Go

[MRD]

Its hard to crash change a modern gearbox because the internals have been made to make the smoothest change possible which usually involves putting in safe gaurds making it harder to put in it low gears at silly speeds and reverse by accident. This is fine in normal use but makes trying to crash is near impossible. FWD cars also suffer from a less precise linkage which again makes it harder to feel the gears and even more difficult to do.


Coming back from York last Saturday my washers froze up so I ended up slowing down to 30 and throwing bottled water over the windscreen to try and clear it. That was fun, On the motorway at 11:30PM when you can't see the lines on the road for snow, brakes are usless and you cant see out of the windscreen .

[plod]

I remember driving to Glasgow in a Iveco luton van and the washers froze, and tried to keep going as long as I could. Had a drivers mate with me, and for some weird reason, the wipers were clearing his side, but not mine !!
Anyway, looked around cab, and no water, but bottle of coke, and as screen was getting really bad, ended up driving along at about 60 trying to throw coke over the screen.
Got me to the next services, as dare not drive any longer as thought the coke would get reet sticky

[wylie]

Not sure about new cars my current car is now 10 years old (xantia) but i can still manage to change gear, up and down without clutch it does take a bit practise but if your carefull with gear stick you can feel when it's ready to slide in . It's all about getting the moving parts inside the gearbox rotating at the same speed as the engine is rotating.
Not sure if this is still posiable with gearboxes with straight cut gears used in race cars, i believe (I'm no expert).

[Welshy40]

If its moving i did manage to get it to lock into second but as i had to stop after the blackwall tunnel at the slip road traffic lights i was buggered as it just wouldnt budge from neutral. Still at least i know whats broken so simplifies their charges a bit at audi.

[wylie]

It may simplify the cost at Audi but you'll still be missing an arm & a leg

[Welshy40]

My clutch pedal and unit were broken. £390 to fix but a two day turnaround at audi is pretty impressive. Saved me the agro.

[MALLET]

You're supposed to have a heavy right foot not left

[Welshy40]

Originally Posted by MALLET

You're supposed to have a heavy right foot not left

Hehe well it appears my left foot enjoys blowing my money

[smokes]

Originally Posted by Welshy40

My clutch pedal and unit were broken. £390 to fix but a two day turnaround at audi is pretty impressive. Saved me the agro.

Thought it would be it a common problem with all vag cars the spot weld for the return spring always fails from fatigue. I fix my bro mk1 s3 which did the same thing on a bypass in bristol.....

its a shame the charge so much to fix it, it only takes an hour and the pedal is £20 the hardest thing is getting the spring back in. you have to compress it and clamp it so you can slide it in I used a bunch of zip tie to clamp it after compressing it with a bench vice.

[Dave Dodd]

Originally Posted by Captain-Codpiece-The-2nd

Nightmare week. First off, I have had to do 900 motorway miles in the worst weather imaginable. No problems, until I go to clear the windscreen. Bollocks. No water atall. " must be empty or frozen" I think, and pull into services. Plenty of liquid water inside, hmmmmm. Decide to ignore it and carry on driving. Big mistake. 3 miles further I actually cannot see a thing thanks to a mixture of snow/grit/un-named black crap plastered on my screen. I resort to holding my head out the passenger window like a dog, in order to see. Manage to get the same mixture plastered over my face. Decide to get to the next services, and fix the goddam washers.

Off come the hoses. Blow through them, all seems fine. Dammit. Next I test the pump. Again working fine. Well why in the hell is it not coming out? I decide to search for a brick to put through the windscreen so I can just see, but decided it was waaaaay too cold for that. Ok so it must be the actual tank?!? Unlikely but there is nothing else. I peek inside and it looks fine. Off comes the pump, and the little rubber filter between it and the tank. Bingo. It looked like someone had jizzed in my tank. White jism-like substance all over the filter. Cleaned it off, washers work fine. God I am a genius!

Drive off back on the m1 feeling smug and warm inside. few miles down, windscreen filthy again, hit the washers...........bollocks. Its all jizzed-up again. Right. Screaming off the next services, swearing, cursing the car, damning whoever jizzed in my washer tank in front of earshot of some very astonsihed motorists. Pull the filter of and sure as day follows night, jizz all over my filter. Decide to remove the offending jizz-filled tank and clean it out at the water pump. Easy enough right? Wrong. It would've been easier to go in to the services and got a handjob off a talk Swede called Boris.

