Be Excellent To Each Other

They're under-specced overpriced Octavias, I hear.

Has it got the auto handbrake?

Well it's only £400 (not much in the Goddess copper jar this year unfortunatly) I reckon a car would depreciate that much a year anyway so if it lasts the 12 months and I end up selling it for scrap I've not lost out too much.

Horrible URL here.

I hate buying cars I know nothing about.

Passat = Superb, not Octavia. Octavia = Jetta.

I now have a mental image of cavey indignantly straightening his monocle and adjusting his string backed driving gloves before setting off to "teach the young blade a lesson in manners".

1994. It doesn't.

If it's got a long MOT and isn't too visibly rusty then go for it. It'll be fairly expensive to run though, if you're doing any sort of mileage.

Meh! Too right old chap!

Apparently Costco have 20% off Michelin tyres during November, if you buy 4 at once.

Does anyone shop at costco, and is there a way to check what they have in stock, or is it strictly a turn up and look job?

(A friend has a membership card which I can presumably borrow)

Re: The Passat: Don't you want to insure a 17 year old on it? It's a 1.9, so probably going to be expensive, like ~£1,500. The plate is L831 RVV - run it through Direct Line or something to get a rough idea of prices.
You really want something like a Micra or a Polo, with the smallest engine possible.

I did Grim... but I can't afford to add him at the moment even on a group two, so I've decided to just go for something for myself.

I'm not going to look at the Passat anymore anyway. My insurance won't continue to insure me on it as it's too old apparently, so by the time I've paid the cancellation fee and lost 7 months of a years no claims I reckon it's not really worth it.

Seen a couple of others, but will leave it until tomorrow now, they're all starting to blur into one.

Thanks for your help/advice/opinions though chaps, it is appreciated.

I have never heard of such a thing before. Who's your provider?

Do you have car breakdown cover from your insurance supplier as well, GJ? That is often age limited to 10 years, or you have to pay more after that, at least.

Aw maaaaan...
\

The underwriters are Fortis Grim...

Kalmar, yes I do. It worked out cheaper to get the two combined than pay for them seperatly at the time. Do you think that might be it?

Zardoz, I know, I'm not happy about it either.

Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform.

Odd what you remember, isn't it? Especially as I've never seen it.

GJ: Yes, reckon so.

I think it's likely. As Grim... says I've never heard of that sort of restriction on actual insurance before and I've almost always run >10 y/o vehicles..

Paid the car tax on Saturday, no tax disc yet, expecting discussions with the cops later when I go in to Oxford, even thought the DVLA said "5 days grace". Should i print out the confirmation email and stick it in the dashboard or not?

I'm pretty sure that they'll just check your plate and find out you already taxed it.

Good oh. Thanks.

it's a good system, though, taxing it online, it checked there was an MOT and insewerants and everything. Tok me 45 seconds from start to finish which is a lot quicker than queuing in the post office.

The tax on the car we bought for Shin ran out on Saturday.

This is a problem, because I haven't got the V5C, and I don't know where the V5C/2 is. To compound matters, I don't remember giving the dealer my details for him to fill in on the V5C.

A phone call is required methinks.

Charl lost the new disc for the Octy but hasn't had any trouble yet. That's a month so far.

Which reminds, I need to remember to have brung the V5C to work so I can print off the replacement form and take it to the dvla office near work.


Oh.

C4 VEY, surely? Unless your name is Cate.

Only when he's cruising.

Meh, you're right too. Trust me to make a typo even on a car number plate.

0MFG L0L

Shhh! Don't tell everyone!!11

Here comes some "science". A bit bored on a drive down the M11 on Saturday, I decided to see what the difference in mileage was between driving "normally" and driving "economically".

So, I reset the trip computer, slowed down to 65 and did ten miles.

47.6mpg is none too shabby in a two-tonne car, and I suspect that I didn't help that I got in a strop with a van and put my foot down (in forth) to overtake it. The ten miles took just over ten minutes.
So, then I did ten miles fast.

So, that uses more than twice the amount of fuel, but the upshot is that I did ten miles in a just under seven minutes.

Once into London, I did five miles economically:

Very impressed with that, although it did involve pulling away from traffic lights so slowly it caused people to beep me. I also switched the car off if I'd arrived at a light that had just turned red - I'm not sure if that helps or not.
And five miles not so economically:

Oh dear again - and crucially it was only one minute quicker with my foot down.

FEEL FREE TO DRAW SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS!

More foot = better.

In the Golf, in top gear, the difference between 70mph and 80mph was 1000rpm and 10mpg. In the 306 it's 100rpm.

