Six Cylinders Motoring Notes

[LightBulbFun]

7 minutes ago, Richard_FM said:

What tool would this be?  I normally check out the registrations on the pictures I’ve been scanning on cartell & the dvla site to find out a bit about them.

its a commercial  tool I somehow managed to wrangle myself access too

I mainly use it for my invalid vehicle research where it has been invaluable

its not free sadly and its not really meant for end users either

and on top of all that i'm also a bit reluctant to give out its details, least someone try and do something nefarious with it! and ruin it for everyone etc

[Richard_FM]

11 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

its a commercial  tool I somehow managed to wrangle myself access too

I mainly use it for my invalid vehicle research where it has been invaluable

its not free sadly and its not really meant for end users either

and on top of all that i'm also a bit reluctant to give out its details, least someone try and do something nefarious with it! and ruin it for everyone etc

Ok I had noticed the dvla site doesn’t give the number of previous owners any more.

[LightBulbFun]

Just now, Richard_FM said:

Ok I had noticed the dvla site doesn’t give the number of previous owners any more.

I dont think they ever did sadly?

would be interesting to know if they did at some point!

[Zelandeth]

@Six-cylinder may recall that when I was out for a run in their lovely little Metro that the first thing I noticed and was downright startled by was how quiet the gearbox was compared to that in my much missed example (and that the lack of the thermal flasher on the indicators was a shame).  Never quite figured out whether there is actually that much difference between the 'box in the two cars, or if the plusher MG version (and being a few years later) just had more sound insulation.  Stumbled across an audio recording this evening while looking for something totally unrelated which demonstrates quite how pronounced the gearbox whine in 1st, 2nd and 3rd in mine was.  Audio quality is appalling I'm afraid as the only thing that the digital camera I had back then in 2004 did worse than taking photos was recording audio...however it's all I had!

Folks have often said to me when talking about the car "it's a shame it wasn't the 1300" - I still dispute that...I never once in my time driving the car found myself wishing she had more grunt.  She always felt more than up to and willing to take on any task I asked of her with great enthusiasm.  Yes if you were merging onto a 70mph dual carriageway you needed to make proper use of the gears, but the gearchange was lovely (even though of course the one time I had a bloody audio recording running I crunched first!), and the car always seemed to encourage you to put your foot down. 

998cc or not, she still showed a clean pair of heels on a twisty country road by where I lived to a Golf GTi once the road got properly twisty.

It's a 0-70mph run here...again apologies for the white noise once we're moving...but it's the indicator "tick-plunk" and the gearbox which clearly wanted to live in a racing car that we're interested in.  It's still one of the most evocative sounds in the motoring world for me...and I still reckon that if I came across a clean early Metro at a reasonable price that I'd have a seriously difficult time saying no.  If it was Snapdragon yellow, I'd truly be doomed.

Metro Run.mp3

I will forever regret selling that car.

[Six-cylinder]

I have driven several 1.0 Metros and all are great to drive, but when you look at the speedo you are not going very fast!

The one that really sticks in my mind was a 1.0 HLE with 3+E gearbox. It was like a 3 speed gearbox with a cruising gear, that is as long as you were going reasonably fast, there was no head wind or up hills to travel! I still enjoyed it and was pleased I had requested to take it home instead of my usual new Volvo 340 1.7.

[TooManyPeopleMovers]

32 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

I have driven several 1.0 Metros and all are great to drive, but when you look at the speedo you are not going very fast!

The one that really sticks in my mind was a 1.0 HLE with 3+E gearbox. It was like a 3 speed gearbox with a cruising gear, that is as long as you were going reasonably fast, there was no head wind or up hills to travel! I still enjoyed it and was pleased I had requested to take it home instead of my usual new Volvo 340 1.7.

I wonder how well a 3+E gearbox would work in a 1275 Metro? Would the extra power make the E/4th gear more useful?

I appreciate that would defeat the purpose of the 1.0HLE but it's nice to wonder.

