Be Excellent To Each Other

New wheels! Got myself a 2008 Chevrolet Lacetti. Not quite the blue 1952 Chevvy I always imagined I'd get to do a road trip in but I'm happy with it nonetheless.

To the Top Gear track!

I had one of those in Tuscany. Daewoo badge.

I had a fycking WHALE of a time hooning it around the mountain roads, its limits are just right for making narrow cliff/cliff/hairpin setups brilliant fun.

Apart from when massive VW SUVs come round blind bends on the wrong side of the road, but that's not daewoos fault.

...and stuffed it straight into a hedge.

Congrats on the new car

I've done 3000 miles in the beemer in 6 months. That's a lot of cash sitting in a car that does fuck all.

That's as good an excuse as any to swap I think I fancy a manual this time, I miss changing gear.

You'll want one with a new clutch, then. And a fairly new alternator. And starter motor. In fact, luckily, I've got a Ka just for you!

Sorry dude, I don't trust the shady seller

ha! I've done 4000 in more than a year.

Helen's focus has done 4400 in nearly 18 months.

One of th sales guys has rocked up in a C63 AMG. That's got to be some cost to do business in.

I'm at Thruxton, about to drive various quick Vauxhalls around a track, probably a lot slower than they are capable of.

Make sure you fall off the track in at least one of them - this is your chance to do it safely!

Yeah I was going to say, they're someone else's cars, you want to be trying to go much faster than they're capable of.

Was it you that put Jem up to this on Saturday when I took my Celica to Blyton Park?

Did you end up in the kitty litter?

Actually, no - but whereas I'm quite brakey when going around tight corners, Jem apparently isn't - and this particular tight corner was absolutely saturated in standing water so I was *convinced* that the car was going to slide off and end up way off track.

Of course, when all of said standing water flew up on to the windscreen and caused Jem to try and flick my indicators on instead of the wipers, she did have a little panic and think she was going to drive off the track with no vision

To say I had a "moment" would be an understatement I think there are still finger imprints in the passenger door handle.

(for those not on FB who've not seen the photo of the amount of water she drove through...

)

So basically she drives faster than you and you're a big girl's blouse.

Good to know!

I tell first-time Tomcat drivers that if they cause me to grab the roll cage in a panic, something's about to go very wrong.

Zio managed it

Pretty much.

Although, in my defence, I've had a rather nasty experience of my Celica understeering on a very wet corner (on a public road) so I'm mightily surprised that it gave no fucks about going around this corner. Guess it's the Goodyear Eagle F1s - I was probably using the crappy tyres that came with the wheels when I had my near-miss.

Nope. Nearly ran wide and on to the grass at Church in the Insignia as it's a big heavy lump, but other than that it was all disaster free.

It takes a bit to adapt to just how hard you can push these cars on track so took a few laps to get up to speed, but when you do it's great fun. Did 3 laps as a passenger for familiarisation, 18 laps driving, and 1 with Paul O'Neil driving who is just insane behind the wheel.

The fastest I remember seeing was 130 before breaking into the last chicane.

It only cost £35 for an hour on track plus a really nice lunch which is a bargain. I'm sure I got through more than that in tyres, brakes and fuel.

Somehow new car is broke.

Neither key works to let us in, so used the manual key hidden in the fob to get in (in case it was the central locking) but the ignition system doesn't respond.

Hope it's just the battery discharged somehow, but we only used it the day before yesterday, and it did a loooong journey on Sunday.

Sorry to hear that. It's unlikely as both keys don't work, but have you tried changing the batteries in the fob?

He tried the manual key. It sounds like a totally flat battery. One of you probably left an interior light on or something.

I'm really paranoid about that since the last car used to drain a lot so I pay real attention. Plus everything automatically turns off. Hope it's easy to diagnose and fix.

Does turning the key in the ignition do anything?

Immobiliser fault would be my guess.

It's keyless entry and push start, so there's no ignition to turn.

Any way to sort/diagnose an immobiliser fault?

Change battery on fob

I was thinking that, too.

Its not working on any of the fobs, and they were all working on Monday. Unless the batteries have run out on all of the keyless entry fobs on exactly the same day it isn't that.

Do you have AA membership? If so, use it

It's unlikely, true.

Have got the RAC coming out to look at it. Just annoying not knowing.

