For those interested in old cars.

[alastairq]

40 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

It seems to suit the car at least.

Better than red oxide splodges?

[Kickstart]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

So it's just another fad gadget / unnecessary complication?

I think that I will stick with one small key that: 

Won't lose its code.

Won't have a silly little battery inside.

Won't fall apart / snap off.

Won't wear a hole in the pocket of your trahziz / stab you in the ####s if you move suddenly.

Will only cost about £6 to replace if lost.

 

Next job, take all your car and bike locks apart and sort them so they all use a matching key!

A couple of months ago I took a load of old Zadi locks to pieces to get the wafers. Will sort out the seat and petrol caps to match on a couple if bikes (ignition switch is a rather heftier lock)

 

All the best

 

Katy

[MrWolf]

We keep it simple here. The Herald has a Wilmot Breedon key for the driver's door, boot and ignition and a Waso key for the fuel cap. The Triumph bike and both BSAs do without, never had keys. We just have security locks for those.

[Oldddudders]

27 minutes ago, Kickstart said:

Next job, take all your car and bike locks apart and sort them so they all use a matching key!

It is my casual observation that the biking fraternity expects to be, and thrives upon, taking their machine to pieces and making it work better, or at least as intended. The average 4-w C21 motorist has no such dark desires. Checking oil and tyres are tedious enough - and impossible for not a few older drivers. 

[boxbrownie]

43 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

We keep it simple here. The Herald has a Wilmot Breedon key for the driver's door, boot and ignition and a Waso key for the fuel cap. The Triumph bike and both BSAs do without, never had keys. We just have security locks for those.

Sounds complicated to me…..just press a button on the fob here, does the lot…..

[MrWolf]

Fine until you have a flat battery or gadgets stop talking to each other. I've seen far too many people locked out of their vehicles to bother with such things. It doesn't look quite so poseur when you're stood in the rain waiting for the AA and everyone else has gone home.

If I had a pound for every time my friend could have cheerfully set fire to his Transit because one or all of the doors wouldn't open.

[MrWolf]

Another joyous example of over complication I've come across was the throttle cable on a Renault Kangoo diesel. You would expect it to connect pedal to pump rack quadrant. 

It doesn't.

It goes to the opposite side of the bulkhead to a sealed unit containing a plastic quadrant and a sensor. The sensor transmits e signal down cables around the engine bay to another sensor which tells a device to open the fuel rack.

End result is that a broken cable (a common fault according to the mechanic) means £139 for a new assembly plus a couple of hours fitting.

Dealer part only of course.

[boxbrownie]

51 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Fine until you have a flat battery or gadgets stop talking to each other. I've seen far too many people locked out of their vehicles to bother with such things. It doesn't look quite so poseur when you're stood in the rain waiting for the AA and everyone else has gone home.

If I had a pound for every time my friend could have cheerfully set fire to his Transit because one or all of the doors wouldn't open.

In all my driving life when using key fobs I have never had a fob battery run flat (admittedly I don’t keep cars more than a few years) and on several cars the key fob was actually charged by the car when being used…….

 

I imagine it don’t look so much of a pose in the pouring rain when the little metal key snaps (now that happened to me) off in the lock or standing there trying to clear the snow from a frozen lock…….the pose then would be standing there peeing over the lock 

[MrWolf]

It's all very well if you can buy a new car every couple of years, everything's new and if it breaks, it's under warranty.

 

But for someone who doesn't have much money and needs to keep a used car going just to keep bread on the table, then a stupid electronic fault can break more than the bank.

 

If you oil locks on old cars like it tells you to in the handbook, they seldom seize or freeze up. 

The keys that tend to snap are those stupid long double edged things that they started making in the 80s. Those godawful Chubb locks that Ford fitted to the Sierra, XR3 et al, fell apart because they were made of monkey metal. Not much has changed, except the number of unnecessary wires.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

In all my driving life when using key fobs I have never had a fob battery run flat (admittedly I don’t keep cars more than a few years) and on several cars the key fob was actually charged by the car when being used…….

