Police BMW engine issues

[Strangely Brown]

iDave said:

I have also seen a couple of times now between M25 Junction 5-9 a liveried Mercedes C-class which I am sure was on a 68 plate!! Parked up on sliproad exits so was operational. Old stock being put to use due to lack of new stock in?
It did look rather nice, can't recall ever seeing MB being used outside of Germany!

Sussex used to run a couple (a few?) Mercs for RPU stuff. You can google some pictures of both E and C class in Sussex livery.

[Earthdweller]

Strangely Brown said:

iDave said:

I have also seen a couple of times now between M25 Junction 5-9 a liveried Mercedes C-class which I am sure was on a 68 plate!! Parked up on sliproad exits so was operational. Old stock being put to use due to lack of new stock in?
It did look rather nice, can't recall ever seeing MB being used outside of Germany!

Sussex used to run a couple (a few?) Mercs for RPU stuff. You can google some pictures of both E and C class in Sussex livery.

The original ML was widely used for traffic/motorway patrol in 320/350 form by numerous forces

Various Scottish forces ran quite a lot of Mercs as did a few English forces .. Durham springs to mind

Quite a few Vito’s used as divisional vans and specialist roles all over

Plus the Sprinter has been the default public order van for the last 25 years, the Met introduced a fleet of hundreds of them from 1995 onwards

[Stedman]

Strangely Brown said:

Sussex used to run a couple (a few?) Mercs for RPU stuff. You can google some pictures of both E and C class in Sussex livery.

A few went up in flames too. The W211 did look good though.

Sussex also had a few W203 in estate form.

[BlindedByTheLights]

Interesting article on the Czech police specific Skodas

https://www.skoda-storyboard.com/en/skoda-world/nu...

[FiF]

BlindedByTheLights said:

Interesting article on the Czech police specific Skodas

https://www.skoda-storyboard.com/en/skoda-world/nu...

Picked up on the "metal rims, more durable than alloy"

[DickP]

From the article photo captions:

"The Czech carmaker became an official partner and supplier to the British public sector in January 2023 and expects to deliver over 6,000 vehicles to institutions, including the British police, during the contracted four-year period."

Explains why I think I have seen a growing number of Skoda police cars in Lancashire and Cumbria.

[gazza285]

FiF said:

Picked up on the "metal rims, more durable than alloy"

I presume they meant steel rims. Makes sense though, cheaper to replace, less prone to breaking, and weigh less most of the time.

[FiF]

gazza285 said:

FiF said:

Picked up on the "metal rims, more durable than alloy"

I presume they meant steel rims. Makes sense though, cheaper to replace, less prone to breaking, and weigh less most of the time.

Agree, I assumed they meant steelers. In years of club rallying steelies never let us down, even if after really rough events they looked a bit like threepenny bits. The alloys that had been homologated for Gp1 Escorts though, one RAC got heartily sick of stopping mid stage to change after puncture and a broken wheel preventing further progress. Still we got wheel changes down to a fine art.

[Southerner]

BlindedByTheLights said:

Interesting article on the Czech police specific Skodas

https://www.skoda-storyboard.com/en/skoda-world/nu...

A very interesting read. I particularly like the “special frame” which resembles essentially a mini set of bull/nudge bars to help avoid damage when stopping fleeing vehicles. No doubt UK powers-that-be will continue to shun any such common sense design in case it hurts little Jonny Scroat one day, preferring instead to burn their way through replacement cars and heavy repair bills at eye watering expense

[Sir Bagalot]

gazza285 said:

FiF said:

Picked up on the "metal rims, more durable than alloy"

I presume they meant steel rims. Makes sense though, cheaper to replace, less prone to breaking, and weigh less most of the time.

Reminds me of a Met Police story back in the day.

They had taken delivery of some Sierra XR4x4's



But these were police spec and one of the items binned to reduce costs were those alloys.

At the end of the first week they were withdrawn from service, due to brake issues. Met Police and written two off, and a third needed major repairs. All 3 drivers reported the same issues, in fast heavy driving conditions the brakes simply failed. Ford looked into it and they reported back that the alloys also had the unknown of cooling the brakes down. All existing cars were retrofitted with the standard alloys and no more issues

[FiF]

Sir Bagalot said:

gazza285 said:

FiF said:

Picked up on the "metal rims, more durable than alloy"

I presume they meant steel rims. Makes sense though, cheaper to replace, less prone to breaking, and weigh less most of the time.

Reminds me of a Met Police story back in the day.

They had taken delivery of some Sierra XR4x4's



But these were police spec and one of the items binned to reduce costs were those alloys.

At the end of the first week they were withdrawn from service, due to brake issues. Met Police and written two off, and a third needed major repairs. All 3 drivers reported the same issues, in fast heavy driving conditions the brakes simply failed. Ford looked into it and they reported back that the alloys also had the unknown of cooling the brakes down. All existing cars were retrofitted with the standard alloys and no more issues

Plus of course we shouldn't forget to wind in the same issue with the SD1 Rovers with brake cooling issues the solution being to run them on Minilites. I have a brief and now distant recollection of some of the technical investigation into those issues. Once briefly drove a 2600 SD1 complete with brake pressure monitoring kit as part of that.

[gazza285]

Sir Bagalot said:

gazza285 said:

FiF said:

Picked up on the "metal rims, more durable than alloy"

I presume they meant steel rims. Makes sense though, cheaper to replace, less prone to breaking, and weigh less most of the time.

Reminds me of a Met Police story back in the day.

They had taken delivery of some Sierra XR4x4's



But these were police spec and one of the items binned to reduce costs were those alloys.

At the end of the first week they were withdrawn from service, due to brake issues. Met Police and written two off, and a third needed major repairs. All 3 drivers reported the same issues, in fast heavy driving conditions the brakes simply failed. Ford looked into it and they reported back that the alloys also had the unknown of cooling the brakes down. All existing cars were retrofitted with the standard alloys and no more issues

Sorry, but that sounds like a load of bks, would it be possible to have just a little bit of corroborative evidence?

[aproctor1]

gazza285 said:

Welcome to PistonHeads OP, it’s a friendly place really, you just need to filter out the nobheads.

[Earthdweller]

Sir Bagalot said:

Reminds me of a Met Police story back in the day.

They had taken delivery of some Sierra XR4x4's



But these were police spec and one of the items binned to reduce costs were those alloys.

At the end of the first week they were withdrawn from service, due to brake issues. Met Police and written two off, and a third needed major repairs. All 3 drivers reported the same issues, in fast heavy driving conditions the brakes simply failed. Ford looked into it and they reported back that the alloys also had the unknown of cooling the brakes down. All existing cars were retrofitted with the standard alloys and no more issues

The Met didn’t use the XR4x4 at all for patrol work. They were too low and didn’t deal with speed bumps at all. Other forces did however.

All the Met Sierras for Area Car/Traffic use were 2.0 autos

Most of not all were on steel wheels, some of the last iirc ( K plate ) were on alloys

I don’t recall any brake issues with them, unlike the Rovers and later Vectra’s that were all withdrawn from service at one point due to a brake fault

None of the sierras had power steering or ABS fitted

Edited by Earthdweller on Friday 29th December 09:29