Well not quite but as I start to sell out the remaining stocks of parts (Check out what I have listed on eBay; http://www.ebay.com.au/usr/au.mih2) I’m making my fleet of (now retro) Mini-Z the best it can be.
There’s a few MR01, an MR02 and Monster or two in the mix. Some are still in storage but as they get unearthed and hopped up they’re going to appear here.
There’s a humble invention in this world that serves a very noble purpose. Today that invention inflicted a cruel injustice upon me.
There’s a sense of betrayal lingering in my mind, I was betrayed by corporate greed and uncaring bean counters who obviously felt a dab of glue would stretch the supply chain costs beyond acceptable margins, a dab too far into the profit machine that is Oates.
I introduce to you the object of my ire, a shiny stainless steel wrapped tool, a tool my friends, thats sole purpose is to allow those of us who clean the dignity of keeping our hands away from the inner workings of the vessel in which we (and anyone who uses our bathrooms) poop.
Today this tool tore my dignity asunder as the head, like a bristly hedgehog if cleanliness calmly unwound from its shackles – or as it turns our poorly fitting screw in handle – and tried to scurry round that pesky S-bend towards the probably gator and piraña infested mystery that is the Canberra sewer system.
Dear reader I swallowed my pride and a cup of concrete, reached down and chased that while bristly beast, snagging it from the porcelain confines and restrained it once more.
I have done the unthinkable, the horror of realisation that I reached into a toilet, down into the that abyss where poop swims into a distant memory, not to save an iPhone, not save a Kitten, but to save a brush. Either I’m a great humanitarian or a fool, or maybe just a 39 year old dude who had to shove his hand down a toilet because somewhere someone decided a dab adhesive of would be the difference between profit and the total loss of consumer faith in their products ability to keep the place of pooping at a safe distance.
People of Oates, I salute your ability to be uncaring and cruel.
Perfohub is the magic front suspension design that Renault developed to separate the drive and steering axis of their the Megane RS. Otherwise decribed as the “Cup” suspension option and usually paired with an LSD and Brembo 4-spot front brakes.
Otherwise known as a “double-axis” strut system the basic principle has been used by Ford, Opel and Renault on their pinnacle hot-hatches to resolve some of the negative handling characteristics of hight performance front-wheel-drive systems.
For buyers of special editions such as the Mk3 Megane GT220 there’s no choice to tick the “Cup” box so we get what Renault provides, a well tuned combination of conventional strut hardware and all that goes along with it.
These pages are the compiled parts lists and technical drawings to show the parts required for retro-fitting the Perfohub suspension, the swap has already been done by other owners – however they have used complete (used) RS265 subframes to achieve the swap.
I’m approaching writing this as the owner of a 2013 Megane GT220, a chassis that already has a lot of RS265 DNA – the brake master cylinder is the same as the Brembo equipped RS265, the gearbox and engine are the same and so on. If you have a different model you should research further.
On the following linked pages I’ll cover off the parts that make up the Mk3 Megane GT220 and RS265 front suspension packages along with the diagrams from Renault Dialogys.
I’d only had the Panasonic DMC-TZ40 for a couple of weeks before leaving for my Malaysia trip and in that time had played around enough to learn where the basic settings were and understand how the WiFi function could be used.
As the camera itself is an “old” and now discontinued model there’s not much point in a full review, so consider this as a way of me reminding myself just how little I paid and and just how good it was on the trip.
One of the big reasons I bought the TZ40 was the Zoom, at 20x optical it was going to bring the action closer. Now in practice that zoom works well on a clear sunny day when the shutter speeds can be drop to deal with the camera shake. In practice newer generations of this camera and its competitors are going out to 30x zooms. I’m not entirely convinced that this is a good thing given the difficultly holding the camera steady enough.
The best zoom point for the camera is in the middle of the range though, the above shots were “easy” grabs and most from this position in the stands to the corner (a few hundred metres) were sharp and clear considering the hazy conditions.
When working with closer faster moving subjects the same middle of the range zoom point coupled with the burst mode on the shutter got me what I really enjoy – closeup clear sharp pictures. The success factors were again influenced by the ability to aim and stead the camera. So much so that I feel investing in, or making a “grenade grip” or large handle grip is going to be on the cards. That way the weight of the camera is better supported by the left hand while the right hand can guide the shots while triggering the shutter.
In short there’s not enough camera to hang onto solidly if you have larger hands, the same reason that makes the TZ40 a great travel companion is its downfall in these scenarios.
