< I never realised that Wipac was part of Lucas >

I don't think they were. This link suggests that they are still going strong under that name:
About Wipac - Wipac

Er - I think most people know that calling someone a name related to fruit is somewhat different to a name related to sewage.

I respectfully suggest that if you were to call, say, an African or an Asian race "Sewage" - short for for Sewage Farm - a direct equivalent to calling someone a septic tank - on the basis of some fanciful connection to a "rhyme" you would find yourself correctly and rightly buried in all kinds of trouble - for being nastily racist. So why/how is it OK to call Americans that? Is it becoz they is white?

Does not compute.

Anyway, racism apart septic is a thoroughly nasty and offensive term, you wouldn't dare to use it to an American's face would you? It is grossly unpleasant and thus not acceptable by any normal standards of manners or decency.

As an American I accept septic as a normal way of disposing of waste. Not offensive at all. Now the Florida Keys has a brand new sewer system so septic systems are gone. Two years ago that was the only way to dispose of waste. We had the same system on our farm growing up. Why do people get so up tight about nothing? My polish roomate knew every polish joke and loved to tell them. Learn to laugh at yourself, it makes you healthier.

Can and have - only in the age-old context of expressing affection between male friends by using insults though. I wouldn't use it to a stranger, just as I wouldn't call a stranger a :mad:er, :mad:pot, :mad:hole or :mad:nozzle! ;)

Rhyming slang can bite you if you get into the etymology though - A lot of people use "berk" thinking it's fairly innocuous, I hear kids use it and as a kid I even heard teachers use it on occasion. I doubt that'd be the case if it were more widely known that "berk" is a contraction of "Berkeley Hunt"... :}

AB
 

Perhaps you would prefer another rhyming slang
Thick as a ....
Just going for a ....
Or maybe you just don't understand semantics?

Speaking with an electronic systems designers' hat on, the idea of spraying WD-40 around electrics willy-nilly doesn't strike me as wholly wise. As the MSDS makes clear, WD-40 is nothing more than a mixture of white spirit and mineral oil. Neither is particularly good for either the galvanic properties of conductors or the long-term insulation properties of many plastics. Quite where WD-40 acquired its stellar reputation is a mystery.

If you want to disperse water and keep condensation out of an engine bay, a silicon/PTFE spray will do the job effectively. If you want to clean low-voltage or low-current connectors, propanol and a toothbrush works well.

WD40 is petroleum based, so rots rubber and is also inflammable.

While I still have a can or two, my preference is also silicon spray. The
cheapest way to buy it is to look for "Silicon Mold Release Agent". Basically,
silicon grease in an aerosol.. Fixes the old style distributor caps for good and
also prevents electrolytic corrosion in multipin auto connectors...

cockney steve, #44:

@syseng. You' Sir, are a true masochist. trying to stop the noise of an Alfa rusting, whilst struggling to make the engine run with that wonderful brown MM bakelite distributor cap which had built -in tracking.(the earlier form of theft-prevention which pinched the term.)

Well, everyone knew that the bodywork came free with Alfas, but where else
could could you buy a car with twin cam alloy engine, twin Weber carbs,
5 speed gearbox, limited slip diff and properly located axles for a few hundred
pounds ?. Yes, they all needed work, but the performance made it worthwhile and
provided forced education in the gentle art of mechanics :O...

The gentle art of mechanics
 

Ah, the gentle art of mechanics. It should be a qualification for certification for every mechanical engineer to disassemble an engine down to each bolt and piston ring and rebuild it to hum (I've done a few) as it should be for every computer engineer to rebuild a wonky motherboard (and debug a peripheral driver) and every physician to be a hospital patient (been there too). One can't be a real engineer or physician without experiencing the practice of one's profession. Unfortunately, management MBA's are only trained by case studies of the latest corporate wheeze (most of which went bankrupt five years later) and can only relate to the sizzle and not the steak (viz. the latest verbiage from Boeing PR).

