thoughts of the driverSteinn Eldjarn Sigurdarson on tech, tel, digital freedom and possibly his life..

This is the third time I attempt to describe recent events, here on my blog!

Yesterday, I first type everything in, then my hand regresses back to the same level of nerve-control as when I was 3, and closes the wrong tab. A few hours later, I muster up the strength to start writing again, and then my hand spasms when I’m moving the mouse to return to my blogging tab, and I accidentally click while on top of an image, and … drag it. For some reason this often crashes firefox on my computer, and it did this time as well.

Today, just like yesterday, I had a cheeseburger for breakfast. Some would say it’s unhealthy, I would say it’s a breakfast of champions. Meanwhile coworkers whine something like “Oooh, my tummy.. I must’ve eaten that yoghurt too fast..”, I munch down on a fat cheesey burger, and wash it down with liquid ambrosia (Pepsi Max).
Me =
Coworker =

I’ve finally mustered up the mental strength to write about last weekend, not that it was mentally straining or anything, I’m just a weak minded lamer. On friday I was invited to some party, but since it’s far away from Reykjavík centre, where I live and like to party, I passed in favor of a quiet evening at home — my brother had called, and he and a half danish cousin of ours, Bo, wanted to swing by and see my house.

This post contains some pics I snapped a couple of days ago of some cars which were “gathered at my house” .. and then there is one of my fridge (packed with skyr.is protein drinks), and one of me looking rather funny (I think).

Tonight I’m going to see Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age, in the second concert night of a small music “festival” called “Reykjavík Rokkar”, or “Reykjavík Rocks”.

Right now I’m warming up by listening to Grohl and co’s latest album, In your honor. Also I’m getting aggravated that the cleaning people don’t change bags in my garbage can, and must have decided that my 1L water bottle was trash, strange that I would keep the one bottle on my desk for the last 7 months, and want it thrown away? Baaaaah.

Yesterday I spent my lunch hour driving my cousin around to pick up his E30 cabrio from the shipping company.

This time, the customs office had taken a look at the car the same morning, and he got the papers released, and paid the necessary import taxes, then we went down to the Eimskip loading area to pick up the car. We had no clue where to go, so we drove up to some gate, the gate had an intercomm and I pressed the “Dial” button on it.

Today — actually right about *now* — there are 22 years since I blessed the world with my arrival. A selfless sacrifice, even though I say so myself, because the lot of you can be quite the burden sometimes! Don’t take me too seriously, I’m only half as good as I say I am, and half as bad as you think I am.

The party ended up with me driving my cousins banged up ‘87 Mitsubishi Lancer, with Anton the garage owner in the trunk, and various guys from the party stuffed in the car. My cousin, who had earlier claimed he was a gentleman — after having ripped his t-shirt off and ran screaming around swinging it over his head — now proceeded to moon passers-by from the front seat of the car, before climing on top of the car and sliding down on the windscreen. Anton tried without much luck to moon people from the trunk, there were space restrictions to deal with.

If you’re trying to answer that question, take a moment and think which sex you’d rather be in bed with? According to ananova, if you like to run your fingers through someone’s chest hair, you’re not fit to drive.

So I returned from Brimbürgh with my worn plastic cube, returned to the site of my car and spent an hour returning it to the same fragile running condition it was in on wednesday night when me and Tobbi finished it last time. I have to admit, having my engine properly secured in my engine bay, and not held up by a few pavement tiles is very comforting. And being able to jump into my car and drive somewhere - albeit very gently - is load off my chest.

Recently I’ve been thinking if I should add a category on my page called “repairing”, since a sizable portion of my posts under “driving” are in fact about repairs or break downs. I decided against this in the end though, because ultimately I’m “the driver”, and not “the mechanic” — I’ll let that honour be someone elses.

Ford’s RS badge was once deeply rooted in motorsport, and cars such as the Sierra RS Cosworth, Sierra Sapphire RS Cosworth, and the Escort RS Cosworth were all cars that in many respects were exactly the same as Fords Group-B, Group-N rally cars of the era in which they were produced. Then there were also the milder Escort and Fiesta RS’s, which although not as motorsport inspired perhaps, they were pretty hot when they came out, and would probably be badged ST today.

For the last few months it’s been indicated often that the new focus ST would be based on the volvo T5 five cylinder turbocharged engine, according to Ford they wanted to make the ST badge a bit more hardcore, so a 220bhp ST focus, would be a rather hardcore step up from the 150bhp ST fiesta. When news of this started appearing online and on the pages of Fast Ford, I started wondering if the only difference between the ST and the RS would be FWD vs 4WD, and level of tune. So the RS would be a 300-350 bhp version of the same engine, with a 4WD system?

However according to this article in Autocar the new RS focus will be based on a 3.0 inline 6 cylinder turbocharged unit, being developed by Volvo now for their flagship S80 cars. The new powerplant will be available in 3.2L naturally aspirated form as well as the 3.0L turbocharged form, the N/A model receiving variable cam timing on the inlet valves, and the turbo getting VCT on both inlet and exhaust. They also explain that the engine should be producing 350bhp in the form found in the focus RS.

Image taken from Autocar.co.uk

Autocar also say that the new RS will be four wheel drive — where have we heard that before? Last focus RS was suppsed to be 300bhp, and four wheel drive, sort of like, say… the WRC car?

Well, now I think it more likely to happen though, since it’s built on the Volvo C1 platform anyway, and Volvo have demonstrated their Haldex 4WD system on the platform, for example in the form of the S40 T5, V50 T5, and even with the V50 SC concept where the T5 powerplant has been tuned to 340bhp. So 350bhp, and 4WD — like Autocar muse, M3 beater?

They’ve still got to sort out the transmission though, I don’t think getrag makes a transmission at the moment capable of coping with more than 400Nm, so if they don’t make a stronger version of either the M66 or MMT6, we might see something similar to the 6 speed used in the S60R (if it can handle 300bhp in the S60R, and 340bhp in the V50 SC concept, it may suffice, but I don’t know that transmission at all, it may even *be* a getrag unit?). I may be way off, and they wouldn’t even go for a traditional FWD transmission because it’s a 4WD car, I’m clueless technically this time! This will be interesting

So the new focus RS, will be powered by a six cylinder turbocharged dual VCT engine. 350bhp, 332lb/ft, four wheel drive, and according to Autocar it will look something like this:

Image taken from Autocar.co.uk

Autocar have been wrong before when it comes to images of upcoming cars, and I’m afraid they might be now, but I sincerely hope that the focus RS will look at least this good, because the standard styling is just terrible, a real step backwards from the rather radical but totally “fashion-statement” looks of the MK1 focus.

To sum up, I’m rather sad about the departure from the RS WRC roots, but that was already apparent after finding out that the ST would most likely be powered by the Volvo T5 engine/drivetrain, so I’ll try and not reawaken my sad feelings on that matter, and rather coyly dream of the possibility that the new focus RS is an M3 and Skyline beater