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Modern MB manual shift is fine I have one in my 2009 C class. It's perhaps slightly long in the throw but otherwise as good or better than other modern manuals I driven. Back on 1993 I bought a 190e and had tried both a manual and auto. The manual gear change really was not nice and it wasn't...

If you lived in a hot climate then using LV fluid might not be critical but the whole purpose of the LV fluid is to maintain the fast response times at low temperatures that the designer intended for anti lock braking and all the other modern stability controls that use the brakes. I would only...

When something is simple and soundly engineered then age is almost immaterial. My 44 year old motorcycle has been near 100% reliable. The only time it has ever had a fault out on the road is when the points closed up on a test ride because I'd failed to tighten the screw adequately after...

I bought a 26 year old motorcycle with 6000 miles on the clock and the original factory fitted tyres. Amazingly it had passed an MOT inspection with these fitted. I did a couple of short test rides on it but didn't exceed 30 mph until they were replaced.

I spent a lot of hours as an instrument apprentice using dead weight testers. Wish I had access to one now. The stupid thing about dial gauges is that they sacrifice accuracy and readability by being an inappropriate range. They are almost all 0-100 psi when 0-60 psi would cover 99 percent of...

I agree and there is another aspect in residential areas. If the street is clear of parked cars, it's safer for pedestrians particularly children. It's a long time ago now but when I visited a cousin in Canada, they went to some length including using neighbors driveway to get my rental car...

The only time I've ever felt a really strong push in the back is when it felt like the pilot throttled up before releasing the brakes. That was a long time ago and these days it's always a slower rolling start with a more gradual increase in acceleration.

It's not about a 0-60 time that never gets used, almost ever car has adequate acceleration these days if you are prepared to use the revs. I suppose it depends what sort of terrain you live in but for me it's hill climbing ability which either means a very big engine with low down torque or a...

Back in the 50's/60's there was a very basic 3 wheeler Bond minicar car powered by a Villiers 2 stroke engine. It had no reverse gear fitted. To reverse the car, the engine had to be stopped and started up again in the reverse direction, then of course stopped and started up again in the forward...

I think it's got to that stage where yes it's a basic human right. (edit - MOD) Fee-free basic bank accounts are for people who don’t have a bank account or don’t qualify for a standard current account. This could be because you haven’t been able to build up a credit history. Or maybe you...

It's not just Volkswagen. EV car sales across the board while still growing are not meeting either manufacturers forecasts or government targets. There is the beginning of a backlash in the UK and in Europe against the unrealistic targets for phasing out IC cars and in fact a backlash against...

Honda made some motorcycles with disc brakes that were manual in every respect. There was no servo assistance but then there never was on motorcycles, but the worst aspect was they were cable operated rather than hydraulic. They were not a success being tricky to set up and inferior to a good...

It's a separate debate from topic of this thread which is viscosity but no one should be thinking of favouring Dot 5.1 unless they are prepared to change the fluid more often. 5.1 may have a higher performance when new but is more hygroscopic than 4 and 4 is more hygroscopic than 3. Those who...

I use the low viscosity class 6 fluid in everything including my 44 year old BMW Motorcycle. Works fine with no problems over 5 years and makes gravity bleeding on the bike easier.

Following through on one of the links above I was surprised to read that some of the modern gear hubs are filled with grease rather than thin oil, making them less efficient than the Sturmey Archer 3 speed hubs I was riding 60 years ago. Not exactly progress then.

In Europe the service interval for the DSG on a VW Polo is 40,000 miles. The oil level check for the some VW DSG's is a little odd so it's worth checking up on that before attempting to change the oil.

The original poster said nothing about any concern that his batteries were tired so suggestions to replace them don't seem to address the question. For what it's worth my last two batteries have both lasted 12 years. I read the question as: will the recondition setting on the new charger do any...

Of course oil expands when it's hot but in a sump it makes little difference to the level so the dealer is for the most part talking nonsense. Where temperature does make a big difference to the dipstick reading is in auto transmissions, not because ATF expands any more than engine oil, it's...

I've used a synthetic gear oil that was nearly clear like one of your samples. Is it the case that "ordinary" amber looking oil contains a dye and the clearer oil doesn't. We are so used to the normal oil colour that we don't trust anything else. At a guess I would say the old group 1 oils were...

The way society is moving with increasingly soft liberal views, the real danger is that robots/AI will get recognition as sentient beings which will endow them with rights such that we won't be able to disagree with them never mind turn them off. For a view of how this might turn out read...