Ah, replacing bulbs in cars, why so difficult?

So picture the scene. One of your headlight bulbs has gone, and you can't see very well. You have a spare set of bulbs in the glove box (well, you have to, legally, in France anyway!). You are driving a Subaru Forester S-turbo, or a Toyota Celica GT. You open the bonnet, detach the headlight cable connector, flick the catches, slide the bulb out, and put in the new one. Easy. Now imagine you're driving an Audi A4, A6, Ford Cougar or such... For Audis, the owners manual tells you to bring the car to a main dealer! If you try to do it yourself you have to remove the air snorkel, airbox, power steering resevoir etc... Then you have to locate 4 screws for each light, 2 hidden down under the light. Did you bring a torch with you? Is it raining? Do you have a magnet to pick up any screws that may fall into the engine, or disappear into a drain? Vorsprung Durch Technic my arse! The Ford Cougar isn't so bad. The owners manual takes you step by step through the procedure. First you have to remove the front grille. Might be good to have somewhere safe and well-lit to lay out all the parts you've removed! Then the entire headlight assembly needs to be removed from the front of the car. Once you've done this, then you can begin to dis-assemble the unit to get at the bulbs... I mean, really, come on, motor manufacturers! Why should this be so difficult?

CFD not used for ERB design, evidently...

If only the architects of the Engineering Research Building had run a CFD* simulation on the design, they would have spotted the venturi created by the walkway between the buildings. This venturi accelerates the wind flowing between the buildings, and thus also creates a low-pressure area that ensures opening any of the entrance doors results in them being rapidly sucked out and smashing into each other, The problem this morning was particularly bad as the damper has been detached from the door (probably because it is not strong enough to self-close against such a pressure differential), thus the door can swing in an uncontrolled manner. I would not be surprised if the glass breaks one of these days. The automated access door will soon burn out its motor for the same reasons.

*CFD - Computational Fluid Dynamics

NCT all new cars please! At least their headlight aim...

All new cars should have to pass a NCT Lite (no pun intended!) to check their dipped beams are set correctly. Only forcing the NCT on cars more than 4 years old is unfair on those road users who are constantly blinded by new car owners driving behind them with their headlights incorrectly aligned. This issue will not be caught for 4 years; that's 4 years of potential blinding for every new car on the road. Partly to blame are the "levelling" devices on the dash designed for adjusting your lights if you are towing a heavy trailer, for example. Some owners just think this is an "improve my lighting" switch, and wind it up to the max, thus placing their car in an NCT-fail state. Correctly aligned dipped beams should only light the tyres and bumper of the car in front of you. Most new cars that drive behind me manage to light all three rear-view mirrors, and the ceiling of my car! C'mon people, if you can't work it out for yourselves (oh look, the guy in the car in front of us has his hand over the rear-view mirror. How can we see that so clearly? Hmm...), then it's time for legislation.

Lemon Juice

Made the staggering discovery yesterday, while looking at the ingredients for a well-known brand of washing-up liquid, that REAL LEMON JUICE is used in washing-up liquid, yet, after a quick scan of some other products in the kitchen, only fake lemon flavourings are used in most of the stuff we eat. So, when you wash the dishes after dinner, only now are you using fresh lemon juice... Ridiculous? No, just another example of how confused and disorientated our world has become.