The huge amount of indirect light thanks to heavy cloud and haze cover did cause all of the automated functions some grief, the chrome finish of the Mclaren cars flaring out in most shots and confusing everything from shutter setting to focus points. I think had I not been relying on so much Automation I would have tweaked the Aperture and Shutter settings to specifically suit, however while the high-resolution screen nthe rear of the camera is bright and very sharp the lack f size still makes discerning these sorts of issues impossible in the field.
More conventional livery wasn’t a problem though with the mix of colours and contrasts being well picked up.
There’s really no true substitute for a DSLR at capturing super detailed pictures, but to be very honest I travelled to Malaysia with under 6kg of clothes, electronics and camera, I certainly didn’t have the space (or will) to wrangle more stuff.
The Panasonic TZ40 bridges the chasm between “good” mobile phone cameras with all their foibles and the new-generation of mirror less interchangeable lens cameras. The small external size packs a lot of useable features into a very pocket friendly package.
Overall I found the battery life to be very good, using a “power bank” to top-up the battery when walking around, having lunch and so forth extended the life and the change to the spare (at 199RM for a genuine battery) was completed quickly and barely interrupted use.
I had initially been using a Patriot Class10 32GB SD card which was “fast” enough for our DMC-TS3 indestructible camera but when filled I went out and splurged on a 64Gb Sandisk Extreme in MicroSD form (with adapter) to allow sharing with the GoPro. While on paper the specification difference between the two cards is not extreme it does play out in practice with the Sandisk card giving a faster save-time and consequently better burst mode performance.
At night the automatic Nightshot mode rarely faltered with the superbright lights and a colours captured clearly with minimal user effort. Motion blur in stills as expected but very little evidence of shake.
In bright light colour and detail are good, again this is a point and shoot (and the images are resized) but the level of detail captured is more than adequate for decent prints.
Overall I quickly became comfortable with carrying and using the TZ40 – I got good results most of the times I pulled it from the pocket and by contributing more effort on my part even better results would have been attained.
For the price of these super-zoom compact cameras I have no idea why some people travel relying upon mobile phone cameras to capture memories.
We are heading for a month since I wrote my last entry, at the time I was just 7 days away from departing for Malaysia onboard AirAsias A330 for the 2014 Malaysian GP.
Well considering part of the goal was to travel light I ended up taking just an iPhone 4S, a Kindle and the Panasonic TZ40 to capture the moments of the trip.
So first lets answer the question of accommodation; I stayed at The Victory Exclusive in Bukit Bintang. Rather than write yet another review here’s what I said on TripAdvisor. In summary though – the room had no windows a comfortable bed and was generally clean and functional and for the price I’m not complaining.
As with my previous visits Malaysia had me captivated with the pace of development and the friendliness of the people. In Australia we often like to think of our country as being “multicultural” – and for a anglo-dominated 1st world country that may be the case – but Malaysia seems to incorporate a greater mix of cultures, languages and lifestyles with a ease that I don’t feel back home.
For me this trip was all about trying to have a good time without simply throwing money at the experience. So I grabbed a Touch’n’Go MyPass and got around like a local on the Trains, Buses and Monorail. The added advantage was the massive cost saving compared to taxis, in 10 days I went through about 70RM (about AUD25) on the card and was on some form of mass-transit at least once! I can’t speak highly enough of the convenience of the system and wholeheartedly recommend any traveller to Malaysia pick one up as soon as they can.
With my budget drained by picking up options on airfares and the travel insurance I was now in the difficult position of trying to make the accommodation fit.
As I knew I’d be travelling with minimal luggage and only staying a short time I wouldn’t need the largest room, but I did want my own room, and own bathroom. At 39 years of age I don’t think I need to do hostel style anymore.
So I hit Hotels.com – we’ve been using it with moderate success to get good deals and to be honest the aggregators always have some sting in their tail – whether it is pricing only the cheapest night in the date range, forgetting about the taxes and fees or worst still having the links swapped in bait & switch fashion.
I’m familiar the “Golden Triangle” and Bit Bintang so that’s where I focussed attention.
My Hotels.com Search was delivering a good mix of results, and in the end after a lot of reading I settled on a choice between 3 places, chosen for their price, the reviews on Hotels.com and on TripAdvisor and the pictures.
The finalists were;
I’ve made my booking – missing out on some of the deeper discounting – and choosing a room spec which will hopefully offer a little more comfort than the base level.
I killed my budget though. AUD652.50 spent.
For now I won’t say where – you can do the reading about each of the three candidates and when I check-in I’ll put up some reviews of the space then.
In my next post I’ll write a bit about all the things I’m going to do in the 7 days I won’t be at Sepang Circuit!
