Landies are ace!!!

the way back from Derby we

miles, I know as I did it

im now starting to use the GPS to get to places without using the motorways. the shortest route is usually so much more interesting! It took me past the anderton boat lift the other day (went to st helens), which made a nice break since id never seen it before.

I got stuck in a traffic jam for an hour (2 miles) on the M6 at midnight on friday!. I could have got most of the way home via the A roads by then.

heads done I wasn't taking

keep the engine well Ok, me

LOL - yeah I had that in my wifes old car - got stuck in an accident on the M4 for 1h (was only nipping out 10 mins down the road!), boiling hot day last year - two screaming kids in the car and the needle touching the red, so I turned the heater on full blast and boiled us a bit more! Did reduce the ending temp to a sensible level tho. Lovely being boiled on a boiling day isn't it?! Better than sitting on the hard shoulder with a steaming car tho!

Matt

A friend of mine bought one of the first useful turn-by-turn routing devices years ago, the Garmin Street Pilot, it cost him a lot of loot, but he bought it for just that reason. He mounted it on his bike, told it to avoid motorways, and used it like that all the time.

The current version of tomtom that I have has a "limited speed" option, if yours has similar, try cranking that down to 45MPH or so, it tends to take you along more interesting routes too. I use it in the pinz as I'm lucky if it'll reach that speed ;-)

I wonder if there's a "route via petrol stations" option...

Tom Woods came up with the following;:

It's one of our favourite pastimes when we're exploring places we've never been. We're lucky enough to be in a different part of the country most weekends (model car racing and motorbike Trials etc) and to 'wind down' after a hectic day we go somewhere using Sat Nav on the limited speed, no motorway, shortest route option ... amazing what you'll find. ;)

: The current version of tomtom that I have has a "limited speed" : option, if yours has similar, try cranking that down to 45MPH or so, : it tends to take you along more interesting routes too. I use it in : the pinz as I'm lucky if it'll reach that speed ;-)

Which model/release you got Ian?

Si

Any car which is sold to a world market should be able to be in these conditions indefinitely without moving off normal (and no model Landrovers have a reputation here for overheating). Here for example this temperature would be reached probably 150-200 days a year. How would you be in places like the Arabian Gulf where the temperature is rarely below this and up to twenty degrees higher? Rather than "Landies are Ace" I would be worrying about which bit of the cooling system needs attention. JD

Irony isn't something you do to shirts you know!

WHOOOOSH!

V5 running on a Palm.

agree - put the running hot down to old cars and inadequate maintenance. I've currently running a V8's auto Defender, with A/C and it doesn't twitch off 90 degrees celcius. It's not tricky and there's no need to sweat it out on a hot day.

JD wrote:

Be careful with the "Shortest Route" option, we once ended up driving through some rather unsavoury places in London using that. It literally took a straight line and tried to follow it. It was some years ago so perhaps the newer ones are better, have more sensible programming in this regard, I haven't chanced it since. We often go for the "No Motorways" option but usually its "Fastest" which it often isn't as it tries to keep you on motorways as much as possible, even when there is a perfectly direct "A" road that is a shorter route.

ive got tomtom running on a mio too. i didnt know about the limit speed thing. ive just been using 'shortest' rather than 'quickest' till now and it usually makes it more interesting.

That's down to the faster assumed speed on a motorway, try the "restricted speed" option, set to 60MPH which will treat A-roads the same as motorways.

There is a tiny village around here where residents are getting really pissed off because GPS systems are routing loads of motorists through their village, down narrow lanes to Bristol airport instead of taking the main road route. There was another story on the local news about how GPS systems were routing people along this 'green lane' up a mountain - apparently the road started off ok, but then turned into a rocky pass and lots of motorists were getting stuck LOL.

I've had 3 GPS systems, and I never found any one of them better than a map and a sense of direction. Each one of my GPS systems have taken me down impossible to go down roads (especially in a van!). I once remember in France the GPS had me coming off at the services, only to go back on again at the other end of the services - instead of just staying on the motorway??!! Another time my first GPS took me on a huge diversion round really narrow country roads, only to have me end up a few hundred yards further down the same road I was on to start with! I keep thinking of buying another, but then I remember how useless mine were and think I'd be better off keeping the money!

Matt

I've had good experiences with an ancient version of Autoroute, sorting out options with the help of a good roadmap. It can put you onto a decent alternative.

Ever since Microsoft took over Autoroute I've been seeing stories of weird routing in the reviews. I sometimes wonder if the original programmers were doing some tweaking of the routing model, based on some instinctive feel for British geography and the way in which the lower- grade roads vary in different places.

It's not even the sort of specific local knowledge which tells you there's half a mile of potholed track along the riverbank. It's more about knowing that that corner-cutting road in the Pennines is likely to be really bad, because of the hills.

On or around Mon, 17 Jul 2006 19:11:32 +0100, "Nige" enlightened us thusly:

behold there's a massive crash

south only 1 lane open. I hope

for 2 hours moving a bit

heads done I wasn't taking

keep the engine well Ok, me

the way back from Derby we

miles, I know as I did it

yikes.

Mind, there's scope for fun in traffic with landies, drop it into low-1 and pootle at about 1 mph, thereby annoying all the cars behind :-)

and if you get really bored, you can do that and then get out and walk alongside steering it.

On or around Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:41:16 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

hehe. someone was doing an overlay for LPG stations.

The problem with a map and a sense of direction is that when you're in a strange town in heavy traffic, keeping one eye on the map and one on the road is harder than just using the GPS. If you miss a turn it re-routes and you try again. Some think that they can handle reading a map and driving without compromising their safety, but that just makes me question their judgement even more, especially in a city with lots of traffic and people in close proximity.

Also I've not seen a map with postcode-lookup facilities ;-)

Bad routing decisions are relatively minor IME, and I don't follow what it says slavishly anyway, it's used as an aid to navigation, not a dictator.

On or around 17 Jul 2006 15:10:02 -0700, "ChavScum" enlightened us thusly:

it's nearly always down to old radiators IME. There's really no answer other than to replace 'em.

I had this on the 110 V8 - tried various flushing stuff and flushing it from the tap and reverse flushing and so forth, and none of 'em had any effect, it'd still overheat when running slowly uphill and suchlike, even with a fixed fan. New rad on it and it never strayed above "normal" again.

i came back from wales using the gps the other week after coming up against an unsigned diversion round a closed road. It took us down some right dodgy single track lanes, some of which had gates across that you had to stop and open! (it was like the laning Lee_d took us on back in the spring!). I was ready to stop and turn round at any time but they all remained surfaced roads and eventually we got back to civilisation.