Wing mirrors on cars

I had a 3 cylinder Vauxhall Corsa (1 litre). Not particularly powerful but it was light, so I could overtake the old codgers. I didn't notice any roughness, it just sounded like I was driving an underpowered diesel. The stupid thing about it though was.... it had 5 seats. But place 5 average sized adults in it and it would hit the bottom of the suspension.

Most of the time it's recovering waste energy from the exhaust, and the supercharger part of the system is doing nothing. As I said, best with a hybrid driveline. You don't often need all that boost, but it's there when you want it. The system losses in a motor-generator pair will be under 20%, and may well be made up by better load matching.

Andy

And it is the ridiculously high price of spare parts that is the problem! If they were available on a simple cost plus basis with a reasonable profit, rather than a ludicrous mark-up of many hundreds of percent, repairs of older vehicles would be more viable.

SteveW

Ever tried Ebay?

Wheel bearing for my car from the local motor factor that supplies my ga= rage: =A350. Ordered online form a car parts supplier: =A335. Ordered from Ebay: =A39.

Which do you think I used?

-- =

I went to San Francisco. I found someone's heart.

New car buyers certainly don't care. But they do matter. Because they feed the market down the line. Given the number of cars more than 10 years old and low second hand prices, I suggest cars are mostly scrapped because of supply, not because of cost of parts.

Some years ago, I sold a car that was 11 years old. Nothing fundamentaly wrong but I had had it for 10 years and fancied a change. Three more MOTs show up, covering 50K. Failures only recorded some minors, brake balance and ball joints. Looks like a pretty fair whack to me.

It might be worth a lot to you but at 10 years old the market says it's worth pocket money.

Good news. The Peugeot 208 is actually slightly narrower than the 207. Old American cars coming out for a bit of exercise on summer Sundays actually look quite small by today's standards.

If it can be heard, it can't be sweet (except perhaps a Merlin from a respectable distance). Turbos do a brilliant job of helping to smooth out the noise.

But surely most essential spares are available from sources other than the car maker?

Slow moving spares are different. But then storing them for perhaps many years ain't cheap either.

Yes.

But very few layouts are perfectly balanced. An inline 6 has torsional imbalance at higher revs due to crank and cam lengths - hence the fitment of a vibration damper to the crank.

Think you have to go to a V12 to get theoretical perfect balance.

Boxer engines tend to have uneven firing pulses. Hence the characteristic exhaust note.

I once had an Alfasud. Compared to the GS it had a water jacket to help. It had reviewers creaming their jeans about how it would rev to the sky without realising it but I never got that; go past 5k and it was pretty obvious what was happening, as in any engine I have ever come across. Though I will give it credit that with the wick turned down for cruising it could sit at 4500rpm pretty comfortably.

Compared to the acrid stench our 'oxygenated' gasoline produces, the smell of diesel is like walking through a field of spring wildflowers.

The Chinese knock-off made of a cheap alloy resembling steel?

Tata owns Jaguar Land Rover now. Your former colony know how to build vehicles.

storage costs money, not only in terms of warehouse space but in capital tied up. That why Dennis, the fire engine makers, went bust. Lotus Cars had a sale of all their spares, but would send you a manufacturing drawing if you asked nicely.

And new cars would be more expensive. Car manufacturer's income has to come from *somewhere*.

Plus administration of the spares operation, employing the people that run it, maintaining the spares catalogue and supercession information. I wrote some software once to help maintain the Ford UK spare parts catalogue and it was a nightmare. I'm actually surprised they provide spares for as long as they do.

I suppose Honda engines being weak is why Civics get souped up to within an inch of their lives

But not how to prevent them being stolen easily. ;-)

There's no such thing as "waste" energy in the exhaust. If you put something in the exhaust you increase the back pressure which the engine then has to work against using more fuel and reducing power. Why do you think straight through exhausts are the norm in racing? Turbos only work because the amount of power they use is far exceeded by the extra power they can help the engine generate by shoving more air in.

The only time you get free energy from the exhaust is on the overrun and you wouldn't be wanting to generate any more power then anyway.

Lets hope no one is following him down the motorway when that cheap POS fails and his wheel comes off.

Its probably the way he fixed his Honda engine too. The one he's accusing of being unreliable.

Tata couldn't build a decent vehicle if their lives depended on it. They bought that expertise when they bought JLR. Which is a bit more honest than the chinese approach which is to simply copy it - badly.