You know you're an ecomodder if/when...

[Laurentiu]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

YKYAEI
9. You have an ebay search for Diesel Citroen BX (non turbo) set up to email every day.
1.5 Diesel, weighs less than my sponge...

I love the looks/aerodynamics of the BX.... i doubt you would be getting much higher MPG's than the Fabia though.

As for that AX, would be nice for a project I guess...4.5 l/100km (52 MPG) that's not bad for starters How much is it ?

[Formula413]

Your passengers ask questions like "what is that switch for?" and "why are you driving so slow?"

[ShadeTreeMech]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

YKYAEI
8. You start to like Caravans - not because you "like" them totally, that would just be peverse and stupid - they should be burned in the style of Top Gear. But they give you an excuse for 50 mph.

Out here, it's cattle trailers. Slightly more odiferous, but after smelling exhaust all day, a pleasant respite.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

I love the looks/aerodynamics of the BX.... i doubt you would be getting much higher MPG's than the Fabia though.

As for that AX, would be nice for a project I guess...4.5 l/100km (52 MPG) that's not bad for starters How much is it ?

It was up for 350 gpb but it seems to have gone during the EM down time. I'm afraid my Mrs has banned any more projects until my stalled project approaches moving, probably towards the scrapper at the moment.

[Arragonis]

PS you do know my life is now dominated by the ultimate specs website - damn you internet, damn you...

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by ShadeTreeMech

Out here, it's cattle trailers. Slightly more odiferous, but after smelling exhaust all day, a pleasant respite.

Rant warning

At least those trailers have a purpose. Caravans have no purpose except to block roads and frustrate other road users.

I know caravaners would claim to pull in every now and again to let people past. Nowadays it rarely happens in my experience on the roads in the North of Scotland - with few if any overtaking places. The last person I know pulling a caravan who did that was my dad who pulled one behind a 1200 Beetle with 45 bhp in 1975 - aka see Scotland in 2nd gear. He didn't learn because we repeated the experience in a 1275cc Austin Metro with all of 62 bhp, so it was 3rd gear.

And if you do make it past them its all flashing lights and beeping horns - how dare you not want to be behind their 2 ton white plastic box on wheels?

And why caravan anyway ? At least camping properly in a tent is comuning with nature with the associated experience - cold, wet and so on. All you get in a caravan is that experience plus the endless tap tap tap on the roof from the rain, stupidly cr@p cooking arrangements thanks to bottled gas, oh and a chemical toilet.

As Armstrong and Miller would say - Kill Them....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62H8iJxS-3Q

[ShadeTreeMech]

I suspect Britian's biggest problem with a caravan is the lack of good pulling vehicles. You almost never see anything in the US pulling any sort of trailer unless it has at least a 4L V-6. I pulled a flatbed 16'x8' trailer with my Explorer once, and my dad thought I would tear up the truck in the process!

Isn't there a system in the UK stating a vehicle can only pull a certain amount of weight? Most of my vehicles are rated only up to 2200 lbs, and these are vehicles with over 150 hp. So anything pulling a 2 ton brick with less than 100 hp is preposterous to the American way of thinking!

[Arragonis]

Shade -

There is a maximum towing weight quoted for most if not all vehicles just like the US. Anything being towed is limited to 60 mph by law anyway - like all of our limits this is from the days when cars had 1.2 litre OHV engines, live axles, leaf springs and drum brakes. The problem is not really the vehicles these days but the roads and drivers.

Roads - For quite a few holiday areas in the UK - Devon and Cornwall or the North of Scotland or the pretty bits of England and Wales the motorway network does not go. In Scotland for example it runs out about 1/3rd of the way between the border and the northern coast - about another 2-300 miles. It is two lane roads, often twisty two lane roads. Combine that with the fact that Caravans and vehicles have grown in size and weight means they are even less suitable for these types of road.

Drivers - And people just can't overtake because usually they are in a convoy and leave no passing gaps and never seem to do the decent thing and pull over to let the queue pass. In the very North of Scotland a lot of the roads are single track - one lane both ways. There are verges labelled PASSING POINT. Do they get the message ? Nope.

And anyway, nobody but a lottery winner in the UK would think of buying a 4.1 V6 - all that wasted efficiency when you can have a 2.5 TD and get more torque and use galf the fuel

[Laurentiu]

He-he...British country roads are in their own league, I've never seen such narrow roads.
I lived in N. Devon for a short while myself and it was unbelievable how narrow the country road was, and it's not one way either....when you meet somebody, one has to reverse and pull into one of the "appendices" every 1/8 of a mile or so. The craziest thing...when I was living there, didn't have a car so I used to take a bus to Bideford , the nearest town and that bus was almost full size !! Both sides the paint was scraped because of the hedges. And the driver stopped few times and went out to chase the pheasants out of the way. Hilarious but at the same time I kinda liked it. The scariest was the "main" road - not the motorway which was going thru the woods, narrow as hell and people would be driving quite fast there was barely space to pass each other and when you met the occasional lorry it felt very weird...are we gonna make it ??

Here's a video to get an idea for you folks over the pond blessed with very wide roads most places (I know coz I lived in FL for a while, as well):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_plh...eature=related

[RobertSmalls]

Wow, has the lawnmower not made it to Cornwall? I can't imagine why you'd want a hedge within ten feet of the road, let alone one trimmed by ordinary traffic.

YKYAEI you watched that video and saw an excellent course for P&G, wasted on some leadfoot kid.

@Arragonis: trailer stability drops off with speed squared, so towing slower is the alternative to American-sized tow cars.