August 2003
Don't know if its exactly true, but still a good story that makes me smile.
A friend of a friend took their car into the local, well known, "fast - fit" place for a free brake safety check.
All the brakes were fine but they were advised that all their shock absorbers were in a dangerous way and this could seriously affect their steering etc under heavy braking.
If thats the case, they said, you better change them over. When they came back from shopping they were handed a hefty bill and asked how they were paying.
"We're not" was the reply, here is the 2 year warranty on the shock absorbers you replaced 8 months ago.......
Allegedly true, and certainly believable... Read more
R-O-B = Rip Off Britain. (perhaps it should be rip off Europe)
Always had suspicions this was happening now I have the proof.
Major hire car outfit which asks which country you live in before giving an online quote.
Just done two quotes, identical vehicles, location and duration.
Checked both quotes in detail to see if they were identical in what was included, and indeed they were.
To a USA resident weekly rate = 254.99 USD.
To a UK resident weekly rate = 387.00 USD [1]
Over a 130 bucks extra a week
[1] To be fair the rate is sometimes higher to residents of other European countries eg Germany @ 524 USD.
This rate, however, includes all sorts of insurances and to be honest I can't be bothered to back them out to see what the exact base rate is. Somewhere around 275 usd at a rough guess. But it would be far lower than the UK rate, of that I'm certain.
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Other than a brief discussion about rental cars, this thread has little to do with motoring and a lot to do with politics.
Therefore I've locked it. There are more suitable places.
Mark.
Can anyone recommend a good dash cleaner that leaves a "matt" finish? Read more
I bought some very cheap and chearful stuff years ago IIRC its by a company called carcare(?) had it for about 4 years now and works great, it is a big 1l can and cost me about 50p from one of those shops that opens up every now and again to have a closing down sale.
Just remember spray onto the cloth and not onto the dash.
Anyone got a portable satnav (a PDA version for example) fitted in a Galaxy?
Do they work with the quickclear windscrren, or do you need an external antenna? Read more
I thought I'd update in case anyone's interested...
I've now got a Viewsonic V35 (cheapest PocketPC available), running TomTom Navigator II satnav software, coupled with a Haicom GPS receiver and a 128MB SD card. The whole lot cost me £449 including all leads and windscreen mount.
Works perfectly with my Quickclear windscreen. Voice directions and colour graphics including 3D, for much less £££ than anything comparable.
Plus, of course you've got a fully-functioning PocketPC as well as a Satnav system!!
Recommended!
Purchased from www.globalpositioningsystems.co.uk, who specialise in this sort of thing an mapping stuff.
Having just got back from two weeks on the Algarve and a week Bull running in Spain I thought I'd just let you know the trouble I've had with hire cars.
Normally I would have driven down but the nippers too young so we flew. Got a Renault Megane at Faro which was fine untill you went over 120kph loaded up and it would start to twitch. You had to hang onto the wheel for dear life and gently slow down.
Took the car back to the rental company and was told they all did this. Yeah right. They gave me another one and the same problem occured, it was fine with just a couple of people in but load it up and it was like a bucking bronco. Took this one back and they gave me a Toyata Avensis, boring car but safe.
Got to Madrid with the boys and went to get the hire cars and was told we had a Megane and a Vauxhall Meriva or something. I was a little bit dubious about the Megane but accepted it saying I would drive the Vauxhall. 50 miles out of Madrid on a long bend the fully loaded Megane just lost control. Luckily it did'nt hit anything but scared the life out of my mates. We took it straigh back and the hire people said they are withdrawing these vehicles from their fleet because of this. I have looked into this and can't find any information about it.
The car when loaded is a death trap, how can Renault be allowed to get away with this. I know most cars are rarely loaded up like this but when the Megane is it becomes extremely dangerous.
I have spoken to Renault about this and they have informed me that we must have over loaded the car, I think not.
Has anyone heard about this problem? Read more
Marcos, you make a serious allegation asserting that the Megane is inherently unstable and unsafe when loaded and at speed. You seem to have had bad experiences with 3 different Meganes which you did not have under similar circumstances with the Avensis or Meriva.
