September 2006
Hi, I know this convo has been mulled over many times but I can't find it in the forum search. I need to know what the main cause of car deaths are for some homework. Can someone help me please. This isn't cheating is it?
Thanks
School Boy
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Guys, my daughter's AX is a 1.1 made in 1992 and it has an unusual starting problem.
The car will not start when cold on the key, the starter turns over rapidly but there's no spark I've checked. But after a short push it always bump starts first time and then for the rest of the day it starts just fine on the key! Leave it overnight and you are back to square one, the things I have changed to try and cure it are the HT leads, distributor cap and rotor arm and they made no change at all. Jump leads make no difference either.
Any clues on this please ? Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Regards,
Steve D. Read more
Cheers dieselnut, I will give that a go. But as I work shifts it will be probably be next weekend when I can tackle it. I will let you know though, thanks again.
Regards,
Steve.
Hi, I need to find out if I have the modified fuel injectors fiited to my car. I have contacted Lexus and their records show that they have not fitted any. However, they may have been fitted by an Independant. Can anybody advise how can I identify original and modified injectors. i.e Part Numbers or colour etc? Also I cannot obtain a service manual for this vehicle and Haynes aren't publishing one either. Thanks for any advice. Read more
THanks Highspeed, I'll look into it.
It was with great sadness that I learned today that Lord Strathcarron of Banchor has died at the age of 82.
President of the Guild of Motoring Writers for more than 30 years, some of you may remember him as the motoring correspondent for The Field, as well as contributing to Advanced Motoring and Hoot! a website magazine.
An Old Etonian, David William Anthony Blyth Macpherson to give him his full name, was a pilot, appeared in vintage motor car racing and was a champion of transport on two wheels as well as speaking on motoring subjects in the House of Lords.
He founded the Strathcarron automotive supply company, remaining a consultant to the firm right up until his death at the end of August.
A charming and delightful man who treated everyone as an equal, I spent many an hour in his company over dinner at various events; we were regularly entertained about his vast fund of stories about his motoring experiences, many of them extremely amusing.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by Read more
Met Lord Strathcarron on the same occasion as Clarkson. ne turned up on time and was a gentleman, the other was an hour late and expected everything to start again for him.
Hi
This morning My 2001 A4 TDi 130BHP threw its fan belt. The problem appears to be that the pulley on the alternator has moved forward and the fan belt came off and was running on the shaft between the pulley and the alternator itself .
As far as I know the car was pulled off the road and stopped within a few minutes of it happening. Am I likely to have done any lasting damage to the car? It did sound like a bag of spanners!
What would have caused this? Can the pulley just move forward on the shaft? Or has the shaft pulled out of the alternator? Can an alternator seize and cause this to happen?
The guy who sold me the car is fixing it for me, which is good as I guess I am not paying for it, but like free Kitchen fitting, in a way I would rather be paying for it so I have some sort of control of the quality of the work. What should I look for when I get it back?
The above is for my peace of mind more than anything else. I was very impressed by the guy who sold me the car, and to be fair I expected him to walk away from me today, so far I am more than happy.
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Good good, that does not sound too bad. At least if it has just floated off the shaft it is unlikely to have inflicted too much stress on anything else.
It has 80k on the clock if I remember correctly.
As I said I am pretty sure I caught it as soon as it happened and only drove a few hundred meters to pull it off the road somewhere convient so there was only a few of the fan vanes with a small nick in them. Think the size of a segment of a 5p with a chord across 1/4 of the circumference Nothng to worry about.
I've just brought a pair of "Brembo" vented brake disks for my Passat from GSF (OEM fitment) and they were £26.50 each including VAT.
Why is it that if these were for a motorcycle (of which I have a couple) they would be upwards of £200 each, (maybe more)!
I know the old chestnut "supply and demand" come into it and modern bike disks are generally more complex to manufacture but can there really be any justification for a 650%+ difference in price?
