June 2005
If the government introduces road charging using a GPS system, there are a couple of things we should be aware of.
Firstly, as well as knowing which roads you have used, the Government will also know how fast you have travelled throughout the journey. I can forsee a situation where speed cameras will no longer be necessary as the GPS records will show if you have exceeded the speed limit at any stage of every journey you have made. They will have to build a new printing plant to handle all of the NIPs that they will require.(Sound effect of Gordon rubbing his hands).
Secondly, they will have records of every journey you will ever make and every place you visit. I am sure that the civil liberties lobby will have a heart attack.
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Speed cameras in France.
Having purchased a device to alert me to cameras in the UK and on the continent I road tested it last week. A trip from St Malo to past La Rochelle spotted cameras on the Rennes ring road, the Nantes RR and the La Rochelle RR. Coming back towards Caen same places but also at Rochefort. Device worked fine. French cameras are Grey, larger than ours and lower mounted that UK cameras. They are usually in the central reservation. The signs telling you about them say Controle automatique and have a picture of a car & a motorbike and several attractive circles . Speed limit on the ring roads is usually 90kph and most cars keep to it. Worrying thing is I've travelled these roads for decades and never noticed them in the past. Wife also mused that we were probably immune with foreign plates but for how long?
Didn't see or notice any cameras in towns. Read more
Yes I have read that they are illegal.
Large fines and confiscation of devices.
Must remove mine when I get to Dover from oop north.
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I wasna fu but just had plenty.
Hi all,
I own a 1999 Mitsubishi Galant 2.0 16v manual saloon which has done 102k miles. I've not had the car long but in the time I've owned it it has always made a 'tapping' noise from the engine throughout the rev range. Like the noise you sometimes get until the hydralic lifters get pressurised with oil when cold but all the time regardless of engine temp or load. Yesterday however whilst driving on the motorway the noise got a lot worse. Very clattery and would vary with engine load (went quiet when lifting off the accelerator). I pulled off the motorway and as I was looking for somewhere to pull in the engine cut out and I came to a stop. I checked the dipstick and there was some oil on that. No obvious leaks from the engine. I opened the oil filer cap and a load of white smoke wafted out for some time. Burnt oil I presume. I let it cool for 5 minutes and then attempted to start it to move into a better position. However the engine didn't turn over so I guessed it had seized. I got it recovered to a garage who were later able to start it but said that it sounded very rough.
To cut to the point. If the engine has been seized once and now runs roughly is it more likely than not that the engine has been badly damaged and a replacement would be needed? I presume a replacement engine could work out rather costly so I have to decide to take the car is scrap hit or new engine hit.
Cheers,
Mat.
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This may be completely unrelated but I agree with Pete. I had a Cortina (yes I know technology has changed just a tad since the Pinto engine) that I was running down the A77 at about 70 for an extended time. The car was never used much. This was the first long run. After a while the engine ran a bit hotter than usual but not excessively. Then the noise started. I done the camshaft on this car only about 500 miles previous and I thought it maybe wasn't case hardened properly and the lobes had started to grind down. I was busy cursing the makers of the cam kit as I slowed down. After a couple of minutes the noise calmed down a bit and so did I. I got stupidly brave after another 10 minutes and picked up speed again. The same thing happened. It just sounded like the tappets had gone out of adjustment or the camshaft was melting away. This time I was too late slowing down. The car stayed noisy, became powerless and I pulled in to a layby. As soon as I declutched, it stalled. I immediately tried to start it but it wouldn't even turn over. The battery lights just went out as I turned the key. Anyway, after trying to push start it (I thought the battery was dead) and my mates getting fed up smashing their heads of the bootlid every time I let the clutch out, I gave up and phoned for a tow.
The engine was siezed. I took off the timing belt and the camshaft moved ok. I put a torque wrench on the crankshaft pulley bolt and jumped on it. It didn't budge. When I stripped it down I found that the number 1 bearing shells were a lovely blue/black colour and a different shape from what the makers intended. On my car the shells were already oversize meaning it had happened before and the crankshaft had been ground down to get rid of the scarring.
If you find that it is the big end bearing shells and fix it, look out for why it happened. Oil entry into the shell is via a hole and the concensus of opinion was that my oil or the oil filter wasn't being changed enough. No comment, I was a student!
from today's telegraph:
money.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/...l
Ravaged General Motors to slash 25,000 jobs in US
...
Mr Wagoner, who took the job two years ago, said a number of US plants would be closed by 2008 as the company attempts to staunch the loss of market share to its foreign rivals. He said the plan, which comes on top of thousands of job losses in Europe and among its white-collar workers, would save $2.5billion (£1.37billion) a year.
