Ask a Shiter

[warren t claim]

Living near Heathrow there are loads of trailers for artics parked up all over the place. Alot of them leave their rear doors open. Is this to point out that they ave nothing to nick or is it to air them or summat?

 

Also are they just allowed to park up and sleep wherever they want?

1. Yes

 

2. No

[trigger]

Just a quick Q before bed, This afternoon i was following a tatty N reg Audi A4 TDi Taxi, Is there a law what says how old a taxi can be or is it just down to the local council?

 

The car was working for a big taxi company in town and wasn't just a private hire vehicle, there's also two J reg Volvo 940's still working in town too, they just seem really old to be a taxi now.

[Lacy]

Moog: to prove the trailers are empty.

 

Quite right.....however I've always questioned the logic behind this as surely all they are doing is drawing attention to those trailers that AREN'T empty as they will have the doors closed.........so it makes life easier for the scumbags who break into them.........

[Pete-M]

Just a quick Q before bed, This afternoon i was following a tatty N reg Audi A4 TDi Taxi, Is there a law what says how old a taxi can be or is it just down to the local council?

 

Local council.

 

Some councils have mental rules regarding the age of taxis. Derby seems to be 'anything goes' but some other councils won't licence anything over 6/7/8 years old. Some other councils will only licence cars up to three years old at first application and then renew until the car is 6 or 7 when it's deemed too old. One particular council won't licence any car that has done more than 500 miles from new at first application.

 

Then there are the dirty tricks some councils use to stop people running old cars. Wolverhampton often mysteriously run out of appointments when a 7 year old cab is due for test and then inform the driver "You've missed the date, your car is too old, buy a new one", they're trying to change the rules at the moment so that if you want to put a secondhand car on as a cab you need full main agent service history with full documentation for all work done, all old MOTs and advisories etc, which I'm sure wouldn't stand up to any serious legal challenge but "Them's the rules mate. Nothing I can do about it" . There are a couple of other councils who change the colour of minicabs every few years just to piss cabbies off.

[imothepixie]

What are those little plastic widgets on the top sides of car batteries for? Even if the battery doesn't come with 'em the holes are there for 'em on most!?

[ashmicro]

What are those little plastic widgets on the top sides of car batteries for? Even if the battery doesn't come with 'em the holes are there for 'em on most!?

 

 

If I'm right in thinking you mean the little flip-up plastic flaps, they are, among other things, for covering up the terminals so they don't short against the bonnet/carelessly placed tools etc. My neighbour has a Toyota Picnic with the wrong battery in it (too tall) and the alarm kept going off as the battery kept arcing off the bonnet. A pair of these from the scrappy sorted it. They also keep muck and shite off the terminals.

[Des]

What are those little plastic widgets on the top sides of car batteries for? Even if the battery doesn't come with 'em the holes are there for 'em on most!?

Some batteries come with spacers to allow one case to fit different applications, allows a slightly smaller size to be used where the clamp would otherwise bottom out, usually missing and replaced with bits of wood, fag packets, small sockets hammered in etc.

[Guest]

Can traffic light cameras do you if you're turning right, or do they just point forward?

 

Could do with an answer to this one, chaps.

[Lacy]

The camera will activate as soon as you cross the line on red so it matters not if you are turning right or going straight on, the two pictures taken ill show that you crossed the line and carried on moving.

[M'coli]

Do they activate if you've crossed the line, are waiting for a gap to turn right, the lights change and thus it means that you now have the opportunity to turn right - indeed, it may well be the only safe option to get out of the way of the impatient clowns whose lights are now green?

[scaryoldcortina]

^No, the camera watches your entry into the junction - Crossing the solid white line with the light on Red gets you a ticket. In the "turning right" scenario you are already in the junction looking for a way out.

[Father Ted]

Does anyone have a single car seat cover they would be willing to part with?

[cort16]

I've been looking at timing belt stuff for my v6 Alfa 166 and see you can buy a cam locking kit for changing the timing belt.

