I'd dispute the wiring size, as I'm pretty sure many cars do use thick enough wires for caravans and trailers which might have non LED lights, but certainly elsewhere they could be thinner and one would suppose any fuses smaller as well. People tell me that unless the light is out due to a crash or some wiring defect in the vehicle, they hardly ever stop working. So you have swings and roundabouts I suppose.
Brian
Electric handbrakes are (I suppose) a good idea that is very badly implemented. Firstly there needs to be a means of applying and releasing the handbrake even if the power to the handbrake motor has failed. Secondly it needs to apply and release as fast as a mechanical handbrake to allow for quick application and release during a hill start. I use a handbrake for a lot more than just parking: when stopped at traffic lights, when doing a hill start, so I need to be able to release and go, without having to wait for the motor to unwind the cable to release the brakes before I can start moving, or to wait for the handbrake to apply before it's safe to release the footbrake.
Another thing that has no place in a car is a space-saver spare wheel. I want a full size, fully-serviceable spare which can be used as far and as fast as the wheel that has got a puncture, so I can take the car to get the tyre repaired when *I* want, rather than immediately having to find a garage that is still open and which can do the repair *now*, if I get a puncture during a journey and want to go more than 50 miles at 50 mph. Start from the premise that every car must have a full-size spare, and design the car boot around that restriction. Tyres that you have to squirt goo into the seal the puncture are a waste, because as I understand it, once you've put goo in the tyre it always needs to be replaced rather than being repaired. Mind you, almost every puncture I've had in the last 10 years or so has been at the edge of the tread (or on the wall of the tyre) - I can't remember the last time a puncture has been repairable. Sod's law? My wife's Honda also suffered from a "leaky wheel" which had a slow puncture even after the tyre was replaced because its tread was getting low: eventually we found a little local garage which wire-brushed the rims to make sure there was a good tyre/rim seal.; the others just said "we can't find a problem". Local garages take more care than QuickFit etc.
Even when somebody drove into the back of my car and broke the coloured lens, the use of coloured LEDS meant that the brake and stop lights still showed red, while the indicator still showed amber.
sensible chap....
A car designed without a fitment for adding a tow-bar cannot have one fitted.
If a car is designed with fittings for a tow-bar, it should have wiring capable of driving a trailer board with filament lights.
Does your manual handbrake have a “back-up” method of application?
This technical nut has long been cracked. A non-issue.
I have no idea what kind of implementation of an electric handbrake you’ve had experience of but again, these all all non-issues in practice. So maybe you have to wait half a second for full application. Hardly a deal breaker.
Why? A full size spare would be nice but have you picked up a modern full size wheel and tyre lately? They weigh a ton. I can see why in the interests of weight-saving and economy space-savers or even no spare is increasingly the norm. With the mandatory TPMS fitted these days you’re much more likely to catch a puncture early before any tyre damage has occurred.
Not true with the newer water based sealants. Of course it’s not unknown for tyres shops to be either ignorant or disingenuous in the interests of selling more tyres.
Tim
After market tow bars for cars not designed to have one used to be quite a big business. Are you saying those no longer exist?
I believe that is the case. 1998 was the date where you needed a type approved tow-bar. Some cars don't have a train-weight specification, and these cannot tow a trailer.
Ah, back in the Good Old Days, (late 60s/early 70s), when I was a student, I removed the rear bumper from my Herald 13/60, and bolted a piece of angle-iron across the gap between the rear ends of the chassis members. This worked successfully to tow a car trailer around for several years, once carrying a Big Healey a hundred miles or so. And I could not do that now? Terrible!
Stop my (hybrid) car on a gradient with the footbrake and the brake remains applied when I take my foot off the pedal. Restart by pressing the accelerator pedal. No delay. And when I stop on level-ish ground and apply the parking brake putting the car into drive and pressing the accelerator releases the brake
I have almost always had the puncture repairable except with the first where the flat wasnt obvious handling wise and I f***ed the tyre driving on it flat. But I live adjacent to where we have lots and lots of new houses being built and the punture has been a teck screw in the body of the tyre, presumably it has fallen off the back of one of the builder's utes. One time I could hear it ticking when going around a corner relatively slowly. Didnt bother to get it fixed when I realised what it was but evenually ended up with a flat.
I would have thought that type approval would not be a problem for a big tow bar manufacturer, such as Witter. The train-weight specification might be more of a problem, but are there many cars that don't have one or, because of their age perhaps, don't need one?
I would have thought that was something for the two-bar fitter to check and, if necessary, to provide new wiring for. A caravan will need a lot more than just a few filament lights.
One potential advantage of LED lighting is that every light unit could have its own separate digital address so in theory all the low-power lights (ie not headlights) could simply exist on a 'ring main' and be activated by sending control signals over the power cable. Not sure if this is what CanBUS is all about anyway.
Andrew
Yes Fredxx is right. There are cars that cannot legally have a tow bar fitted as they are not approved for such. The Ford Ka was one such model.
OMG
PATHETIC
PATHETIC
shocking
Only the bad ones. My car’s auto-dipping is brilliant.
Tim
Can the Peel P50 have one?
Correct, but not entirely. It is a type approved towbar for a type approved vehicle, from after that date, that the manufacturer has apoproved to tow.
You can still add a towbar (without type approval) to a car produced before that date or to a car from after that date, that is not type approved. So you can add one to an imported or amateur built vehicle that has gone through Single Vehicle Approval or its replacement, Individual Vehicle Approval.
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