XV test drive

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 8:18 pm

Actually manufacturers generally run a small number of shells through extra processes and do lots of things not possible after the shell leaves the line .
They often add LOTS more spot welds and use thicker steel sheet or even a different grade of steel to make certain sections stiffer and lighter at the same time .
Often the mechanicals won't even fit into a production shells and mountings are no where near strong enough . Many many years ago you could take a production body shell and construct a properly make roll cage inside it , seen that done in years gone by and its a real fabrication art .
The reason why the manufacturers wanted the move away from Group A production car based racing was that they didn't want to have to make and sell the 5000 odd homologation specials and 500 sporting evolutions to base the racers on . Its expensive and finding homes for real cars is difficult when most drivers want a lounge room on wheels . This is where you start to see the huge void between a race car basis and a a road car basis . What the manufacturers pass off as sporty cars is a long way from what was once called a sports car . To have good performance/handling/steering/braking means having something that communicates well with the driver and being smooth quiet comfortable etc is at opposites with this . You can't have it both ways .

Dikman · Post by **Dikman** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 11:47 am

This has turned into a most interesting thread (as these things sometimes do)

. All these extra "safety" features have to cater for the lowest common denominator, which is a driver who may end up in a nasty situation and not have the experience to know what to do to get out of it - which is probably going to be the majority of drivers out there today. The driving test requirements these days are much more stringent than when I got my license (I basically had to prove I could drive and reverse park!) but it doesn't follow that it makes them better drivers. It's a lot scarier out there these days (you only have to ride a motorbike to realise just how bad it is) and a lot more hectic. And the roads are deteriorating rapidly!!!
Fortunately, my employer put me through a defensive driving course back in the '60s, which has held me in good stead all these years.

As my wife will be driving the car primarily, all these safety features I see as a good thing, and when I drive I sit on the speed limit and generally drive within my limits (which is a LOT slower than I used to) so these features are fairly irrelevant to me (other than the ABS). I'm more concerned with having a smooth auto trans

.

As for a turbo version, no thanks, I deliberately avoided getting an XT because I don't want/need a turbo. Same with a diesel version, this site has put me right off modern diesels.

Btw, I just received the brochures for the XV in the mail, at last

. This must be the first time a manufacturer has rolled out a new model, which appears to be selling well, without having detailed brochures available first!!

thunder039 · Post by **thunder039** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 11:55 am

i went and had a look at the new xv yesty not drive but just look.
looks great i love the ground clearance and i can see why its selling so well

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:53 am

A lot of new car sales these days are based on how the thing looks and the creature comforts inside it . All this is fine but it is boring when advertising is all about the gadgets and SFA about the substance of the actual vehicle , or at times the lack of it .
All I can say is research the product well and if interested hold off briefly and let everyone else find any glitches .
I wouldn't look at any new car as a long term proposition and turnimg over new cars is an expensive way to get around . The electronics will dictate back to dealership servicing initially and thats cheap - not .
No I'll stick to things I can work on at an age where there are plenty of cheap spares available .
If I have another roo it will probably be a 98-99 Impreza sedan without the dryer for everyday use , damn Subaru for not putting the EJ25 NA in these cars and I don't want another daylie turning into a project like Ellie did .

A .

Dikman · Post by **Dikman** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:48 pm

All valid points, disco.I've always said it's a mistake to buy something when it first comes out, better to let others sort out the bugs! Unfortunately, I'm in a difficult situation. My wife has decided we're getting a new car (long story, but we need to keep the Forester for a while so my daughter and family can use it when they're here from overseas for a few months), so what do I do? She doesn't like buying second-hand, so it has to be new. Do I buy something else (another brand), something that we might not be entirely happy with? Or do we buy a new model that we're happy with (brand/body size/engine size etc) and take a chance that any issues are going to be small and taken care of under warranty?

To be perfectly honest, I would rather take a chance with Subaru's new-model quality being up-to-scratch than buy an X-Trail/Hyundai something-or-other/Honda/Toyota etc.
After all, the fiasco with their diesel is probably the worst thing I can recall with their cars, in general they have an enviable reputation.

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:31 pm

Well its not for me to say how the two of you make your choices but my wife doesn't make decisions for we . We have our own cars and pretty much stick to them .

Again as I said your call but it sounds like someone thinks new has to be best and its arguably not always the case . With us its a case of we know who gets the job of keeping them running so they have to be able to be worked on often by me . In my case my more recent cars have been Nissan Subaru and Mitsubishi , hers is a Nissan and generally easy to service . Only once have I ever had a fault code cleared and that was for the hand (air) bag in the Skyline at some horrific price . Got a surge jump starting it we think .
I just see lots of compounding problems with electronics and its in virtually all car systems now . God help you if you get the diesel shudder style issues and spend all your time arguing with dealer service managers .

Best of luck , cheers A .

NachaLuva · Post by **NachaLuva** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:45 pm

Dikman wrote: After all, the fiasco with their diesel is probably the worst thing I can recall with their cars, in general they have an enviable reputation.

Yeah I'd probably stay away from their diesel but the XV does look good

discopotato03 wrote:Well its not for me to say how the two of you make your choices but my wife doesn't make decisions for we . We have our own cars and pretty much stick to them .

