iBabySlapper

A Vauxhall Meriva VXR (also known as Opel Meriva OPC) has popped up for sale near me, for not that much money. VXR Vauxhalls are the hot version of their cars, and this has 180bhp, which might not sound like much, but this thing weighs under 1300kg/2870lbs. It also has a 6MT. While the box is probably a GM M32 judging by the age, which is a pretty bad box afaik (I heard some people use a specific Fuchs MTF that apparently helps the M32 a lot), but it's a manual none the less. Now, I never knew they made a hot version of the meriva, I'd never seen one before. According to the govt. database, only 251 came to the country, and there are only 166 still either taxed or SORN (not taxed, but not recorded as scrapped). Exterior looks pretty good, it's got the factory Recaro Style seats, interior is a bit dirty.. I kinda really want this car, even though I'll probably never have kids, much less a partner. Something about a hot version of such a boring, normal car attracts me.. Opels of this era are kinda like cockroaches, in that they just won't die, so it'll probably be fairly dependable too.

It staggers me how far we've come with IEMs/earphones. Picked these up for $44 (usually $50~55), during the recent aliexpress sale. They have 14.2mm planar magnetic drivers, and while fit and finish is a bit rough, the cable they come with is a beautiful silver plated copper braided cable, and is replacable/non-proprietary (4.4mm TRRRS jack, but also available as a normal 3.5mm TRS). It's got a W-shaped curve tune, which I find a bit intense at higher volumes, but is generally very well done. If you're a bass head, give it a bit more sub bass on an EQ (or turn on a bass boost), and it'll punch very hard and fast, just like any good planar does. Just an incredibly detailed, energetic sound. Especially if your hearing's getting a little weaker, I think these'll let you hear frequencies you haven't in a while. Bloody hell, you used to have to pay in the $600~1000 for this kind of sound, only half a decade or so ago. And they're easy to drive, almost anything should be able to, although they do get better with more power. Oh, they're called the Artti T10. The tips they come with aren't great, I like Acoustune AET06, which you can also get on Ali.

Cat

What a cool vibe.

What a banger. Vocal honey from Ado as usual. I've gone ahead and bought the FLAC of this song.

No, it isn't that high, the dealer part price for a new head unit is about £400. That's probably 8x what it costs to make though lol

Found something pretty cool about my car, the people who programmed the infotainment are obviously gamers; you can access a hidden menu which lets you bring up a bunch of different diagnositc screens if you punch in a particular code, and they called it "Cheat codes". Keeping this in mind, I'm pretty sure whoever programmed this was also a sadist, for choosing ABC layout for the onscreen keyboard.

There's been a sudden heat wave the last week, and one of the coils decided it's had enough lol. Scanner shows cylinder 1 misfire, so I'm hoping it's a coil. I had a set of spark plugs spare, so I replaced cyl 1, but no change, so I'm really hoping the coils that are coming tomorrow will fix it. Because if it doesn't, it's going to be expensive.. Edit: Moved cyl 1 coil to cyl 4, and the code moved, so it's just the coil. Thank God it's not the fuel pump, or the injector, or b the charcoal canister, or the ECU.

PT5000 is fine imo. I've got one in a Cronos I got 3 years ago, and it's still keeping good time. PT5000 should be the best Chinese 2824 clone.

A roller dial eh, pretty cool!

Stumbled upon this one. Takes me back, this song.

I mean, if you care about it enough a movement swap isn't that hard, and you only need a few tools.

Guessing it's a 20?

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EJOtbmJ Try that.

link I like these, they're cheap and they come with surprisingly good hardware.

I guess that video is getting slingshotted by the algorythm

Well, this was just served to me on Youtube

If my car wasn't consuming all of my disposable income, I almost certainly would've ordered a Ball Engineer Master II Chronometer. Not sure if I would've gone for brown or green tbh. Not only does this have their "Marvelite" rainbow tritium tube setup on the dial (I've wanted a Marvelite watch for ages), but they actually put tritium tubes in the bezel as well. That's 36 tirtium tubes in total on the face. It would've made such a cool daily driver tbh. Too bad really, since most Balls are limited editions, including this one, so I'll probably never be able to buy one. This is the second Ball I really want, the first one being a white dial Ball Inspector II (I want it 50% for the name, 50% because I actually like it), which was another limited edition. I saw one on eBay once, but I missed it because I didn't realise how rare they were.

Yesterday I had a day free, and the weather was decent for washing, so I did a huge exterior spring clean. Citrus prewash + Snowfoam, contact clean, chemical decon, clay decon, DA polish (meguires compound + polish), wax (Soft99 fusso coat). Total time taken was around 6 hours. Still need to do interior and alloy wheel barrels, but that'll have to wait for some other time. First time using Fusso coat, I'll see how long it lasts with only maintainance washes once a fortnight or so.