In my last post I outlined the plan – attend the 2014 Malaysian Formula1 for an all-in cost of AUD 1500 from my home in Canberra Australia.
Key to this was getting some killer airfares – I needed to book 4 legs at least, either in a single booking or a cluster of bookings linked together by myself.
Turning to any of the regular travel aggregators gets some decent joined rates; Helloworld (formerly Bestflights) shows pricing of around AUD1000 and that’s pretty good, but I knew I could do better.
In the end I settled on using AirAsia and making a booking with my choice of service level, carry-on luggage only to KL, 20kg Return luggage, a seat in the Quiet Zone of my choice and so on. Total spent including all fees – AUD425. The problem is this flight left from Sydney meaning either two 3 hour drives from Canberra or a linking flight.
Turning to Virgin Australia and lining up matching flight times put me a further AUD247.70 down but I now had dates of travel locked in.
Its all getting very real now
With flights locked in on the cheapest virtually non-refundable, non-changeable fares this trip was going to happen. I’d previously sketched out a rough budget while looking at airfares and now it was getting tight…
| Description | Estimate |
| Flights (SYD – KUL) | $ 368.00 |
| Flights (CBR – SYD) | $ 240.00 |
| Accomodation | $ 650.00 |
| Travel Insurance | $ 90.00 |
| F1 Ticket | $ 250.00 |
| Totals: | $ 1,598.00 |
OK in reality the budget crept a bit when I added in the base cost of the AirAsia flights and the real (no discount) internal flights. But at this point I was still allowing myself a generous 3 star accommodation budget and a pretty good range of ticket options for the F1.
Working a bit backwards I contacted our usual travel insurer for a quote – it came back a bit higher than expected, but not much, and a chunk of the increase was selecting the “no excess” option. Always worthwhile when travelling and while my Credit Card offers complimentary insurance a dedicated policy is always much more generous.
Time to get serious and book some more stuff, with the flights already over budget I was hoping to downgrade costs a bit, so hitting the Sepang Circuit website I started the arduous choice of selecting my F1 tickets.
Sepang Circuit ticket prices are some of the better prices – and buying direct from the circuit online cut out some of the costs that other ticket sellers impose including mandatory postage of tickets. Not to mention it’s not like the racetrack is a fraudulent operator!
In the end I’ve settled for a covered grandstand on the back straight – it was basically the best combination of allocated seat – I’ve grabbed one right on the railing so should have a great clear view. It was cheap, at a smidge over AUD195 for the three days.
There is a bonus with booking through Sepang Circuit – that is the inclusion of tickets to the post-race party (Calvin Harris in 2014) and other things.
So now I had flights, insurance, and an F1 ticket and nowhere to sleep!
There’s about AUD600 to spend
This year I’m attending the Formula1 at Malaysia, and I’m doing it “cheap”.
I’ve never been to an F1 race before and despite being in Malaysia at the same time as the 2012 race I never quite made it down to Sepang Circuit to have a look. This year I’m making a dedicated trip, on a budget.
The Budget:
The budget was “open” to interpretation as I’m always a sucker for toxic option syndrome, but to meet all the initial costs upfront from cash reserves and limit myself from up-speccing accommodation etc I elected to cap fixed costs of airfares, accommodation and F1 ticket at AUD1500.
Planning:
I started out in January with a very simple plan, book some fares on the worlds best low-cost carrier and use the dates of the cheapest fares to determine the duration of the trip. I wanted some time on the ground to visit some attractions as well as relax and generally “have a break”.
Canberra is not an international travel hub so my flight costs had to get blown out by the duopoly that is the Australian domestic airline industry.
F1 tickets for Malaysia are cheap, there’s no other way to put it and this was the most flexible part of my budget, I could spend next to nothing for a walking paddock pass or extend into Grandstand seats from around AUD100.
Accommodation was going to be part of the make-or-break equation, I knew spending AUD100-AUD150 a night would deliver a good room in a international hotel chain, but it would also significantly dent my meagre budget. Thankfully Kuala Lumpur has a myriad of options and really the trick was seeing how much was left after the airlines took their share.
So the plan was:
1. Book flights to Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) – ensure domestic flights could be matched up and book those too.
2. Lock in F1 ticket booking.
3. Decide on any side-trips, book Kuala Lumpur accommodation.
4. Do stuff I forgot to do first… (Like Travel Insurance)
I’ve never been an outstandingly patient person but sometimes when there’s money involved it easy to wait.
Back in early 2012 prior to our epic Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore trip we bought a Panasonic Lumix FT3 – the rationale was simple, it was small, rugged, waterproof and reviewed very well. It usurped our Canon cameras at the time thanks to size and both the Canons were getting old.
