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  1. AndrueC

    AndrueC

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  2. Konrad C

    Konrad C

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  3. rafletcher

    rafletcher

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  4. waqar_lionheart

    waqar_lionheart

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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/05/2019 in all areas

  1. You choose to drive differently from me and I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that I don't approve of your kind of driving. I consider it to be wasteful, lacking in vehicle sympathy, inefficient and above all less safe. In normal driving I keep the car out of the PWR area on the dashboard which equates to rarely going much above 2,000 rpm and that seems to suffice for my commute and for driving on motorways. My advice to anyone that thinks they need more power is to dedicate a week or two to driving more sensibly. Measure the difference in journey times and I'm pretty sure it will be negligible for any journey less than an hour. You will however save significant amounts of fuel, reduce wear and tear on your vehicle and make the experience more pleasant for your passengers. It'll also be a lot safer for everyone. Here endith the lesson. Sorry :)
    2 points
  2. I had just written a very long reply but my giant fingers got in the way and clicked a few buttons and ruined it all. I was having the perfect rant. 🙂 I own two cars, Honda Jazz 2005 and prius Gen 2 2007.They are both on the target list for these thieves. couple of things, my car is now in a garage having an aftermarket cat conv fitted. Its setting back £350. Plus the hassle is thrown in for free. Also the sheet that Konrad has posted was for a Gen 3. Also the mechanic just rang. My car is ready, he is charging 350. The O2 sensor is OEM (i think denso are the suppliers or Bosch, cant remember). I have also asked his permission to post in this group the address and name. Not sure if i can but i leave it with them. This guy seems good. And has a decent workshop. Its not one of those under the railway line arches one. I will post the address towards the end of this post. Ok couple of things I wanna get of my chest. My whole family has hybrids. It was heartbreaking to have it happened to my brother but since we live in a leafy little village in the heart of surrey, i thought hmmm its okay it wont happen to us. BUT when i thought that i didnt know the reputation of the Leatherhead Leisure Centre. The manager there looked dodgy (didnt look like the manager - attire was well out of place without going into too much detail 🙂 ). I spoke to the caretaker who started the conversation when my car was being recovered. He said one day last week 9 were stolen. And many more before that. The guy who recovered me said he recovers 5 vehicles on average a week. These stats are ridiculous and represent the reality on the ground. The caretaker was kind enough to look into CCTV for me and confirmed that he has the culprits on 3 different cameras. I have reported this to the police but I am not expecting anything to happen. A theft is a theft but in this country, even if the police catch the culprits, they ll probably get away with cleaning the leaves off the side of the road for a couple of hours. LEGAL SYSTEM IS A JOKE or even worse get a suspended sentence. THis is not a deterrent but only an enabler because every evil starts small and if there is no punishment for little crimes, bigger ones will continue to flourish. I have been told someone from the police will be in touch int he next 72 hours. Lets see what comes out of that. Generally speaking my faith in kindness of strangers is only hanging by a thread because of the nice people here. one thing is for sure, what goes around comes around, in this world and the hereafter. This is my positive take away from this experience. I knew owning this car could mean something like this one day but to have it happen to my wife all alone and vulnerable out in the bitter cold shows what these heartless worthless theives are doing. its not about the money, its about the safety of vulnerable ppl. Imagine if she came out of the leisure centre and the gang was there in the middle of cutting the thing out, they could have hurt her. This is my point around allowing small evil to flourish. It can only lead to bigger problems in society. Sorry RANT OVER. Gonna go and get my car. Regards, Waqar p.s: thanks Konrad for supporting me through this. will keep you posted. Also just realised that in my posted that got deleted, it had mentioned the mechanics details. please find these below. RB Car Care and MOT Testing Station Car repair and maintenance in London, England Address: Unit 5, Jubilee Centre, Lombard Rd, London SW19 3TZ Phone: 020 8417 1122 Appointments: rbcarcare.co.uk
    2 points
  3. My last car was a 2.0l. An Audi Quattro. It managed to average 28mpg on a 17 mile commute. Whatever the mpg from the 2.0l hybrid it'll be a lot more than that! Perhaps not as much as some diesels, but I made a conscious decision to avoid diesels around 5 years ago.