 

Even if it does go flat you just open the door with the regular key hidden inside the fob. Then to start the car you press the start button using the fob and it works like a vanilla transponder key.

 

The Leaf moaned that the key battery was going flat long before it actually did so. The only problem was I had to look on the internet to figure out out to prise the fob apart.

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

It's all very well if you can buy a new car every couple of years, everything's new and if it breaks, it's under warranty.

 

But for someone who doesn't have much money and needs to keep a used car going just to keep bread on the table, then a stupid electronic fault can break more than the bank.

 

If you oil locks on old cars like it tells you to in the handbook, they seldom seize or freeze up. 

The keys that tend to snap are those stupid long double edged things that they started making in the 80s. Those godawful Chubb locks that Ford fitted to the Sierra, XR3 et al, fell apart because they were made of monkey metal. Not much has changed, except the number of unnecessary wires.

 

Moneys not the object, and I don’t mean that as it if doesn’t matter.

 

If I had to run a cheap car (which we’ve done many times in the past as well as a couple I built, nowadays it would be a Focus without doubt, the first generation…..great handling, comfortable and can be mended in any back street garage with sellotape and spit.

 

Never oil locks…..graphite will stop them seizing and freezing and cheap as chips with a 4B pencil 

 

BTW The Chubb locks were “forced” upon us in the 80’s by the insurance companies, they literally threatened to make the sporty Fords uninsurable if they didn’t get fitted as at the time they were the only locks that couldn’t be picked or forced with close cuts, and they cost a fortune in royalties hence the cheaper materials, I think the piece cost was something like 75p a barrel and key…..add that up across millions and the standard 20p locks seemed so much better!

 

Then the thieves just punched a hole in the door and threw the lock with a bent bent rod, the steering lock was easy as the same as all the others, big screw, slide hammer and away.

 

I did a lot of work filming “tame thieves” breaking into the cars back then, one demo our friend gave us was a brand new 1989 7 series BMW which he walked up to, slid the stainless steel strip out of the wiper rubber slid it into the drivers window seal and clicked the central locking alarm system off…..all in about 10 seconds……and you think Ford had problems 

Edited December 1, 2021 by boxbrownie

[boxbrownie]

58 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

Even if it does go flat you just open the door with the regular key hidden inside the fob. Then to start the car you press the start button using the fob and it works like a vanilla transponder key.

 

The Leaf moaned that the key battery was going flat long before it actually did so. The only problem was I had to look on the internet to figure out out to prise the fob apart.

Don’t spoil an urban myth about high tech failures 

[MrWolf]

Urban myth? Perhaps you should try googling "most unreliable new cars" or similar?

 

Electrics

Electrics

Electrics

Transmission

Brakes

Electrics controlling the above.

 

It doesn't seem to matter if you buy a far Eastern cheapie or fly the flag () and cough up for a Jaguar or Land Rover. 

 

 

 

 

 

[jcredfer]

33 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Urban myth? Perhaps you should try googling "most unreliable new cars" or similar?

 

Electrics

Electrics

Electrics

Transmission

Brakes

Electrics controlling the above.

 

It doesn't seem to matter if you buy a far Eastern cheapie or fly the flag () and cough up for a Jaguar or Land Rover. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is journalistic smoke and mirrors, as it merely lists the frequency of faults in numerical order.  It contains nothing quantitively, giving no indication of how that compares to the overall numbers of vehicles, or how many had none of the faults.  It is also very general, listing none of the stats on how trivial any of those faults may have been, with no effect on the motorist's ability to continue to drive it, until the minor matter was dealt with.  It's a simple argumentative cheap shot, hoping no one will notice and also used by politicians.  Same journalistic level as "A customer in Tesco said he had found two of the faulty packs of.....  " and just as relevant to the overall countrywide picture.

 

 

[MrWolf]

Really? Hundreds of different articles on the subject.

Besides, I thought that this was a thread about old cars? 

Like I said earlier, I can get a lecture about how much better new cars are whilst filling up with petrol.

