nerdstrike

FYI my 45Ah battery is now five years old, and lasts a fortnight before I get nervous about starting. It'll die sooner or later, but is defying my expectations. Maybe this winter will finish it off?

My Winters have probably covered about 10k miles by now and they've still got plenty of life in them, despite me exploiting their fun characteristics. Performance gets extra squiffy above about 10 degrees and that's my guide for when they come off in spring, i.e. when the morning temperature is consistently warm. Irrespective of tyre choice, if you've got slopes to climb you might have to resort to Sierra tuning, i.e. heavy stuff in the boot. Depending on how bad your roads get, you might also go all-season with some snow socks if things get wild. Your driving experience will be much better most of the time that way. Mud+snow tyres are very impressive in the wet, but they're often wooly in the dry.

Well it's totally the immobiliser. I'd get that to Toyota. You mention a big spark, so I'd go over the relevant fuses too.

Nope, the list price is used to calculate additional ongoing costs. In the hypothetical luxury electric saloon, that's £320/year. Cheaper cars waive that, and are taxed at a standard rate for their fuel source, and have an additional up front first payment. Diesels get slaughtered!

The new tax scheme is weird. The £30k Corolla hybrid costs £100 up front, £135/year, whereas a Model S will pay £0 upfront, £320/year, and a Leaf should pay nothing at all. I think buying a Supra would be a taxing experience.

You lot strike me as people who might have opinions. At long last I finally have a garage to keep my favourite car in. Only trouble is the original builder thought it was better without a door on. The car will be coming in and out often, but I also want a secure space for tools and such. Please advise me on what kind of door best suits a double width gap, reliable brands, and if possible who to trust to install one!

That's not pretty!

Fixed price servicing tells us £250 intermediate, £395 for full service, plus any extras that are due, but there's not much at 40k to worry about. Franchises seem to vary their pricing a little bit.

Suzuki's emergency brake system warns first before intervening. My dad's VW has also gone bananas on B-roads with unkempt hedges - that did intervene unnecessarily. I don't think you could drive in Sicily or Greece at all with such a system "helping".

I'm on the brink of buying a house, so I'm out. Too many things to do. Enjoy yourselves.

A crunch is the lugs on the gears skipping out of the holes they're supposed to engage with (because they're rotating at different speeds). If you repeatedly abuse the gearbox you might wear the lugs down and it'll be more likely to skip in future (or worst case snap off I suppose), but they are slathered in oil and it probably needs a lot of blunders to have an impact. The 100k mile brigade aren't needing new gearboxes as far as I'm aware. I wonder if our boxes are tough to shift when cold because of the oil, or because of thermal contraction of the moving parts and gear selector? On a cold morning it can take me two or even three attempts to get into 2nd gear in the first couple of minutes if I'm unlucky.

I think it's safe to say that quite a few people here are Focal fanpeople. You get what you pay for from reputable speaker manufacturers (at least with drivers, cabinets is another matter). It might make sense to brand match your Pioneers. As for power, only you can say how loud it needs to be. Some people complain that it's not enough. If you're happy with the 6.5s output at the moment (with bassy music) then you've probably got all the muscle you need. You lose the bass punch first when power is short. It might not be worth the effort of extracting the wiring that runs to the rears. Lots of trim to come off. If you did, you could run those wires to 3.5's and cut them to length.

Replace the tweeters - they suck and distort all over the place. The simplest solution for three speaker pairs is a 3-way amp, but only you know if you have one of those. If you repurpose the rear cabling, your fader controls will be weird but could act as a ghetto equaliser. It is probably a bad idea to have two mid-high range speakers on a single wire as they'll double up in a large cross-over range. A discrete crossover to blend them together would help. The standard two-way setup in the car has large gap in the soundstage which sounds weird in some music. Mids might help with that, but a high quality two-way is enjoyable if you want to keep the wiring simple.

My keyless fob definitely took the awkward not available in supermarkets CR1632. The only way to know is to crack them open and look. It's pretty easy and won't mess anything up. I believe a battery will last up to two years in continuous use. There's a lot of communication goes on for the immobiliser and , much more than with the old remote locking fobs.

I've felt chillier blasts, but well done Subaru, your aircon is good for hard times! The same cannot be said for my glasshouse office building with 360 degree solar collection...