Now ever since our wonderful government has decided to remove any sort of subsidies for our petrol, I have resorted to using Ron95 but as most other people, I get the question (sometimes) on what is the difference between the two fuels.

Personally on my car, I can definitely feel the difference in terms of power after swapping from Ron97 to Ron95. This is for the VW Golf but when I was driving my old FD1 Civic, I really couldn't tell any difference.

Perhaps this video could help us all understand the difference a little bit more.



Even with the lack of power, I still choose Ron95 mainly because of the cost of fuel now. Heck, the 10sen reduction still proves that Ron97 is rather expensive especially for people who drive far distances on a daily basis.

But heck, I am definitely tempted to try out a couple of tanks of Ron97 and bring the car for a dyno test to see the difference.

Since we are also checking out some YouTube videos, check this out. Happened during the Sepang GT last weekend :)

Saw this bit of news on MacRumors, ever since the WWDC keynote event where Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and others were announced by good old Steve Jobs, one of the new features of iOS 5 did manage to catch my eye.

Image source - MacRumours

One of these new features within iOS is iMessage which is Apple's own messaging service for it's own devices. Built in to messages itself, what iOS 5 now will do is to check if the recipient of your message is using an iOS device and then sends it via iMessage instead of the usual SMS channel.

I guess this is Apple's official answer to RIM's Blackberry messenger, WhatsApp and other messaging service. I do hope that there are other features such as group chats and all but as much as I like this to work, we all still have friends who don't use iOS and rely on Blackberries and Android.

What it does allow us to do is to save a bit of cash instead of sending SMS out, and I really do like it's transparency feature where you only need to access messages instead of launching a separate app such as WhatsApp.

Can't wait for these new goodies to be available especially since I promised munz that I would get her an iPhone 5 and I definitely do need to upgrade my current MacbookPro. So far rumours have it is that the next model will sport a whole new casing design. Will probably wait for that. Also another feature which I am really looking forward to, is syncing iOS devices via Wi-fi.

Credit - MacRumors

Update: Had an issue with my theme earlier. Apparently the permission settings for the stylesheets were screwed up (no idea how that happened). I hope everyone can see the blog now :)

So what is a Unibrace? I am sure you might have heard of the brand Ultra Racing especially since locally they have been advertising extremely agressive. Anyway, just like Ultra Racing which sells anti-roll bars as well as many type of other bars (except for chocolate bars), Unibrace is another manufacturer which provides braces for Volkswagen cars.

Bruce Levin, an architect, product designer, and principal of Studiolevin in San Francisco, California, USA, is the designer of UNIbrace products. A long time Volkwagen enthusiast, Bruce has owned two MkII GTI’s, a MkIV GTI 337, and currently drives a MkIV .:R32. UNIbrace was started as an effort to combine the highest quality product design and fabrication, the love of the grassroots VW community, and on and off track spirited driving.

At the moment, there are two braces available for the Volkswagen Golf MkVI, Scirocco and the Golf MkV, the XB rear brace and the UB underbody brace. The XB rear brace is fitted at the boot of the Golf, right behind the back seats while the UB underbody brace, replaces the two stock metal plates as shown below.

Above - XB Rear Brace

See more images of the XB Rear Brace being fitted here.




(Above) The car originally comes with the two metal pieces. Looks rather flimsy and after removing them, they are actually flimsy.

Why I say that these metals look flimsy (I know they are!), look at some of the issues you might encounter with these stock braces.



(Image above obtained from Ryou's Modshop)

The bars above have already rusted! And this was on a less than a year old VW Scirocco. Imagine the horror especially if you take a corner and these braces break out.

This is where the UB underbody brace comes in. It replaces the stock two metal braces with a single large piece of brace (comes in two colours, red or black). Having a single piece to brace your car is a lot better than having two because you get the forces from the front and the rear to be distributed evenly across through the brace.




Also, red is a totally awesome colour! Didn't you know that red parts add additional horsepower to the car? Installation is fairly easy, all you need is to jack your car up and then remove the stock bars and then replace it back again with the Unibrace. I understand that for the Scirocco models, you might need a different set of screws for the Unibrace.

The brace comes in at a total weight of around 3kg and what it does do is to help stiffen up your drive especially when taking corners. So for those of you who are looking for braces to replace your Volkswagen's stock braces, these Unibraces are the right solution for you.

Personally, the Golf Mk6 1.4 TSI cars do come on the softer side compared to its older brother (the GTI) hence having these braces would definitely help improve the handling of your car. Of course the best option would be to use both the cross brace (XB) and the underbody brace (UB) together. Overall, I would recommend this product to those of you who like to take corners at quite fast speeds or if you regularly go for track days.

Also, they are rather rare here in Malaysia but head over to Ryou's Modshop here (or search for Ryou's Modshop in Facebook) to order one. The Unibrace FAQ is also available here about ordering and shipping as well as costs.

In the midst of searching and poking about with a new theme for the blog. Thanks to dictator Tan, he informed me that my old theme was sort of broken hence I do need to do a bit of poking about to see whats wrong. It the mean time, I am trying out this free theme for the moment. No time yet to make those minor tweaks.  Will be back soon!