Having done a little accident investigation in Africa, there are three entities possibly responsible for your bad experience: Renault, the hire company and you. What we need are the facts.
Re: possible overloading - as you flew down to Spain you would know how much your total luggage weighed. If the airline did not charge you excess baggage then you would have around 25kg per person max. So assuming you stepped off the plane at Faro and into your hire car (i.e. did not add any extra luggage) how many people with luggage were in the first/ second Megane? What is your best guess for the weight of the occupants and luggage you had in this car? I assume the Meganes you had were the latest "bug bum" models. Do you know what is the maximum permissible load (MPL) for the model you had?
My Clio has a MPL of 440kg. So it would become overloaded with 5 average adults plus airline luggage (forgetting the fact that you couldn't get 5 adults with 5 suitcases into it [1]). If you overload any car it can become dangerous at high speed.
Did you get the tyre pressures checked? Is there a difference between loaded and unloaded tyres pressures for this car? Is there a difference between normal and high speed tyre pressures for this car?
I know from personal experience that, due to unscrupulous hire companies, it is not uncommon to find hire cars in a terrible mechanical state with non-functioning shock absorbers and bald, under-inflated tyres [2]. This would give rise to the same effect of instability at high speed. If the hire company fails to maintain the car properly that could hardly be the manufacturer's fault. Which hire company did you use?
Their comments about "they all do that" and "they are withdrawing these vehicles from their fleet because of this" are cause for concern but may be covering up their skimping on maintenance.
In conclusion: I have to say that I seriously doubt that a relatively new, un-overloaded Megane in good mechanical condition would exhibit this behaviour. It is much more likely, however, that the hire company may have supplied you with badly maintained cars and/ or cars not suitable for your needs.
Give us some more facts and perhaps we can shed some more light on why you had such a bad experience.
CMark
[1] but you could easily get five 75kg adults in the car plus 100 kgs of beer in the boot (9 cases of 24 half-litre tins). This would seriously overload the Clio and I would not want to drive this at 120kph.
[2] You should have seen the Hyundai I got in Greece!
The roads are fast, smooth, jamless, totally roadworks-free and generally efficient at what they set out to do. Travel at 90-95mph and be overtaken by an equally efficient train on an adjacent track. Yes, there are tolls but the fuel is cheaper?a lot cheaper for a diesel driver. (Why is it that the rest of Europe pretty much unanimously agrees that diesel should be cheaper than petrol but we seem to think it dirty and worthy of additional taxes?) It seems to me that the traveller is being catered for on these roads ? you get the feeling that your taxes are being ploughed back into the transport infrastructure. Yes I?m writing about the French system and I?m no francophile. Why is it that we cannot replicate this over here? I?ve just driven down to the SW corner of France & back and spent much time asking myself this question?The contrast with the road from Dover up to London and beyond was only too obvious. Ghastly concrete sections, poor road surface, etc.
Its not all roses for the French though. I tried in vain to get a measure of their ?highway code? but have to conclude that theirs is an ?anything goes? culture. Add to this some outrageous instances of dangerous driving and its not surprising that the annual French road death carnage is double our own ? and I?m not complacent about our own record which must improve?.
Still, I had a great time ? drove down overnight and was surprised still to be in a steady flow of traffic at 3.30am?The Mondeo TDCI behaved impeccably too.
Recommended for all who, like me, love being behind the wheel.
Splodgeface
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Hehe Neil, yes - 71 mph or more. It's different abroad as they use kph.
This may seem like a strange post, but I'm curious as to why , under heavy braking (ie emergency stop scenario) the brakes on my 98 Fiesta (solid disc front,drum rear,no ABS) DON'T lock up!
Every other car I've had (all sizes, apart from ABS equipped ones obviously) lock their brakes in the dry as well as the wet if you brake hard enough (Not that I do this all the time, you just get a feel for when its going to happen!)