I’d also harboured the idea of buying a Super Zoom compact as well, setting my heart on a Nikon S9200 – a model barely released – and ultimately it just wasn’t available during our trip at a price I was prepared to pay.
The FT3 has travelled with us, we’ve lost the original battery and the two no-brand ones are getting a bit tired, it’s got scratches and scrapes from falls but it just keeps on going. It’s spent 6 weeks in Vanuatu, snorkelling and trekking, finally the humidity taking a toll and the camera suffering condensation internally, but a few days in the sun have that all cleared up once more.
So now with the Malaysian F1 looming and my budget trip planned I was revisiting the idea of a new camera. There’s nothing wrong with the old FT3 – except the super tough brief meant Zoom was sacrificed and for F1 where the action is a little further away Zoom would be good.
Enter the search for a new Super Zoom compact. Again size was an important factor, and immediately I looked into the Nikon and Canon offerings, The Nikon S9500 or Canon SX280HS immediately sprang to mind but after reading a few reviews I was forcing myself into a bigger choice, there are quite a few good compact super zooms out on the market, but my own budget (No more than AUD300) meant that I’d need to be doing some bargain shopping to get what I wanted.
Since the advent of digital cameras there’s been a yearly new-model cycle – when I was looking for the S9200 I was looking to buy at the start of a model cycle, but this time with my availability lesson learnt I was going to buy an End-of-Model runout.
So off the the various retailers I went, knowing the basic specs and models meant I was really just trying to identify the camera that felt nice in the hand and fitted the budget.
In the end it was another Panasonic – the Lumix DMC-FZ40 that fitted the best. Not only had it consistently reviewed well but it also felt nice in the hand. The familiar user interface helped push it over the line.
I paid AUD293 compared to the RRP of AUD399 (saving over 25%), got all the features I wanted and have it ready to travel. There were a couple more surprises in this – firstly I bought from a Bricks’n’Mortar retailer during a “sale”, secondly online discount resellers simply were not price competitive. In fact if you took into account the risks of getting non-Australian stock, which may or may not have the Panasonic International Warranty that we get here then buying online was at least 10% more expensive!
Sure all the 2014 generation Super Compacts have taken a bigger step forward, the lenses are now pushing out towards 30x (from the ~20x of the 2012-2013 generations) but are they that much better? The replacement for the TZ-40 is the TZ-60 – with a launch RRP of an eye watering AUD549 is a great camera I’m sure but I doubt it’s over AUD250 better! The price difference is roughly half my ticket costs!
So what’s it like?
Well I wouldn’t go as far as saying I love it, I’ll save that for the day when I am truly blown away by a camera, but for the most part the reviews are honest.
The Panasonic Lumix TZ-40 does everything well, just like all the other “numbers driven” super-zooms there’s flaws with the premise and the performance, but there’s a lot of camera in a tiny price.
Unlike a lot of reviewers I must have a steady hand technique as I’m able to use the full zoom to capture distant scenes, it’s not the easiest I admit, the same amount of zoom on the 300D is easier to shoot with thanks to the bulk of the camera providing stable grip points, but using a mini-tripod or adapting a GoPro grenade grip would work really well.
The iPhone app is a little clunky but for tripod mounted shots, it’s workable. It would be good if later versions of the App saved the images into their own Camera Roll rather than blending with the rest of the photos in the iPhone.
The composite picture above shows some of the zoom capabilities, all shots taken from the same point, letting the iA mode do it’s own thing.
Naturally I’ve only taken a few pics so far, and the real test starts in two weeks when I hit Malaysia.
5:11am and the cheerful melodies of the alarm that woke me are a distant memory. My feet hit the floor and it’s time to get a move on. Looking out the window reveals the smattering of rain that’s fallen and the latest forecast looks more like I’ll become a human lightning rod.
The 229km drive out to Temora from south Canberra takes about 3 hours to do at a leisurely pace, stopping for breakfast, comfort and naturally avoiding the attention of the NSW Police force. Yes we’ve all driven further faster, but these days having a license and money in my pockets is more favourable.
After rummaging around throwing my untouched for 3 years camera gear back into the bag, stopping for fuel and generally getting myself conscious by 6:30am I was cruising. There’s the obligatory stop for breakfast at the Yass/Hume Highway Service Centre for one of McDonalds fine breakfasts around an hour later. I had a bit of a walk around, you know the classic “Stop Revive Survive” mantra while savouring the coffee from the same fine establishment. Then it’s back on the road.
