OT I am not a very happy at the moment.

Dave,

My brother has a two year old 1.9TDI Passat, the running gear is identical and you will have at least 130HP on tap. He tows a caravan etc and has no complaints with it at all.

Martin P

On Sat, 27 May 2006 12:32:12 +0100, "Dave Croft" finished tucking into their plate of fish, chips and mushy peas. Wiping their mouths, they swiggged the last of their cup of tea, paid the bill and wrote::

Looking at the rest of the album, I think it's a VERY poor excuse to put the Ariel 3 back on the road!

Seriously though, sorry to hear about your misfortune - you'll find the Octavia will go well.

Brian L Dominic

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Sorry to see the bad news about the car. It looks like the front has been hit. This could have caused a short on the main battery lead. An easy way of protecting the car is to fit a battery master switch. A

John

John, would slightly disagree with you regarding 4 x 4 on wet fields, my usual means of towing is a 1969 Bedford CA Camper which has a low power 1600cc petrol engine. Not very quick in a straight line but I can without using the throttle lift off the clutch and creep because she has low revving torque and will pull herself and my trailer out of trouble. I've only ever been towed onto a field because I stupidly arrived at Bloxham rally where the ground was so bad I sunk to the chassis rails as we were towed onto it from the road. (holding large plank as I write this) Today's modern engine idles to fast or as with a diesel has no power until the turbo kicks in so clutch control is fighting a fast revving engine. I've also seen owners of 4 x 4's who get stuck just as easily because they don't have a clue.

Martin, I don't know too much about the Subaru on fields yet but even without the turbo I suspect it has more power than your Bedford. Remind me next we meet and you can try it. The Sierra certainly had power and at low revs too. at 400 rpm it would still pull well. That's a big lazy engine for you. The other place that car won was being able to accelerate quickly as I left the road so that I hit the field a few mph faster than others. I know what you mean about 4x4 idiots. I've towed my caravan past a Landrover before now. What I am saying is that 4x4 is better than 2x4 if all else is equal.

John

Still down to the idiot driving it.

Martin P

On 27 May 2006 13:45:08 -0700, "John" finished tucking into their plate of fish, chips and mushy peas. Wiping their mouths, they swiggged the last of their cup of tea, paid the bill and wrote::

But in this sort of situation, sheer power isn't an issue. A Subaru will easily dig itself in, a 2CV with MUCH less power and skinny tires will extract itself on tickover.

When I ran 2CV's, everybody in our valley waited to see if I could get out in snowy weather, before they'd attempt it: if I couldn't, they wouldn't try!

Brian L Dominic

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Sorry to hear about the car Dave. I used to pull all the big engines around with various poor, overworked, petrol cars but now have the (almost) perfect setup for the engines.

Brian, My point was in answer to Martin who said that modern engines needed revs to be able to produce enough power to move. Mine can make enough power at lower revs so remains tractable. Your comment about tyres is a mixed one and the virtues of wide vs narrow tyres is totally dependant on the ground. On snowy roads, it's a benefit to have the tyres sink to the tarmac. Rally cars run really skinny tyres on snow events. The last thing you want is to ski over the snow. On a field you need the correct balance of ground pressure low enough to avoid sinking and high enough to provide traction.

John

On 28 May 2006 14:09:53 -0700, "John" finished tucking into their plate of fish, chips and mushy peas. Wiping their mouths, they swiggged the last of their cup of tea, paid the bill and wrote::

.......... in which case you're a LOT more sensible than most!

Oh yes - don't forget you've got a proper Chassis to attach it to! It would be a LITTLE underpowered for pulling engines, tho'. Mind you, so was my 998cc Mini, but that did wonders, tho' the tail did wag the dog a couple of times. Still, I was a lot younger and less easily scared in those days..........................

Brian L Dominic

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Thank you

Ah Mini's. I started caravaning with a 14ft van and an 850 Mini. The time I towed a SWB Landrover on a car trailer was entertaining. 20 bhp moving about 3 tons!

As you say.......youthfull enthusiasm

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

On Sun, 28 May 2006 22:39:38 +1200, Tom finished tucking into their plate of fish, chips and mushy peas. Wiping their mouths, they swiggged the last of their cup of tea, paid the bill and wrote::

It would've been, after that........................

Brian L Dominic

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John

Good fish and chips still exist if you know where to look :) Just a pity they can't sell them in newspaper anymore.

Al

"Tom" wrote:-

Plenty of fine local chippies still, Cowley Fish bar is ours and still well under a tenner for two. Oh, and our proximity to Southall ensures some pretty good curry houses too! Trouble with visiting colonials etc is that they are seduced by the expensive and mediocre likes of Harry Ramsden's just because they know the name ;-)

Sorry to hear about the car Dave. One of our reps at work has an Octavia turbo diesel and, while still quite new, it suddenly began to accelerate of its own volition, he pulled over and found he couldn't switch the engine off. So there he stood as the engine note rose and the cloud of black smoke grew thicker until - BANG! The engine was replaced under warrantee and as far as I know it has been thoroughly satisfactory ever since (must now be well over the 100k miles). I believe the failure was put down to a dud turbo dumping lube oil into the air stream followed my Mr. valve saying hello to Mr. piston due to over revving. Hopefully it was an isolated case and if the one you are looking at has a good few miles under its belt I'm sure it will be fine.

Automatic or manual? Manual, heave on the hand brake press the foot brake bung it in 3rd, let up the clutch (not to quickly or slowly) and you should be able to stall it before the engine goes bang or the clutch burns out...

Automatic, erm, run away unless you fancy trying to suffocate it by blocking the air intake. Even fully braked I suspect the torque convertor would just get very hot and go bang followed by the engine unless you managed to catch it very early in the run away.

Quite a common failure mode for diesels, someone has just had their LR run away over in alt.fan.landrover. Diesels will happily burn anything including their own oil... A really worn diesel can do it on the oil coming past piston rings or valve stems.

But they only serve American food unless you count the odd slice of black pudding

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

Many generators have an 'air flap' over the intake for just such an occurrence, it's held open by springs and closed by a solenoid driven from an overspeed detector or the set's controller, a half megawatt engine running away is a bit scary 8-).

Greg