Used to occasionally look for 6th in the Disco, now look for 7th...
The bias on the Freelander box is 3/4 and R is next to 6 with no collar/push down interlock to prevent you going past 5/6. So 4 to 5 has a habit of ending up nowhere and 5 to 6 will try R!
That depends, much quieter car that revs considerably slower. Disco
2300 rpm @ 63mph, Freelander 1750 rpm @ 63 mph (all ish but close enough). Normall sort of driving would have the Disco up to nearly
3000 rpm before changing up, Freelander doesn't have to go much above
2000 rpm.
When I first got the FL the little green "change up" light was on an awful lot. And the damn thing will do nearly 30 mph in 6th with the engine at idle, it'll even fight the brakes...
What did we do before lowering door mirrors were available? There are probably quite a lot of people reading here who started driving long before door mirrors were fitted to cars. It was not that long ago when the only mirror was internal. No door mirrors, and no wing mirrors.
But this is a manual car so it doesn't have a transmission brake. I can't see how suspension is implicated if the car is fully at rest (ie car body has stopped moving relative to the wheels) and the wheels then rotate slightly when the footbrake is released after the handbrake has been applied. I'd have thought that this indicated some sideways play on the brake pads that are operated by the handbrake - I presume there must be separate pads because if there was only one set of pads they would already be applied by the footbrake and should remain applied just as hard when the handbrake pulls them on and then when the footbrake pressure on them is released. Car is a Honda CR-V if that helps identify problem further.
Well you very rarely see people nowadays opening the driver's door slightly to look backwards through the gap towards the back wheel when parking or reversing into a narrow gap, as used to be very common when I was a child in the 1960s. And it's a bit less common to see a passenger get out of the car to guide the driver into the space. Was it common not even to have *wing* mirrors? I'll have to find pictures of old cars and have a look... I presume in the days before adjustable mirrors (either mechanical or electric) they tended to be convex so you had a greater field of view and could see the ground at the same time as the cars you are passing, at the expense of the old "objects in this mirror may appear further away that they really are" problem.
There is no doubt that door mirrors, and especially a remotely-controlled passenger side one, have made parking close to a kerb a great deal easier. Before adjustable door mirrors, I probably drove forward into a parking space more often that backwards to avoid the problem of the lines disappearing as you get close to them.
No doubt we will all be wondering in a few decades "how did people ever manage before reversing cameras?" which again make life a great deal easier for lining up straight. I find that I can judge the forwards/backwards position of the rear bumper of a car (even one I've never driven before) fairly easily but judging the lateral position, even on a car I drive frequently, is very difficult without being able to see the position of the lines relative to rear wheels in the mirror.
One problem with modern cars is that windows are smaller (especially the sills are higher) and the wings are lower and slope away, so it's more difficult to see the extremities of the car through the windows by turning your head round and you have to rely more on mirrors. I remember when I got my Pug 308, replacing a Pug 306 with better visibility of the front wings, I had to practice a lot with parallel parking until I worked out where the sides of the front wings were - I was scared stiff of nudging the car in front as I turned into the space. Parking sensors are OK, though a lot only "see" forwards and not sideways so they don't necessarily help with the "can I turn yet - have I gone far enough to avoid the car in front" problem of parallel parking (apart from the final forwards/backwards positioning after you've turned into the space. As with a lot of things, the more you practice the better you get!
I had a couple of Volvo 240s which did this, and came to the conclusion that it was simply the suspension winding up. It was only a real problem when trying to back up to the caravan when on a slope.
I still do, sometimes, just to check that I am between the white lines in a car park.
It is not unknown for me to ask Wifey to hop out and guide me, in a tight spot :-)
Just looked back, and some did, some didn't. My 'fun' car is a 1968 Traveller, made the year before I started driving, and that does not have any external mirrors except a bolt on door mirror that I fitted.
I clearly remember buying and fitting wing mirrors to cars, in, I suppose, the early 70s. Back then, nearly everyone had a hole saw to fit wing mirrors and aerials, neither of which were standard on ordinary cars, except perhaps the 'deluxe' models.
The only "accident" I've had recently was where a woman was out of a Honda guiding the lady driver back - straight into the rear corner of my last Omega. I was stationary at lights at the time. I bought a replacement tail-light lens, and when I called to be refunded for the cost was told of the hundreds of pounds the Honda had cost for her repairs.
I fitted great streamlined things to my Mk 1 Cortina back in the day. They were great cars with narrow pillars. My current Octavia has huge blind spots because of the angle subtended by the door pillars and mirror mounting.
I've just found a photo of one of my dad's cars (a 1967 Ford Corsair) and that only had a wing mirror on the driver's side. And mum's 1960 Morris Minor (just a two-door, not a Traveller) didn't have any - but then it still had trafficators when it was made and only had these decommissioned and flashing indicators fitted later on - maybe when mum bought it in 1966.
After that I can't be sure what was standard because mum and dad got a caravan and may well have had wing mirror's fitted on both sides of their cars from then onwards, even if this wasn't standard, so they could attach the wide-angle strap-on "see round the caravan" mirrors to them.
Manual or auto Defenders and Discovery's do, the parking brake operates a single drum brake on the output of the transfer box. The disc brakes at each wheel are only operated by the foot brake.
What can happen is that the tension in the handbrake cables pulls the suspension to a different static position when things can move when the footbrake is released. But this should only be a sort of "settleing" rather than a sensation of actually moving.
Learnt where the sides and corners of the car are relative to the ground/line/kerb/wall or WHY. I do cheat with the low (18") high wall that curves out from our gate. It has a 5' high stake to mark it's end. Said stake is also useful to show the driver of the council snow blower where that wall is.
Pretty sure the car I partly learnt in and used after passing the test in 1977 only had an internal mirror. Hillman Minx Hunter type, a google image search shows them with and without wing mirrors.
I do remember hiring a large van about 12 years ago and "discovering" door mirrors for reversing. Previously reverseing would have been arm across back of passenger seat to help twist my body body 90 degrees to car direction and head turned left to properly look out of nearside rear windows or rear window.
I discovered the usefulness of door mirrors for reversing when I first met my wife (*) and she said "why do you turn round to reverse" and pointed out how you could use door mirrors instead. I still tend to do a quick confidence check over my left shoulder (though I've never needed the arm-along-the-seat-back) because I can see a wider field of view simultaneously rather than seeing one narrower field of view and then have to look across to the other mirror for the other side view, but I rely more on my mirrors than I did - and at least now I can see where the wheels are to avoid parking a foot away from the kerb or mounting the kerb. Until I started using my mirrors for reversing (as well as for normal driving when overtaking, which is all I thought they were for!) I always found it easier to park on the offside of a road because I had a better view of the kerb that I was parking against.
The first time I drove a hired van, I was forever looking in the non-existent central mirror when I wanted to check what was behind me. Took ages to school myself not to!
I see that many modern caravans don't have a window at the back so the driver can't use that other great 1970s accessory - a periscope that fitted on the car windscreen near the rear-view mirror to look back over the roof of the car and through the front and rear windows of the caravan.
(*) In the husband v wife driving stakes, she wins hands down because she can reverse a trailer which I am utterly inept and cack-handed at doing - I can't even keep the trailer in line, never mind reverse it round a corner, but I regain my lost kudos because I can parallel park much more easily than she can.
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