Be Excellent To Each Other

Unless the road is fairly empty then motorway driving is fucking horrible. You have to stay really alert but there's nothing at all to keep you interested apart from continually looking around to see what some dickhead might do next. x10 if it's raining.

I like motorway driving. I like all kinds of driving, though.

I don't like motorway driving. I'll always take the scenic route if I can.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about it too. Each to his own though.

And have it only stop at designated places along teh route.

You end up following the lead vehicle to a truck stop & get bummed to death?Unless you say something daft like "Motorways have soul" I'm with you on this
They're certainly not the most exciting of roads to drive, but cruising along at speed while singing to the radio & overtaking folk is still a wee pleasure. Especially when you never have to touch the brakes.

You don't like driving slowly.

Driving economically?

Heh! I did think about it, but Zarz would kill me.

That's what the Audi R8 TDI is for.


EDIT: 1,000th post! Yay. All pure quality, too.......

Hi5!

Have you ever commuted via motorway, daily, for a distance of more than 15 miles each way?

FAIL: The slower you can drive through difficult off-road situations, the more show-offy you are.


This is probably true

While I think about it, me and my chum did a trip from London to Bedford in his companies piss-small Fiat Punto. It used more fuel than my Mondeo and took longer to get there.
Small cars are crap.

My father in law has something like that on his S class, I don't think he uses it all that much though - he found it a bit unnerving, even though it worked just fine.

Hell, I'd be quite content just with regular old cruise control at the moment. Even though we got an ST3, it didn't come with all that many toys.

Aye, I went to college in Springburn (30 odd miles away) as well as having to work in/near Glasgow most winters. As long as I stick to the inside lane I have a hassle free journey right up until the last 2 miles of motorway where the M77 meets the M8 & passes through the city centre.
Also, not daily but I also had weekly commutes to Mostyn or Birkenhead when we were building the Liverpool Bay (Burbo Bank) windfarm & that was awesome except that one time when they gave me a 1.0 Fiesta to come home in, that was pretty fucking dull

To be fair though, the motorway to Glasgow isn't nearly as bad as most other motorways in Britain since it is only really once you join the M8 outside of Glasgow that you hit traffic and even then it is only at rush hour. The worst part of Glasgow is trying to get on the motorway from the Finnieston turn off, bloody nightmare.

I like the M6 just after the last junction for Manchester heading north. The road just empties, it's straight as an arrow, you can pick up the Friday night dance mix on Rock FM* and there are no speed cameras.
Also I would have been going to see Mrs Grim... at Lancaster university, so that would make me happy.

*Er, assuming it's Friday night, of course.

I love how wee things like driving on a certain stretch of road with certain music can remind you so much of something lovely

What the fuck is wrong with the M8 outside of Glasgow, by the way? Why the hell do you have to join the motorway on the wrong side of the bloody road? I want to merge into lane 1, not lane 3, you fucks!

Is it just to scare off English types?

Lol whereabouts?

I do around 50 miles of motorway driving everyday just getting to and from work. After a while, your brain adjusts to it completely, so you're staying alert for potential hazards but the constant driving-in-a-straight-line-whilst-maintaining-the-same-speed allows you to switch off a little more than you would going a more scenic route and just chillout to the radio, etc.

That said, I've always enjoyed motorway driving. My mother, on the other hand, hates it so much she avoids motorways whenever possible. I remember one time, just a couple of months after passing my test, driving the family down to Bristol for the weekend to visit my brother. Driving in Bristol was so stressful for me back then that at one point I pulled up on the side of the road, stormed out of the car and point-blank refused to drive any further, so mum took over. She drove round the city all day without a care in the world, but as soon as we started to head towards the M4 I had to take over again.

Nowadays the only thing I'm really not keen on is driving down little single-track country lanes as I spend the entire time with my buttocks clenched tightly together waiting for some twat in a chavmobile to suddenly rocket straight towards me at 70+ mph. I've driven through London, Birmingham and Bristol city centres and none of that bothers me as much as those poxy little lanes.

Yeah. I like it as it means folk are forced to join the motorway at a reasonable speed rather than trying to creep onto a free flowing motorway at 40. Anyway, that's the least of your worries on the other side if you take a wrong turn on the expressway you'll end up joining the M8 VIA the Ski Jump.

@Gill, it's near Glesga Cross & next to the Infirmary.

I like motorway driving. 99.9% of the time.

