28.1mpg.....

I see you got the flux capacitor working - you're posting a half hour ahead of the rest of us

Suddenly... a flash of blue appeared in the corner of my eye - the evil ray-gun of the constabulary had fixed in on my vehicle and they were pursuing me with amazing pace. Sirens blared until they were there, right upon me, I could feel them, sense them breathing down my neck. Then, abruptly, the sound ceased...

In news:NuSdnQQO4peOdp snipped-for-privacy@karoo.co.uk, Tim S Kemp decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Heh, it *was* the only time I've ever seen one of those blue, forward facing "not gatso" cameras flash.

Didn't get a ticket though.

Volvo wasn't registered to me..

Oh these little traffic master cameras that are everywhere? Yea i once went past one of them on an A road at night, single carriageway, doing some crazy three figure mph, and it flashed, i'm sure of it...

You need to spend an afternoon, do all 3 filters and an oil change :) Then take the filter apart if you're really bored, and put pictures up for the rest of us that are bored to look at :)

If it's the same engine as the old Volvo S70 then that's 175bhp available. Nearly as much as mine - for now...

Well I'll bring my 8-year old diseasel estate along.

Peter

Some of the nutters on VVspy and Swedespeed have >150k on theire chipped motors, and as some of the photography shows, they use it - 2.0T volvo S40, normally 160bhp, chipped to 200bhp, off clock...

The new Volvo diseasel chips to 195bhp and is very very sprightly in that tune - word is that Volvo will up the standard power to 180 this year (it's

Yep, one of them has original clutch too (300bhp T5...)

S40 had a 4 cyl 2.0 giving 160bhp in turbo form.

Just do it. The chip will alter the boost to increase available power - it'll get accellerate faster even if the gearing stops the top speed.

\-- slightly greasy solar atoms...

Nah - I'm leaving it as is for the time being, there's plenty of power as far as what I can realistically get to use!

Might do a couple of mods very soon though, thems being a new fuel filter and oil and filter change? Talking of which, if a fuel filter hasn't been changed in 25,000 miles, what likely effects will that have? Service schedule is somewhere in a very big mess at the moment so can't look in that to find out the exact recommendation, but the previous owner religiously did oil+filter, air filter and fuel filter every 6000 miles. From what I've read in some service schedule, doing air + fuel filters every 6k is overkill, though people seem to mention fuel filters as needing changing more often than air filters (obviously depends on conditions, YMMV etc.) - I'm thinking of the handbook for the Master which says oil+filter every 6k, fuel filter every 12k, air filter something like only every 24k.

So I'm guessing my fuel filter could be getting to the "really should replace NOW" stage - so I'm guessing there'll be a fair bit more power + bettery economy when I replace it, but probably not nearly as much as I'd like to think. Might attack the old fuel filter with a hacksaw to see what sort of crap it's collected, and just how blocked it is (if at all)......

Peter

It handles reasonably well for something of its size, yeah it's a bit barge-like but it ain't too bad, I like it anyway!

Peter

Well not quite so impressive, but I managed Sheffield to Bracknell (180 miles) in 2 hours 20 minutes. In fact, that's really not all that impressive at all - should have been, the speed I was travelling at for a lot of the way - kept on bottling out of going too quickly along the M1 due to paranoia (been banned once, it's very nearly out of the "convictions in the last 5 years" category and I want it to stay there!). That did include somehow getting lost on the way out of Sheffield (didn't go straight from the centre - dropped someone off somewhere) and ending up on the way out to Chesterfield and getting on the M1 from there. Looking back, it would have only been impressive had I done it in under 2 hours. The thing is, I don't get that much driving enjoyment from going all that quickly on motorways, I'll happily sit at 80-90-ish, but cruising at 110-120 just seems like a waste of fuel, and too much risk, which sorta spoils any enjoyment - I'd much rather maintain a decent speed on a nice twisty road, rather than cruise along doing 3-figure speeds on an empty motorway.