It’s just short of 9:30am as I cruise up Tom Moon Ave in Temora. The gates to the carpark are open and there’s a few cars sitting forlornly in the rain. It’s still another 30 or so minutes before we can enter the museum so I sit back and play with the trip computer.
The GT220 was never bought for hyper-miler performance, but it has proven to be very economical in comparison to my last 4 cars. In fact its fuel consumption is on-par with the 2002 RenaultSport Clio, ironically adding considerably more size to the car and a turbocharger to the “same” 2L F4R base engine results in no change to overall consumption. This is a great example of just how much silent evolution happens in the auto industry. I’ve carrying around 400kg more weight, added more performance (50hp additional thanks to the turbo) and yet use the same amount of fuel!
The numbers are good but not stellar, but with the light rain and water on the road plus the rather undulating terrain I’m not about to complain. The outward journey consumed about a quarter tank with a measured 229.2km travelled. This was spot-on the Google Maps estimate of distance and the same as predicted by the Tom Tom Carminat system in the GT220. More encouraging was the “Range” calculation showing an even 500km Distance to Empty. Take away some of the more adverse conditions and I probably could bank on an easy 750km touring range. This is an important consideration for future day-trips!
Finally the clock flashes up 10am and my fellow carpark lurkers and I spill from our rain sodden vehicles, gather our camera equipment and proceed into the Gift Shop/Entrance of the Museum. $20 changes hands, I get my pass-out stamp and the days program of flying.
The Museum is broadly made up of 4 areas of interest; The Gift Shop and Information centre where displays covering both the aircraft and RAAF history are intermingled with museum restoration information, a “observation deck” that overlooks the main maintenance hanger so you can see aircraft being maintained (as opposed to the non-accessible restoration hangers), the main Museum Hanger where aircraft are displayed when not being flown, and finally the open-air benches and seating where the hard-stand, runway and flying can be observed from. None of these areas are huge, so with the crowd diminished but he rain I’m able to move around freely and attempt to reacquaint myself with my old Canon 300D.
By now it’s clear the weather is going to get the best of the day. There will be flying but there’s eagle eyes poised over the weather radar and flights will be low-level and low-speed to minimise aircraft damage.
That was something new I learnt, historic aircraft aren’t flown in the rain because the impact of water against the surfaces strips the paint! The weather remains closed in, but the museum crew continue to ready aircraft while the small crowd rotate through the hangers and the open areas.
There’s plenty of time to take photos of todays demonstration aircraft between the rain squalls. The Supermarine Spitfire Mk8, CAC Boomerang and Lockheed Hudson are prepped and fuelled in front of us.
At last there’s a break in the weather and the CAC Boomerang takes to the air. Shortly after the Boomerang returns the Spitfire takes off and gives us a unique demonstration of low-speed flying. Normally (on a clear day) the Spitfire is flown more in line with its reputation for speed and agility, so in a way this is a refreshing change. A break follows while the weather clears enough for the Hudson to take-off. 5 minutes becomes 15 which becomes 30 but eventually the rain breaks and the Hudson is up.
While the 300D and I struggled to get our groove back the iPhones video ability did allow me to capture the engine starts quite clearly. Once in the air the 300mm telephoto was brought into play, the now 10 year old 300D was never going to cope well in the weather and my lack of recent experience didn’t make things better. While I fumbling with settings I’d occasionally get a good short and ruin 20 others by forgetting to switch those same settings back!
By 2pm the flying was over and the aircraft moved to the maintenance/engineering hangar for us all to get up close. A bit more wandering around and finally it was time to make another pass through the giftshop before heading back to Canberra.
The plan for the return trip was much the same, use the same route, expect it to take 3 hours and generally stay out of trouble. Pulling out of the Museum carpark at 2:30pm and crawling through Temora until hitting the open road I was immediately surprised at the massive increase in traffic. The constant rain had led to a build-up of standing water, the road sections depressed through constant heavy vehicle use were now 20mm deep channels of standing water, the crown of the road and centre of each lane forming the “dry line”.
An insipid version of McDonalds coffee at Yass/Hume Highway Services – why is it that some McCafes still can’t make an average quality coffee? – before the final leg back to fill the tank and see what our real world economy was.
Door to door we covered 458.9km and burned a total of 34.71L of Shell V-Power. My fuel use spreadsheet tells me this equates to 7.56L/100km. The trip computer was showing an average consumption of 8.7L/100km and a Range of 320km. I’m overall happy with that, pushing through water on the road and having a number of quite-low to quite-high speed runs overtaking on undulating terrain was never going to deliver diesel shaming economy.
