OT - 4x4 automatic car.

[Ron Lowe]

That's a Land Rover Discovery 3 with Bridgestone Blizzak winter tyres.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Eh? Peak RPM is usually the safety limit of the engine. Dunno of any where the two coincide.

It would be a very poor design indeed where they did.

Race engines are horribly inefficient and have nothing to do with road vehicles.

Far too simple and explanation.

But never is.

[Dave Liquorice]

My winters are no more noisy than the summer or all season tyres I have had. Don't confuse knobbly, mainly for mud use, tyres with winter ones. The esstential difference between my winters and the summer and all season tyres is a much softer compound and far more sipes right across the tread width.

Hard compound to take the punishment of tracks and knobbly to dig in between rocks and mud. There is a landi round here that has some muds fitted, you can hear him coming way before any other car...

[John MacLeod]

Well, some topics run and run!

I drive an automatic car -- Honda Accord -- and a LandRover Defender (obviously manual and obviously permanent 4WD with a lockable centre differential). I live in a rural area and have been driving for 45 years. All over the world. Spent years in Canada and duly passed a driving test there too. Travelled hundreds of miles a day in snow in a 7=BD litre Fury with a blueprinted engine -- obviously 2WD and auto. And high mileages in a somewhat less powerful Fury and in a much less powerful 4.1 litre inline 6 -- auto of course.

Dreadful car, that last one. My driveway was parallel to the Trans- Canada highway but about 20 yards up a side road -- and both the TransCanada and the driveway would have a bank of frozen snow thrown up by the plough. The technique for getting that rear-wheel drive into the drive was to approach the turn off at a good speed, haul the wheel round quickly to the right and give the car gas to clear the snowbank at the entrance to the side road, knock the selector back into drive when it was knocked into neutral by the bank of snow underneath and simultaneously haul the wheel round to the left, keeping the power on and bring the tail of the car out the other way to kick the car into the driveway over the snowbank; straighten the car out into a more or less straight line and keep the power on until forward motion up the driveway was lost. Hopefully well off the road and close enough to plug in the sump heater so that the car would start the next morning. The much bigger Furies were a much better proposition -- the old American full-size cars of the early 70s were a lot better than they're often given credit for. Given a good set of winter tyres they did very well. The Pontiac was a compact and a much less desirable item.

With regard to my present vehicles, all I can say is in winter, give me the Defender -- which is shod with tyres suitable for use in snow and mud -- any day. And that's with 32 years experience of driving automatics of varying types every day and in all sorts of weather. And yes, the test I passed in Canada was in an automatic.

You've been given very good advice. The first thing to ensure is that whatever you drive, it's shod with suitable winter tyres. In the years I lived in Canada everyone in rural areas changed their tyres for winter. And I wouldn't dream of setting off without a shovel and a bag of grit in the back of the car.

Certainly in this neck of the woods Subarus have a very good reputation as a practical, car-type 4WD bought by people who can really use 4WD -- small farmers, rural doctors who still do house visits, etc.

Is it a troll? Who knows. Not everyone in the motor trade is a crook or patronising. I'm still on good terms with the Volvo salesman who sold me two different Volvo estates many years ago. I would happily have bought another from him, but once the family got larger than five children .......... :-). And I bought three Hondas in succession, second hand and sight unseen from a local garage owner who was sourcing them from a friend hundreds of miles away. If the said mechanic were still alive, I'd probably still be buying cars from him, but my last Accord was bought new (from a large local main dealer and for a better price than I could get on the internet, so I ended up with a top of the range model)and no quarrel about the deal I got, which was first class. You don't need to get the run-around. If you're not a troll, then remember that there's a technique in handling people -- even car salesmen. Get written off as a belligerent middle- aged woman and they're not going to go out of their way to help you. Nowadays they're under such pressure that No. 1 priority is to shift the vehicles they have on the forecourt. If you're looking for something that's not on the forecourt or being run "pre-registered," you're going to have to look as if you're likely to be worth investing time in. Car salesmen in general don't have a great reputation, but some of their customers are even worse.

Have you ever thought of seeking out garages which operate the Motability scheme? Of course you're not going to be under that, but garages which operate the scheme will always be used to supplying large numbers of automatic vehicles of many different types and be conscious of the needs of drivers for whom manual transmission is not a realistic option.

John

[DavidR]

"sweetheart" wrote

You came in wanting advice about a small automatic four wheel drive. Straightforward I would have thought. Amazing how there have been so many replies yet nobody has moved you further forward than when you started. I have no experience of either btw.

[geoff]

In message , Adrian writes

I've never bothered with winter tyres, even in the 5 years of living in bavaria. I've only used them twice and needed them three times (when they were sitting on top of my wardrobe in Milan)

I've always treated chains as a last resort, and have nearly always got up the hill one way or another without (this doesn't necessarily mean that the passengers stayed warm!)