I decide to clean the tank out in-situ, and drive over to the water station still cursing the phantom jizzer. Pull all the pipes off and grab the water hose. God damn winter! Out of order, frozen solid. Bonnet down, window down, head out and another 15 miles of motorway driving. Next services, water frozen. Drastic action is needed here......

Then it came to me. Think outside the box. The problem is the tank. Ill just get another tank! Off I trot into the station, with my jizz-covered filter and pump nozzle in hand, still cursing. I offer it up in front of some bemused staff, to all the bottles in their fridge display. I found that Vittel water seems closest. and buy a couple. I reamed the drinks spout out to snugly fit against the filter nozzle, and rammed it in with a psychotic grin on my face, still complaining about jism.

I created a bottle sized gap under my bonnet, rammed the new "tank" into place upside down so gravity aided the jis-infested pump, and slammed the bonnet. Et voila! The poshest window washers on the m1! I am so happy with my modification that I am going to leave it there.

Here are some pics of my amazing handywork for anyone that is actually bored enough to still be reading this far.

My day did get worse though, my back box fell off 60 miles from home, but that was beyond a bottle of vittel so just got chucked in the boot.

jis-invested
its quite common usually a mix of a build up of crap and using too much screenwash ... i clean out a couple a week :thumbsdown: worse on a cold n' wet day

[Hog]

Originally Posted by antnee

At least your bottle is easy to get to!! On mine (and the fabia and polo of same age) the bottle is tucked down behind the n/s foglight!! Would be a bumper off job!

The rear washer pipe has come off my Fabia VRS - it's a bitch of a job to put back on thanks to the location of the washer bottle!!

[welsh man]

Originally Posted by Captain-Codpiece-The-2nd

Nightmare week. First off, I have had to do 900 motorway miles in the worst weather imaginable. No problems, until I go to clear the windscreen. Bollocks. No water atall. " must be empty or frozen" I think, and pull into services. Plenty of liquid water inside, hmmmmm. Decide to ignore it and carry on driving. Big mistake. 3 miles further I actually cannot see a thing thanks to a mixture of snow/grit/un-named black crap plastered on my screen. I resort to holding my head out the passenger window like a dog, in order to see. Manage to get the same mixture plastered over my face. Decide to get to the next services, and fix the goddam washers.

Off come the hoses. Blow through them, all seems fine. Dammit. Next I test the pump. Again working fine. Well why in the hell is it not coming out? I decide to search for a brick to put through the windscreen so I can just see, but decided it was waaaaay too cold for that. Ok so it must be the actual tank?!? Unlikely but there is nothing else. I peek inside and it looks fine. Off comes the pump, and the little rubber filter between it and the tank. Bingo. It looked like someone had jizzed in my tank. White jism-like substance all over the filter. Cleaned it off, washers work fine. God I am a genius!

Drive off back on the m1 feeling smug and warm inside. few miles down, windscreen filthy again, hit the washers...........bollocks. Its all jizzed-up again. Right. Screaming off the next services, swearing, cursing the car, damning whoever jizzed in my washer tank in front of earshot of some very astonsihed motorists. Pull the filter of and sure as day follows night, jizz all over my filter. Decide to remove the offending jizz-filled tank and clean it out at the water pump. Easy enough right? Wrong. It would've been easier to go in to the services and got a handjob off a talk Swede called Boris.

I decide to clean the tank out in-situ, and drive over to the water station still cursing the phantom jizzer. Pull all the pipes off and grab the water hose. God damn winter! Out of order, frozen solid. Bonnet down, window down, head out and another 15 miles of motorway driving. Next services, water frozen. Drastic action is needed here......

Then it came to me. Think outside the box. The problem is the tank. Ill just get another tank! Off I trot into the station, with my jizz-covered filter and pump nozzle in hand, still cursing. I offer it up in front of some bemused staff, to all the bottles in their fridge display. I found that Vittel water seems closest. and buy a couple. I reamed the drinks spout out to snugly fit against the filter nozzle, and rammed it in with a psychotic grin on my face, still complaining about jism.

I created a bottle sized gap under my bonnet, rammed the new "tank" into place upside down so gravity aided the jis-infested pump, and slammed the bonnet. Et voila! The poshest window washers on the m1! I am so happy with my modification that I am going to leave it there.

Here are some pics of my amazing handywork for anyone that is actually bored enough to still be reading this far.

My day did get worse though, my back box fell off 60 miles from home, but that was beyond a bottle of vittel so just got chucked in the boot.

this is the funniest thing ive heard in a long while god bless your vittell invention