Re: Weird little observations.

Well that's what I told swmbo ... but she said that was also what I said when we got a SWB Series 3 instead of a LWB ... ;)

Yeah. Amazing how much you use it, without realising, until you don't have it anymore.

Radio. Pray tell, what is this radio of which you speak? No. Well, it might have if the radio the last owner put in had been wired correctly!

Bloody things brilliant though, in a retro stylee, awful but great ride, kinda thing, welll it is now I've soldered the throttle body PCB ... ;)

"Paul - xxx" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

I'm used to not having 'em. On 2cvs.

Ah. I'll bet the OEM radio's display contained the clock.

On that note, you can't beat a heated windscreen this time of year.

Conor gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Or a bloody good heater/demister. One spec'd for Scandi winters.

Heh, I do miss the 900's face burning heater on winter mornings :-)

Mike P

"AstraVanMann" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Yeh, I miss that with the Saab - 3dr, so over-centre catches on the tilting rears. Didn't BMW (and probably others) use electric motors for opening that kind of window? Might be interesting to try and retro-fit those...

Indeed. The passenger one on the XM auto-dipped to a different position on selecting Reverse. Lovely.

Controlled by Citroen electronics :-)

"Clive George" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Worked fine for the seven years I had the car...

My 1996 Nissan doesn't have a clock either! But it does have two cigarette lighter sockets.

Keep meaning to fit a dog guard in the Disco. Been close to rolling (off-road) a couple of times and had stuff come into the rear passenger seats 'cos I hadn't strapped them dwn enough.

I'm lucky with heated mirrors. The Rangie and 325 both have 'em.

I'm planning on retro-fitting that to the 325 soon, it'll be handy on Czech runs.

Must do that to the 156.

It's a 50 quid part and 10 mins with a screwdriver.

"AstraVanMann" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

But... they're just normal splitfold rear seats. As featured on damn near every hatch and estate across the last 20 years or more...?

Not every car with a split-fold seat back has split-flip bases, so you can't always get a totally flat load bay.

My E30 has, but it's a 50-50 split, not a 60-40 one. Rangie is 60-40.

Having said that, the number of times in the last 20 years I've thought "I'm so glad my back seats are 60-40 split" is about, um, one.

IIRC the original metro had them...

Erm, I was on about the base splitting as well. Can't speak for a whole range of cars, but none of my Carlton Estates did that - the back bits did, but not the base. Would have been bloody handy on a number of occasions at gigs to have 2/3rds folded completely flat, and still have a usable back seat.

The other day it would have been very handy on the Xantia for the purposes of giving someone a lift to rehearsal. That is, had the car not been so packed full of gear that there's no way in the world it would have just fitted in 2/3rds of the width plus the full bootspace.....

What? A big estate car like that didn't get the seats folding flat? Or was it just that the base of the seat didn't split?

My favourite folding seats were in the CX (estate). They went down properly flat, with no vertical bits behind the front seat - ie you can get properly long stuff in. The BX spends a lot of its time missing the bigger seat base for just that reason.