If you were underwhelmed by Fifth Gear - and reading the thread most of us were, tune in to Discovery Channel at 10pm on a Monday night. Global Garage. Last night's episode - Bangla Banger.

Imagine the Top Gear 'lets make a cabrio Espace' stunt but done in Bangladesh with a local 'car' designer and an East London mechanic with 40 years experience in the trade.

Local goes and buys an absolute shed of a Toyota 2 door coupe - at least 30 years old. Apparently Bangladesh buys up most of Japan's ex motors and scraps them. Pays £1200 for it!. The car is a large number of holes held together with very thin steel! He then spends the next four weeks getting the car ready for the Dhaka motorshow. This involves lots of sheet steel, lots of welding and lots of Bangaldeshis crawling over it. The only tools he has are hack saws, a multitude of hammers, a few spanners and oxy welding gear.

The main guy has the ideas, the locals build the body shell using cardboard templates and the sheet steel. The East London mechanic goes off and finds a new engine and gearbox. The engine is also 30 years old and is found at a huge engine supplier in the middle of Dhaka. The engine is 'bench' tested in the street. A large battery and a pop bottle full of fuel is all that's required - it fired first time. The engine is fitted by 5 locals placing it in the engine bay, there is no engine crane and of course no need for shoes - it's too hot!

The new radiator fouls the cooling fan, so off to a back street welder where the water inlet tube is moved. The machanic then tunes the enigne. The test drive takes place in the streets of Dhaka - no glass in at this stage and body work is base metal - the old paint of the original car has been stripped by many locals using hacksaw blades! The car jumps around as the shockers were shortened by four inches so have no travel!

This show is what happens in a Country where Health and Safety are unknown terms and in parts had me and my wife in stitches. Highly recommended. Read more

The thread by Westpig got me thinking.

In modern ECUs, some of which are purported to be of the 'learning' type, how long does it take for fuel consumption to stabilize at the new driving style?

If my Mondeo TDCi 5-speed has such an ECU (correct me if I'm wrong), then I have this evidence:

If only I use the car for commuting for several tank-fulls, I will get just over 50 mpg. If my wife and I swap the car at about every tank-full, then my commute mpg drops to 47-ish. If my wife has sole use, then the mpg hovers at around 43mpg (6 x 1.5 - 2 mile journeys per day and the odd longer one).

This evidence would back up my theory.

Is it really the ECU trying to be clever or do the lumps of metal and plastic themselves simply take a while to settle to different usage regimes? Read more

can anyone tell me whether the following consumption figures are about right or should i get the car looked at under the warranty......... i want it to be right, but don't want to look a fool at the dealers

wife's car... X Type 2.0 diesel estate (i undertsand it to be the Mondeo 130 engine)

33-34 mpg on the trip computer around town....(rush hour stop start with a fair amount of completely stationary traffic, max 4 miles journey at a time)

38-39 mpg... on a very long motorway journey, that includes 120 miles of very good fast A roads at the end of it(driven quite hard, 4th gear selected when gaps appear on motorway with full acceleration, cruise control at well over the limit for the rest of it and constant overtakes on A road at max acceleration, car very heavily laden

47-50 if you fill it up, cruise quite gently in 5th at 40-50 mph but take it very carefully...(can never last very long doing that, drives me mad)

others have said it's not as economical as it should be........ i tend to think it's my divers boot driving on the long journey and the city traffic stuff is to be expected......... however, it's left a niggling doubt....... and you know what they're like. Read more

I have a 'K' reg 626 and i seems to be losing water. It needs the water topped up every couple of days but i dont know where all the water has gone. there is no oil in the water and vice versa. I have been told that the head gasket needs replaced but with no oil in the water could this be true?? The engine sits about 2000 revs even when warm and has a tendancy to bounce between 750-1500 revs when the water is low. Is this normal?

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Looks like the future is a bit brighter for diesels after those clever people at Honda have developed a next-generation diesel engine that reduces exhaust gas emissions to a level equal to a petrol engine. The new diesel engine employs a revolutionary NOx catalytic converter that enables a reduction in NOx emissions sufficient to meet stringent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Tier II Bin 5 emissions requirements (based on Honda calculations). Honda plans to introduce its next-generation diesel engine in the U.S. within three years.

They have also developed the next stage of i-VTEC technology with the development of the Advanced VTEC engine, which provides high performance along with outstanding fuel economy and lower emissions. The new engine combines continuously variable valve lift and timing control with the continuously variable phase control of VTC (Variable Timing Control) to achieve a world-leading level of performance and a 13% improvement in fuel efficiency (in comparison to their 2.4 i-VTEC). Honda plans to release a production vehicle equipped with the new engine within three years.

Looks like they plan on staying at the forefront of engine technology.
We can see in 3 years if they have done enough.

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