billynibbles

Yes, I'm with johndouglas on this one. Cruise control is only any good for keeping your speed constant on the flat. Any decent driver who can spot an uphill run a mile away will improve on the efforts of c/c by building up some speed in advance (on a downhill, maybe) to avoid flooring the pedal on the up-gradient. Cruise control isn't that clever. I thought I read last week that it's only illegal to use c/c in Belgium on busy roads. Of course, like the UK, that could be all of them! It was in an article about all those things you need to know about driving in different countries (spare prescription glasses, spare bulbs, warning triangles etc. In one of the Balkan countries, even your front seat passenger's not allowed to be drunk. Others even have rules about keeping your car clean!)

I should imagine that there's also a case to be made for a 3-door body shell having more integral strength in the first place. The makers of some 5-door hatches I've had in the past have advised against jacking the car with the doors open in case it twists what's left of the body shell.

As the steerable Xenons come under the category of 'non user serviceable', where do we stand legally when driving in countries that insist you carry a set of spare bulbs by law? Somebody told me you can 'hire' a spare Xenon bulb (from the AA maybe?) so if you find you've lost a headlight, you can go to the nearest garage and get them to change it, just in case they haven't got any in stock. Is that so? I notice that the handbook recommends that you change both at once, but then, I guess they would, wouldn't they.

Maybe some of the Xenons have a flat cut-off, but having tested mine against a high wall, they definitely DO kick upwards towards the left, so I assume that I will need a deflector or a mask to stop French drivers flashing me.

Yes, I've compared ground speed as measured by GPS, not only in my VTS now, but in my previous Toyota, and the trend seems to be towards more accurate speedos, so no more 'rules of thumb' when passing Gatsos - damn! My wife's Smart seems spot on too. Of course, the GPS might not be dead right either, but when two independant measurements agree, it all starts to look right. So the only other factor to throw a fuel computer off course is the volume measurement of fuel flow. If they've got this right, then the mpg is right too, but it's a big 'if'. However, there's no arguing with a tank-to-tank check as long as the mile-ometer can be trusted, and as far as I can see from the one or two that I've done, I've little to complain about in terms of my mpg being lower than the official figures.

I was out and about in Thursday evening's torrential rain in the London area - on Saturday morning, I was getting a 'very close' warning from my rear driver's side sensor. Swearing about Citroen electronics under my breath, I pressed on, thinking maybe water had got into the sensor. On closer inspection, there was a 'kin great spider crawling across it. Once it shifted itself, the false warning went away. The Citroen C4 - "Alive with arachnids" One thing I did notice though - if a truck goes past and flings huge amounts of flood water at you even from 10 feet away, the sensors sound off.

Thanks for that - presumably, if they're self levelling, they don't need to 'cut-off' to one side to avoid blinding anyone

Looking at the headlight clusters of my VTS leads me to wonder what you do about modifying the lights for driving on the right. The outer cases are totally clear with no prismatics, so there's no real clue where to put any 'stickers' - or can the lights themselves be redirected?

I found my old Metro Stoplok Pro (higher spec version with a decent key) the other day and wondered whether to add it to my C4's security - mind you I'm not sure why I was bothering what with my Thatcham alarm, deadlocks and laminated side windows. Because it was there, presumably? Despite being the deeply cranked version of the Stoplok for bulky steering wheel bosses, I could not put it on without setting the horn off several times.

A friend just back from the London Motor Show tells me that Honda have taken the lane wandering warning one stage further by using a simlar system to hold the car to the centre of a lane, but I'm not sure if that's exactly right. If it is, we're one stage nearer to hands-free cruising. The problem is with many of these features, cruise control, et al, is that they don't seem best suited to our overcrowded roads (except the bit that prevents you tailgating maybe). I'm none too sure about any feature that might tempt a really tired driver to press on despite what his eyelids are trying to tell him. Maybe all these features should only be activated after you pass a quick alertness test as a 'log on'. Blimey - I just passed through into the revered halls of 'Advanced Member' - must be a 30-post threshold.

I thought the updates were milage rather than time related and were based upon the guestimated MPG. Hence if you travelled the previous mile at 50MPG the range is higher than if the last mile was covered at 30MPG. Ian Black 55 VTR+ That makes sense. I rarely get stuck in a jam straight after buying fuel, so that would explain why the update times differ for me depending on the speed I manage straightaway afterwards, and it also explains why it's possible to have a projected range of 30 miles left, only to get stuck in a jam (thereby doing no further miles at all), and to run out. The moral being, don't rely on the 'miles left in tank' figure when the reading is very low, especially if your style of driving/fuel economy is about to differ for the worse. Thanks for that. Chris

Good point about the chemical contents of various glues so I'll hold off on that one, but the thought of letting a dealer mess around with plastic trim fills me with no pleasure at all, especially as it appears to need the removal of two other bits of trim to get at it. It seems to clip into place quite positively, but after a couple of closures to the tailgate, it's limp again There's got to be another 'invisible' fix - I just haven't come up with it yet. Blu-Tac wouldn't work for anything under a constant pull, as anyone who's ever tried putting a poster on the bedroom ceiling, and woken up in the morning wearing it will know!