    2 points
  4. Today my friend Waqar who is a member of this forum, has become the latest victim. His wife went to Leatherhead leisure centre in Surrey, and the theft took place in the carpark. His car is gen 2 Prius. A couple of months back whilst he was having the car MOT, he saw these shields made for fitting under the car. He thought about getting one, but obviously did not. I don't have information on the garage supplying these shields. The car is now at another garage having a replacement cat' and sensor fitted. It is not a genuine Toyota, but the garage fitting, plus other sources have said, the thieves seem attracted to genuine Toyota cats! Waqar has told me the carpark manager at the leisure centre seemed shifty, whilst another employee seemed more honest and told him, there had been 9 similar thefts! I told Waqar to add this comment when reporting to the police. If there is a pattern, then they could investigate. If the police had the resources, they could put a bait car there, and follow to the scrap dealer. That's what I would want, but in reality things never work like that.
    2 points
  5. My thoughts exactly, leave well alone I know some the early 2000's diesels are mechanical injection Imho the best bit of tuning you could do is a full service, that breathes life back into most engines
    1 point
  6. This is totally not applicable for many countries. There it could be quite the opposite - not driving with the flow speed and slowing everyone behind you could actually lead to dangerous situations and accidents because of frustrating the others and forcing them to do stupid things to pass you. It is full of youtube videos, forum discussions, etc. especially between Prius drivers, how you should make sure not to make everyone angry just because you want to achieve +2mpg for example. And I have heard this from different traffic/driving experts on different occasions - most safe driving is to “follow” the others. Not driving faster or slower. And again, when you live in a place, where “normal” acceleration is considered to be something else than what Japanese engineers thought when creating the eco/pwr bar, then it’s safer not to watch it and drive as the rest. So you guys seem to be lucky living and driving in a place where there is no road rage, speeds in general are very low and everyone is just driving calmly. But this is not the case in many countries. Just an example: Tell a German to drive on their autobahns with only 60mph. Or to go to the fast lane for overtaking a truck staying only in the eco zone...in a no limit zone where someone behind you can be approaching with 100+mph...
    1 point
  7. I think I'll try shooting a video, where I do normal accelerations, just to show how low or high revs will go. If you could do the same thing with the 1.8 liter engine, then we would have a kind of comparison. Every video on Youtube is about max. acceleration or maximum engine power, but no one shows everyday driving.
    1 point
  8. You feel it quite a bit in the wallet as well Personally I've never found a need for heavy acceleration. The 1.8 seems to have enough without utilising the battery most of the time. It seems to me that any manoeuvre that requires more than a typical 1 litre car can provide is probably one that shouldn't be attempted in the first place. All more power does is increase the chances of getting involved in something nasty. It rarely reduces the journey time.
    1 point
  9. Before you condemn the car it might just be worth getting a second opinion on that diagnosis from another garage. On a Toyota hybrid the transmission really isn't a CVT in the normal sense. It behaves like a CVT would, but the internals could hardly be more different. No belt, no pulleys, no special oil. The transmission is the same as fitted to a Prius gen3, the taxi driver's favourite!, and they are reckoned to generally last ~ 250,000++ miles. Basically the mechanical part of the transmission is the most reliable part of this car. Plenty of owners can elaborate on this! When they do start to get old (much, much older than yours!) then the usual high-mileage transmission gear whine is as close as they get to failing. If you car had been running without enough oil in the box then I would have expected this as one of the symptoms. The electronic control for the transmission can fail, but this would normally throw an error message on the dash, and would render the car almost unuseable, from what I understand. There is no oil change interval at all for the transmission in normal use, and no reason for the oil level to go down unless it is leaking. I have done an oil change on 2 Auris hybrid boxes (just to see if the oil had degraded at all), and very carefully measured the oil volume that drained out. Toyota list the box as having a ~ 3.3 litre capacity, but on both cars, the first drain from new (by me!) showed 2.95 litres. I think if you dig into the Toyota spec. for this it says the capacity is 3.3 litres, plus or minus 10%. So it would possibly appear low if checked (by removing a level/filler plug underneath the car - there is no