It makes a big difference, that. A lot of new cars have the auto-stop feature for that reason.



Good work. Not unexpected results. Try for 60 MPG on the motorway.

What was "fast" in this context, btw?

Err, what?

Well.
On a 100-mile motorway journey, I think I'd save about forty-five minutes, which is quite a long time.
Doing so would cost £11.39 more (£22.40 vs £10.01, assuming a price of £1.05 a litre), or near as damnit £30 an hour.

Yeah, I drove a new Land Rover with it which is why I did it. Are they optimised for low-fuel start-ups somehow, though? I know they have different batteries.


Not sure it could do it. Maybe if I slipstreamed a truck down a hill for ten miles


Speed-wise, not very. But I have a habit of "encouraging" people to move over by barrelling up behind them, waiting, then barrelling up to the next person.

In fact, we can work it out - increase in speed = sqrt(increase in energy)

Since you took roughly twice as much energy, you went 1.4x faster, or 91 mph. Close?

Sounds about right. I generally go as fast as I can.
Would it not have been easier to measure the ten miles in about seven minutes, though?

I think it's a misconception that starting a car takes loads of fuel. I'm not sure that's ever been true, and seems pretty unlikely on anything fuel injected. And even if it does double the fuel dose, it'll only be doing it for one or two cycles.

Yes, I'd expect a slightly better battery, perhaps even additional batteries. I don't know if the new Audis and Toyotas have a combined starter-alternator for this, or if it's using the normal starter. The Honda hybrids use a direct drive motor/generator, but auto-stop was done ages ago in a Golf "ecomatic" or something, which used the normal starter.

If you do 55 in top behind a truck I reckon you can do it on the flat, if you have the patience

Grim, I'm amazed at those massive differentials - according to my calcs, you were only averaging a true speed of 86mph when driving 'fast' which, although not exactly hanging about isn't super-quick or anything, plus you were on a clear motorway. You'd probably have about 90 on the clock? I take it you were in sixth both times?

21mpg @ indicated 90mph on the motorway isn't very good IMO - even the Porsche manages 25mpg in similar circumstances, and that's a 3.4 litre, six cylinder, normally aspirated engine with 320bhp on tap, not exactly the last word in engine efficiency.

Mind you, the Porker drops from ~26mpg (and up to 30mpg on the motorway) down to 15mpg when given the beans. (I'm talking when really given the beans, though! )

Well that gets 85 average.
So as you say it wasn't a constant 85 or your MPG would have been slightly better.

This is in your Tomcat, right?

In the Golf what we used to have, the difference between 70mph and 80 mph was 1000rpm. 70 was just below TURBO POWER. Cruising at 70mph was 10mpg betterer than cruising at 80mph.

In the 306, the difference between 70mph and 80 mph is 100rpm, so such a difference would be smaller.

Seriously? What RPM is it doing at 60 and 70?

Totally worth it. Either that or the car is a waste.

I have discovered that my clutch slips really fucking badly between 2.5 and 3k rpm. This is possibly not a surprise, given that VANOS changes to hoon mode at 2.5k.

Assuming I restrain myself, it is then fairly non-slippy, though still a couple of mph out, until just under 4k rpm. So, cruising at 100 costs <100 rpm, or ~3%.

After that point the rev increase starts going exponential, and the clutch starts smelling.

But. I got stuck at a junction beyond my time tolerance and despite my ominous notes, it will still light up the back wheels. It also went to Oxford and back quite reasonably, even with an enormous detour through most of the villages in Cheshire on the way back thanks to the road network completely falling apart.

It's shitting petrol, obviously. I need to get the details of the transmission specialist my dad likes taking his Jeep too, almost immediately.

2900 @ 70, I'll check 60 in a bit.

Golf was 1900 @70 IIRC

:raised eyebrow dimlie:

Anyway - "Cruising at 70mph was 10mpg betterer than cruising at 80mph." - purely due to aerodynamic drag your energy requirement is about 1.3x as much at 80 than 70. No matter what the gear ratios are.

No, really.

Interestingly, the 50% higher revs of the 306 gives a similar reduced mpg.

Well, the motorway wasn't clear, so there was lots of 'foot down, brake, foot down, brake' action (and lots of swearing). I'll change down to speed up, to.
Like I said, I generally just keep accelerating until someone slower gets in the way.
I've just looked at my top speed for yesterday on the trip thingy on my phone, but I'm not going to write it on here


Please - the Tomcat doesn't go any faster than sixty, and it gets about 12mpg.

What world are you creating for our children!!!11111

Ah sorry mate, missed that. Duh.

I guess that explains it.