I really don't care, I have no interest in modern cars, they bore me to death. You might as well get enthused about your refrigerator. That's clean, quiet, reliable and lined with plastic too.

[boxbrownie]

18 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Really? Hundreds of different articles on the subject.

Besides, I thought that this was a thread about old cars? 

Like I said earlier, I can get a lecture about how much better new cars are whilst filling up with petrol.

I really don't care, I have no interest in modern cars, they bore me to death. You might as well get enthused about your refrigerator. That's clean, quiet, reliable and lined with plastic too.

Your the one who keeps harping on about modern cars unreliability and plain Jane looks…….

 

We are happy with them as tools to travel and enjoy in modern traffic but still appreciate the design and heritage of classic designs.

[New Haven Neil]

Ford Fiesta Powershift transmissions......or what Mr Cadogan calls them....Powersomething else!

[Nick C]

2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

BTW The Chubb locks were “forced” upon us in the 80’s by the insurance companies, they literally threatened to make the sporty Fords uninsurable if they didn’t get fitted as at the time they were the only locks that couldn’t be picked or forced with close cuts, and they cost a fortune in royalties hence the cheaper materials, I think the piece cost was something like 75p a barrel and key…..add that up across millions and the standard 20p locks seemed so much better!

 

No need to pick or force the lock on a 70s or 80s Ford, you just unlocked them with whatever key happened to be closest to hand... I remember opening a friend's mk2 fiesta with my key, and vice versa...

[boxbrownie]

2 minutes ago, Nick C said:

No need to pick or force the lock on a 70s or 80s Ford, you just unlocked them with whatever key happened to be closest to hand... I remember opening a friend's mk2 fiesta with my key, and vice versa...

Not the Chubbs…..that was the standard lifting pin type.

[Nick C]

2 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Not the Chubbs…..that was the standard lifting pin type.

Yeah - the chubbs didn't come in until the very late 80s didn't they? 

[MrWolf]

25 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Your the one who keeps harping on about modern cars unreliability and plain Jane looks…….

 

We are happy with them as tools to travel and enjoy in modern traffic but still appreciate the design and heritage of classic designs.

 

I'm not the one / ones who were going on about how much more gadgetry they've got in a 2015 Toynissrengeot that they simply couldn't do without either. That started way before I got here.

[boxbrownie]

27 minutes ago, Nick C said:

Yeah - the chubbs didn't come in until the very late 80s didn't they? 

If I recall, they were introduced on the DE-1…the Scorpio

[boxbrownie]

12 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

 

I'm not the one / ones who were going on about how much more gadgetry they've got in a 2015 Toynissrengeot that they simply couldn't do without either. That started way before I got here.

Who was that little monkey? 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Nick C said:

No need to pick or force the lock on a 70s or 80s Ford, you just unlocked them with whatever key happened to be closest to hand... I remember opening a friend's mk2 fiesta with my key, and vice versa...

 

Also BL. I once locked myself out of my car and borrowed a key from a passer by.

[jcredfer]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

Really? Hundreds of different articles on the subject. -  That doesn't alter the simple lack of quantifiable facts and simply goes to reinforce the point about the amount of journalistic pap.

 

Besides, I thought that this was a thread about old cars?  -   Indeed it is, although quite why you announce that now is a mystery, as it was you that raised the issue of unreliable new cars when you said  "Urban myth? Perhaps you should try googling "most unreliable new cars" or similar?  

 

Like I said earlier, I can get a lecture about how much better new cars are whilst filling up with petrol.

I really don't care, I have no interest in modern cars, they bore me to death. You might as well get enthused about your refrigerator. That's clean, quiet, reliable and lined with plastic too.  -  Why raise any of these matters in reply to my comments about relevant statistics?  I neither raised, nor mentioned any of them.  Quite why your reply brings up buying petrol, clean, quiet and plastic refrigerator, is unknown, unless you are trying to change the subject as a distraction from the topic you were replying to.  After all, you did remind us that you "thought this was a thread about old cars".

 

 

I hope that this helps to clarify what I was actually commenting on and what I was not.