March 2008
Hello
I commute up and down the A12 most days (Southend -> Colchester). Three times now, over the past 6 months, I have seen a young man in a fairly new black Peugeot driving with his hazard lights on, very slowly at about 40-45mph.
He's always dressed smartly in a suit and usually seen around the Kelvedon/Marks Tey area! I just wonder if anybody else has seen him or knows what he's doing? Why does he always drive so slowly, and why the hazard lights all the time? I didn't think much of it the first time I overtook him, but it is odd that he drives like that all the time. Read more
Had my first experience of this today (for those of you that don't know it - it runs parallel to part of the M6 past Fort Dunlop).
www.birmingham.gov.uk/carsharelane.bcc
I happily drove along it at 11am to much gesticulation and light flashing from those in the other lane, not sure why as it is only in existence until 10am, oh well shaved minutes off my journey time so they do have a useful purpose :-)
Was intrigued to know what the offence is if a single occupancy vehicle uses it in its period of operation, the website is not exactly definitive:
"Enforcement
The car-sharing lane will be enforced by the Police and fines will be issued to offenders found to be contravening the lane."
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>>Don't shout too loudly - its great way of making decent progress at the moment!!
My thoughts exactly!
Maybe this really belongs in Technical Matters but I'm sure there will be plenty here who know the answer.
A friend (really not me) has a flat car battery which he needs to charge. This is used for an electric mower.
He's wondering whether there's a quicker method of charging this than connecting it to a mains-powered charger. He's thinking in terms of using jump leads to connect it to the battery in his car. If he does this, will it charge from the alternator if he runs the engine for a while?
Swapping the batteries isn't an option.
The car in question is a '97 Ford Escort if that has any bearing on the answer. Read more
If he wants to use fuel running a car engine to charge a battery to use in an electric mower, he'd be better off with a petrol mower in the first place!
Just found this link on the good old & ever informative internet:
tinyurl.com/yo7ua7 {shortened link to www.barnsley.gov.uk - courtesy of Martin's post further down} Read more
Apologise for dead link:
This is the text in full:
8< SNIP. No need to post the article in full. Aside from any possible copyright issues, the link you originally submitted has since been amended and is now working. DD}
I am thinking of buying a new car from an internet company one a friend used last year and with whom he was very happy.
I have a car to trade in and I put the details into a different internet company website that buys your car for cash. The offer was fair (indeed more than a local dealer offered me against a new car) but I wondered if anyone on the forum had used this method to sell their car and if so was it a success?
I really don't want the hassle of wheel kickers coming to the house wasting my time as I have had that before. Read more
Little bit lower than I would expect for mine but not too bad. I wouldn't mind dropping a couple of hundred quid just to avoid all the hassle of selling. Depends how you value your free time I suppose.
I am trying remove the inlet manifold and the rocker cover. The rocker cover should be straight forward but alas the hex-bolts are made of cheap metal and tend rust onto the cover and round if you use too much force. Now I need to remove the inlet manifold but two of the nuts are almost impossible to access. Any ideas? Read more
Hi Olaf,
You were right a wobble bar was needed for one of them and I had enough room for a 12 mm spanner to crack the other (and my hand). I found that part of the loom was attached to the inlet manifold and that the knock sensor is threaded through the manifold. So quite a tricky! I will buy new bolts and coat them with copper slip - good call.
Never seen such a coked up inlet manifold - EGR valve was replaced but the pipe was solid and took a bit of cleaning, as will the inlet manifold.
All I need to do now is carefully chisel a notch into the last rocker cover bolt, and I can set about checking and adjusting the valve clearances. They had better be out ? all this because the LTFT is -100% i.e. running very rich.
I noticed that one of the injectors looks different and I thought I would pressure test them on the car. If I plug in the fuel rail and switch the ignition on I should not see any of the injectors leaking, if I do then that could also be causing the car to run rich.
I must admit that the car has been fine for 5 years and then I get an EGR failure and then noticed the fuel trim and the rest is skinned knuckles and lots of blood.
Cheers for the advice.
Eddie
Hi
Will the budget vehicle licence change affect my neighbour's 1995 Ford Explorer (?) 4.0 V8? Its a great big thing so might not be an Explorer! Used weekly to ferry a heavy boat a a few mileshe is panicking. I told him not to panic as its pre 2001. Am I right? Read more
Why doesn't he keep it; sure the road tax is going up £15, but that can't be significant in relation to the amount of fuel tax it pays a year...?
Got a call last night from our au-pair saying he's on the hard shoulder of the m-way having had a blow-out driving back from a day out with his friends.
Oh well I thought, there's £50 gone for a new tyre.
He gets home and the tyre which is newish - maybe 6 months has blown out along its length, with a long flap of now hanging like a tongue off the tyre, with all the metal strands showing along the tear.
The flap has simply destroyed the rear bumper at its edge where it curves ound to meet the wheel arch and even taken out the rear light cluster which on a yaris is about the top of my thigh.
Anyone had a blow-out like this? It would have been a different matter on a front wheel - I'm pleased to say everyone safe just a wee bit shaken.
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Interesting. Would delaminating rip through the metal strands though and odd that it stopped after about 20 inches.
For the last few days the water temp is lower than usual. Its normally 90 degrees, but it now sits between 75 - 80. I am guessing its a broken thermostat, which looks easy enough to replace.
But I wont be able to sort it out until next week - will the car be OK if I continue to drive it with the low water temperature? Read more
Yes it will be fine if drops any lower temp ie: stuck open then the heater may be a little cooler.
I reasonably regularly drive overnight to, or indeed from, Italy. Usually alone so music is very important. As most continental night time radio stations are fairly poor I take my own. I don't want you to think I'm doing a "Clarkson" in some transcontinental supercar, in fact it is mainly in my trusty old Mondeo estate ! However, in the dark even in such a workaday car there is still something quite exciting about making such a journey on largely empty and well cared for roads. I have a very wide taste in music but am currently favouring Goldfrapp, Winehouse, David Jordan and Nickleback among many others. At the other end of the scale I am cheesy enough to occasionally revert to Matt Monro in the Alps as in the "Italian job" ! Pink Floyd gets me through the wee small hours and somehow Mozart always seems appropriate as dawn breaks.
If you had all night to listen to your favourite music on a long but pleasant journey, what sort of things would you choose? I think I need some fresh ideas!
Thanks in advance
SS Read more
"the other interesting thing is iTunes remembers how many times you listen to stuff"
Great feature, I haven't checked mine for a few months. In first place on mine with 235 plays and beating the second place by more than 100 is The Who's Behind Blue Eyes (my 5-year old girl loves it so it gets played to death on the school run). The other positions are just what I'd expect, Abbey Road pops up various times in the top 30, so does Ian Brown but I was surprised by number 5 with 145 plays - Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman. Don't remember playing it so much.
Does a song have to finish to register as "one play" cos I often restart a tune a few seconds before it finishes.
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maybe he only has little legs and cant reach to push the accelerator any further LOL