led lights in cars

[chop]

Sort of, but it doesnt have to be a ring, can be a ring with spurs or any physical config.

[SteveW]

Yes, because it is from before type approval was required.

[chop]

Plenty available for those.

[Fredxx]

The early versions of the Ford Ka that is certainly the case, ironically you can fit tow-bars to later models including the Ka+. I guess anything to halt declining sales!

[NY]

Is it the fitting of the towbar which is a problem on some cars or is it the nose weight of the trailer/caravan on the towbar which is the stumbling block. In other words, would you be allowed to fit a towbar if it was to carry a bike rack as opposed to a second vehicle with one or more axles?

[Tim Streater]

You're in no position to judge; you're on the wrong side of it.

What I see is headlights being dipped late, and rather that dipping, it's like the bulbs are slowly rotated downwards. Also mine remains resolutely dipped at under 30mph. Not what you want on country lanes. We never use it now.

[NY]

No, but it doesn't fail to apply or release if a fuse blows. OK, the ratchet may fail or the cable may fray and snap, but those are less likely than a fuse blowing.

Ah. I drove a Citroen (loan car while mine was being serviced) about 10 years ago and it took a long time to apply and to release. I stopped in traffic, flicked the "apply" switch, let the footbrake up with about the same delay as I would use after pulling on a normal handbrake, and the car began to roll. On another occasion I flicked the "release" switch, let the clutch up and applied power - and the car made a graunching noise like one does when you forget to release a manual handbrake. I quickly learned to allow a few seconds delay after applying or releasing before letting up the footbrake when stopping or before trying to set off.

Almost every puncture I have had has been detected on returning to the car after it has been parked for a while. And almost always when I'm about to start a several-hundred-mile journey on a Sunday night. With a normal spare it's a few minutes' embuggerance to jack the car up, take off the old wheel, put the spare on and let the car off the jack. And then I can set off and do the full journey at normal speed. With a space-saver it would probably mean abandoning the journey (find somewhere to sleep overnight) and then visit a tyre place first thing in the morning when it's open. That is hardly progress.

The wheels on my Peugeot 308 are easily liftable and manoeuvrable when offering the wheel up to the hub to "hang" it on the lip of the hub. Even the much bigger wheels on my wife's Honda CR-V are not a problem: they

*feel* like about 10-20 kg, based on the weight of sack of logs for our fire which are I think 20 kg. Easy enough to lift onto the hub as long as you adopt "the squat" with your forearms braced between your legs and movements of your wrists to fine-tune the position of the wheel on the hub. I've changed quite a few punctured wheels on the Peugeot (at a guess, about 10 in the 14 years I've had it), and one on the Honda. Not a problem. The funniest occasion was just after I bought the Pug as an ex-demonstrator with about 18,000 on the clock. The front tyres were more worn than the back, so I decided to swap fronts and backs (keeping left/right the same because of wheel rotation). That was an amusing process: swap front with spare, swap back with old front, swap old back with spare on front. Repeat for the other side. Took about half an hour in total, and a lot of that was faffing around with the silly scissor jack that Peugeot supply which has an awkward folding handle (permanently attached) to turn the jack, and it guarantees skinning your knuckles on the ground. A separate double-cranked wheelbrace with a bayonet end that engages in the shaft of the jack is much easier because you can operate it at an angle while there's not much ground clearance. The great big pillar jack that was supplied with my dad's Hillman Hunters was a doddle because you turned a nut on the top of the pillar with the wheelbrace and the car rose up - no danger of the wheelbrace hitting the ground. But it was a big bugger and was an encumbrance in the boot ;-)

The re seems to be a school of thought that modern cars don't get punctures, or if they do, that there is always a garage open nearby who can do the job immediately.

[Fredxx]

Yes, but not for the earliest model in the UK.

[Tim+]

Fuses on *some* heavily loaded circuits may be prone to blowing. That doesn’t mean that they’re all equally likely to blow. Never had a fuse blow on my electric handbrake. I have had a snapped handbrake cable.

