VW automatic parking brake. etc

[The Natural Philosopher]

When I were taught there were no autos except in the USA :-)

I was taught to use the

Rules are made for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Michael Chare escribió:

Buggered if I can see what this has to do with uk.d-i-y. What's wrong with uk.rec.driving?

I hired a VW Touran earlier in the year with the automatic parking brake, the first time I'd encountered one. Yes, it took a moment to get used to, but once I'd worked it out it was perfectly logical.

The mistake is to treat it as a replacement for a manual handbrake. Once you get over that way of thinking, it works quite naturally.

Poor dear. You had to RTFM! Can you even read?

Sounds like you needed the wake-up call.

Followups set.

[Capitol]

[Capitol]

Quite a few auto users only have one foot available as they are disabled.

[NY]

If the thing that you are lining up against is high enough to be visible with the mirror in its normal position, then that's fine. But I've found with every car that I've driven that the mirrors in their normal position to show traffic that is overtaking you or that you are overtaking are nowhere

*near* large enough to show the back wheel of the car to line it up with a kerb or to line up the car between the two white lines of a parking bay (assuming that there aren't cars in both the adjacent bays!) - they're not even *remotely* close (*). You can see the lines when you are a long way away but as you get closer and need to fine-tune your position or check that you haven't strayed off course, the lines/kerb disappear below the field of view of the mirror, hence the need to drop the mirror(s).

Things like the sides of your garage, or bollards or waist-high brick walls, that are high enough to be visible in a normally-adjusted mirror are often visible with the naked eye by looking over your shoulder so you don't even have to use the mirror to see them. It's things that are at ground level that you can't see - it depends whether or not those are the only reference points in the places where you park: you're lucky that they are not.

(*) One intriguing digression. With my passenger door mirror correctly positioned for me to see traffic that I'm overtaking, my wife in the passenger seat says she can also see that traffic. But if we swap places so I'm the passenger, and without moving mirror or seat, all I can see out of that mirror is my car's bodywork. I can imagine that the difference in our heights (5' 10" versus 5' 6") will affect the vertical position but not the horizontal position to show something adjacent to my car versus my car's body. Weird.

[NY]

The mirrors on my Peugeot are painfully slow when adjusted manually, so I usually press the switch in the last few yards while I'm driving along the road to the point where I start to reverse into the drive, but the ones on the Honda move very quickly so I can wait until they move down as I engage reverse. On both cars, the fully-down position is just right to show the rear wheel and a few inches to the left of it.

Either way, it is essential for me that the mirrors *do* move, because there's no way that I can move sufficiently far, while remaining in controllable reach of the pedals and without passing sideways through the driver's door and vertically through the roof (!), to be able to see the rear wheels of my car with the passenger's door mirror in its normal position.

I'm baffled that people can ever manage to reverse without lowering the mirrors when the only reference points are lines/kerbs at ground level rather than waist high hedges or walls.

Obviously a reversing camera makes life a lot easier, but I haven't had the Honda long enough to learn to trust that entirely, without corroborating that view with the one from the passenger's door mirror, to make sure I park close enough to the kerb to leave room for the Peugeot to get out and without going over the kerb onto the lawn: it's difficult to line up with something that you can no longer see!

The other problem I have with my Peugeot is that its one reversing light is so dim that the tarmac of the drive, the concrete kerb stone and the green grass all look virtually the same brightness at night when "lit" by the reversing light, even if the mirror *is* showing the right view. I'd paint the concrete kerbstone with white paint but SWMBO says "no way".

[NY]

I find a handbrake an even better way of not rolling: I've thirty years of using that method in a manual car so it's instinctively the way I'd do it in an auto, even if it did have transmission that made it less likely to happen.

Going into park makes a very nasty lurch if you happen to be rolling very slightly and haven't come to a complete stop.

By the way (digressing slightly) what would you say needed adjusting on a brand new (manual) car if the car rolls an inch or so and then comes to an abrupt stop when you come to rest with the footbrake, fully apply the handbrake and then release the footbrake? Eg when stopping at traffic lights on an up/down gradient, with the car either in gear and the clutch down or else in neutral. Until I can get round to taking the car into the garage to get it looked at, I've learned to release the footbrake slowly so the roll and sudden stop are more gradual.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Play in the suspension. Probably worn rubber bushes.

[NY]

Ah, hadn't thought of that. Probably more like wrongly assembled than worn since the car has only done 5000 miles and has been like that from day 1.

[Vir Campestris]

In a brand new car?

My experience of auto handbrakes was doing a hill start in one. It held the handbrake on just long enough so that I stalled the engine. THEN it let it off. I hit the footbrake VERY quickly.

Andy

[Michael Chare]

The tricky bit was moving the car a short distance from rest up a steep hill.

I get on better when the text is in English.

[polygonum]

In the past few months I have had two hire cars with automatic "hand" brakes. The Passat was a dream - it just felt right and did what I expected. The Vauxhall Insignia was foul. Felt as if the brake was not releasing fully until I was doing about 30 mph. And didn't hold that well on steeper hills.

[Michael Chare]

Unfortunately you can't download VW car manuals as pdf files, as I found out when I could not get the manual for a new car I was thinking of buying. EU should do something about that as hiring a car in a foreign county where you are not very familiar with the language can not be that uncommon an experience.

[polygonum]

Wholeheartedly agree that these things should be readily available.

Even if my French were pretty good, I'd prefer to read it in my native language. But I suggest that the hire companies have a duty as well.

[DerbyBorn]

How do they work?

[Sam Thatch]

Very unlikely with a brand new manual car.

[Dave Liquorice]

Can't explain how I did it but I could put the Disco II into the middle of a parking space parallel to the lines in pretty much one smooth reversing movement. 10+ old car, no fancy tilting mirrors. B-) Had to see the lines to start with but once out of view just knew where they were.

Can't say I can do the same in the Freelander 2 yet, I always seem to end up on the skew. It's almost as if the steering is non-linear, near straight ahead requires a larger movement of the steeering wheel for given amount of road wheel movement that it does approaching full lock.

Auto parking brake seems to "just work", provided you drive how I think people are taught to drive these days. That is the parking brake only applied when actually parked or actually required for a hill start.

Stopped on the "flat" in traffic or at lights/junction you put it into neutral and release the clutch, holding the car on the foot brake. Not that you should hold the car on the clutch but for a short pause when already in 1st/2nd just keep the clutch pressed. Why bother selecting neutral and releasing the clutch? 'Cause if you don't and you are on a hill the car won't engage the GRC and you will roll when you release the footbrake. B-)

I have found it a bit sluggish to release, say when you are trying grab a gap when joining a busyish main road with the traffic doing

60+. But you just pre-empt the start by 1/2 a second.

[Bill]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

But on a steep hill or when a winch is attached to the towbar (on-topic for d-i-y?) it reduces the strain on whatever in the gearbox is holding the car.

My holey Disco's handbook says to use the handbrake when using a winch.

[Dave Liquorice]

Nothing, perfectly normal behaviour for vehicles with a transmission brake, like Defenders and Discovery's. Just the "slop" in drive chain and suspension.

[Dave Liquorice]

Hum, simple, lasts for ever, cable and lever replaced by motor, gear box hi-speed worm drive (I think) and still cables to the brakes.