September 2009
I know we've done cyclists on the pavement to death but I was pleasantly surprised by Erin Dors this morning. (Makes a change )
Walking to thec library as part of her ' get fitter ' campaign, she was nearly hit by a woman of a similar age cycling on the pavement.
She wouldn't let said woman pass and laid into her about breaking the law and how the footpath was for people, not bikes. Her excuse was that she was going to rejoin the cycle lane as soon as she could after the parked cars. Wifey told her to get off and push it there to which she called SWBO ' A stupid old trout '
Wife retorted that as she had descended to gutter insults, then it was obvious she had lost the argument !
I was very proud of her.
Ted Read more
If you are thinking of "up grading" your front disc on any 5 or 6 series, don't waste your money. I have done this on both a 535 and 645 and they will "react" to the change, and not for the better. The front suspension set up on both these models are designed to take only Original Equipment (OE). If you want to improve your braking, change your pads, I have spent a fortune in trying to resolve this. Hope this saves you the time and money!! Read more
We have a road near us which is regularly used by my family.
It's a road with no buildings, no junctions and just a cemetery on each side.
It's just single track each way...Rattle knows it well. The surface is now becoming absolutely atrocious with potholes.
One one side is a pavement, on the other a wide grass verge from the kerb to the cemetery fence. A couple of weeks ago contractors started to put in new kerbstones on this side about five feet from the existing kerb. Great, I thought, they're widening the road and this must mean a new surface going down.
Today, I came past and saw that what they were doing is putting in a pavement on the grassed side.
The point is, hardly any pedestrians use this road...if you see someone walking along it you throw a party....What a waste of coucil tac when you need a FWD to use the carriageway.
Another sensible thing...not. The cemetery gates are open all week and cars can go in as they please, plenty of room....Not Sundays....pedestrians can get in but not cars. This means that, as all the popular visiting days, Mothers day, Fathers day, Easter landon Sundays, there are no parking facilities and cars then block the narrow road and park on the wide grass verge ( shortly to become narrower ) sinking into the ground and having to pay to be towed off......brilliant idea, and all for the sake of leaving one gate open.
Going away on the Honda tomorrow...I'll be going the long way round to get to the M56 !
Gripe over.
Ted Read more
I have come to the conclusion that its to discourage people from using it as a rat run, I tend to use it a lot get to the Heaton Moor area but sometimes I think twice and use the main road which gets a lot more traffic. I think its also some kind of very poor traffic calming measure. Even with my four new springs anything above 25mph down that road and my car feels very unstable and its a 30 limit.
I've actually got quite annoyed when driving down there at 25mph listening to all bits of trim work loose and some twonk behind me is trying to do 50.
Take care on your trip and ride safely :).
Who thinks of these stupid routes when they close a Motorway for maintenance.
The M4 from Junc23A to Junc 24 or further has been closed for maintenance to the overhead gantry's changing the Signs one or two nights a week.
So where is the logic to allow traffic to travel over the new Severn bridge on the M4 then when they get to Junc23A they are diverted/turned back along the M4 east onto M48 to Chepstow then onto the A48 west. This adds some 30 miles or more to a journey.
Why could'nt they divert the traffic onto the M48 from the M4 near Almondsbury, to go over the old Severn bridge to Chepstow then A48 saving wasted fuel. The M49 could be closed at the M5 Avonmouth and diverted to Almondsbury along the M5 to join the M4, as the M49 serves the new Severn bridge.
It can't be that the old bridge can't cope as they divert to this bridge when the other is closed for such as falling ice as last winter.
Granted there are signs on the side of the motorway warning of these closures, but unless you travel at 20mph to read them and there are normally only one, so if you miss it Tuff.
Where's the logic. ??????
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I don't know this one but might the avoidance of towns and suitability for heavy traffic and all sizes of HGV be an issue?
My daughter starts a year at the hospital next week and long day shifts usually start at 08:00.
It is easy to see several routes on a map and can recce them off peak but can anyone help with rush hour routes.
Although I only live a few miles away I have absolutely no idea of the traffic situation along the routes at peak times.
Options
1. Double back to Tolworth, A3, M25 J11 and just round the corner.
Looks the fastest route BUT all the risks of the M25 snarl up.
2. A3 to Cobham, Brooklands, Addlestone.
3 .A309, A307 to Esher, A244 to Hersham, A317 to M25 J11.
Risk of queue backing up for the M25?.
4.Same route as 3. but is Green Lane close to the Hospital a useful bypass of queues for the M25 junction ? It looks a possibilty on the map.
So help! IIRC this is Altea Ego manor but all help appreciated. Read more
I made it from Junction of A1 to Junction 11 @ 08:15-09:00 today, with barely a stop, even through the roadworks. Even the speed restriction were not lit.
Am in the process of changing dash clocks on said car due to a non working milometer.
I hope to pick up a used replacement from a breaker, what I want to know is....
will the mileage on the donor car come from the ecu of recepient car or will it be whatever was on the donor car when scrapped?
Thanx in advance. Read more
The battery disconnected was my first port of call...alas no joy.
Thanks for the help Doc!