Thanks for the info, syseng. (Pedant alert: I know you mean flammable). I have sprayed WD40 all over the car engine bay for the last couple of winters and the results are great. The rubber looks new and shows no sign of perishing. Or am I suddenly going to be stranded by the roadside one night?

I have always wondered how spraying silicon etc onto electrical connections makes them work. Apart from driving off water, one would expect it to cause bad connections by it's insulating properties? (and I speak as an erstwhile electronics engineer).

Uplinker: The OED accepts inflammable and flammable as equivalent. Pedant alert: the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) tries to keep English speakers communicating efficiently. The in- prefix of inflammable means supporting. A monolayer of silicone on electrical contacts would only be an insulator for microvolt potential differences.

I once saw a toggle switch burn up not long after someone decided to lubricate it with silicone spray. I've always figured the cause was resistance from silicone on the contacts. But I could, of course, be wrong.

if anyone is experiencing problems with Lucas electrics (they are actually A/C, with a random frequency), you may need this replacement part

http://www.mez.co.uk/smoke2.jpg

" Lucas Replacement Wiring Harness Smoke kit, P/N 530433, along with the very rare Churchill Tool 18G548BS adapter tube and metering valve. "

this one was for sale on eBay, but these original service kits are hard to find

Auto connectors are usually not the best quality and have tin plated
contacts. They also often carry significant current and have voltage
drop across the contacts, so it only takes a little moisture to produce
electrolytic corrosion and the "white powder effect". The contacts slide
on mate and there's pressure between the surfaces. A thin film of silicon
spray forms a bubble around the mating surfaces, while at the same time
being easily penetrated by contact pressure to form a good contact.
Modern autos typically have dozens of connectors, many of which are
exposed and even if they are rubber sealed, this perishes over time to
let the damp in.

I tend to keep my cars for years, even decades, so I perhaps see more
of this sort of problem than others...

I've spent years cleaning electrical contacts with various products, and have always wondered that.

I also keep my cars for too long and know about the problems of which you speak. :rolleyes:

Thanks kilo, that must have changed then, because it used to mean the opposite - or was that an urban myth? (Like I said I did issue a 'pedant alert' !!)

Language pedant
 

Inflammable.
The problem is that the prefix in- has two origins. One is Germanic, and intensifies the meaning of the compound; the other derives from a Latin prefix in-, which negatives the meaning of the compound. Normally, people know which is which by context.

AFAIK, the original word was "inflammable" with intensifying in-. But, of course, some people took the wrong meaning, so the word "flammable" was invented, for labelling purposes. For me, the word is "inflammable" in normal usage (as in "highly inflammable" or "an inflammable personality"), but I'd for sure put "flammable" on a bottle of solvent.

P.S., the true pedants will notice that I have somewhat simplified the in- thing; and also that "flammable" did exist in the 1800s, but was rare until its adoption on elf and safety grounds.

Habitable and inhabitable follow the same logic.

Which is why I only ever use it on connectors with plastic housing (and inside the distributor cap). I use regular switch cleaner on rubber connectors, seal with insulating tape and put Vaseline on the tape.

That said, I think in more modern vehicles the "rubber" on things like HT leads etc. is actually synthetic.

Something like that might have been the case in the old days, when there was more
stress on the practical, rather than abstracting the whole process off into some cad
package or other. Not that i'm against cad, just the oppposite, but how do trainee
engineers get the practical experience these days ?. Working with hand and machine
tools should be part of the process and there's nothing like hands on working with
metal to get an instinctive understanding of it's characteristics and limits. You can't
get that from cad packages and "design rule sets" are by nature generic and not
necessarily optimum...

If you are similar age, then our generation cut our teeth on motorcycles, often fixing
by the roadside, before somehow getting cheap mot failure cars fixed and through
the mot. So many people these days seem so completely devoid of clue w/respect
to anything mechanical and would rather pay garages 50-100 ukp / hour, for the
most trivial of faults.

