>Dampers of course is much more correct than shock-absorber, as their true
>function is velocity-damping, an engineering term. Shock absorbing is an
>incidental side-effect - vague and vernacular to and engineer too.

The SPRINGS are the absorbers of road-surface-induced shock. Not the
dampers, which ONLY damp out the body oscillations caused by the
springs.

>  > Kiwis can't spell bungee, either. A local tourist-frightener called A
>>  J Hackett runs bungee-jumping in various places. He misspells it
>>  "bungy". He must have a bung up his... arse.
>
>We hear they also misappropriate its origins, and apart from those macho
>tribesmens undergoing their initiation rights in a rain-forest (somewhere)
>using whippy timber towers and stretchy rope,

Vanuatu

>I think it was two guys from
>the Oxford Dangerous Sports club who first did the calculations, and then
>went and jumped off Brunel's lovely Clifton suspension bridge - and
>survived.

I have no doubt that you are correct there! Kiwis also claim to have
succeeded at powered flight before the Wright Brothers, going by
oldtimers' memories! (no documentation exists).

>wing (fender)
>rocker panel (sill)
>mag wheel (aluminum alloy)
>
>Andrew, can't agree with these three...
>A wing here is not a fender is it? - I thought fenders were bumpers, but if
>fenders are wings then what are bumpers?

They fend off impacts on the wheels. Sure, a bumper is a fender as
well. But a car's corners are not wings, which are structures
designed for producing aerodynamic lift.

>Is a sill really a rocker panel, how does that work? what rocks? pretty
>static thing a sill!

A sill is the horizontal bottom structure of some objects, eg
windows, doors, car body sides. They sure have nothing to do with
rocking.

>And mag wheels really often are Mag(nesium) alloy - the original Minilites
>for instance.

Almost no street wheels are magnesium (and those which sare are
dangerous... brittle stuff, fractures, corrodes, shatters... ask
owners of Italian bikes in the late 80s, with their Campagnolo
wheels). Street wheels are normally aluminum alloy.

And while we're on it, Americans get things wrong too. How many there
realize that Vanagon is a US-only name, and thet they are
Transporters (and therefore Type 2s)?
--
Andrew Grebneff
165 Evans St, Dunedin 9001, New Zealand
<andrew.grebneff@stonebow.otago.ac.nz>
Seashell, Macintosh, VW/Toyota van nut