Airbags - only last 10 years ?

PC Paul ( snipped-for-privacy@home.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Nope, it's designed fail-safe. If the valve fails, it fails allowing the fluid pressure to pass through. Besides, it'd only affect one wheel - as there's one valve per wheel - and the car would fail on the braking efficiency, not on the ABS light.

Probably 99% of ABS failures are a wheel sensor wire fracturing. It's actually more unsafe BEFORE it triggers the light, when it can trigger the ABS when it shouldn't.

The message from snipped-for-privacy@italiancar.co.uk (SteveH) contains these words:

Quite like it here - unpretentious!

The message from Adrian contains these words:

It's not as simple as that. Cars without ABS have other solutions to stopping the rear brakes locking when the back end's light - for example. When ABS packs up there's no alternative system there.

To an extent yes. It is not sensible not to offer these things and virtually every manufacturer does as standard. Like I said, a kill switch would cost pennies. What it boils down to is that some consumers are daft enough to buy vehicles such as the TVR without abs etc. The Company is only looking to sell a few and since those very few couldn't care less for the feature, they get away with it. Thankfully most consumers are now switched on enough to examine safety features as part of the buying process, not something that was common more than fifteen years ago, and demand better with each successive model generation. There will always be the odd ostrich and they may well gravitate towards TVR. TVR on the other hand would have nothing to lose and possibly much to gain by offering these systems, albeit with kill switches for the more daring drivers, as do their competitors.

The signal has to be two way and technology has moved on somewhat from the

I'm not thinking specifically of on-road applications, although if every car was equipped and every mobile road obstruction mapped automatically, and the signal combined with existing and future technology such as car based automatic distance and lane following controls etc. then who knows what would be possible on major trunk routes or even universally.

I think you will find the versatility and utility and possibly the intrusion into personal lives will be in a different league to present GPS. Big brother will be watching you unless we all put legal limits on its use at an early stage. Government by its very nature strives to control and limit its subjects and we cannot guarantee that future Governments will be benign in nature.

Huw

Jesus.

Talk about missing the point.

Oh yes there is. All of the normal braking system is present and the brakes balance normally even if abs fails. I know this because I have had my share of abs faults. One of these has never been repaired, only a piece of black tape placed over the warning light. It brakes as well as any other non abs vehicle of the same type. It has been like this for some four years now. The others braked nicely too but since these were used at somewhat higher speeds and more intensively, I chose to get these repaired. None of them actually cost that much to repair, a matter of not much more than £100 IIRC.

Oh yes, one was a car and the other two are 4x4's

Huw

Huw (hedydd[nospam]@tiscali.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Right. So you ARE against people being able to choose what to buy.

Which Galileo isn't.

You can already send a signal back from a GPS receiver to either another comms satellite or via the mobile networks or radio or whatever other comms technology.

Yes, it has. But the concept of triangulating from known points has not changed one iota.

Blimey - you're extending this to cats and dogs and deer and badgers and pedestrians and horses and bicycles now?

It's not GPS or Galileo that's intrusive. It's what is done with them.

They don't need Galileo to do that...

SteveH ( snipped-for-privacy@italiancar.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Exactly.

The message from "Huw" contains these words:

Really? Well - you live and learn!

Guy King ( snipped-for-privacy@zetnet.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Leaving the front-rear balance to ABS would be *lethal*.

I am NOT missing the point. They can and do produce a car with no ABS. What I am saying is that they should not be in the minority of ostrich manufacturers who don't bother supplying these things as standard. If a particular owner wants to switch it off then why not use a kill switch? If someone wanted a cheap track car then certainly abs and all would be superfluous but we aren't talking track cars exclusively with TVR and certainly not cheap cars. We are talking about cars bought mainly by poser baristers and football/rock stars etc. with the occasional pilot who wants to pull birds [from new at least]. I do think it is one or two here together with TVR who miss the point, because TVR are now relegated to a very small minority indeed who do not fit abs etc to their cars. This encompasses the range of cars from the Fiat Panda to the newest and most expensive Ferrari. TVR are putting off the inevitable but if anyone is really wanting an overpriced and underequipped retro car then join the queue for a TVR now. It is not a long one.

Huw

: It's already getting that way - but 10-15yo cars now are nowhere near the : complexity of today's 0-5yo cars. Fancy trying to troubleshoot a : multiplexing fault in your drive?

I'm often asked if the DS is a complicated pain to maintain. To which I reply, yes, absolutely, but not even in the same league as a modern supermini.

Ian

: IMO it is not something anyone should worry unduly about as long as they : recognise that an old [older than say 12 years] airbag might not deploy : efficiently.

How can the driver be sure that the failure will be that way round?

Ian

Because they have been designed from the outset to fail-safe. That ia not to say that airbags will never deploy unexpectedly due to a design fault but these faults in either hardware or software calibration are often picked up when the batch of vehicles are quite new and with a common fault.

Huw

Huw (hedydd[nospam]@tiscali.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Which shows that you are missing the point. Perhaps you ought to go and ask them over at

TVR seem to be doing quite nicely.

Indeed.

So much so there appears to be a 6 month to 2 year (plus) waiting list for a new one, depending on model and spec.

I'd have said so, but I'm no financial or economic expert.

But I'd have guessed they don't aim to sell as many of all their models put together, as Ford intend to shift, of the Focus or Mondeo, for example.

SteveH has one as his daily drive.

MkII had the big bumpers yes? The ones that permanently seem to hang off in various states of disrepair, and oscillate and self destruct at certain speeds?