Starting to sound like grumpy old sod, but what happened to scientific curiosity,
the right stuff and pursuit of excellence for it's own sake ?. Just one more pointer to
the general decline and fall of Western civilisation :sad:...

I agree with you Chris,

I never cease to be amazed when I see a car with a flat on the side of the road, and instead of the guy changing the wheel, he is standing there clueless and calling someone on his phone.


Same goes for gals too by the way - everyone should know how to change a wheel. Unless she's nice looking, in which case I might stop and help.....

Just found my copy of Fowlers, 1990, which has an entry for inflame:

"...Has been displaced by inflammable, from French or Latin.
<snipped>
...It must have been a supposed ambiguity in inflammable that led to the coining of
the word flammable, but that could only make things worse and flammable is now
rare, usually in the compound non-flammable"...

Uplinker, #99

As if one needed any excuse to help a damsel in distress, even if they are expected
to understand the basics these days :).

As for garages, the classic case for me was a colleague at work who had an inoperative
side light. He took it to the dealer across the road, who said "Thankyou very much,
sir" and charged him 35 ukp to change the bulb.

No wonder that some garages have such an iffy reputation...

[quote"Thankyou very much,
sir" and charged him 35 ukp to change the bulb.][/quote]

Agreed that sounds scandalous....now add up the overheads for the mechanic, plus his hourly rate, plus a profit-margin....you're lucky if you get 30 minutes labour on that- fine, if it's a hand under the bonnet, twist and withdraw..change bulb, replace and twist, drop bonnet....then you have to drive round to reception remove seat and steering-wheel covers.......

remind us, how much does a pilot get paid, divided into how many actual revenue-raising flying-with -a- paying -cargo hours????;)
not getting at you, but been there, done that.
Saturday was NO booked-jobs day. reserved for customers paying bills, booking work in/getting quotes/advice (free!) and a constant stream of "canyewjust"ers

"can yew just tell me how to...."
"can yew just fit a sidelight bulb" (and the P.O.D's lampholder would be rusted/poor earth/broken spring- but somehow I'VE sabotaged it for the sake of a 20p bulb!)

"canyew just listen to my engine and tellme...."

took to saying "No problem....can YOU just put a couple of quid in one of those charity -boxes" many turned away, the charities had a good draw every six months or so :)
A wise person pointed out that I could work indefinitely for nowt, but if i valued my time, others would also!...I stopped feeling guilty for not disseminating my knowledge for nothing.

cockney steve, #102:
Yes, I know they have a living to earn, the rent, rates, tools, diags
equipment, wages etc means they have to charge for everything. It was the
main dealer for the brand and a half way decent mechanic could have changed
that in 5 minutes and charged 10 ukp for the good will. What goes around
comes around and it's better to be in credit with the karma, or whatever
you like to call it. In modern garages, they often don't let you speak to
a mechanic. Everything has to go through the process, it costs money to
prepare an invoice and it's not worth doing that for less than increments
of 1/2 hour minimum. I've worked freelance for decades so do understand,
but that was just a bad example and from what i've heard, not that uncommon.
In a world where everything has a price, few put value on anything that's
free, but i've been fortunate in gaining a lot of varied knowledge over
the years at others expense, so there is some responsibility to put
some of that back in the pot for nowt.

They say you can take the man out of Yorkshire etc :)...

Steve the pilot professon has always been full of skinflints...
Had a multitude of skippers who have had horses douvres, steak and desert then equally divided the bill after the girls have had just a salad.
"flogged" my book to an ex Dublin based FR TRE who now flies out in the sand pit (100grand plus tax free) - asked him for less than the printing cost - fumbled about in his purse then said he would pop back with the correct money taking said book with him...still waiting and that was a month ago ;-)
Then there was the owner of a commercial flying school who had a free copy...asked me for a second free one as someone had nicked it....
Seems the more money some get the more they want to hang on to it!