[Six-cylinder]

They did a 1.3 HLE and that had a higher ratio diff.

[TooManyPeopleMovers]

Thank you! I didn't know they had a 1.3HLE. I think I'll need to read some more Austin Rover Online.

[Six-cylinder]

My diary has reminded me it should have been Shitefest this weekend, but the world has changed.

However completely within guidelines I had to go 30 miles to Oxford today. They do not state what car to drive or the route to get there and it was a great drive. Empty duel carriageway on the way there and beautiful country roads to get home.

Chosen car was the BMW 735i that drove very well. I used it last night and it started on its own battery after 3 weeks for shopping, but it has its faults for shopping as the boot is so big a weeks shopping rolls around in there! 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

On 4/23/2020 at 12:21 AM, Zelandeth said:

@Six-cylinder may recall that when I was out for a run in their lovely little Metro that the first thing I noticed and was downright startled by was how quiet the gearbox was compared to that in my much missed example (and that the lack of the thermal flasher on the indicators was a shame).  Never quite figured out whether there is actually that much difference between the 'box in the two cars, or if the plusher MG version (and being a few years later) just had more sound insulation.  Stumbled across an audio recording this evening while looking for something totally unrelated which demonstrates quite how pronounced the gearbox whine in 1st, 2nd and 3rd in mine was.  Audio quality is appalling I'm afraid as the only thing that the digital camera I had back then in 2004 did worse than taking photos was recording audio...however it's all I had!

Folks have often said to me when talking about the car "it's a shame it wasn't the 1300" - I still dispute that...I never once in my time driving the car found myself wishing she had more grunt.  She always felt more than up to and willing to take on any task I asked of her with great enthusiasm.  Yes if you were merging onto a 70mph dual carriageway you needed to make proper use of the gears, but the gearchange was lovely (even though of course the one time I had a bloody audio recording running I crunched first!), and the car always seemed to encourage you to put your foot down. 

998cc or not, she still showed a clean pair of heels on a twisty country road by where I lived to a Golf GTi once the road got properly twisty.

It's a 0-70mph run here...again apologies for the white noise once we're moving...but it's the indicator "tick-plunk" and the gearbox which clearly wanted to live in a racing car that we're interested in.  It's still one of the most evocative sounds in the motoring world for me...and I still reckon that if I came across a clean early Metro at a reasonable price that I'd have a seriously difficult time saying no.  If it was Snapdragon yellow, I'd truly be doomed.

Metro Run.mp3 362 kB · 6 downloads

I will forever regret selling that car.

Metros are funny little things. Yours sounded like a soundtrack taken from the inside of a rally prepped  Mini Cooper on track in the 60s! They were so good at their job and hugely successful when released. I had great fun with my early Mini Metro when I owned it, although I do admit to being liberal with the wob. I think people forget just how successful they actually were.

[Craig the Princess]

5 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

I think people forget just how successful they actually were.

If they had been replaced after 10-12 years rather than updated beyond obsolescence they would be far more highly regarded today.

Cracking little cars.

[Zelandeth]

12 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Metros are funny little things. Yours sounded like a soundtrack taken from the inside of a rally prepped  Mini Cooper on track in the 60s!

The soundtrack was downright addictive, especially when pushing on.  What you couldn't hear in that rubbish quality clip was the growl added by the MG spec exhaust - which was an honest skip find out the back of my local tyre/exhaust fitter when I was in for tyres... apparently someone had ordered it years earlier then never turned up for it.  They eventually got fed up of waiting for someone to buy it so chucked it in the skip...an hour before I turned up.  £20 later into the petty cash tin and I had claimed it, and they refused to take anything more than that for fitting it.

I know she was a very, very early one so I'm sure there were some interesting oddball specification differences.  The illumination for the heater controls the A-plate one we had a few years earlier had was absent in it being one I remember spotting.  Also lacked a brake servo, though honestly I don't recall ever missing that, the brakes were more than up to the job of stopping such a light car, you just needed to push a bit harder.

