Apart from myself does anyone use their cars performance, but treat it with care. Not holding the car on a slope with the clutch instead of doing a hill start, waiting at traffic lights with foot on clutch instead of handbrake and neutral, violent last minute braking. Driving over kerbs, not slowing down or driving around road imperfections.
And is it a company car or yours!
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Apart from myself does anyone use their cars performance but treat it with care. Not holding the car on a slope with the clutch instead of doing a hill start waiting at traffic lights with foot on clutch instead of handbrake and neutral violent last minute braking. Driving over kerbs not slowing down or driving around road imperfections.
Blimey, have you been out in a car with my fiancee?
You've just described almost to the letter her driving style. When we go out, I tend to volunteer to drive there if she drives back (she hardly drinks, whereas I like a shandy or two). This means that a) I can have a couple of beers and b) I'm desensitised to her driving by the time it comes to going home...
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Blimey have you been out in a car with my fiancee?
1, Too old.
2, Not brave enough, (you haven't met SWMBO!)
3, Divorce is too expensive.
Edited by Old Navy on 03/11/2009 at 10:37
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I treat any car I drive with mechanical sympathy, and particularly so my own car for which I have to pay.
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I fully agree.
Treat a cold engine as if it were brand new.
659.
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SWMBO takes the mick out of me because I will drive a mile out of my way rather than go down a road that has speed humps. She just can't grasp that driving over speed humps without altering your speed (as she does) will damage her car.
She's only driven my car once since I got it, thank the Lord!
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my missus goes mad because i use a road on the way home with lots of cars parked on it, and the fact occasionaly you have to give way. I use this route because if i used the easier route during the course of the year i will have saved on mileage & fuel because it is shorter.
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Apart from myself does anyone use their cars performance but treat it with care.
Of course. My car, BYW.
Edited by FotheringtonThomas on 03/11/2009 at 11:10
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I dont use my cars performance - it doesnt have very much, so instead I drive it sympathetically seeking good economy at reasonable speed. I tend to take it up to about 2600-3000 rpm in the lower gears and a bit less going into 4th and 5th.
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I have always believed that reliability is at least partly due to mechanical sympathy.
As for the performance, why not, as long as it is also sympathetically done, eg not using high revs when cold.
I drive any car whether my own , company or hire car in much the same way. The exception is my old Commer which is driven a little more gently and with due deference to age of design and components.
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I don't use high revs from cold, and I always try to cruise the last mile or so, plus let the engine idle for 20-30 seconds before switching off to let the turbo cool off. I do this with both the diesel and petrol engines.
The Volvo gets a blast round to 6000 RPM occasionally on wide open throttle once everything is nice and hot, despite it's 150,000 miles. It doesn't seem to suffer for it, and still makes a lovely noise when it does so. Otherwise, it gets a pretty easy life, 95% motorway miles, few journeys under 25 miles and not driven hard most of the time.
I do have a bad habit with clutch and brake when sitting stationary. I tell myself off for it, and try not to do it.
I have always had good mechanical reliability from my cars though, so I tell myself I can't be doing too much wrong.
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I look after my car better than myself. I tread her out down 2 mile of road with hardly any traffic before hitting my local town centre, this means the engine is doing very little revs and is running letting the oil warm up to temperature. Everytime I stop its handrake and into nautral I never ever leave it in gear with clutch down. Also again hill starts always a hand brake job, then slowly release getting the biting point to move off.
Once the engine is hot I do sometimes rev the pants out of it before changing gear but then its the only way you can get enjoyment out of a 64bhp engine!
I also try and avoid heavy braking but I don't go through amber unless its not safe to do so so sometimes I do have to brake hard.
I also have sadly gone over a kerb at speed last week :(. Tracking will need doing to be on the save side.
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kerb at speed last week :(. Tracking will need doing to be on the save side.
Never does any harm to get it checked Rattle, but unless the steering feels different in some way it's unlikely the tracking is out.
It's a good idea to examine the tyre minutely though. Banging over a high sharp kerb at any speed can cut the sidewall. The other thing to do is jack the wheel up and spin it to see if it's bent.
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Both my daughters now live in parts of London where it's obligatory to park with two wheels on the pavement.
They and their respective husband/boyfriend now treat kerbs with disdain. I wince to see them hit kerbs at speed.
I've given up trying to tell them - they'll find out when they have to buy new tyres I suppose.
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Thanks for the tip Lud :) Steering feels ok but it feels like there is a tiny bit of pull to left but I dare not take the hands of the wheel to find if its just my imagination or not. It certainly dosn't feel dangerious but I will do what you say if I get a day off and it stops raining. I can't afford any more garages for a bit :).