dipstick), when actually 'normal', and the same level as it came with when new. How does the garage know it was under-filled, I wonder? By the way, Some Toyota garages have been known to almost refuse to do an gearbox oil change on these when it is requested by the keen owner, "because it doesn't need it!" they say. You obviously have a problem on the car, but the gearbox diagnosis is blaming an incredibly reliable part. This might sound harsh, but, I would speculate that that is a judgement from someone who doesn't really have a thorough Toyota hybrid experience, but I'm happy to be corrected on this, of course, I'm commenting on this long-distance after all! The diagnosis you have been given would fit much better with a car using a regular CVT - the reliability of the hybrid box (properly called an eCVT by Toyota) is in a completely different league. But then - 'There is always a first for everything'. 'Never say never', etc. etc. etc. And I definitely wouldn't blame yourself. Excuse the long post. I should point out that I'm just an Auris owner, I only get to check out my own cars! Oh, and thanks for the update!
    1 point
  10. In that era you were lucky to get one sheet of foolscap (slight bigger then A4) of notes typed on a manual typewriter. In the 1960s my Mum worked in the Vickers factory in Weybridge, Surrey (which became British Aircraft Corporation, which became British Aerospace, now BAe) and used to type manuals and procedure documents for aircraft such as the VC10 on an electric typewriter. Her boss obviously had a sense of humour as when he learned we were going to Spain on a BAC 1-11 jet he got her to type some of the emergency drill procedures, telling her if there was emergency on our flight she'd be able to brief the pilot!
    1 point
  11. Honestly, half of the manual will be warnings. Most of it common sense stuff that can no longer be assumed to be common sense, otherwise the manufacturer gets repeatedly sued by the stupid and the greedy. There would have been a lot fewer warnings in the manual from Morris.😂
    1 point
  12. Here we go my friends, a new episode 😄
    1 point
  13. IMO Hybrids and PHVs are a safe island where lots of people are gathering at the moment.
    1 point
  14. EVs are the destination. Hybrids are just a stepping stone, but they’re still the best compromise right now.
    1 point
  15. When a Toyota pure EV is produced I reckon it will be a good un, that's what Toyota do.
    1 point
  16. Like some others on this forum, I am not entirely convinced that Toyota is so far behind everyone with EV tech. Their hybrid program has included nearly all if not all technologies require to build a totally electrical car. They have one of the most slippery bodyshells on the current prius and this includes quite wide tyres and a radiator grille-( both items known to cause drag). They have electrical motors able to power the car along, they have kinetic battery recharging technology, electrical power control technology, charging technology and battery technology and mass production experience. Putting a Toyota next to any one of its EV competitors highlights their competitors weakness. Nissan , for example are only successful with small cars with big batteries. Tesla have cracked the range, power and battery issue but the cost of the tech is astronomical.Renault have fallen rather short of the mark made by Nissan but have also gone along the route of putting big batteries into a small car. Nearly everyone else is trying to use their petrol engined chassis as a lack lustre EV or hybrid. Only BMW have really had a good go at things but their very space efficient I3 is a bit of a draggy little lump at cd 0.29. My impression is that for the time being , Toyota are keeping their powder dry whilst battery and motor technology slowly improves to the point where producing a vehicle which will carry 4 persons and their baggage 300miles between fuel ups ( charges ) is commonplace and affordable.
    1 point
  17. Battery swapping has been tried and doesn't really work - handling such heavy battery packs causes a lot of wear and tear, not something you want when dealing with high voltages and volatile chemistry. Battery charging is constantly getting faster. Once it's down to <10 minutes for a full charge then the inconvenience of BEVs will no longer be an issue. It'll happen eventually (though not necessarily for home charging, due to amount of power required), but I don't know how soon. I don't think hydrogen fuel cells is ever going to happen for normal passenger cars, mainly down to the infrastructure. Hydrogen storage is expensive, and production requires a lot of energy - it's more efficient for the lecky to go directly into your car than use it to produce hydrogen. There's not a single publicly available hydrogen station in my country, whereas there are hundreds of public EV chargers around, and if I'm really stuck I can charge (slowly) from pretty much any residential or commercial premises in the country. And the Mirai has a range that's no better than the top end Teslas (around 300 miles).
    1 point
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