I think there's something which clouds a lot of folk's opinions of Metros: So many people remember trundling around or learning to drive in a clapped out one, run on a shoe string and containing more rust and fibreglass than steel.  Like my first one - a clapped out low compression City which had been round the clock before the speedometer died several years before I got it, and in which the diff made some truly exciting noises.  Oh, and it tried to asphyxiate you if you turned the heater on so demising the windscreen required the windows to be open because the exhaust manifold was cracked. 

Driving a really good one is a totally different experience.  The Cappuccino is the only car that I think I've had which was capable of being so much fun on a twisty road.  Handling saw to that, adding the aforementioned gearbox that sounded like it belonged on a race track made it very hard to drive gently.

Speaking of gearchange, I've heard a lot of folks saying that it wasn't great on the Metro, but I remember it being really precise on the yellow one. 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

41 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

The soundtrack was downright addictive, especially when pushing on.  What you couldn't hear in that rubbish quality clip was the growl added by the MG spec exhaust - which was an honest skip find out the back of my local tyre/exhaust fitter when I was in for tyres... apparently someone had ordered it years earlier then never turned up for it.  They eventually got fed up of waiting for someone to buy it so chucked it in the skip...an hour before I turned up.  £20 later into the petty cash tin and I had claimed it, and they refused to take anything more than that for fitting it.

I know she was a very, very early one so I'm sure there were some interesting oddball specification differences.  The illumination for the heater controls the A-plate one we had a few years earlier had was absent in it being one I remember spotting.  Also lacked a brake servo, though honestly I don't recall ever missing that, the brakes were more than up to the job of stopping such a light car, you just needed to push a bit harder.

I think there's something which clouds a lot of folk's opinions of Metros: So many people remember trundling around or learning to drive in a clapped out one, run on a shoe string and containing more rust and fibreglass than steel.  Like my first one - a clapped out low compression City which had been round the clock before the speedometer died several years before I got it, and in which the diff made some truly exciting noises.  Oh, and it tried to asphyxiate you if you turned the heater on so demising the windscreen required the windows to be open because the exhaust manifold was cracked. 

Driving a really good one is a totally different experience.  The Cappuccino is the only car that I think I've had which was capable of being so much fun on a twisty road.  Handling saw to that, adding the aforementioned gearbox that sounded like it belonged on a race track made it very hard to drive gently.

Speaking of gearchange, I've heard a lot of folks saying that it wasn't great on the Metro, but I remember it being really precise on the yellow one. 

How early was yours? Mine was January '81. 

Sorry to go off on a tangent on your thread, SixCylinder!

[Zelandeth]

27 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

How early was yours? Mine was January '81. 

Sorry to go off on a tangent on your thread, SixCylinder!

Sadly the documents which have all the exact details were lost in a computer crash in 2007, it was apparently originally a promotional/press car according to an expert a few years back...nobody ever explained to me why it had an Inverness rather than Birmingham registration number though...so I can't cite the veracity of that claim.  Sadly I don't have a note of the VIN so can't do any further research myself, unless anyone can figure out a way to get a VIN out of a long dead registration...in which case I'd be all ears.

[LightBulbFun]

6 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Sadly I don't have a note of the VIN so can't do any further research myself, unless anyone can figure out a way to get a VIN out of a long dead registration...in which case I'd be all ears.

 

[Six-cylinder]

Just the morning for a drive, hold on we can't!

first shot 04:15

Second 04:47 and that is the moon.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

^^

What about the dark side of the moon?

[Six-cylinder]

I have just watched a youtube clip on the Fiat Dino Spyder and it has reminded me I went to Leeds with a friend on a Friday evening rush hour so I could drive his new blind purchase, lower priced Fiat Dino Coupe home. I drove it away very nervously clutching my AA card as my only protection from this Italian half exotica, it drove home very well with no major issues so I put my AA card away and then my reward came. I was lent the car for the weekend along with permission to take it the Auto Italia show at Gaydon, this was August 2010. I loved the car and the excitement of driving something so unusual and the fact my friend trusted me to keep his new baby for the weekend.

