Richmond

It's definitely worth having (I may change my mind when it goes wrong), but whether it's worth fitting, I don't know.

There's at least one thread on this. It's a vacuum device and the vacuum pipe can deteriorate and leak, IIRC. Search for the thread for details.

At the risk of being boring: 'Time delay' recording of TV programs is not copyright infringement. It is a criminal offence to 'make an article specifically designed or adapted for making copies of a particular copyright work' or to possess such an article if you know that it will be used to make infringing copies for sale or hire or for business use. Ownership of a video recorder for private use is not an offence. As well as criminal penalties for copyright infringement, there are civil law measures which the copyright owner can take. You may be liable for damages to the copyright owner and delivery to the copyright owner of all infringing copies and the copying means (such as a PC) that you have, as well as the copyright owner's legal costs. This is all highly theoretical so far as having a TIS CD is concerned. It seems very unlikely that Ford will come after anyone for non commercial use of a pirate copy.

Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 - "Only the owner, or his exclusive licensee can bring proceedings in the courts against an infringement" It is not a criminal offence (in the UK) despite what the music industry (and others in this thread) say.... S.107 of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 makes many activities which infringe copyright a criminal offence, including making an infringing article for sale, and distribution (possibly including giving it away). Mere ownership of a pirate copy for non commercial purposes is probably not itself a criminal offence. Penalty is a fine or up to 2 years in the slammer. Sorry, Alarm Man.

Flog the new ones! Sod's Law states that if you keep them, you'll damage them within 10 mins, and who cares what the wheels look like? You can't see them when you're driving (unless you're in real trouble).

The absence of a copyright notice,

Owning an unauthorised copyof a TIS CD, in any form, is likely to be an infringement of the copyright (presumably but not necessarily Ford's) in the disc and its contents. It's unlikely, but not impossible, that Ford will go after a car owner just for having the CD, however. The dissemination of the TIS material for non-commercial use doesn't do Ford any harm; they don't sell legitimate copies of the CD themselves (do they?), so they are not losing sales, and it is unlikely that TIS users would otherwise be having their cars fixed commercially (not that Ford would benefit if they did, but Ford dealers might pester Ford to go after TIS users if they felt they were losing business). If Ford sue for copyright infringement, they will need to show financial damage in order to obtain damages; fat chance of doing that with a mere non commercial owner of a pirated TIS disc. Criminal penalties are a possibility, but a remote one. There's a lot of difference between having a pirate copy of Word, which presumably lose Microsoft $M a year (my heart bleeds), and a pirate TIS disc, which presumably lose Ford approx. 0 a year. A possible risk is that Ford might get pissed off if they think that people are profiting significantly by selling the TIS CDs. They might then hassle owners of pirated discs to find out who's supplying them. Things may be different for commercial car repairers with pirated copies. Ford could be put under pressure by Ford dealers to go after such people. Presumably TIS discs are available to commercial car repairers by a legitimate route, or do they work from a Haynes manual like the rest of us? It is also possible that EU competition law would require Ford to make the info on TIS discs avaialble to the motor trade in general on fair terms, so maybe Ford don't care about pirated copies. These TIS discs have been around openly for such a long time with no action by Ford (of which I am aware) that they might well find it hard to start throwing their weight around now.

Same here. A very unscientific test suggests that fuel consumption increased with the higher octane petrol without an increase in performance (not that an increase in performance is really needed).

Pure guess work, but could it be something to do with the alarm?

I might pay

And more likely to go wrong, with an extra evaporator and more fans (I assume). Still, it's probably cheaper to have it in dry dock being 'worked' on than to drive it.

In that case it's got to be worth having dual air con if only for the bigger compressor. I'm glad that we've sorted that out :unsure: .

I did pay good money for it, BUT, got offered

I take it from Dally that the 2.8 has a larger compressor whether it has a dual or a single air con system. The larger compressor can presumably cool the car more quickly than the smaller one. I don't know much about air con, but simply bunging in an extra evaporator can't increase the maximum 'cool' :unsure: delivered by the system, single or dual, can it? Thus, the 'cool' delivered to the rear by the dual air system must be at the expense of the front, unless the dual system can run the compressor at a higher output than the single system (in which case why fit a larger compressor to the single system?). The dual system doesn't deliver more 'cool', so far as I can see, but it does distribute it more quickly and it allows a modest temp difference between front and rear. I'm not knocking the dual system, I'm just saying it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

"The 12V VR6 has 174 bhp if the letters are altered slightly it could read GO 174" "..or if you press the top of the "7" down, as he goes past you, you read "Got Ya"!! " Bloody hell. If either of those is correct, I hope that PP didn't pay money for the plate.

If there is only one compressor, presumably the dual system's ability to cool is the same as the single air con system's, as the compressor is where the energy goes into the system to shift the heat from inside the car to outside (assuming that the compressors on the single and dual systems are the same). Presumably the rear outlet of the dual system means that the rear compartment cools more quickly with dual, but at the expense of the front cooling more slowly. The only real advantage, then, is the possibility of having an up to 3 deg C temp difference between front and rear, which is nice, but not a big deal (for me).

I'm sure that I'm being stupid B) , but what is the significance of the Purple Peril's numberplate GOT 7A?

I thought of that after I'd written my earlier reply. I have nothing to compare it with, but you're probably right. Does the dual air con have 2 compressors? I suppose it must. Given the fairly weedy nature of the Galaxy air con, an extra compressor could be a big help.

Thats not sleep, it's a hypothermia induced coma B) Howard That'll be why she hasn't woken up yet (the journey was in 1998).

Yes, well, quite B) . What I should have said is that I rarely take advantage of the possibility of having the front and rear air cons running to different temperatures. I do sometimes, for example when driving at night and wishing to encourage the kids to kip (by keeping them warmish) while keeping myself at the peak of alertness (by keeping coolish). My wife falls asleep instantly in cars at any temperature (including notably in a Triumph Spitfire at a very, very noisy 90 ish, at night, in winter, with the top down and no working heater). The max temperature difference is only 3 degs C, IIRC, so it hardly seems worth the expense and increased risk of problems (already high enough by the look of it). I wouldn't miss it.

If it turns out that you don't have dual air con, I shouldn't worry too much. I have it and almost never use it even with rear passengers, although I use the air con almost all the time, and there's more kit to go wrong. It would be more useful to have separate air con for the driver only so that the driver could be cooler than all the passengers (obviously most of us are cooler than our passengers anyway B) ).

They don't work. We've had this discussion before.

That makes more sense.

There's some good info on this on a thread about performance/economy improvements. IIRC, lambda is a measure of the difference between the actual fuel:air ratio and the stoichiometric (theoretical) ratio (lambda of 1 is stoichiometric, >1 indicates more air than stoichiometric (lean), <1 more fuel than stoichiometric (rich)). The sensor measures this and corrects the fuel/air intake to maintain the lambda value within narrow limits. Measurement is actually of oxygen in exhaust. It looks as if yours is running pretty lean which leads to high NOX emissions (as there is insufficient oxygen (from air) knocking about to allow them to be oxidised by the cat, I think). Maybe a new lambda sensor is needed or (as already suggested) whatever it is under the bonnet which is controlled by the lambda sensor (injection pump? MAF?) could be on the blink.

Could be a problem with the cat.