Blimey - a good point from me! The silly pills must be wearing off ;)

On the subject of fuel computing, the 'range left in tank' must be a difficult one to compute, and can lead to complaints if not taken with a pinch of salt. I was at the dealers a while back when an irate customer came in complain that he'd just run out half a mile from bringing it in for a service, when the computer reckoned he'd got 30 miles left. (What he thought the garage were going to use to test the car is another matter) Well, silly him, I know, but as it only seems to update every 10-20 mins or so, he may have been in a total gridlock in the mean time and used up what was left before it could recompute based on present usage. Mine always seems to reset to around 472 miles when I fill up, and if I immediately get onto the M4 and drive sedately, it starts to read nearer 800! Of course, this soon alters again when I get into the Slough Trading Estate! I have however managed to get about 750 out of a tank before chickening out when it was reading 50 miles left, so maybe I could squeeze 800 out if I wasn't such a wimp.

Good on yer Frank - you've taken over as the senior postee on this one, and I'm happy to hand over the crown. I also like playing my stereo loud to annoy young people in bus queues. A senile delinquent? Moi?

Ditto to all of that. The VTS diesel is the best drive I've had in a long while. I've eradicated most of what annoys me - got some 'unofficial' embroidered seatbelt pads from ebay etc (the usual - only 99p but '500 quid' postage from HK). The only remaining creak and groan was coming from the two different types of leather used for the seat sides and the arm rest. Every time I cornered or went over a large bump, the flexing of the former was creating a really loud leathery creaking like a cowboy shifting in his saddle as it rubbed the suede of the arm rest. Problem solved with two strips of the velvet half of self-adhesive velcro applied to the arm rest to cushion the offending layers from eachother. I'm now looking at ways of stopping the arm rest sliding forward every time I stop - maybe a discrete application of that self-adhesive magnetic strip somewhere strategic but hidden? Just lately, I've noticed that the hot weather has caused the trim across the window bar in the coupé to sag and no amount of clipping it back cures it - very annoying as it can easily be seen in the rear view mirror. I may try some non-permanent adhesive in small dabs, like Uhu. I know we shouldn't have to do this stuff, but it's better than repeated visits to the dealer when I could be out enjoying driving the thing (which I do whole heartedly). In any case, could they have come up with anything better?

When on a single carriageway, I set my cruise control to about 1 mph less than the car in front - eventually, the road ahead seems quite clear! (I need help - I think I'm a latent caravanner*) :o *A friend has a good name for them - "shed-draggers". Getting the c/c to 'resume' to its previous speed is quite an odd experience isn't it, especially with the 2.0l diesel's extra torque? It feels a little like you're out of control as it surges forward with no input from you - a bit like being a passenger, not a driver. The last time I felt that was in a 5.0l Chevy Caprice job with bog-standard 3-speed automatic box - that would 'resume' from a standing start if you let it! Now maybe if that lane wandering system could be linked into the steering, we could all get in the back for a snooze or use the 12v socket for a brew. Can't help feeling that relying on the parking sensors to warn that the car in front is too close might be leaving it a bit too late though. Oh well, back to the reality of a clutch-pumper on the A316 Chertsey Road. :o

Well, I'm 56 so that lets you off the hook dear boy. Now then, where's me pipe and slippers? Oh one remembers now; one left them in the shed while one was pimping one's ride.

Give it a couple of years - basic unleaded'll cost £2.42 a litre!

My 15-month old VTS has the visual warning as well as audible - it shows a map of the car with one, two or three bars as you get closer to the offending object I really must stop getting too close to the car in front in a queue, because as soon as one bar shows up, the display blocks your use of the radio unless you press the ESC button to get rid of it.

The general concensus seems to be that the VTS is the only one to be stiffer (or should that be even stiffer?), but I wonder if they made any extra provision to firm up the front end of diesel VTSs still further to allow for the weightier power plant, which I seem to recall is 100 kilos heavier. As with others here, I'm glad I don't have to sit in the back

My JBL upgrade kit plays mp3s in the front slot, but my Blaupunkt multi-changer won't recognise them although it's OK with CD-Rs in general as long as they're CD-Audio format. It doesn't mind playing second fiddle to the mp3 files in the front slot though. Still, since you can get the approx equivalent of around 12 CDs in the front slot, even at a high quality rip rate, the ability to play a few "ordinary" CDs in the changer is somewhat academic. I'm very pleased with the way the central dashboard display shows track details, artist, title etc (as long as you make sure your MP3 files have got the ID3 tags)

Good idea - plastic bolts would seem to be the way forward. I'm going to start looking too.

Sorry - posted twice

Ditto to all of that - I've had a few people ask me why I didn't buy a Focus instead. I've driven one of the new models for two weeks whilst on holiday, and I have to say that Fords have really shot themselves in the foot with the new model. Out goes the old more innovative design and back in comes a really so-so looking car with a really boring dashboard, but then what do we expect from a company that ditches the Puma? I'm surprised the Ka hasn't been axed too. After all, we wouldn't want to drive something looking unusual would we? Wrong, Mr Ford, we do, and fortunately for us, Citroen make them. I still have to keep looking back over my shoulder at my VTS coupé - silly I know but name me one mid-ranged Ford you'd do that for!