[SiC]

Same air intake as the one Tyrrell's had to!

They are a lovely shape things aren't they? 

[Six-cylinder]

1 hour ago, SiC said:

Same air intake as the one Tyrrell's had to!

They are a lovely shape things aren't they? 

It was the Tyrrell Video that I had been watching. I used to regularly see a spider in High Wycombe when I was still at school there, left an impression so I have always be aware of them. My Observer's book of Automobiles always showed the coupe so I had to ask my father what it was and then I thought the spider must be pretty special not to be in the book. As a child I could recite the Observer's book of Automobiles from memory and if you reed out a engine cc I could tell you what car it was.

Yes I love the looks of both the coupe and the spider.

My friends car is flattered in those photos because it was a tired old car with a very poor respray and slit upholstery. From memory my friend paid something like £3300 for it, did a ton of work including paintwork and sold it for £7000ish 2 years later.

[Six-cylinder]

1 minute ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

The 3+E was the Maestro with the Polo/Golf Formel E box and it's mega tall fourth gear and a huge jump from third to fourth. The Metro HLE had standard(ish) ratios but a really tall final drive.

It is a long time ago but I seem to remember the Metro HLE gearknob marked 1-3 + E?

[HMC]

Lovely car the Dino. In the late 90s they were usually in the 6-12k price range. Not anymore sadly. I prefer these to the spider (a different design house did each IIRC)

Mr6c, earlier.

[Six-cylinder]

2 minutes ago, The Mighty Quinn said:

It could have been, yes. But it wasn't like the Golf or ARG stuff where you had to use 5000 rpm in third and then snick it into fourth. The economy box was very effective though (especially in the Mini) and it meant that you could cruise at 85-90. A mate had a Primula yellow City E from around 1983 with the 10 inch wheels and we had the speedo needle pointing at the fuel gauge on a downill section of the M40  - probably around 100 mph.  We were racing a Cavalier at the time.

The 1275 engine was okay but a good 998 was the nicer engine. On a run, the economy was astonishing, a genuine 50+ mpg on a steady run doing 60 mph.  The Metro was let down by the usual BL quality, variable at best. Some would rust like a bastard, others were OK. As a car they were excellent. Great handling and huge glass area and I felt the facelift spoiled it with that horrid dashboard. The original dash was just genius, a big binnacle with huge instruments plonked on top of a wide shelf.

Our current Metro is a MK1 MG with short gearing and before it I had a Rover 114 SLi with 5 gears, even now I look for 5th from time to time!

[adw1977]

9 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

It is a long time ago but I seem to remember the Metro HLE gearknob marked 1-3 + E?

I can't find a picture of a Metro HLE gearknob, but here's a Maestro HLE from a 1984 brochure:

[Six-cylinder]

I have been sold a car two cylinders short of a real one!

Since I got the CLK I have noticed in a local village there are two other CLK convertibles that live just a few hundred yards apart. Sometimes I have seen one, sometimes the other but today I decided to photograph them as they were both there. Imagine how small and insignificant I felt when I found out they are BOTH V8s!

I crept away in shame in my V6.

[HMC]

Umm I’m blaming the go to cause for all late 90s Mercedes problems- it has to be the water based paint that’s to blame!!!!! 

[SiC]

Fun fact. The Jag V6 is a V8 with two cylinders in the casting blocked off. 

[richardmorris]

That silver one has a different coloured door. It would match your Alfa.

[Stinkwheel]

Fun fact. The Jag V6 is a V8 with two cylinders in the casting blocked off. 

Wow, didn’t realise that engineering like this still exists.
Less power but virtually all the weight and bulk.

[beko1987]

Wonder if anyone's been heroic enough to machine the castings and put the extra 2 cylinders back in one?