The discs,pads and shoes are all nearly new and the fluid changed completely about 2 months ago.The pedal feel is great and theres no pulling or wandering. Dunlop SP tyres on the front.
I'm just wondering if theres enough braking power - or are Fiesta brakes just not that powerful?
I'm not a boy racer that wants to shred his tyres, but the fact you have enough braking power to lock the wheels is somehow reassuring. Read more
I've always thought the pedal feel was spongey - even after new discs,pads and shoes and a full bleed of the system!
By the sound of it, upgrading the brakes isn't really worth it, especially as I only expect to keep the car another year or so.
I know its not difficult to confuse me, BUT! every time I get my tyres changed the tyre fitter tells me something different about locking wheel nuts.
1.You should or should not only tighten them hand tight with a wrench.
2.They should or should not be tightened with an air wrench.
3.They should or should not be torqued to the same lb/ft as the other nuts.
I know these guys have to undergo years of training before they are allowed to touch one of the most important parts of the car but still, the one last week must have special micrometer finger tips, his method of telling whether tyres were legal or not was to stick his figers in the tread, ahh, yes that one needs changing this one has got another 500 miles left.
Balancing is another issue with alloys, we'll only balance your wheels on the inside sir! yes but the outside is still reading 20g out, ahh well you don't want weights on the outside do you? Wrong! i want balanced wheels please.
Come back after 1000 miles and have your wheels rebalanced sir, they coat tyres in polyurethene now and when this wears off they need rebalancing £9 per tyre sir.
Even if you under inflate your tyres sir they will still wear in the middle, as you go down the motorway they get more air in them, and after a while they are rock hard and hence they wear in the middle again, its nothing to do with us overinflating them. By the way sir how much pressure do you want in your tyres, don't need to look in the handbook you can have what you want, makes alot of difference to the ride.
Ah your car was supplied with Michelin, mustn't change the make sir, I know Fulda might be cheaper, but the manufacturer puts the best tyres on for the make of car. When I had a Mondeo with Firestone on you lold me they were cheap and wouldn't last long, and change to Michelin they'll last longer about 2000 mile and only cost you double. Read more
Can only agree with all you say BeetleFreak. When it comes to suspension, tyres & brakes, I'm sure there is a C&G qualification on how to extact as much money by false pretences as possible.
There's a current thread which has made me smile, where someone has had a couple of fairly major accidents in a relatively short while, but none were the posters fault.
My two nephews had the same happen. The older one had three middling knocks in his first six months of driving, none were his fault. The younger had a small knock, then managed to roll his car (luckliy he was unhurt) when an artic pulled into his lane on a dual carriageway. They claimed, with their parents support, that none of the incidents were their fault.
I'm sure there are many Backroomers who have an accident free driving record, and in my opinion this is, to some degree, as much by luck as by design.
But I am equally sure that there are some drivers who, through inexperience/carelessness/whatever put themselves in positions where they have an accident which technically may not be "their" fault, but which would not have happened had a more experienced/aware driver been at the wheel.
Not quite sure what my point is, but I hope an animated discussion will follow... Read more
Ups! Sorry for the bad words! The point I was trying to make is that most of the time the natural reaction is "It's not my fault!". It helps you feel better to say "okay, I did crash on his rear end, but if he hadn't [...] I wouldn't have done so!"
BTW, EBD is something like Electronic Brake-pressure Distributor. It distributes pressure according to speed, load, car direction, etc. It works great on my Clio! (unwillingly tested it while heavily breaking and cornering at high speed)
Vagelis.
Idea: Reversed hovercraft for better grip
A car could pull itself towards the ground by sucking the air below itself, like a vacuum cleaner. So it would have a better grip.
This should be switched on only when needed (turning, accelerating or breaking). Bumpers should also be adjusted.
(I could add a drawing if I knew how to attach it.) Read more
The Grand Prix cars had skirts that enabled the suction to work. Even on on clean tracks there were problems with it picking up muck. Imagine the problems on normal roads.
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I just kept going to different branches, just in case...