I can hear the "biker haters" sniggering from here ;-) Read more
I'd bet the car brakes would outsell the bike 10,000 to
1 (and thats very conserative) around the world making tooling
/ set up costs minimal. Not only Golf , Passat, but
Seat, Skoda et all
Thing is though that there will be a smaller number of factories producing the bike discs, which would mean that the setup costs should be similar as it's not just the same amount of companies making much smaller quantities of parts.
In that instance supply and demand comes into play, but even then the parts should be no more than double the price of the car components, assuming a similar manufacturing cost.
I can see why the OP is frustrated.
Just curious if they were dangerous in a frontal impact as they have fuel tank at front? A mate of mine has just bought an early 70's one and my dad said they are death traps in a front impact, more so than other cars of teh era.
Is this true? Read more
OK So the front mounted tank of a VW might make it more dangerous in a frontal impact.
What about the rear mounted tank of the car in front that you've just driven into?
I currently drive a new mondeo tdci which has approx 50,000 miles on now , the car is 2 and a half years old . I have allways fancied a V70 Vovo estate , the one that im interested in is a petrol manual 2.4 engine . The said car has done approx 60,000 miles and is 3 years old .
So weird the mondeo allready is starting to show its age , the Volvo just drove it and seems much more of a solid not so wimpy drive as in the Ford . If that makes sence to you guys .
Now should I really buy the Volvo , will I regret it long term ? Read more
achieved
by using redundant space above the gearbox to mount some ancilliaries
(ie at the opposite end of the engine to where they
would normally be found).
An interesting engine, I wonder if it will be widely used by Ford.
The packaging principal is of course similar to that employed on motorcycles for years pioneered by Yamaha with the FZ750 in the mid 80's.
*Tenuous link time*
The 5 pot Volvos are either 10v or 20v, the other 20v car engines are the 1.8 ltr VAG 4cyl units with 5 valves/cyl, the FZ750 was the first production 5 valve/cyl engine, Yamaha have persisted with the 5v head though the YZR-M1 MotoGp bike has 4 valves/cyl and rumour has it that next year's YZF-R1 superbike will also drop the 5 valve design.
Picked up what I thought to be a bargain - dusty zx 1.9i 1991 48k on the clock with mots to back it up. test drove really well. after having it a couple of weeks and opening her up a fair bit I have now noticed town driving and low rev acceleration to be lumpy. changed plugs and ht leads but wonder is it worth trying the dist cap/rotor arm? they seem fine to look at, but maybe not underclose inspection. its a bit odd as it was fine and now isn't!!! HELP!! Read more
Prompted by an article in In Flux magazine that just dropped through my letterbox (An Adrian Flux insurance broker rebadge of Intersection Magazine) I just did a Google for Ken Brough Quad.
Imagine merging Impreza Turbo STi mechanicals with quad bike principles - even down to handlebar steering and sitting astride the seat - and this is what you get: www.topgear.com/content/news/stories/1010/
What a machine!
He built it to compete in New Zealand's Gold Rush Hillclimb but he was barred as it was deemed too radical and against the spirit of the event. He's also barred from using it on the road by NZ's road Nancies, unfortunately! Read more
a real STi would be as quick and more practical and a motorbike would be much quicker and ultimately more fun.
On the original hilclimb for which he designed the machine, I very much doubt whether an STi or a motorbike would hold a candle to it. The NZ equivalent of a Pike's Peak special, if you like.
I think that's an inference drawn by a perverse viewer :)
I have always understood that advert to mean "you may be unlucky enough or stoopid enoughto hit a child, in which case it's mucho better to hit them at 30 rather than 35 -- that small speed difference makes a big difference to the child"
That's largely a matter of vehicle design, rather than speed, hence the attention being (belatedly) given to the issue by NCAP.
Having seen a few such impacts, I doubt it. The bluff front of a bus tends to splat people by design, and you'd have to do a lot of speed to bounce off meaningfully, by which time you'd be mangled anyway by the impact.
I don't think anyone would argue against the idea that it's better not to be hit at all, but that need not be an either/or alternative to moderating speeds so as to reduce the severity of impacts that do occur.
Hmm. True up to a point, but drivers also need to take responsibility by recognising that on many steeets there are no "safe" crossing points, and to recognise that many roads are in shared-use