Thanks for the help so far though

In that case it was Mimi who did it.

You talking about my wife?!

It probably was

No, to be honest, I wouldn't even know how to put the interior lights on. I think all of the electrics switch off if you are not in the vicinity of the car anyway, so I don't think it is something that e have left on, or if it is, it should go off after a few seconds.

All the electrics in my car are supposed to go off too. They don't. It's never actually not started but yeah, modern cars are stupid.

I found out the other weekend that the switch on the steering column turns the parking lights of the car on...

The other night, I grounded the Celica on Jem's driveway after sinking into some gravel. Trying to unbeach myself has stuffed the exhaust, despite me thinking there was no obvious damage it turns out one of the welds has split open or something so there's a humungous hole in the exhaust now.

Clearly, the logical thing to do would be to simply pay my local garage to repair the weld, which would take barely any time at all and cost me about £40.

But no, what I've actually done, is buy a second-hand Blitz Nur-Spec R exhaust which arrives tomorrow. I've asked the guy at the local garage to swap them over, and then repair my old exhaust anyway so I can sell it - so the total cost is going to end up much higher. Hopefully I can sell the repaired exhaust for a decent sum.

Kinda curious as to the volume increase though - the current exhaust tested at 88dB at a track day last year, the mental M5 exhaust I had on tested at 103.4dB, and this Nur-Spec R apparently tests at 105+dB in this configuration...

'last year'? Didn't you have it on track recently?

I thought that they checked every car on track days because of 95dB noise pollution stuff because of idiots buying houses next to tracks than complaining about noise.

They did at oulton when I took my civic in 2004.

Are you just lucky to have a local track with no nearby idiots?

Yeah, last track event was last weekend at Blyton Park up in Lincolnshire - no noise testing is done there, it's far enough out of the way that it's out of earshot of everyone basically. They do say that there is an "unofficial" limit of 105 though and that if they think a car is taking the piss noise-wise they'll pull it in for a test.

The chap from the RAC is here. Only four hours later than expected, so that's cool. The return to work today has been fab.

Anyhoo, it is definitely the battery. He has checked and nothing was left on. He has re-charged the battery and re-turned the car off and there is a drain of 9 or .9 somethings running the car down whilst it is all completely off, though he can't work out what. So, boo.

A cursory Google suggests that people have had issues with the bluetooth module draining power or the immobiliser not going to sleep properly. Is it under warranty at all?

How in the name of Christ can he tell that?

The interior and exterior light switch positions? There's nothing much else you can leave on is there?

How many cars actually have switches for that, rather than them being automatic or push-buttons?

By first checking that the boot etc were properly locked (not to leave them ajar, where the light can be left on, like a fridge door) then powering the car and seeing what pops back on, from what he said. There was nothing that came on (lights... other things - I don't know - radio?) to see if it was something that we could physically leave on, though as he said, unless the door was open it should all power off automatically even if we did leave them on. But we knew the doors were not left open as we couldn't get into the car this morning.

But there is a drain on the battery with everything off, so that is in line with what he said, also, I suppose.

COuld be the regulator/rectifier not charging the battery fully as it goes around, which, if nothing was left on, could cause it to slowly drain as it isn't charging properly. I think they are hidden in the alternator. I had a motorbike do that once, took bloody ages to work out what was wrong with it. Turns out, you souldn't ride an er5 through foot deep water.

It's a fuse.

He has removed and tested the fuses one by one and the very last one that he tried was the culprit. So, he replaced the fuse but it doesn't solve the problem, so he brought up the wiring diagrams and the fuse serves about eight different systems (it's the 'battery +' lead fuse.)

To temporarily enable us to use the car whilst we get it to a garage, he is making us a fuse with a little handle that Russell can easily remove from the car each time he parks to stop the battery drain, but it will need to be booked in.

My replacement car arrived yesterday. In the end I went for another Octavia 2.0 TDI

Did fancy the VRS but the petrol was crap mpg when compared with the TDI, went after a couple of Diesel VRS but these had sold already

Paid 14K for a late 2011 model that's Laurin Klement spec so Sat Nav, Leather, cruise control, will get around 4K back for the other car so not a bad deal at all. Its got 20,000 on the clock.

Based on how lost the deliver guy got when dropping the car off, I figured the Sat Nav maps were very outdated, the updates for it for June 2014 is 17GB in size!!?