Be Excellent To Each Other

Or five parking sensors that won't work for a Mercedes CLS.

In fairness, the sensors worked fine.

When it comes to the miasma of my car's Parktronic system it's hard to tell where the broken stuff ends and the evil stuff starts. *



* Totally no exaggeration there at all.

However, despite the issues with my CLS I have found myself quite enjoying the Mercedes experience overall, so am now casting wandering eyes towards a next teutonic Germanic purchase - namely the AMG C-Class with the proper 6.3 litre V8 in it, there's a decent amount of choice under £20K now. (Albeit just about under £20K, but it does seem to be possible to pick one with decent miles and spec at that price point.)

457bhp and quicker in a straight line than an Audi R8 - that's got to be tempting.

(I'm not specifically thinking of this one, but there's a reasonable cluster of them around £19.5K to £21K as things stand at the moment.)

If you've had trouble with Parktronic, do you really want to gamble with Speedtronic?

The speedtronic stuff in my Mercedes is one of my most favouritest things about it. Although I imagine less useful there.

It'll pay for itself.

Standard.

You were encouraging me to buy the AMG flavour of the CLS, which is similar but not the same.

The AMG C-Class is nice as it's a bit of a Q-Car and not as MASSIVELY BARGELIKE as the CLS.

The shape of the car is unimportant, it's the engine it's wrapped around that matters.

Also barge-like is fine. It doesn't exactly slow it down

Can't help but think that the potential for wallet-destruction is far greater there though - at least make sure you get a decent warranty on it.

It'd be very much in the spirit of this thread though.



I will get a special 'warranty' like I got for the CLS. The warranty that MUST NEVER BE SEEN BY HUMAN EYES but everyone pretends exists.

Grindy noise from rear brakes came back, they're very worn...

£41.11 for Ferodo rear discs and pads with free delivery.

Interesting fact incoming!

I used to play badminton in the hall at Ferodo's factory on Saturday mornings.

Interesting fact!

That's very interesting.

Plot twist! It's actually a lie.

Still interesting.

But no longer a fact.

Another interesting fact is that Ferodo Brakes were named after a popular fantasy fiction character. The Hobbit himself, Ferodo Biggins!

Actually no, they were named after a locally reknowned strumpet, Freda Bigguns.

Another interesting fact is that my brain keeps reading 'Ferodo' as 'Freddo', possibly because I'm hungry.

I'm about to order some copper grease.

Is there any one with an interesting fact about it?

"What's that you're ordering, sonny jim?"

INTERESTING FACT:
Copper Grease does not contain copper, but rather is named after Sir Theobald Copper, who invented it in 1876. There is a statue of him outside the Royal Institute of Grease and Lubricant due to his pioneering work in the field of slipperyness.

Gah, I was going to say that was incredibly interesting, until I realised it wasn't a fact.

Next you'll be telling me gullible doesn't actually mean:

Deserving to be the subject of a gulling (see Gulling).

Clutch was worn down to metal...

Isn't that the entire cost of your car?

No. I like to think the Subaru is double that having had the timing belts done in January.

Worked OK thank you.

Use your handbrake more often

I had a good look at one of these close up yesterday as there was one in a public car park, pretty much identical to the one in the pics above (same colour but with different alloys).

They're not really all that to look at, and the C-Class itself is very much a mid-sized saloon proposition, kind of like a 3 series I suppose. (The C-Class being one of the lower end Mercedes offerings, of course.)

Now that I'm noticing the car itself there are loads of 2008-2014 C-Classes around the place, but only a handful of the AMG variant.

I'd love to take a drive in one, but it's not the sort of thing that'll tend to just turn up at a local garage. We do have a couple of those 'car sourcing' companies locally, who work on the basis that they'll source the car and bring it over, with no obligation to buy, so that might be an option.

New wishbone bushes* and wheel alignment tomorrow. Going to shave even more seconds off my work run!

*Same as what is on Audi TT! Cor!

PARKTRONIC NEWS (the last proposed 'fix' did of course not fix it, BTW) - viewtopic.php?p=921465#p921465

So this morning I was up at one of our data centres doing data centre shit. This particular data centre is very close to the car specialist who's allegedly had the Merc loads of times for days on end, so once I'd finished doing the data centre shit, I drove over to the specialist, parked up, walked into his workshop and introduced myself.

The chap was most friendly and forthcoming, and he is indeed very familiar with my car, but it appears that there has been a slight, ahem, 'disconnect' between what the dealer has been telling me the specialist chap has been up to, on how many occasions, and for how long, and what he's actually been up to, on how many occasions, and for how long.

TL:DR version is he's only ever had the car for an hour or two at a time (and certainly never for a day), and what he's basically been doing is diagnosing as best he can in the time he's had, telling the dealer what they need to do to fix it, but the dealer hasn't been doing a very good job of it. He quite openly said this will be because the dealer is trying to save money by getting his workshop guys to do it, as he's quite expensive.

