intermittent EAS faults.

Same colour as mine, even down to the straw on the carpets.

Harman-Kardon is the normal system...

No, the server was definitely running out of memory. I've done a bit of juggling, and that should sort it for now.

I've noticed a spike in 502 errors, but I'm at work just now and can't fiddle. Not sure why, but it does correlate with a massive amount of spam being filtered so it's probably the VPS running out of RAM. Oh well, like my old dad used to say, "If at first you don't succeed, build a bigger one!"

Thanks, Richard. I guess I need to turn on captcha for signups.

Mine needs done. Maybe we should start a thread on "group stuff to buy into and do".