Peter

You computer is set for GMT - check the time zone in regional settings / clock settings under control panel, should be set for "GMT - Dublin Edinburgh Lisbon London" and auto adjust for daylight savings should be ticked

It basically is, though I do remember someone on one of the newsgroups mentioning that they'd bought a Haynes manual for an A6 TDI to use with their Volvo 2.5TDI, thinking it to be exactly the same engine, and they found that there were some subtle differences rendering the manual not really all that useful. It basically is though.

Might do a coolant drain and refill at some point as well, and a brake fluid change wouldn't go amiss either. It's a shame I'm really lazy as these things really need doing, plus it's bloody filthy at the moment, and that can't be doing the paintwork all that much good :-(

But talking of chips - a while back, in part of my ultimate quest to find a nice leather interior for it, I phoned up about an A6 TDI Avant Auto on AutoTrader, for sale somewhere up near Bolton, asked a few questions about it (was it 115 or 140 - turned out to be 115), and then basically got to explaining that I've actually already got a 140bhp SE Estate and I'm ideally after a leather interior for it, but if I can find a complete car that's as good or better than mine then I'll consider chopping and changing it. The bloke had actually pretty much definitely sold it, but said it was a real minter but he understood what I was after and said I'd be better off keeping mine. Ended up talking for about an hour about 5-cyl Audi diesels in the end, and it turns out this guy's an Audi mechanic, who from the sounds of things really takes pride in his workmanship (though cynics would say he would say that!) and if he was any reasonable amount nearer I would have definitely taken mine to him for its cambelt. Also, he's tried several different chip upgrades in the quest to find the best one, and sells it as a little sideline and speaks very highly of it. I asked him about how it affects long-term reliability and he mentioned he'd had it on a car of his for 30k with no problems. Now call me a cynic, but 30k doesn't spell long-term to me. If it'd been on a car for 300k, then maybe so, but I'd like to see general long term reliability before putting something like that on my car, as I know I'd end up using the extra power quite a bit, so things would be under that bit more stress :-)

Peter

As in they've had the chip installed for all of those 150k+++ miles?

and as some of the photography shows, they use it - 2.0T volvo S40,

I thought the 2.0T had 180bhp - or was there a less powerful version than the one in your S60? Still, all this talk is tempting me......

(belgian? )

The bloke I was talking to said that this chip (that's the best out of a whole load he's tried) ups the peak power by 25bhp to 165, though it could well be 163, dunno.

I wonder what sort of top speed I'd be able to get out of it if I had it chipped. According to the book it's around 130mph, which is about right as it's doing 100 at 3000rpm in top gear, and it goes up to around 4500rpm, but according to the graphs here

Yep, you guys with your quick cars, I'm one step ahead of you :-)

But seriously, how do I fix this? I'm using OE6 + Win98, and the clock is set correctly, it's just the posts from OE6 - how do I adjust time zone settings in OE?

Peter

In news:m8DMc.398$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net, AstraVanMan decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

This was a bit of an emergency really, but not enough of one to justify the speeds I was doing. Basically I *had* to be in Liverpool for midday, but had forgotten I had to be in Liverpool until 9:45am, at which time I was happily in bed when the phone rang to remind me... I was in the car for 9:50, the petrol station for 9:55, had filled up, paid, an all that jazz by 10:03, had sorted my cd out, got comfy, and was on the road at 10:55. Had parked up at my destination at exactly midday according to the radio, final pip an all that just as I went to switch off the engine. I'd say that for most sections of the journey I was doing between 110-115, for very small ones did I drop below 90.. I managed to use a full tank when normally - which meant about 80 on the motorways / A14 - I'd use about a third of a tank...

Volvo ran a hell of a lot better for a week or so as well.

Cheap was what I needed, though. I had just moved out of home and I was covering 20K a year. I needed cheap above all else.

They're also spacious for people, if not for luggage.

No no, it had a softer ride, which was detrimental to the handling. A better engine yes, but it was also something like £2,000 dearer for the closest I could get. And the fleet service costs were almost 150% of the Mondeo TD too. I did't have £2,000 kicking about.