One very interesting snippet of information is that it looks to him like the car has had a bit of respray work done front and rear at some point, not for anything serious more a sort of 'scuff or nudge' than an actual banging into anything else, but when the bumpers have been put back on and the sensors remounted and whatnot - it's not been done 100% right which is why the Parktronic is misfiring all the time. He said it's basically a good system but very sensitive to not being set up completely correctly.

I literally just asked him 'So can you fix it then?' and he was like 'yeah no problem', they (the dealer) just need to get it booked in with him for a full day instead of an ad hoc hour or two when he's got a small amount of time free (he's generally booked up 2-3 weeks in advance), he'll get both bumpers off so he can get to everything easily, properly sort out what needs doing and what bits need replacing, and then they'll need to be ordered, and once the bits arrive he'll need the car back for another day or maybe half day to get the work done, and that'll be it.

I thanked him for his time and said goodbye, returned to town and presented myself at the dealers and gave them an abridged version of the tale, but left in the key point that I'd spoken to the specialist myself and he'd said quite clearly he needs a proper chunk of time with the car to fix it, and that's the only barrier to the job getting done once and for all.

The chap at the dealer said he'd get back to me ASAP, and sure enough within an hour he'd called me back, and the Merc is now booked in for a full day with the specialist on the 24th October.

So it looks like there may yet be a working Parktronic at the end of the tunnel.

It's like one of those multipart questlines in WoW that just seems to go on FOREVER.

I am in Vegas with a convertible V8 Mustang.

The trip out to the Grand Canyon will be nice, once I've got over just how terrifying driving on American roads is.

Audi TT wishbone bushes have made my car really awesome.

We saw a really smart sporty Merc yesterday. It was a bright yellowy orange and The Boy was super excited at seeing 'Bumblebee'.

I was most impressed by the snazzy indicators, a row of orange lights that progressively lit up sideways rather than a simple on/off flashing.




Sweet.... I really like the look of that new Mustang. Perhaps when the kids have grown up a bit more and Lady T is back at work I can schedule in a mid-life crisis and one of those would fit the bill nicely.

Which aspect of American roads are terrifying? I didn't think driving in the states was all that bad, really.

Seen those on some new Audi's too.

There are all kind of funky light situations on cars now, with the above, and also variable intensity brake lights depending on how hard you brake. I believe some cars will also flash both indicators if you do a full in emergency stop.

However, I'm not a big fan of led daylight running lights which are on all the time in the headlights of lots of new cars. Quite like the fact they dim when you indicate, but other than that I think they look poorly implemented on most cars.

My Citroen C5 was doing that the best part of a decade ago. I was overtaking 'enthusiastically' towards a 40 limit (or as enthusiastically as the thing could manage), and some pretty extravagant braking was required to get back down towards 40 as I hit the 40 sign. So much so that the car thought I was doing an emergency stop and put the hazards on.

On a wider note, fucking dreadful car. Leaked like a bastard and about a million things went wrong with it.

(Note C5, not the C6, which I had some years later.)

Yeah, the Mondeo did that... Nine years ago? I forgot when I had it.

It also set them off if you lost it well enough.

I pushed this to something of an extreme today and not even deliberately either, I was late getting home last night so didn't stop to put diesel in when really I should have done, (I was on a promise to quest in WoW with Mrs H and Jnr), as the light had been on for a day and a half already and it had been nagging me on the display about RESERVE FUEL.

Then I had to set off early this morning and had forgotten that the petrol station doesn't open until 7am, so it was shut, and I had to get to work, so with an indicated range of 12 miles, I set off on a 16 mile journey to Douglas, the first four miles of which are up onto the mountain road.

By the time I got to the end of the climb my range was reported as 0 miles (!), when I had 12 miles left to go (!!). It stubbornly stayed at 0 miles for a bit, and then begrudgingly changed to 4 miles where it pretty much stayed for the rest of the journey, it did go up to 8 miles at one point but literally just pressing the accelerator a bit to maintain decent forward momentum would cause that to drop down in real time in front of my eyes. The last leg of the journey is the easiest fuel wise, so once I got to the beginning of the drop into the outskirts of Douglas I felt fairly comfortable I'd make it.

Needless to say I stopped at the first garage I came to, and managed to get 79.1 litres into an 80 litre tank

I don't intend to get that close to the wire again.

Is it actually damaging to an engine any more to get down to the fumes like that? I remember hearing once that all the sediment and bits in the bottom of the tank are more likely to settle there and get sucked up as the tank gets dry, but writing it out now it sounds like rubbish.

Is it actually damaging to an engine any more to get down to the fumes like that? I remember hearing once that all the sediment and bits in the bottom of the tank are more likely to settle there and get sucked up as the tank gets dry, but writing it out now it sounds like rubbish.

Not sure, I know it used to be

Where do you think the fuel pumps from?

The petrol station.

It's bad for the engine to run dry, but as long as there's enough to keep the fuel flowing properly, it makes little difference. You can tell when there's not enough anyway, as the car will start to lurch quite alarmingly.

It is rubbish. The fuel pumps from the bottom of the tank (which, when you think about it, is obvious).


Only in that it stops - it's not going to damage the engine in any way.

Also, engines have fuel filters to get rid of the muck and sediment.

... most of it, anyway.

Another urban myth dispelled