Or so she lets you believe lol

(PS: just kidding lol

)

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:10 am

What can I say , if its easy to let her think she's winning why burst the bubble ?

All these late electronically controlled diesels with exhaust traps/cookers are a worry because they take the reliability of a once pretty bullet proof engine design . People may think they are economical things but they go pretty green when they see the service costs after a few miles .
One thing diesels universally HATE is water in their fuel and the late siliconized ones bite BIG time to fix , significantly more than an unmolested one does .
Actually a friend from work has been right across the country on a three week jaunt in a 100 Series Cruiser and it never missed a beat . He saw a few silicon fourbies stop dead in river crossings because the electronics failed - all of them . Its not like you can drain the water out of the black boxes and go again .
I think the serious off roaders write these black box mobiles off as SUVs because they're not worth a pinch of s&it off the beaten track .
So many people buy them and never ever take them off the bitumen . I give the marketing departments full marks for seperating people from their money , and they didn't have to make a serious off road car to do it .
Make it look lairy and tough and make it ride like a lounge with air conn and surround sound . Make out its great and sell em like hot cakes .
I think you can pretty much draw a line at around the 2000 dateline and say things built up to this point are managable and from a maint viewpoint the earlier the better . I think its going to be VERY hard to legally modify anything from about 2005-6 on so Subaru was marketing a crock when they showed the older REALER cars in the XV add . Unlike my poor old L I doubt an XV will still be around in 2038 when its 26 years old .

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:24 am

discopotato03 wrote:Unlike my poor old L I doubt an XV will still be around in 2038 when its 26 years old .

Time will tell! It'll be interesting too. I'd like to think my L would be around in another 26 years, but if this was the case it'd probably be in a museum!

And I agree with what you've said about the new diesel electronic units - they're even changing the diesel fuel to be more refined that ever before. I've heard of some old diesels having issues with this - one fella out Hotham way adds gearbox or engine oil or some oil I can't remember to his diesel to make his old oiler run like it used to. On top of that they've got to run all sorts of additives for the winter months!

I was beside a new foz diesel in traffic yesterday, at the traffic lights it was very noisy and continually changed it's idle for reasons unknown to me... I thought it odd.

Cheers

Bennie

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 8:42 am

I think more sulPHur is being removed from ULP and diseasel , the manufacturers like like this because the combustion process gets a bit less corrosive and they can use less expensive materials in anything that sees fire .

Some late model mobile mainframes idle all over the place because the idle air bypass valve struggles to regulate engine speeds with varying electrical loads and mechanical ones like AC compressors switching on and off .
Diesels don't generally have strangler valves (throttles) and control everything usually with the volume of fuel injected .
Late diseasels give me much mirth and I think the problems revolve around (sic I know) diesel engines running cool when they run lean . Petrol engines normally run hot when lean and this can "help" the engineers with emissions and consumption at times . Its difficult to make a cool engine run "clean" particularly when it uses combustion pressure and temperature to light the fire . I'm sure there are ways to introduce other fuels with the diesel to make them burn "hotter" at light loads but how complex and non user friendly do they want it to be .

A .

GOD · Post by **GOD** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:39 pm

Hey Disco, what did your father and grandfather say about all the injectors and computers and turbos and cats and advance diaphragms in your RX or Skyline? Yet both those cars are still running and being repaired now. Why should late model diesels be any different?

Yes, they have downsides and you can't always fix them with a big hammer, but I disagree with the arguments that new diesels are useless in the bush or when they get old.

Exploration drillers and cattle stations are still buying new Landcruisers and taking them into the never never and putting lots of hard km on them. And the technology you whinge about isn't all that new anyway - my Jackaroo is a computer controlled common rail injected diesel (granted, no DPF) from 1999. It's done 260,000km including plenty of water and remote area travel.

discopotato03 wrote:because the idle air bypass valve struggles to regulate engine speeds with varying electrical loads and mechanical ones like AC compressors switching on and off .

What makes you think they idle valve is struggling? Engine load fluctuates, thus air requirement fluctuates, idle valve opens and closes as required to accomodate. That's what it's there for.

BTW, many (most?) modern diesels have a throttle butterfly, either to create negative pressure for EGR, smooth shutdown, or even for engine speed control in some cases.

Modern cars make most people mostly happy, and when they stop doing that they get recycled. What would you have the manufacturers make instead?

Dane.

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 7:00 pm

discopotato03 wrote:I think more sulPHur is being removed from ULP and diseasel

That's funny because I was following a new diesel and thought there was more sulphur to be smelt in it's exhaust emissions... This isn't just one brand of new diesel either.

Cheers

Bennie

Dikman · Post by **Dikman** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 9:25 pm

GOD, putting on "hard kms" seems to be what modern diesels need, judging by the experiences I've been reading about. Where they seem to be problematic is when used in a typical urban driving environment.

Change of topic - why is dealing with car salesmen such a pain? With virtually anything else I buy I ask for their best price and that's it, but you ask a car salesman and the first thing they say is "are you ready to sign now?". If you say no, then you might as well leave as you won't get anywhere, other than making small talk!!!!

