hi,i have recently aquired the cv off a friend.i put jump leads to it with a new battery too,still wont start.so i towed iyt and she fired up and purred like a kitten.shes been stood for a year.
the only thing ive noticed now is that i have to put a jump lead to the engine just to get it to slighlty turn over.
when i do this she turns as if the battery was dying,just a couple of turns then nothing.
i left a small lead attached and it melted it straight away.
when i was connecting the earth to the engine i could hear a relay somewhere clicking?????
im lost when it comes to electrics???can you help me??
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A couple of weeks ago, I made a remark to my passenger that when driving at night, "things" in the road give rise to the biggest danger. This is born out by all sorts of incidents - pile-ups, collisions with pedestrians and other debris. In my opinion, the very vast majority of these incidents are the drivers fault. Anyway.

How far ahead do you look - even in daylight?

This question has come to mind because of the "hit & run/jaywalking" thread, and also because of this, in broad daylight (11:30 a.m.), about 10 days ago:

I was driving along a not-very-familiar piece of dual carriageway, the A421, east of Bedford, in the Midlands. It is possible to make very brisk progress on this road, which I was, on the inside lane. Ahead, at a slip road, a car joined the inside lane, accelerated as is proper from brisk to very brisk, and then pulled out into the outside lane, to overtake something in front of him. So did I. He suddenly slowed and pulled back in (so did I, behind him) - for there was debris in the outside lane, some scattered into the inside lane. It, at a distance, looked like a very large lorry wheel. The Vauxhall Corsa which had been following, at a speed of approximately 90MPH, overtook me and the car in front, and smashed into the object without braking at all!! It then continued on its way, still not slowing, or braking.

It turned out that the object was, in fact, a large black plastic car bumper, which was smashed to smithereens by the impact. Had it really been a a lorry wheel, then - ! Read more

tinyurl.com/38nltn

I believe as a driver I owe a duty of care to pedestrians, but he is lifting our collective leg.

Walks into the road in the dark, after a drink, on his mobile, and complains that the police don't try to find the car he can offer no description of ? Read more

The other thread on the subject of hgv is of too narrow a viewpoint to be of any help to anyone so I am going to try and explain some of the types of hgv use, drivers, and other info that may (just may) allow non hgv people (and some with limited and out of date experience) some idea of why the hgv s behave as they do.

i am not a hgv driver (and it is a very skilled trade to do correctly) but I do hold a licence and help an owner/driver friend to cover at times.

There are various types of hgv on the roads but the 1 type that most people hate are the artics on the motorway/dual carriageway that hold up their journeys by long winded overtaking.

The types of lorry use here actually matter, and if this explains well enough and you can understand more than I can say, then you might begin to understand why the problems occur (and its not always the lorry drivers fault).

Ignore the stone hauling, quarry type, and car haulage etc type vehicles (they usually cause no problem because of the routes and way they are paid; time is not too important on their pay). But pay attention mostly to curtain sided arctics and/or wagon and drag units (mostly foreign) and obvious supermarket lorries.

An avaerage route of these get in your way types are
1. From docks to bulk warehouse and return.
2. From bulk warehouse to customer warehouse.
3. From customer warehouse to delivery locations.

Generally it is type 2 that will cause the problems because of the way they are paid, timed, and generally its the area where most agency drivers will be because its the most aggravational route. This is with the exception of most supermarket lorries (they will rarely cause any problems).

To explain it further. They are given a time slot to arrive at (normally with a 15 min limit on it! Yes 15 mins leeway even on a route of over 100 miles!). If they miss this slot they may well have to wait 24 hours before another slot is allocated and no provision is made for them to park or wait in the meantime. So these, rightly or wrongly, will be the ones with the attitude of "get past him even if it holds up other traffic".

It is a very complex subject but hope this explains just alittle and proves its only a few who drive like this. And that maybe the answer is in the hands of the managers and controllers (no doubt that includes a few on here?) who just push numbers around a computer and not actually try the job to see how under pressure some of the drivers are! And agency drivers dont care if they are reported for bad driving because there is such a demand for them they just go the next job!

Sits back and waits for the "well they should get another job type" responses. But that doesnt really cure any problem at all does it?

And as an extra comment regarding qulaity of modern day hgv drivers. The newer ones are cheaper to use. Pay peanuts get monkeys?

{dropped make/model as not required for this discussion} Read more

Seeing the postings about driving in snow remeinded me that others have previously reported how poor "summer" tyres are at temperatures below 6 or 7C.

Given our relatively snow and ice-free winters, can it really be worth owning TWO full sets of tyres, one for summer and one for winter? How many Broomers have 4 summer tyres in their garage currently, just awaiting April's arrival to do a 4-jack job before putting the roof down for 6 months.? Read more