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I have always believed that reliability is at least partly due to mechanical sympathy.
I think that goes without saying. If a car's durability was unaffected by the driver's sympathy, there wouldn't be any point in doing it.
I drive any car whether my own, company or hire car in much the same way
Many years ago I booked a company pool car (a 309) for a round trip of 250 miles. Immediately after setting out I realised from the horrible noise on braking that the front pads were down to bedrock. I did the whole trip on the gears and handbrake, except in emergency of course. It amazed me that the car had only done 16K - I could only assume that no other users could be bothered to report the fault.
Edited by Andrew-T on 03/11/2009 at 15:29
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Interesting that in a thread about mechanical sympathy, the term pool car should crop up. My first experience of a pool car was a K registration mk3 Cavalier SRi 8 valve. Not only had the poor thing done about 80,000 miles without so much as an oil change, but it was filthy, tatty, and generally reeked of abuse. It looked like you would expect a car to turn up if joyriders had had it and dumped it. Thrashed by everyone, cared for by nobody, loads of minor faults unfixed because nobody reported them. Still went well, amazingly, but an absolute shed of a car.
Stolen and burnt out in the end. We jokingly referred to it as a mercy killing.
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Interesting, the one kind of car I have never driven is a pool car. My employer has never believed in using them.
I would think that nowadays the wreck of a pool car is a thing of the past. Elf ' n safety means that company provided cars are part of your working environment, certainly our company cars are meticulously monitored for maintenance etc by the leasing co.
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I used several pool cars when I worked in the tobacco industry in the sixties. The ones I remember are a Morris 1800, a Hillman Super Minx and a Ford Corsair.
They were all fairly new, clean inside and out and in impeccable nick.
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Hitting a kerb to fast often means wheel needs balancing,let a tyre outlet have a check to be on the safeside.I have owned 3 VW Beetles in the past all had milages well over hundred thousand miles when i sold them.Most cars will do that milage if driven with care.
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rattle does that mean you going to spend a bit for the tracking on your corsa that be over the £626 you just spent on...
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it feels like there is a tiny bit of pull to left <<
This is probably due to the camber (curvature from middle to kerb) of the road - most cars will track left a little. Try going the wrong way up a road (somewhere quiet like an industrial estate at night!) and you'll likely find it pulls right.
On a basic car I'd only check the tracking if there was abnormal tyre wear or it really felt odd to drive.
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Yes, sympathy for the cold engine a must, and let the thing have a tickover for a few mins (turbo'd) to let the gubbins cool down before shutoff.
I think good regular servicing comes under this heading too.
Can't abide seeing people holding cars on the clutch, i suppose that's why hill hold has been introduced...for people who can't drive.
Road humps/pot holes....there's a particular deep one on the main road coming home, without fail every car will thump into that hole the car violently lurching to one side, swmbo and i manage to straddle it every time.
You only have to look at the uncared for car a few moments to see the way it's driven.
Problem being, reburbishment does away with the evidence quite well, makes used car buying more difficult.
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>>Road humps/pot holes....there's a particular deep one on the main road coming home
Have you reported it?
I find my local council's very good on dealing with damaged road reports.
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Have you reported it?
It's a point in the road where the road has sunk beside a drain cover.
I haven't reported it Tom cos it's not a problem for us, we manage to miss it...TBH i'd miss seeing the line of cars connected close together like a train one by one bouncing in the thing..;)
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I'm a great believer in 'mechanical sympathy' and I concur with most contributions to this thread.
One aspect that confuses me is the practise of letting the engine tick-over at the end of a long run to 'let things cool down'.
How long should this extended tick-over last and does it actually work? I thought that an engine heats up when ticking over - witness cars overheating in long traffic hold ups - and if this is not so I would imagine that it would take a very inconvenient time of sitting in one's car having driven home from, say, Newcastle to Birmingham with the wife waiting inside with who knows what as you wait for the engine to cool down.
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The cooling down is for turbo-chargers rather than engines and is generally pointless unless you've been using plenty-o-boost (sounds like a Bond character...) just prior to the end of your journey.
More sensibly just keep the engine off boost (typically light throttle below 2000rpm) for the last mile or so of your journey and it's not really necessary.
If you've been zooming around, eg on a race track, the oil in the (red hot) turbo will carbonise and contaminate oilways/oil filters unless thee turbo is allowed to cool first with the engine running.
The rest of the engine will remain at the normal running temp assuming the engine fan/thermostat/cooling system are worming ok.
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