OT: "Mixed up the brake and accelerator"?!?

You mean the GM Hydramatic??? They used ir for only 15 years, from

Arguably better than the Powerslide...

My car failed the other year because one of the headlights was aimed too high and too far to the right. I'm not sure how it had got out of adjustment, unless I had to replace a bulb and the new has seated slightly differently in the housing so the filament isn't quite at the optical centre of the reflector.

Being a sensible, helpful garage, they fixed it immediately and recorded it as a pass, with a status of "advisory - corrected for test".

That shows that headlamp aim *is* checked. It then has another 12 months to go out of aim before being checked again ;-)

The problem is that some cars have no warning or else tell you once you have completely run out. In the old days you could see the tank and could see the level, providing you remembered to check under the bonnet periodically. Nowadays the tank is usually hidden within a front wing and the filler hose is bent, so you have no way of visually checking (either from the side or from above) and are reliant entirely on the warning (if any) or on the absence of fluid when you try to wash, and then filing from a bottle if you keep one in the car.

My dad's Ford Sierra had a warning light, but the icon on it was as incomprehensible as they usually are. Once I can work out *what the F* the icon is showing a picture of, working out what that means is usually trivially easy. I was driving and suddenly there was an insistently flashing orange light. On the basis that a flashing light usually means "this in important: attend to it NOW" I stopped and looked through the instruction manual. Next problem: the icons in the manual look different to the ones on the lights themselves, so you've got that added problem of "which icon in the manual looks most similar to (rather than identical to) the one on the dashboard".

Because they may be bloody-minded and because it means you have to pay a re-test fee (some proportion of the full test fee) which probably means the garage get their cut of that.

I once had a scare. I bought a new car (new to me, but about 3 1/2 years old). I was given an MOT certificate in amongst the paper work. I assumed (wrongly!) that the MOT would be due at the same time as the tax disc, on the assumption that the car was taxed from new and then had 1-year tax every year from then. One day I happened to look at the MOT certificate and found that it had run out a couple of months ago and was due at a totally different time of year from the tax disc. I had to phone round various test centres to find one that could do it *now* so I became legal ASAP. I was very careful not to do anything that would get me stopped by the police: while it is legal to drive with no MOT if you are on your way to a booked test, there would be the inevitable questions about "have you been driving it illegally for the last few months".

The problem wouldn't happen now because the tax payment now always dates from when the car changes hands, so there is no longer any correlation between tax date and MOT date: you *always* have to look at the MOT certificate. Nowadays, you cannot sell a car with n months tax remaining. Instead the seller always claims a refund for the unused portion, and then the new owner has to take out a new 12 month period of tax from the day he buys it. Logistically this is is a pain because you can't use the (untaxed) car to drive you from the garage to the nearest post office to buy the tax. I'm not sure whether you can buy the *first* tax of a newly-acquired car online (by posting them the documents they need to see) or whether the first one has to be a a post office, with all the subsequent ones being online. I've not been in that situation since the rules changed, because I bought my present car (ex demonstrator at 18,000 miles) long before they abolished the concept of selling a car with n months' tax outstanding.

That really is illogical. To have different conventions even within the same parent company (BMC, later BL) is absurd. I could imagine a different standard between (for example) all BMC cars and all Fords or all Vauxhalls, but I'd expect one company to be consistent. I suppose the Austin convention was more logical as it is at least the same way round as a floor-mounted gearshift, if you imagine looking from the knob towards the steering column (verus looking from the knob towards the floor of the car).

Did all column gearchanges have the 1/2 plane as up/down or did some even turn things round through 90 degrees and have 1/2 as towards/away?

I've never driven a column gearchange car. The only car I can remember seeing was my Dad's 1967 Ford Corsair which had a column-mounted

(*) Some of which were branded as "Consul" rather than "Cortina", in the same way as some Ford Granadas in the 70s were branded as "Consul" - I believe Regan and Carter's in The Sweeney (NHK 295M) was technically a Consul not a Granada, even though identical-looking cars were also sold as Granadas at the same time.

The Dynaflow was no efficiency champion either. A friend had a '59 225 and I thought it was like driving a power boat. Send a message to the

Was the Morris ISIS a column shift - never drove a column shift BMC car..