Mr Wagoner acknowledged the dire financial straits of the car marker, admitting that without significant changes, there was a "significant risk to the long-term viability of our business".
...
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But we mustn't forget the GM interests in Daewoo & other brands they have interests in.So they still sneak in, the backdoor!!
& I still can't imagine that out-going UK boss, Nick Riley (spelling), was offerd, his job HeadOfMalaysian&Eastern&Northern&WhateverPacificRimRegiopnsOperations, if he hadn't made a sucsesful shutdown of our factories, here!
Not a bad deal for him, I'd imagine!!
VB
A friend of mine has a Y reg 3 door VW Polo, with a small leak into the boot. There is a small puddle in the boot under the carpet and between the spare wheel well and rear seat.
The car is Y reg as I've said, and it is the facelifted model. It has just 2 doors and the hatch. There is no sunroof, and for what it's worth (you never know) it's a 1.4 petrol automatic with aircon.
What might cause this? Any other leaky Polo experiences out there?
Thanks in advance Read more
.............a seal around a rear light cluster?
What does the road sign with the red circle and a picture of an exploding car inside it mean?
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I always thought it prohibited driving after a Chicken Phal :)
A friend of mine called round yesterday with his 2000 diesel Disco for assistance with an oil change.Underneath we found two hatches in the plastic undertray,the rearmost one revealing the sump drain plug,but the other gave access to a pipe,about an inch in diameter,with a nut in it.It too appears to be there for draining purposes,does anyone know what it is for?Also these have two filters,one called a rotary filter,and indeed it does look like it rotates in its housing. What is the principle behind this? Read more
Hi,
The mystery pipe could be the Air-con condensation vent pipe.
Carse
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On trying to restart the engine turns but battery is flat, so wont turn , i have emptied what i can from the various fuel lines but know some has managed to get in
My question now is as I am sat in airport late of course and have 6 hours until next flight , what is chance on my return of starting motor if 1 i add more fuel ie diesel hehe and getting a jump on battery???
All help appreciated as I am sure it wont go down with my employer to well ,
Car is a one year old Nissan Navarro
Yours Muppet
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I have an adapted fuel injection high pressure pump to do this very job, at the roadside if required. Works well and didn't cost a penny to make!
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groups.msn.com/honestjohn - Pictures say a thousand words.....
At what price does your image/street cred rather than the cars abilities take over when purchasing a car?
We could all make do with a £500 car, it'll get us from a to b.
A well known motoring journalist said today that he was well into his thirties until he paid more than £1000 for a car.
So it looks good on your driveway but a £30k car does the same job as a £3k car?
why pay more than neccesary?
What price does image takeover?
why do we need image? Read more
Im firmly in the camp of "spend what you like on what you like" and don't judge others. I happen to really like cars and will spend what I like on them.
The brits are a funny lot, I remmember Jeremy C commenting one time when he drove a flash car (Ferrari IIRC) in England and then on the continent. He commented that when he stopped in it in England, people were sniggering at him, when on the continent people came up to admire the thing and congratulate him.
For the record I drive a fairly pricey car, but a make that a lot of (uninformed) people think are still rubbish because of cars they produced 30 years ago, so I must be somewhere in the middle ;)
Yesterday the speedo needle on my 1995 Mercedes C200 failed to register until the road speed was around 30+ MPH, at which point the needle shot round to the 30+ point and operated normally - both up and down the scale. However, every time the car came to rest and then moved off, the needle misbehaved as described. This morning the same thing happened, except that the road speed at which the needle became operative was much lower - around 10 MPH. Trip and total mileage are registering as normal. All other gauges are OK. Can any one suggest a cause/cure. (I think I once read that static electricity on the 'perspex' needle might be involved). Anyway, if any one can suggest how I might overcome this problem I'd be most grateful. Thank you. Read more
Browse
SS
My thoughts too. Fuel duty gives a 'pay per mile' tax, related to size of vehicle and congestion, both of which increase consumption. It's collected via an existing system, paid in advance and very difficult to avoid.
Replacing this with a huge, and hugely expensive, new electronic monitoring system, plus a host of people (in government pay) managing the process and sending out bills after the event is madness. However, few governments like simple taxation systems, especially this one. The record of sucess(?) of large government computing projects does not give confidence either. I really fear Orwell's Big Brother has finally arrived.
I was disgusted by the BBC news the other night which seemed to work on the premise that road use was 'free' and completely ignored the current taxation of motorists - anyone else spot that?
JS