[geoff]

In message , sweetheart writes

Then be careful where you put it - there are some very poor interest rates around. If your money is not keeping up with inflation, you are, in effect, losing money

[The Natural Philosopher]

What I am saying is that IF you can get the gas throughput there is no reason for torque to drop with RPM. Its purely down to the strength of the internal bang in the piston minus the friction.

WEheter you run out of mecahnical strength, ort out of airflow, depends n teh engine.

Cooking engines will rev harder than they will torque: thats elivberate to encourage eejits to change up.

Your lotus is MUCH better, maintaining torque a long way before running out of puff.

Real racing engines are timed valved tuned and flowed to get the absolute max of bhp at the disintegration point: rev limiters are almost mandatory.

Engine life is pretty much a function of how many times its operatetd at bleeding edge RPM.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My mother managed to drive into a stationary truck on a clear road in broad daylight in the manual car she had driven for 20 years. "I forgot where the brake pedal was". shortly afterwards she forgot how to keep upright, and a couple of years later forgot who I was.

So I don't think you can equate left foot braking with senility or plain stupidity.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Almost any car with prtesnsions to performance.

No, a very good one.

Total rubbish. A road engine is merely a detuned race engine.

No. Its not. Its almost 100% correct.

turbos can be set to take any engine to within an inch of its life: breathing is not a serious issue with a turbo. VVT allows you to have agressive race timing in the higher rev bands ad still have a decent idle and low RPM response.

On a good engine it damn early is. If it isn't you have gas flow problems.

[Roger Chapman]

I wouldn't know but as Andy pointed out if you have your cut-off at peak bhp you are missing out on quickest acceleration through the gears.

I am reminded of what some of us tried to do when I was a young driver - plotting torque and bhp curves through the gears in an attempt work out either the most economical or the best point to change gear.

[boltar2003]

Following your example perhaps.

[Tinkerer]

I know him, you don't, in his case it was definitely the latter ;o)

[The Natural Philosopher]

You dont seem to really understand much aout cars do you?

Better tell it to McLaren.

Its easy in a racing engine. For best acceleration. At the red line.

[Adrian]

I've just had a most entertaining trip to the office. Apart from the chuffing great big 4x4 tractor & livestock trailer that were having difficulty a couple of times, and the broken-down farm loader just round a bend half-way up a hill, it was lethal enough that - even with chunky work boots on, I went flying.

But the Vredestein SnowTracs meant that I just didn't have any problems with grip in the car.

Unlike the bloke in the Jeep Cherokee coming the other way. He was having a horror-show. Full-on all four wheels spinning and steering at

45deg to the direction of travel time. That wasn't even one of the really slippy sections.

[Adrian]

I got mine from Camskill, and the rims locally. Cheaper than equivalent quality summer tyres. But I wasn't trying to buy 'em in the midst of this. I gather prices of the little remaining stock have rocketed in the last week or so.

[Roger Chapman]

Either you don't seem to know much about acceleration or I don't know as much as I thought I did.

Not in my social circle.

But you insist that the red line is at peak bhp. Ergo you do not get the best acceleration through the gears and if you don't red line at maximum speed you may not get the best maximum speed either.

FWIW I think that for best acceleration through the gears you don't leave the lower gear until you will get as much bhp in the higher gear, ie the points at which the bhp curves plotted against road speed cross. If you are at max bhp in the lower gear you will have less bhp to play with when you change up.

[Tim Streater]

Presumably then the best bet is to have one of the rubber-band gear boxes like I has on my Rover 45. Just floor it, go to max revs, and stay there while the gear box catches up.

[Roger Chapman]

In which case you would have to consider the usually negative impact of transmission losses against gearbox cleverness. Automatics are usually at least marginally slower than manuals in published figures.

[Tim Streater]

:-)

Well indeed. And, I got about 35mpg from it, whereas the manual 400 I had before that typically gave 42 or so.

And, after 60,000.00001 miles, a bearing failed in the box. Their initial offer was £2k for a new one. After I, um, remonstrated a bit, they remembered they knew a gear-box overhaul place in St Neots that had just done a similar box for a Rover 25. So it was overhauled for £800.

Then at 85k miles it blew a head gasket while I was in France (Annecy). This was in '04 so there was still a Rover dealer there who did the repair no problem.

Blew another head gasket at 120k miles but I had left it undriven all over Xmas so that was that.

But the box was the nicest implementation I've experienced so far of how an automatic should work. The C4 semi-auto-clutchless job gives better mileage but the shift 1st-2nd at a roundabout can leave you a bit embarrassed.