Astonishingly strange features on a car
Discussion
Alfanatic said:
The '80s Alfa Guilietta had an adjustable rake steering column. It adjusted between high and ridiculously high. My GTV had a hand throttle, which was only useful on cold mornings because the choke didn't work. The engine had a bracket bolted to the bottom of the block, on the right hand side, near the bulkhead. The nut would vibrate loose over time leaving the bracket free to rattle. It sounded like Father Christmas coming down the chimney. There was nothing connected to the bracket, and nothing anywhere near it which it may have held at some time in its past, so it was just a bit of metal bolted to the engine, doing nothing except occasionally coming loose and rattling. It didn't have enough clearance against the bulkhead to be removed, so to get rid of it was either an engine out job, or some handywork with an angle grinder.
brilliant post, the full LOLgreat thread.
The astra interior light was attached to the light switch (no symbol though) (pull out just abit).
Did not know this, pulled it out acciodentally, where it stayed for ages (winter commuting) ending up taking out the interior bulb as my "fix".
Eventually noticed in a haynes manual what it was. Took 18 months though, DUH!
kambites said:
youngsyr said:
kambites said:
Personally I have no doubt that the big lip spoiler on the RS is there because RS buyers expect a big lip spoiler. It certainly does nothing that a small lip spoiler wouldn't.
I've heard people say the same about the Evo spoiler, but if you believe the marketing hype it does have an affect.The standard Evo X has a low level spoiler, the uprated one has the larger spoiler more commonly associated with Evos...
It definitely does produce downforce; you can see them flex slightly in the middle when you're doing ridiculous speeds on track and they're extremely stiff.
Number 5 said:
For some strange reason I quite miss electric aerials.
Mine goes up and down as the stereo is turned on/off, meaning that I couldn't listen to a CD in a carwash if I wanted to.If I hated my paint and thought that taking a convertible into a carwash was a good idea.
Which it isn't.
kambites said:
minimoog said:
Foot-operated parking brakes (yes I'm looking at you Mercedes).
They're good on automatics - gives you much more freedom with the cabin design if you don't have to have a hand brake between the seats. Really doesn't work in a manual though. minimoog said:
kambites said:
minimoog said:
Foot-operated parking brakes (yes I'm looking at you Mercedes).
They're good on automatics - gives you much more freedom with the cabin design if you don't have to have a hand brake between the seats. Really doesn't work in a manual though. mr_krissy_kris said:
Hyperion said:
Volvo 480- When you parked up at night you could flash the headlights which lit the way to your front door for a minute or so. Really useful feature actually.
Unless you have a garage. 
...or don't have a drive and park on the street.
youngsyr said:
mr_krissy_kris said:
Hyperion said:
Volvo 480- When you parked up at night you could flash the headlights which lit the way to your front door for a minute or so. Really useful feature actually.
Unless you have a garage. ...or don't have a drive and park on the street.
Crusoe said:
agree the feature is useful but maybe if it did the reverse. A button for lower power softer suspension mode that you could use in town or on the motorway so that it was in full sport spec as standard.
That would be fine.The useless button is the Power one. Who the Hell buys a 500 bhp car and wants to drive it with only 400? It doesn't even improve fuel consumption. Worst of all, it defaults to the low power mode every time the car starts.
mr_krissy_kris said:
youngsyr said:
mr_krissy_kris said:
Hyperion said:
Volvo 480- When you parked up at night you could flash the headlights which lit the way to your front door for a minute or so. Really useful feature actually.
Unless you have a garage. ...or don't have a drive and park on the street.
Re. the compulsory inside openers for boots in US. Some years ago, in Arizona, or somewhere hot, 3 kids locked themself in a boot of a car, the car wasn't used for several days, it was really, really hot, no one came to open the boot. Imagine the rest.
That said, it would be far easier to teach kids not to lock themself in car boots.
Finlandia said:
Re. the compulsory inside openers for boots in US. Some years ago, in Arizona, or somewhere hot, 3 kids locked themself in a boot of a car, the car wasn't used for several days, it was really, really hot, no one came to open the boot. Imagine the rest.
That said, it would be far easier to teach kids not to lock themself in car boots.
I did that when I was younger too, terrible.. I thought I was going to die in there at the beach That said, it would be far easier to teach kids not to lock themself in car boots.
Somehow I was messing around with the lock in panic and it flipped open.
It's what made me really claustrophobic as I am now.
Sway said:
Balmoral Green said:
I had an old '49 Bentley MKVI, it had a hand throttle lever on the steering wheel centre boss, you could adjust it and use it like cruise control.
When my grandfather (RIP) was booted out of the children's home he grew up in at the age of 13, he walked along Camden High Street and got an apprenticeship as a mechanic, for a garage that looked after some lovely cars. This would have been the late '30s.He used to get in early to get the cars into the yard, and being a resourceful chap, decided there must be a better way to start the cars rather than setting the hand throttle, getting out and cranking it over. This led to the discovery that the cylinder sealing was so good that the unused charge from switching the engine off the night before could be coaxed into cranking the engine over by setting the hand throttle, and flicking the advance/retard lever. He then won his first car (a Austin 7) off his boss in a bet that it wouldn't work!
Sam
Very impressive.
Better than cranking it to start.
youngsyr said:
sniff diesel said:
youngsyr said:
GravelBen said:
youngsyr said:
GravelBen said:
Didn't BMW claim that the small 'gurney lip' on the bootlid of the E39 M5 was good for a 50kg reduction in rear end lift at speed?
Who knows, but if that little lip generates 50 kgs at speed, then I'd imagine the aircraft wings attached to race cars would generate far too much downforce for it to be useful.Doesn't the entire F1 car generate just enough downforce for it to travel upside down in a tunnel at something like 180 mph?
If a formula one car weighs 700 kg and travels and generates that much downforce at 180 mph, I'd imagine that the little lip spoiler won't generate 1/14 of that at 150 mph.
It also begs the question as to how is the lip spoiler attached?
Is it a moulded part of the boot, bolted on or stuck on?
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