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:41 pm

Well Dane if the system was so perfect why does the idle hunt around all over the place . By struggle I mean struggle to react quickly enough to keep the idle speed constant .

The diesel concept is quite an old one and it succeeded because it was simple , once started you could throw the battery and alternator away because the engine itself doesn't need them other than to start .
You obviously don't do much with diesels aside from drive one , talk to people that work on the things all the time and see what they say .
As for farmer brown well he isn't going to be fixing the new toy when it stops is he ? Not like he could the old trusty reliable Tojo if it expired .
Mining companies don't get a choice because you can't buy anything else .

Earlier EFI systems are also a lot simpler than they are today and far easier to work on because of it . Less garbage to go haywire and any design faults are common knowlege . If they were unreliable they wouldn't be running around at 26 or 16 or 12 years old like my L Skyline or Lancer are would they ?
Just to update your lack of understanding I don't have winge about these time bombs because I don't own them and won't own them either .

I always reckoned that if I really had to have a 4WD it'd be an old classic Range Rover and preferably an original two door .
Real chassis/aluminium panels/strong box and a simple alloy pushrod V8 with a pair of CD Stromberg carburettors . Easy to work on and can carry everything likely to fail engine wise in two shoe boxes . How long does it take to swap a coil/distributor/alternator/plugs/leads or belts ?

Any way you keep pluging along with late and later diesels and we'll see what the buying public thinks when they've had them long enough to learn the truth about them .

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 8:00 am

I hear NSW trains are going common rail Diesel

hee, hee

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:46 pm

Well our GE V16s have injectors connected by large aeroquip style hoses for feed and return . The injectors themselves are Lucas mechanicals regulated by electric bleed valves . They use cab auxilary and excitation computers in the vestibule behind the cab .
They still lose cylinders from time to time and the easy way to tell is to look at the clouds of black smoke they blow when they load up .
When the computers fail you have a 132 tonne paperweight to drag back to Spotswood in Melbourne - unless you can rob another crow for its computer modules .
Funny actually , I remember having the bungs out of the intercoolers (one each bank) and emptying cans of aerostart into them whilst cranking the beast over in vain attempts to start it . The maint people worked for two days on that one without getting it to fire - at all . On day three it started first crank and to this day they still do not know what was wrong in the first place .

GOD · Post by **GOD** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 3:29 pm

discopotato03 wrote: some shit about my "obvious" "lack of understanding"

My point is that Farmer Brown (or at least his kids) will learn how to deal with an ECU and some sensors, just like he learnt to deal with a combine harvester and then a GPS guided one. Furthermore, he'll like it because the new gear will get his work done faster and with less fuel.

Whatever. If you're happiest in the 1980s, stay there.

Dane.

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 10:02 pm

Don't have to , 2/3 of my little fleet comes from the second half of the 90s as does the other halves car .

discopotato03 · Post by **discopotato03** » Tue May 01, 2012 10:17 am

I don't think I can see people with little technical interest and detach from the real world digging into black boxes in farm equipment . I can see all sorts of shonky things done to the mechanical beasts because no one is around to see . I can also see many mobile techno geeks running around making a fortune keeping this stuff running .

Now my grandfather passed away in 1991 and his last car was a Valiant Regal Safari dinosaur . Probably bought it new in 1965 which is my birth year and loved the old thing . I do remember it getting one reco engine and the torque flight auto was rebuilt or replaced at least once .
My old mans last car was a VL Commodore auto wagon and I think he was considering an Outback but it never eventuated .
My maternal grandfathers last car was also an auto VL sedan and I knew he was considering a Liberty but he died of a heart attack in his sleep at 91 and was driving up until the day before he passed away .
I think his first car was an ancient Studebaker with a straight 8 and probably fit most peoples images of vintage cars . Long before my time there was a Willys something and a bull nose Morry . Then ther was a Standard Vangard and an XP Falcon "Persuit" , followed by the LJ and LX Toranas .
Lots of cars over lots of years and the common factor was they lasted many miles because they were looked after .

A .

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Tue May 01, 2012 10:51 pm

Sometimes , Disco, people that work on cars day in, day out, get a dim view of a lot of cars, that dim view can be unfair. But, a good indicator that should not be ignored. Always considered Commodes as poo boxes but in 25 years seen one V6 poop itself due to owner stretching an oil change 80,000km - oil turned thick and grease like, cam seized - DEAD. Never done HG just inlet valley cover to keep water out of oil, the odd coil replaced and one or two trannies - one due to the tranny cooler in the radiator . Falcons however go through coils and modules, some aftermarket dizies of ELs stripped jackshaft gears, HG, HG, HG,HG dizzy - yet they on the whole are a reliable car used by many fleet and taxi companies. My dim view is of one workshop, the biggest seller the most reliable it would seem - hate to admit it too ! Being exposed to break downs, tow ins over all those years makes me a little hypersensitive, almost disaster putting me off the road - yet in 13 years of Subies only two modules (not same car) two FL's (not same car) have only ever got me and let me down. The simpler the better is my like too - old school LPG just makes it all easier for me