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Being right-handed I thought it was a good idea to put my Mio PDA with GPS on the right above the ESP switch. It meant I could reach out with my "good" hand and operate the controls on it, like setting modes and inputting addresses. It wasn't a good idea because of the sun shining in through the...

Don't know whether you've got the same in the Mk1, but here's what it does in the Mk2. There are two pipes feeding air into the air cleaner. One of them has the valve in it which attaches to the intake system and only opens when there's enough revs and enough throttle opening to need lots of...

There's already benzol/benzene in your petrol. Its legally limited to 1% because of its toxicity. Its a carcinogen. And it pollutes groundwater when it leaks out of petrol station tanks. Its what they used to put in petrol to get the octane up until they discovered how nasty bit was, so they...

Occam's Razor. You don't need any more than the tyres to explain it. Some tyres are good in the dry and bad in the wet. Worn out tyres are bad in the wet. Old tyes are bad in the wet.

1. The ideo behind the Clio Sport - a small nimble car with a good engine - is great. But Clio Sports are poorly-engineered and poorly-built crap. Buy one and you'll be running back to your local dealer continuously getting one fault or another fixed. Rattles. Faulty sensors. Rattly dashboards...

Those numbers might mean something if your trip computer was giving accurate results for fuel consumption. Being methodical I checked mine against actual fuel used. It was initially 15% optimistic. I asked the dealer to fix it at a service. He halved the error. Now its about 8% optimistic. The...

220 pounds for a 2004 172 or at least the equivalent of it I live in Australia And I'm 54 with maximum no claim because the last claim I had that was my fault was in 1971.

I'd have thought that since they compare wheel rotational rates the traction control and the ESP would be very unhappy at significantly different rolling diameter tyres. The question is how much different they've got to be before the computer thinks there's a problem.

This is one of those questions where anything is possible, it just depends on how much money you've got and how willing you are to throw it away. What would be a lot smarter is to start with something that lends itself better to doing such a conversion. Like I looked half-seriously at starting...

What's confusing is that they show a picture of a wheel with a 5-bolt pattern, and say its only available in a 4-bolt pattern.

A laser pen should not trigger it. The frequency is completely wrong. Pens are optical, so you can see where they're pointing to. Laser guns are infra-red, so you can't see them. Whether a mobile phone with irda on it works depends. Radar guns are 904 nm wavelength. Irda is 875+/-30 nm.

You want a bullet-proof bonnet? Pray tell why. You're not going to Iraq with your 182 and expecting trouble at the security checkpoints where they shoot at your engine block if you don't stop are you?

No Rich_16v, spacers do NOT shorten the life of wheel bearings. It is having the wrong wheel offset that shortens bearing life. Whether that's cause by putting on spacers OR by putting on wheels that have the wrong offset. But if you use spacers to correct the other way for wheels that have...

I hear the Mk3 Cup cars have a sequential shift box with steering wheel paddles for shifting. Paddles would solve the problem that the current sequential box needs major surgery to fit the gear change linkage through the firewall. But is the new box really new, and maybe won't fit earlier Clios...

This was one of the things that most annoyed me about my 172. You either didn't pick up quite enough revs when you moved off from the lights and it stalled, or you picked up just a few too many and you squaled the front wheel and looked like an idiot. It was annoying that you had to take some...

Mine does it at highways speeds when I have the air conditioning off. If I turn it on the noise stops. I complained and asked for it to be fixed under warranty. My request came back "unable to test - no action".

Oh, and the reason the induction kit could have resulted in fuel consumption rising is that, like most induction kits, it doesn't actually work. So you used more throttle and more fuel just to do the same as you were doing before.

I pulled the Pipercross Viper off mine and chucked it. All it did was encourage me to put my foot down when I didn't need to because it sounded good, and produce more annoyingly more noise when I didn't want it to.

Mk3s are 5-stud aren't they?

The rule for increased top speed is a cube rule. Ie, to go 2 times as fast you need 8 times as much horsepower. The chipping company says you will get 17% more power at the same peak power revs. That'll give you just over a 5% increase in top speed. So you want to increase your gearing by about...

So by the time the engine reaches its best the gearbox has long since worn out?

What does it weigh?

The smaller the offset the further out the wheels sit. So changing from wheels with a 48.5 mm offset to ones with a 45 mm offset pushes all the wheels out 3.5 mm and widens the track by 2 x 3.5 mm = 7 mm.

It could work like brake assist. Brake assist looks at the rate of application of the brake pedal and when it sees you pushing hard on the pedal it doesn't wait for you to get the pedal pressed all the way down, it anticipates it, and jumps straight to maximum effort, leaving the ABS to ensure...

If you want grip go for sticky tyres. They'll wear quicker. But they don't require the purchase of bigger wheels. And because the wheels aren't bigger they won't be any heavier and they won't stuff up the ride. And you'll get more extra grip by going for a stickier tyre than you'd get by putting...

A wheel can be perfectly balanced, but not round. As in elliptical shape rather than perfectly circular. Roundness is one of the things that manufacturers specify tightly for OEM parts (ones delivered new on the car, even if someone else actually manufacturers them). You can also get out of...

The higher the frequency the easier the ears can pinpoint the direction the sound is coming from, left or right. The lower the frequency, more correctly the longer the wavelength, but its the same thing, the less the ear is able to distinguish direction. Two ears located 150 mm apart can't...

I thought the same about the HIDs on my 172. They're absolutely hopeless. I moved a week after I bought the 172. It was terrible trying to find my way around at night in a city I was unfamiliar with because the sharp cutoff of the HIDs meant there was no illumination of street signs. Or of...

I intended to mount my GPS aerial outside the car. The manufacturer of the aerial said that irrespective of how it looked, they hadn't designed it to be car wash proof. They put a magnet on the bottom intending that if you put it on an exterior panel you'd pull it back in when it rained or the...

Anyone know yet how they get 197 ps out of the 2 litre engine in Renaultsport Clio III? Anyone know what would have to be updated/changed/whatever in an earlier model to match, if its possible? Its a lot from a conventional (non-VTEC) long-stroke engine. The only thing I've seen from the pics...