Police Cars (traffic cops) - speed of reverse gear ??

Last night, coming back from the snooker, there were a load of 50-limit signs on the dot matrix displays between J5 and J4 on the M40. Turned out there was a Ka that had spun around and was facing the central reservation, taking out the middle and right lanes. I safely avoided it without any problems, but couldn't help saying to myself "where the f*ck are the police", thinking that it must have happened long enough ago for them to activate the 50 limits on the dot matrix displays. Then a little while later I see a police car on the hard shoulder, blue lights flashing, then I realise it's moving. Backwards. Quite quickly. Obviously very sensible compared to driving the wrong way down the hard shoulder and dazzling everyone, and I guess they decided to do what they did rather than drive up to the next junction and turn around because of the proximity of the RTA scene to J4.

But it got me thinking - how fast can those Omegas (I'm guessing it'd probably be an MV6) do in reverse, and are the police ones modified in any way for this very purpose?

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan
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I don't know much about what the police do to their vehicles but I noticed on the autobahnstormers website that straight 6 automatic Carltons have a reverse gear ratio somewhere between 1st and 2nd, which is quite fast considering my 6cyl auto carlton will do 55 in 1st, and a touch over 80 in

2nd.

The manual ones have a reverse gear closer to 1st:

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Douglas

Reply to
Douglas Payne

In news:GPKlc.17$Y26.3@newsfe1-win, AstraVanMan decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

IIRC (Dave Plowman will no doubt correct me on this), the old Rover SD1 Vitesse was geared to do something stupid in reverse after Police requests to make it so..

I think my Vitesse did about 60 in reverse, so it sounds about right..

Reply to
Pete M

my brothers carlton gsi was fast as f*ck in reverse, he had to escape a rampaging horse once :)

Reply to
Theo

Thats insane! Need a very steady hand to do 60 in reverse! Yet anopther reason why i want an SD1 though :) Can you imagine racing someone off the lights in reverse and beating them. tee he he

Reply to
Carl Gibbs

Heh heh heh heh!

Reply to
DervMan

most cars have reverse and first at almost the same ratio so when most auto's can hit almost 40 in 1st, hitting "fairly quick" in reverse shouldn't be a problem

Reply to
dojj

Talking of which, a while back a mate of mine was going on about some car that had all the forwards gears available in reverse - it basically had a forward and reverse setting, and the same lot of gears for both, but I can't remember what it was he was on about - any ideas?

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan

In news:mxTlc.302$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe6-gui.server.ntli.net, AstraVanMan decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Daf Variomatic.

HTH

Reply to
Pete M

As long as you're pointing backwards it'd be ok!

Ages ago in my Mk3 Escort days where if the gate that prevents you from selecting reverse (which was right next to 1st) was a bit knackered it was all too easy to accidentally select reverse. I remember once when I was at the lights, and thankfully not attempting to race away from the lights, and I moved a tiny bit back and realised straight away. If I was less alert though, and attempting to race off the lights it could have been, well, interesting. :-)

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan

My old milk float had that. Admittadly it was only one gear in each direction ;) Made reverse pretty swift though, and it was fairly easy to fli[p crates of milk off the back doing it :)

Reply to
Carl Gibbs

Of course the reason that going in reverse is difficult is the rear steering, like a fork lift truck, but Thrust SSC was rear steering. Imagine going the speed of sound in reverse! ;-)

Reply to
yeha

You had a damn milk float?! Bet that went down with ur uni mates well ! :P

Reply to
Max Hamlet

LOL! Talking of strange vehicles, I once almost seriously considered getting an ambulance. Once cropped up on eBay a year or two ago - it was a K reg 2 litre (maybe 2.3 or something), with about 240k on the clock, but a

*very* full service history, and a recent brand new gearbox and clutch. Went for the bargain price of around £900. A mate of mine advised me against getting it as it wasn't a V8 one (!) but I decided against it anyway as I needed the drivespace for a rusty old Carlton.

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan

A police officer told me that the Met and Rover spent a long time tweaking the cars together so that they worked very nicely for their purposes. Apparently it took Volvo a bit longer - the brakes on a T5 test car had to be fixed many times in 20 days of the 24hr tests, and the front tyres replaced every day.

Gareth

Reply to
Gareth A.

My old bike mechanic had a V8 Transit, complete with most of the original livery, but he'd replaced the blues with ambers and added 'motorcycle' to the 'ambulance' stickers. Nice.

Reply to
SteveH

Same box, Volvo licensed the box design, then bought DAF, but didn't buy the box design so still had to license it.

Reply to
MeatballTurbo

Will this do:

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sPoNiX

Reply to
sPoNiX

Well milkmen need milk floats!! Spent my holidays doing it whilst at uni to pay for beer during term time (and for quite a few years before). I didnt actually properly own one. Although i spent many of the 6 miles @ ~15mph planning a V8 conversion on on of the 4 wheelers. Just having it sitting on the bay at the book rumbling away :)

Reply to
Carl Gibbs

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