Not any of the above - my Bedford van (vauxhall victor FB mechanics IIRC) was towards you and up for reverse, towards you and down for first

- away and up for second and away and down for third and that was yer lot.

Never happened to me, even parking on ridiculously steep hills.

That's a lot to own, why do you destroy them so quickly?

That's just laziness.

Still, imagine the customer was a woman. She could swerve off at an angle for no reason and kill people.

But if it breaks, then it reverts to being a car with no ABS. So if you used to have ABS but it broke, you have to fix it, yet you're no more dangerous than your friend who never had it.

I am pretty sure that you can do it online from your phone using the new keepers section of the V5C. You can take out 6 months or 12 months tax and have the option to pay it monthly by direct debit.

There are a few things to catch you out though. You'll probably need to arrange your insurance in plenty of time, because some companies can take days to update the database. You can't tax an ex-motability car online for the first time, as the system can't cope with the idea that a new owner means a change from tax exempt to taxable without you going to the post-office - although in my case, I was buying from a dealer and we could drive to the post-office on his trade-plates.

Another gotcha is if you can't find the V5C for your existing car and have mislaid the reminder, as it arrived weeks before you could actually tax it. You can phone, pay £25 for a new V5C and they can generate the new number and tax it for you there and then - except that they fail to tell you until you have paid the £25 (non-refundable) fee, that you can't set up a monthly direct debit over the phone, only online and they can't give you the number over the phone!

If it is a brand new car, then the dealer normally sorts it out, but if it is second-hand and has been taxed before, then you can do it online.

SteveW

I've driven cars with failed ABS for years (it pays to be nice to the mechanics). They work just fine. Usually only one sensor failed, and it still does the ABS thing for the other three wheels.

The trouble with power steering is it hides things. I once drove 10 miles with a completely flat tyre and didn't notice! By the time I got home, the tyre was shredded. On a car without power steering, I would have stopped, changed the tyre, and been able to have the puncture repaired.

But I do like the light steering it provides.

But it is yet another thing to go wrong. My current car has a power steering leak. One garage told me it must be repaired at some phenomenal cost. The next garage just cleaned up the leak, tightened a nut, and topped up the fluid. It still leaks slowly, but it works, and it er.... passed the MOT.

My mother has a Hyundai with the indicator stalk on the right - on the couple of occasions that I have driven it (test drives after doing work on it), I have found it very hard to adjust. I'm sure I'd be fine after a longer drive.

Similarly, the first time I drove a left-hand drive car, I found myself swerving very slightly when changing gear - much like many learner drivers do. As I had a few hundred miles to my destination, I soon got the hang of it.

SteveW

Nope, works better than having their monkey do it. Fewer monkeys required.

Yep.

Nope, no people there because everyone stays in their car and the monkeys arent there.

And that's worse.

Because a broken one is worse.

It is actually because cars with ABS are designed differently to ones with no ABS, most obviously with the non ABS cars having braking systems balanced so they don't skid at the back with harsh braking etc.

That's because you are mechanically illiterate/incompetent.

It was very obvious on the Getz.

That's life.

Specially when parking in tight places.

Mine never has and plenty of non power steering systems do anyway,

Because it's a steaming turd with wheels.

They do that with you mechanically illiterates/incompetents.

That is not conventional in the UK. We always always have R on the left. It makes sense to have reverse be close to 1, because you don't change from 4 to R!

Only ever seen that s*it in a Citroen 2CV. A proper car has the stick on the floor. Operating a stick in front of you is very difficult.

Rotation, oh my god, WTF were they thinking? Let's make this car as difficult to drive as possible.

I can understand you not remembering all the mechanics of the gears. So, were they hot?

RWD are s*it at everything. Except they have smaller turning circles. I hate the way I try a U-turn in my FWD and it doesn't quite make it. Just ONE f****ng inch out and I scrape the sidewall of the tyre on the kerb. And since we have radials now instead of crossply, they just BURST!

FOUR spelling errors in one sentence? Are you drunk?

What woman wears size 12? Or is that a kid's 12?