Can someone explain why you need to lock the cams in place? My experience of changing a timing belt on a much less complex engine involved making sure it's all the marks line up then just don't move anything.

[M'coli]

I suspect that the cams may move under the pressure of the valve springs once you take the belt off - with a single cam engine, there are going to be valves that are closing and valves that are opening at the same time: they work against each other and stop the cam from moving. Seperate camshafts however will only have one pair of valves open at one time - as there's no overlap, the valvesprings won't need much persuasion to move the cam round once the belt is off so the safe way to deal with this is to lock them in place during the change.

[dollywobbler]

Even on my BX I had to lock the camshaft and diesel pump in place (thankfully using nothing more complicated than three 8mm bolts and an allen key to hold the crank).

[RoadworkUK]

Are the indicators on a Range Rover Evoque particularly difficult to operate?

 

It's just the two I've been behind in traffic so far didn't seem to have them fitted at all. Of course, there's always the chance they were being driven by belltips....

[wuvvum]

I've been looking at timing belt stuff for my v6 Alfa 166 and see you can buy a cam locking kit for changing the timing belt.

Can someone explain why you need to lock the cams in place? My experience of changing a timing belt on a much less complex engine involved making sure it's all the marks line up then just don't move anything.

I believe it's because the cam pulleys aren't fixed to the camshafts properly - there's no splines or woodruff key, they're just a taper fit. This means that once the tension is taken off everything the camshafts will be free to rotate independently of the pulleys, so there's a good chance you'll lose your timing even with the pulleys locked. With the cam locks, you just lock the shafts in place and forget about the pulleys - they're free to rotate as they wish, which makes it easier to fit the new belt - when you tighten everything back up you know that the camshafts are in the right position.

[tonedepear]

Right, so... Um... OMG DMF failure - what are the symptoms?

[warren t claim]

Right, so... Um... OMG DMF failure - what are the symptoms?

[tonedepear]

K. How about the initial syptoms?

 

Apart from

[kinkersaab]

rattling noises that may or may not vary depending on clutch being pressed or not, and a vibration often felt through the pedal...i think....

[tonedepear]

Fuck knows with an auto then. I'm probably imagining it.

[kinkersaab]

hmmmmm............. never heard OMG! DMF! Refered to on an auto before......

[kinkersaab]

and, am i right in thinking you a resisting google / uksaabs, for fear of doom and gloom that will eventually convince you that your car has all the symptoms you read about?

[tonedepear]

Claim your £5 Lee, that's precisely what I'm doing!

 

Edit: I've a feeling I might be being massively dense.

[scaryoldcortina]

^ err, yeah. Autos do not have a DMF. Don't panic though, because instead they have a torque converter and a hugely complex set of cogs/valves/springs/belts/bands/electronics that is just as capable of emptying your wallet faster than a woman with a new wallet emptying attachment for the dyson.

[tonedepear]

That'll do. It just seemed weirdly rattly/not quite right at low speed earlier. Having said that, I've done 150 miles since and it seems fine, so it's possible I was just imagining it, or even more likely I'd left it in flappy paddle mode and it was just in a different gear to what it would usually be so it felt odd. It's been a very long day!

[trigger]

What kind of car is it Tone?

 

P.s like SOC said, DMF = Duel mass flywheel, which is part of a clutch for a manual car basically, Automatics use a thing called a torque converter which is totally different.

[kinkersaab]

in responce to the recent plod metro in tat thread, why did plod cars have no wheel trims around that time? was there a reason, even the unmarked and CID type cavaliers, astras etc were without, kinda made them stand out.

[tonedepear]

What kind of car is it Tone?

 

P.s like SOC said, DMF = Duel mass flywheel, which is part of a clutch for a manual car basically, Automatics use a thing called a torque converter which is totally different.

 

Aye, its a saab 9-3 diesel with flappy paddle auto. For some reason I'd convinced myself modern DMF's were independent of the clutch and worked with the torque converter too. On reflection I feel a bit silly!