OT: Suitable small auto car for elderly mother

[Nightjar]

You appear to be trying to apply logic to a woman's choice.

Colin Bignell

[Mike P]

On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:36:01 +0000, Adrian boggled us with:

I opened the bonnet on the HDi the other day. Everything hidden under plastic shields. I checked the oil, water and LHM levels, then shut it quickly again before it scared me.

[<me9]

A colleague used to rely on the ol light telling him to when to check the oil. He got away with it until the oil lamp failed.

When trading in the remaining lump for a new car he got a better deal than usual, the garage knew what was wrong with the car, unlike other times when they just allowed for problems!

[Onetap]

Yes. The ethylene glycol combines with oxygen to form some acidic compound (IANA chemist). The alkalinity starts off usually around 9 and this decreases as the anti-freeze degrades. Once it becomes acidic (

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've had several cars with pad warning systems, and they all show an error if the correct sensor isn't plugged in. If the sensor dropped out of the pad it would be instantly destroyed and the same warning shown.

[Skipweasel]

Ah - that's the two-wire sort. The single wire type (in the sort of cars I own) just pokes through a hole in the disc and rubs on it when the pad wears down sufficiently thus completing the warning circuit.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Even the single wire type usually has a link in the connector so a fault is shown if it isn't plugged in.

[john Macreedy]

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So Ron, after this big response in the newsgroup which car have you decided on?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Clive George saying something like:

Company I worked for at the time had a Mk1 Escort van that had done 250K miles on a 1.3 petrol engine. Just regular oil changes and the same driver all the time. When it was finally sold off, there was still nothing wrong with it - no oil smoke, still full power. Must have been one of those that actually got assembled with components that were somewhere near the blueprinted specs.

[Mike P]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2011 21:53:10 +0000, Skipweasel ranted:

My W-reg Xantia HDi has just racked up 190,000 this week. OK, only 4,000 of those have been in my ownership, but it's been well looked after, sounds and drives spot on.

[Skipweasel]

Mine just failed its MOT on corrosion at the tops of the front struts. Tenner each from the breakers. Wish it'd stop raining so I can get to fit 'em.

[Tabby]

e

What were those Dafs et al like to drive?

NT

[Tony Bryer]

I had a DAF 66 estate from 1976-79. You had to know how to drive it: if you floored the throttle the revs just rose and the car went no faster. Feed in the acceleration at a measured pace and the speed increased as desired. Most of my driving was in London suburban traffic so speed and acceleration were rarely an issue.

Its battery was sized as a DAF special, no cheap option from Halfords. When it failed its MoT on cracks in the steering wheel spokes (not uncommon); the dealer said that a replacement would be £30 (IIRC - £300 in today's money?) at which I said I'd get a third party leather replacement - "that's what everyone else does", he said, but being a franchised dealer he wasn't allowed to sell them. Bad point for DIYers was that the tailgate latched onto a 'spike' which would slit open a carelessly loaded or unloaded back of cement or plaster (how do I know this ...).

But overall a car I have good memories of.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Reminds me of the engine change I did in a Mmidget. Bloody thing rolled over and smashed teh exhaust manifold "why not pop over to ripspeed and get a steel one' I did and it was 10 mph faster afterwards, and cheaper than the cast iron. Hehe.

[Ron Lowe]

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Well, that's on the back-burner at the moment, since ( as expected) my father passed away a week ago. So that's the current issue on the agenda.

I'll review the responses in due course. And thanks to all for them.

[Tabby]

Was the gearing moved automatically then? I always wondered what the story with those variable gear systems was, as on the face of it it sounds like a good idea, with more performance per given engine, but clearly it fell out of favour.

NT

[Tim Streater]

You talking about the rubber-band gearbox then? (says he, jumping in mid-thread).

I think it was something like this: input and output shafts each have a large cone but the two shafts are offset, so that the cone edges are a constant distance apart. You run a chain (not *actually* a rubber band) over the two cones, and if it's moved from side to side the effective gear ratio changes continuously. I guess some kind of torque-demand sensor decides where the band needs to be.

I had a CVT in my Rover 45. They were made by BMW and made it the pleasantest driving experience of any car I've owned. It threw a bearing at 60001 miles so the factory wasn't interested in paying to repair it. Garage (Marshall's in Cambridge) wanted £2k for a new one, but after I sobbed and bleated for a while they admitted to knowing a gear box place in St Ives (IIRC) that would do an overhaul for £800. So I went with that. Lasted until 120k miles when the head gasket went (second time), so I scrapped it then. Real shame.

Citroen C4 has 6-speed semi-auto which is OK but can embarrass you at a roundabout.

[Clive George]

The DAF ones were rubber belts running on two pairs of cones facing each other. I could try and explain more but

it so much better.

[Skipweasel]

It fell out of favour because the materials weren't right. Subsequent efforts at continuously variable transmissions have been reasonably successful.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

BMW don't make gearboxes. They didn't have any input on the 45 design either.