October 2023
https://youtu.be/F2_PMuL_4w4?feature=shared
Motability converted Vivaro catches fire on drive when it’s not even charging, damaging house Read more
It has occurred to me that the UK bus and coach market seems pretty narrow in its choice of brand. Most coaches (or at least the chassis) I see are Volvo, the occasional Iveco, Scania and VDL. Invariably European.
Why no Asian coaches and buses?
Hyundai, Toyota (the Coaster), Hino, Kia, Nissan, Isuzu, Mitsubishi,.. they all make coaches and/or buses. I wonder what the main reason is for them not being here? Did the EU have some kind of protectionism to bus manufacturers that we have continued?... Read more
As well as being successful here already, Volvo bought Leyland buses, giving their market share a boost. Leyland, of course, had already absorbed, over the years, other major independent bus chassis makers - AEC, Guy, Daimler, Bristol.
Growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, I recall both of my parents petrol cars needing a replacement exhaust, or at least the back box on a fairly regular basis.
I’ve owned cars for 30 odd years now and in that time, I’ve replaced one exhaust pipe on a Japanese import Nissan Figaro that we’ve had for 18 years. Have had both petrol and diesel cars (pre DPF, with a nice lining of soot in the exhaust and with DPFs) and in perhaps 350,000 miles over that 30 odd years, aside from one exhaust for the Figaro, I’ve never replaced any exhaust components, even on cars that I’ve run for longer than 10 years.
Are exhausts just made from more durable metal now, or do more stringent emissions regulations and the phasing out of leaded petrol mean that the gases passing through the exhaust are less corrosive? Read more
The latter, as the apostrophe is before the s
I think, although it's a long time since I did that sort of thing at school....
I wonder if the driver read the manual or assumed everything was the same as his old ICE cars.
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Just had an interesting weekend with a couple of old friends, one of whom has a shiny new Audi Q4 E-tron. He normally charges at home or at work, so when we met up in Aberystwyth he knew he had to get a charge before he left to his next destination. Off to Tesco to get a charge at the 7kW PodPoint, while they did some shopping. Sadly it stopped for no reason after a few minutes. Same again the next evening. He has a PodPoint charger at home so was using the app on his account. I suggested we try a different charger at another location. This was a rapid charger, and it was the first time he had used a CCS connector (didn't know what the difference was) Anyway, in spite of being a so-called pay as you go, it threw up an error message, so that was no good. Off to a Tesla supercharger but the app was taking ages to download so that was another fail. Finally went to LiDL where there was a rapid PodPoint charger. Success! 45kW charge rate so he had topped up enough while we waited for about 20 minutes. Moral, do your homework and download the apps for as many different companies as you can BEFORE you need them. Read more
No, that happened with diesels of that era. You could either 'give it some welly' to keep up with traffic, or pootle along and slowly release the soot whilst holding up those behind.
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There are errors of commission (usually obvious) and omission (often not so obvious). I sometimes wonder if one of the biggest political errors the UK made was not to convert to LHD like Sweden did when I was a teenager. At that time the UK still had an important car and truck industry. Now, apart from the relatively unimportant high end market, it struggles. Anyone who travels abroad will realise what little choice there is in the UK as so many manufacturers just don't bother with RHD versions of some models, and in turn we seem now to export relatively few LHD vehicles compared to other LHD countries with a well developed vehicle manufacturing base. Read more
Standardisation of steering wheel side and traffic side could potentially have been done on a much larger scale following the 1926 Paris Convention, when most countries chose LHD/RH traffic, largely owing to USA-led mass car production and a desire to "standardise". This desire was not felt in countries with an imperialist history (UK, Japan and, in pre-Napoleonic times, the Netherlands and Portugal), hence the plethora of former colonies which continue to drive on the left. Parts of the collapsed Austro Hungarian Empire (including Yugoslavia) continued to drive on the left until WW2
Over the centuries, common (and economic) sense led to the move to the right - or fully to the right! - in territories with land borders (Canada, Gibraltar, Sweden, Poland, Spain), although post-independence nationalism may have played a part in many cases (Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Bahrain.)
Foreign "imports" or anything less common or requiring adaptation is inevitably going to cost a bit more one way or another, but if the whole world had miraculously decided to drive on the same side a century ago this would have undoubtedly evened the playing field.
Hi all
I have always had Vauxhalls, so parts and servicing are cheap. However, i have been tempted by a Scala. I test drove a 2021 1.5 petrol Scala and a 2019 1.0 Turbo petrol Astra, the Scala was so smooth, although the Astra did have more mileage. But both had good engines.
From what i can see online the Scala will be more expensive for parts and servicing than an Astra, but more reliable?
Read more
“ Well done SLO, I only posted this morning in jest and in no way meant it to be offensive to yourself, don't always agree with everything you say but hey life would be boring if we all had the same opinion, hope the leaf is still going OK btw....”
Not offended at all, made me laugh.
Leaf is keeping SWMBO happy so it’s solid gold as far as I’m concerned.
Hi All
We have a 2013 X1 Xdrive which is shared between the family. We bought it about 6 months ago. Its the 2.0 20D version 2013. It only has 80k miles on it and all of that is BMW services... Read more
If my son in law’s experience in typical you should get rid of the X1 PDQ. Last year his 13 reg x1 diesel with about 80k had a major engine failure requiring £2.5 worth of work. It was never the same again and he nursed it for eight months until his new Toyota Corolla was delivered. He’s an engineer incidentally and says the quality of the Toyota is vastly superior to the BMW.
Great to see Toyota finally seeing sense, the new, great looking Prius will be sold in the UK.
Rear headroom is lacking in these so I do wonder how many will end up in the hands of cabbies.
Hello,
I purchased a used 2019 Vitara 1.4 allgrid auto a few months ago. This is my first car. I practiced in the last few months. The car is very easy to drive around town and turning is accurate. I found the car steering to be on the light side and feel a bit twitchy after 50mph. My sister used to drove Volvo V40 said steering is lighter than hers. Can someone tell me if it has speed sensitive power steering? can I make it a bit heavier at high speed or I need to adapt to it? My tyres pressure set to 33psi.
Thanks Read more
Korm**** tyres are a mid range tyre , part of the Michelin group . I’ve got them on my bmw . They are an ok middle of the road product . You may find the continentals a better proposition.
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I'm closing this one now as I think we've covered the Vivaro article. It will be interesting to see the fire report when it's ready.
Also the specific EV thread will be running imminently where discussions like these can take place. ...