My wife has a 4 year old Swift that we bought from the local dealer when it was about 10 months old and it has been serviced there ever since. This year, the car failed the MOT test because one rear tyre was illegal, owing to very uneven wear. The rear tyres are scrubbing on the inside edge and it seems this is due to a manufacturing fault that is well known by Suzuki and the dealers (and is reported on this web site in the car by car breakdown as being quite a common problem with early cars of this model). The car has done less than 17000 miles and I find it very difficult to believe that this uneven wear wouldn't have been apparent when it was serviced last year, which the dealer denies. It would be very unlikely that this amount of wear (a difference of 3 mm across the width of the tyre) could have occurred in around 4000 miles. To have rear tyres worn out on a front wheel drive car, before the front tyres, is something I have never experienced. The car is now out of warranty and the best Suzuki are prepared to offer is 50% of the cost of the parts, which would leave us with a bill of about £300.
One thing is for sure, Suzuki have lost any chance of further business with me or my wife. Personally, I feel that any manufacturing defects of this type should be subject to a recall. A similar thing happened to me with the C5 that I once had but, luckily, I found out about it whilst the car was covered by the warranty.
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Our Xantia which we had for 12 years still had the original
tyres on the back wheels after 60K miles.
Do you mean the tyres were 12 years old? Yikes! They're only supposed to be used for 5-6 years.
Hello All,
Long time no post - good to see some of the old regulars are still, er, regulars! Hope all are well!
Having been self employed for a while now I am being tempted by an attractive offer to head back into the corporate world. I don?t yet have firm details (budget, allowance in lieu of car etc) though it seems like I am going to be looking for a new car at some point and I am a little out of touch on specs etc, more on that later perhaps.
In the meantime the petrol v diesel conundrum, with petrol having lower BiK rates relative to the CO2 figure, how realistic are combined MPG figures, particularly regarding some of the contemporary quite efficient lowish CO2 petrol cars?
My Mondeo has averaged about 1.5mpg less than its official combined figure, on that basis - a couple of options because I am not sure on budget yet - a Golf GT DSG?s combined figure is 47.1 MPG, could I realistically expect to average, say, 45 MPG? And a 325i?s combined figure is 39.2 MPG, could I realistically expect to average, say, 37 MPG?
By the way I have not ruled out a diesel by any means.
And am I the only one who think the Golf Mk V is much better looking than the Mk VI?
And can you turn stop/start off?
And ...
Thanks!
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Sorry Avant, NW, I was talking 1.4 TFSi DSG which has lower CO2 and better mpg than the manual.
Remember your three wheel bike aged 6? You could cock a wheel up and pedal with one wheel in the air - and that with almost an almost equal sided triangle for a wheelbase...
Dwell on that for a second - then on the Reliant and so on.. then imagine something tall, elongated and with a rear wheelbase as wide as a bathtub. With a high centre of gravity..
Heading between the Hotel and a bakeshop in the Far East, I spotted this..
It`s tall, looks old and somehow gets around without doing barrel rolls.
Perhaps it`s driver should be recruited as a Formula 1 driver? given the wide wheelbase 4x4`s you see in our UK scrapyards that have been rolled by incompetants.
Well.. how does it corner?
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/tac1.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/tac2.jpg
All the best ;-) Read more
Built like early airframes with a waterproof canvas "body". Seeing them cornering at daft speeds around wet cobbled streets of a small town was a hoot.
Time may have distorted my memory but was there a 70's (I think) car branded a Wolfburg or Wolfsburg. I seem to remember it was called the Knight or similar and also that it had an unusual engine, possibly 3 cylinder. I told a work mate about this and could then find absolutely no mention of it on the internet. Any memories? Read more
Avant.......
Have yourself a trip down memory lane with these two vids. They will give you some lovely sounds to take you back a few years.
tinyurl.com/ybnn5v2
Scroll down to the fourth movie "Don Julians? immaculate 1973 CE". It brought back some old memories for me to see the fancy footwork of the down change double de-clutch whilst braking. This chap is doing it on the level by the look of it, so not in any particular hurry. Going downhill with a load on you would need to be a wee bit quicker!
Another Commer TS3 vid here
tinyurl.com/y9sfjh7
This reminds me of my trip to the beach on the one hot August weekday (shouldn't people be at work I thought). Got as far as the A249/M2 junction where the M2 was clearly stationary. So I thought 'I can do better than that', and punch things into the tomtom, and head off to the nearby A2. Also stationary.
So I go back and punch more things into the tomtom, setting up diversions, avoiding certain roads, and soon enough I'm heading along a nice quiet road to nowhere (in the wrong direction). Due to numerous diversions, Tomtom sends me up a byway (one of those churned up tracks that will destroy the underside of anything other than a proper Land Rover). Oops, I turn round in someone's drive. He comes out, I wave cheerily.
Head off again setting up even more diversions on the satnav. Am now going along through tiny Kent villages, at no great speed but with considerable purpose. Whereupon I come across 'Road closed'. Argh. There is now no other route, the lack of roads in the wilds of Kent means that this closed road was the only one - apart from back onto the M2/A2 I'd taken great trouble to try and avoid. I ended up sitting in a cornfield for a few minutes, not very happy with it all, but eventually conceded I had no choice but to go back to the M2.
When I eventually got back there via various Tomtom Special narrow roads it turns out that the delay was probably only 15 minutes in the first place.
Later on there was a bit where the A road had been diverted due to construction of a shopping centre. Tomtom was telling me to go straight ahead, which was signposted 'no through traffic', the signs took me right. I followed the signs, and ended up in a 30 minute queue. The old A-road I assume was still there and would have been much quicker.