Just off to pick up the car. MOT yesterday straight through except split in exhaust needed welding £40 no biggie.
Quote from garage owner. 'Yeah virtually every car needs work on its exhaust every year now. Its them speed bumps.'
Sooner or later someone will get a court case past a local council and the hopefully we can start getting rid of these ridiculous things.
|
|
It would require proof to get anywhere in court (no matter how obvious it is to us), noone can afford the expert evidence and forensics. If only someone with the equipment and qualifications could do something about it.
|
How do these things cause damage exactly?
Bare with me here, but:
Most cars here are sold all over the EU.
A lot of EU countries manage (somehow) to have roads that are even worse than ours.
So these parts must be engineered to handle that, unless they make one set of shocks/springs for our tiny island and a whole other set for Europe.
I used to take them at 30mph but that is a ridiculous speed, so I now annoy the hell out of other drivers and do them at 10 - 20mph.
As long as you're sensible I don't see how they can 'damage' the car.
I still hate the poxy things though.
|
How do these things cause damage exactly?
Many humps in my area have a variety of scrapes in the road surface on the down /far side.
I can only assume some are from exhausts and some from tow bars when the vehicle lands/ bottoms out.
|
Good point, I've seen these my way. Sumps could also cause these I imagine, but I still think they are caused by either stupidly low cars, people going too fast, or heavy vehicles like trucks/lorries which probably come off better than the speed bump!
Even taking them at stupid speeds I never ground out any part of the car, even the badly in need of new rear mounts wobbly exhaust.
|
I visited a friend in the Lister hospital in Stevenage recently. Directly outside the main entrance in the narrow slip road is a hump, put there to smooth the passage of pedestrians and, more particularly, wheelchairs, I would think. I hope it wasn't intended primarily to reduce speed in a situation where it is difficult to imagine any of the small minority of (mainly official) vehicles using the road passing at more than 10 mph. The hump goes completely across the road and is quite long and not particularly vicious in terms of the slopes.
Anyway, a police patrol car (MB E-class estate, I think) came slowly along the slip road and slowed to a crawl over the hump. In spite of the care taken, the bodywork very nearly grounded -- I mean by a few millimetres. So it is possible to ground a car at very low speed, even over a long hump with gentle slopes.
On my way out I was in the lift with the police officers involved. I asked them for an off-the-record opinion on speed humps and told them how close they had been to grounding. I can't repeat their words verbatim here, but suffice it to say they were vehemently set against them and they spoke of their views being widely shared by the other emergency services too.
|
|
Some humps in Northampton are twice kerb height and have square brick tops. It is impoosible for anything other than a proper 4 X 4 to get over them without damage. When I had the Supra some roads were simply unpassable for me. The boy racers go up the curb as its lower than the hump...
|
|
I had to take to the kerb recently because of road narrowing.In heavy traffic I needed to make a right turn but the junction had been built out on both sides,effectively limiting it to one vehicles width,although it still had a centre line.As there were several cars in it I could not get through,they could not reverse so the only option left was to mount the pavement which gave me just enough room to get through.This particular junction causes trouble all the time,I cannot see any logic to it,what possible benefit is there to making a junction so narrow it causes gridlock?
|
I had to take to the kerb recently because of road narrowing.In heavy traffic I needed to make a right turn but the junction had been built out on both sides,effectively limiting it to one vehicles width,although it still had a centre line.As there were several cars in it I could not get through,they could not reverse so the only option left was to mount the pavement which gave me just enough room to get through.This particular junction causes trouble all the time,I cannot see any logic to it,what possible benefit is there to making a junction so narrow it causes gridlock?
A very good question Sierraman. Perhaps the mayor of London and executives of many of its borough councils should be required to answer it.
|
|
|
|
.>> Some humps in Northampton are twice kerb height and have squarebrick tops. It is impoosible for anything other than a proper 4 X 4 to get over them without damage. When I had the Supra some roads were simply unpassable for me. The boy racers go up the curb as its lower than the hump...
Whereabouts are these?
Never met anything the BX/Xantia/Berlingo could not handle
|
I have to traverse a number of speed humps and 'platforms' every day and have done for years. I always take them slowly and have never grounded anything as yet, inc. my lowered Skyline GTR and lowered cars I've had here to work on (e.g. lowered FTO).
Really, the exhaust system should not hang lower than sill height - e.g. if you crouch down by the car and peer underneath to the other sill then the exhaust box should not be hanging down. I suspect some exhausts get damaged when hangers are missing or the exhaust is poorly mounted and 'sagging'.
I think many of the 'scars' you see on speed humps are due to people taking them too fast. Near my son's college there is a 20mph limit and three sets of speed humps, yet in the morning I sometimes see delivery vans (Mail, DHL etc) rattling along at 35+mph and making no effort to slow down.
|
|
|
|
|
:no_upscale():format(webp)/https://cdn.uk.prod.group-mobility-trader.com/images/cas/fdef47fa1a2964ea8369a0e487abc66d/02523f0ba966b91fd236fe556c25a82d.jpg)
:no_upscale():format(webp)/https://cdn.uk.prod.group-mobility-trader.com/images/cas/2b474b42e5fa451387db7181965e8ca0/ce48d368c46806d7c5b9941d39bfd953.jpg)
:no_upscale():format(webp)/https://cdn.uk.prod.group-mobility-trader.com/images/fallback/coming-soon.webp)