Tim

[NY]

I seem to always get screws (or on one occasion a long and very stiff thorn - I was surprised when the garage man showed me it) in the edge of the tread, too close to be legally repairable. At a guess, probably 2/3 of the punctures I've had have been non-repairable; one was on a tyre that had only done about 100 miles from new :-(

Over the 40 years of driving I've twice ripped the sidewall when forced into a kerb by cars that pulled out onto the wrong side of the road from behind a parked car when I have had priority because there's nothing parked on my side. Both were in the days before dashcams and the other cars just drove off, oblivious. The very first time I drove on my own after passing my test, I got a puncture but on the soft suspension of my mum's Renault 4 it wasn't obvious by the car pulling to one side or being lower on that side. The first I knew was when I smelled the unmistakable smell of hot rubber :-( I had to change the wheel in the pitch dark (no torch, no street lights, not even a hazard triangle to warn cars coming up behind, and I don't think the car had hazard lights). That was fun, doing everything by feel. After fumbling for a while I realised that if I took off my white shirt, opened the bonnet (which hinged at the *front*) and placed the shirt between the bonnet and the headlight, it cast a *little* bit of light back so I could see what I was doing. Quite a baptism of fire to change a wheel in the dark. The tyre had literally melted in places :-(

Nowadays I always have a torch in the car, and we keep an electric tyre pump in my wife's car (which we use for long journeys) so it's easy either to pump up the tyre to get me to a garage and it has a light in case I need to see to change the wheel.

[NY]

The auto-headlights on my wife's Honda seem to change as quickly as if it was done manually (no "slowly rotated downwards" which suggests something mechanical, rather than switching the beam filament off). Usually it dips as early as I would do, on the "wait till you see the white of the eyes" criterion of waiting to see the headlights rather than their reflection off bushes while the car is still round a corner), though there have been times when I've been fighting it to dip manually when it's not done it automatically (*). There's sometimes a very annoying delay before the headlights go back onto full beam, and I like to drive on full beam at night except for the brief times when I have to dip for an oncoming car. Driving on dipped headlights when there's a car in front is less of a problem because his tail lights help you see the bends ahead than your dipped headlights won't light up.

(*) On the Honda, the rotary light switch on the end of the indicator stalk has positions off, side, auto, headlight. I can never remember which way I need to turn the switch to go from auto to headlight, and it's bloody scary to turn it the wrong way and have only side lights to illuminate the road ahead :-( I think I'd have expected the order to be off, side, headlight, auto. It once stopped working altogether, and then I remembered that we'd just bought a dashcam. Without realising, I'd fitted it in front of the sensor that the auto headlights use which is in the large V-shaped "hub" that sticks down from the top of the window, to which the rear view mirror is attached. Once I'd relocated the dashcam to the opposite side of the hub (where there is no auto-headlights or auto-wipers sensor to be obscured) everything was fine.

[SteveW]

It is certainly the case that some EVs can be fitted with towbars for bike racks, but not for towing - that is down to the manufacturer choosing not to homologate the range for towing.

[Anthony R. Gold]

... as you follow him over the edge of the cliff.

[mm0fmf]

This explains why your electric handbrake experience was poor.

[Brian]

I was always dubious about French cars and, even now, almost certainly wouldn’t buy one. However, back in 1993 we bought a Renault Espace and kept it for about 13 years. Other than service parts only two things failed, a rear spring and a switch ( one of the those stalks on the steering column). I still regard it as one of my favourite cars and we often regretted selling it.

Both my brothers drive French cars and love them. The elder one had a bad experience with a BMW - a turbo failed from memory- and the repair cost was unbelievable.

Our Outlander has an electric handbrake. I was dubious at first but it seems to do the job. I intended to ask how (if) they tested it during the MOT but forgot.

As for LED lights, two of our vehicles have at least some. They are excellent, especially the headlights. Of course, you can’t legally just switch headlight bulbs to LED in lights not designed for them.

[jim.gm4dhj]

btter driving old bangers like me Mr Reay ..... save money in the long run

[jim.gm4dhj]

no DRLs no LED bulbs no TPMS no TURBOs no electric handbrake no built in info screens ...no bluetoof no parking sensors no built in DAB radio no sunroofs only one has working aircon no stop start...only one has a space saver..... would like no ABS or cataliser...but what can you do .....

[jim.gm4dhj]

liked the drum brakes all round on my '66 mustang

[jim.gm4dhj]

liked the sliding windows on my '62 mini and the push button starter on the floor and the dip switch on the floor.........preferred the handbrake on the righthand side of my '62 sunbeam alpine....but what can you do ....

[jim.gm4dhj]

modern cars are for sissies...a real driver picks his cars for features it doesn't have .....