Cars should cut out if they run out of vital fluids!

except on a smart motorway

you could have just pissed into the tank

I often wonder why they don't self protect. After all you should get a warning first, like top within x miles or the engine will self protect and stop. Brian

Yes, a warning that gives you chance to correct a problem (eg top up level of oil) is better than one which is too late and just shuts the car down or gives you a "do not drive any further" error.

That reminds me: I'll check the oil level in my car now. Whenever I've remembered recently, it's been after I've started the engine and been driving, so any dipstick measurement will be inaccurate.

No pollution? Where does the energy come from for these "conveyor belts".

Warnings for low fluid levels make sense, to prompt topping up before running out. However, you do not want an engine automatically shutting down, as it could do so at a dangerous point.

A friend had a dodgy connection suddenly cut the engine on his car. At the time, he was going around a roundabout and the sudden loss of drive, plus the loss of power steering suddenly making it whole lot heavier, meant he hit the kerb and damaged the suspension.

I had a sudden loss of power due to a dry solder joint. Luckily it just dropped to idle, not cutting out completely. It was still pretty scary, as I was in the third lane of the M60 and I not only had to get over the lanes, but the hard-shoulder was closed off for work.

That was certainly the case with my uncle's motorbike many years ago. It seized due to lack of oil. Once it had cooled and was topped up, it ran fine for years after.

Treadmills operated by unicorns

"Steve Walker" snipped-for-privacy@walker-family.me.uk> wrote in message news:srp2kh$5s0$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

I had my "fan belt" (alternator and power steering) fail as I was driving along the motorway. Luckily it happened late at night (so there wasn't much traffic around) and I could tug the steering wheel to move over to Lane 1. I was only about 2 miles short of the junction where I was planning to come off anyway, so I continued as planned. Keeping the car on the right course on the roundabout at the junction took a bit of strength, as did straightening up as I exited the roundabout. I knew of a petrol station just up ahead which was a convenient place to pull off the dual carriageway and to give as my location to the RAC man. As usual with a modern car, there was nothing he could do about it (gone are the days of a simple replacement of an easily-accessible belt with a standard belt that RAC can carry as stock), so all he could do was tow me home so I could take the car to the garage in my village the following morning. Sod's law was in action: the RAC van towed my car with its front wheels on a dolly that ran on its own wheels, and on a country lane this got a puncture. So the RAC man had to unload my car, change the wheel on the dolly, reload my car and carry on - all on a twisty road where the van and my car were sitting ducks for any late night drunk or tired drivers. He gave me a fluorescent jacket and a flashing amber light, and sent me back up the road round the bend to warn drivers coming at least in that direction.

I was very pissed-off that the garage who replaced my fan belt failed to notice that one of the pulleys had a bent flange - this was probably what caused the belt to fail - so about 5000 miles later the new belt failed again. But they denied all liability and (metaphorically) told me to f-off and take my business elsewhere in future (which I'd already decided to do!).

I've twice had cars die on me, on acceleration. One was on a Mark III Golf which occasionally stalled as I'd pulled out of a junction into traffic - but so rarely that I never knew when it would happen. I had it in the garage several times and they never found the fault - until one day the workman rang me in a state of excitement: they'd had it happen while the car was being monitored on its control bus, so they knew what the fault was - a throttle potentiometer from a drive-by-wire feed to the fuel injection. They wanted to charge me a large bll for diagnosing the fault because the car was just outside its mileage limit for the warranty - until I looked back through my paperwork and found the first worksheet describing the problem from several months earlier when the car was well within the limit. They reluctantly paid me back for all the labour of the various times that I'd had the car in, and I left them arguing the toss with VAG Warranties as to who should pay - all I knew was that it wouldn't be me.

The other time was with my present car. When the engine was cold, it would sometimes let me get about a mile from my house (it always failed on the same bit of road) and then the engine would stall as soon as I applied power (even to keep going at the same speed on an uphill gradient). I'd have to restart, which took a few minutes, then it would go fine for another hundred yards or so and repeat the process. After I'd been through this about 5 times, and then engine was warm, the car would behave flawlessly for the rest of the day and for several more days. I got into the habit of setting off early to go anywhere so I could get the car past its initial tantrum into a state where it was reliable. This was happening just when we were in the process of moving house, when I was making lots of journeys with cardboard boxes from the old house to the new one (my wife didn't trust removal men with boxes of books, ornaments etc and only reluctantly trusted them with big things like washing machine, freezer, wardrobes etc). So I didn't have any time to take the car into a garage to get the problem fixed and just had to keep it going until the house-moving was over. I had one scary moment when I thought I'd got the car past its tantrum, because it hadn't stalled for several minutes/miles. And it went and failed just as I'd pulled out into the middle of the road to turn right. I knew that when I'd got it started, it would probably fail again as soon as I set off, so I had to wait for a very long gap that would allow me to pull into the running lane, stop immediately with hazards on, set off and go a bit further, until I could reach a place to turn into a side road where it didn't matter so much if the car kept stalling.

On Jan 13, 2022 at 4:11:49 AM MST, "soup" wrote <srp1dk$rn0$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Wind power. Put huge sails next to the roads.

If the wind is not going the right direction just add huge fans.

Done and done.

Shutting down loses power steering and servo brakes - better to go into Limp mode.

eating corn from magic buckets, which are always full no matter how much has been eaten. The power to make this happen is taken from the "big crunch" at the end of the universe.

Which is precisely what happens if left to fall to bits.

At least my Renault has an automatic oil check every time I start it. It says "oil ok" when I start it up. If I press a button, I get a digital oil level graph, which I sometimes use to see if I could do with a bit more in it. I've never let it get low enough to not say "oil ok", I assume something would flash or beep or it would refuse to start.

It's a damn good basis for one thought, the film could always add and adjust.

And what do you think happens in 30 seconds when it doesn't cut out and the engine seizes?

Fertiliser, not pollution.

You remind me of the guy I sold my wind turbine to. He probably has the only place you can get meaningful power from those stupid things, a yacht.