I can't picture it, is it going towards Dennistoun or the town?

No they're not. It just means that when they do join the motorway at 40, the people having to avoid them are doing 80mph rather than 60.

See if you drive up from the Cross towards Springburn, Gill, go past the cathedral & as you past the Infirmary you can go left & that takes you onto what becomes lane 3 heading West (AKA towards the Shire).Nah, where it joins is 2 lanes & the slip road makes it 3, plus with the S-bend before the junction the cars already on the motorway have had to slow to around 50-60.

Yeah, it's just like this bit of the M11.
http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=51 ... 1&t=h&z=19
It's still fucking retarded, though.

Oh, well I guess that's just like going anticlockwise on the M25 where the M20 joins.

Nasty cold you've got there. I'd love a Turbo Tank.

A Turbot Tank you say Zardoz?

When I had to drive to Inverness last time, it was a great driving journy!

Funny thing is, any concerns or interest I might otherwise have in the specifics of a car pretty much vanish when it makes a noise like that.

Same thing with the big V8s Merc have been using, particularly the last couple of years: I'm quite sure they're really not very good cars but fucking hell would you listen to that. The respect I have for the engineering Audi and BMW throw into making a V8 or V10 rev comfortably past 8k means nothing when Krakatoa is going off nearby.

I like it a bit further up, once you get past the M55 and start up into the lakes. I don't mind motorway driving itself, it's just all the people in the way that piss me off.

I've noticed that having my iPod plugged into the head unit is making me a hell of a lot more relaxed. Or maybe it's to do with having to caress the clutch at the moment. To paraphrase Eddie Izzard: I like my clutches like I like my women - abrasive and grabby.

No, hang on.

Hmm. I have to do 60 miles per day, on the M5, M4 and M32. It's one of the most horrible areas of motorway in the world.

That said, I absolutely loved tooling along the french motorways in the sunshine on a two week touring holiday in an old beat up Polo - both windows open, leg out the window, me and the missus shouting along to the music at just south of 100mph. Good times.

I suppose when it's a daily grind, with shed loads of traffic on the road and the inevitable mile long queues at each junction, there's slightly less mystique to it.



Heh. I get this feeling every day. Bastard city.



I sometimes take the A46 south to the M4 from home, as it's prettier than the motorway. I do occasionally worry about meeting a tit in an Astra coming the other way, but if it comes to that I'm unlikely to have more than 2 seconds to worry about it.

You drive with one leg out of the window?

It's much harder to do in a right hand drive, so I got massive kudos from the Frenchies.

I've read that a couple of times, and I still don't know if you like loud cars or not.

Have you heard my Tomcat? You'll love/hate it

Oh man, I'm just so with you on that score. Used to live near some geezer who had a Dodge Charger (the original one as used in the Dukes of Hazard etc.). It's probably absolutely shite in any real world, objective context, but when he started the damn thing, even my windows rattled in their very panes, some ten houses up. And that was on idle...

... what a total beast. I could forgive a car like that any misdemeanors.

I like big, simple V8s being loud. Anything smaller and I start getting annoyed - I don't even like the straight six in my M3 all that much. 4 pots with big exhausts are horrible, 2 stroke bikes/mopeds trigger murderous rage.

Meaty bikes are great though, there was a fantastic one riding round Berlin on Saturday - twin exhausts similar diameter to guttering but a lovely noise.

I watched that YouTube of you driving the Tomcat around but the wind noise totally obscured the engine.

Car radio fitted. However it doesn't switch off when you remove the ignition keys.

Something to do with the way the car operates. I could put in a wire from the fusebox to the radio from a circuit that has the cutout but this looks like a fag. I could send a wire from the cigarette adaptor, or I could buy yet another fucking Canbus adaptor.

So I would end up with:

Canbus plug>Canbus adaptor>Canbus to ISO adaptor>ISO to Pioneer adaptor.

Which is abit of a mess frankly.

I'm now wondering if the radio will drain the battery if there is no cutout.

Does the radio turn off when you take the key *out* maybe?

Edit: oh, sorry, you already said it didn't. Umm, it'll drain the battery if you leave the radio switched on, certainly over a weekend.

Also I'd check in the ISO adaptor whether there is already a signal which goes on and off with the ignition. There might be.

Really?
Hmm.
Try this one, 25 seconds (or so) in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkRgLZDgUc
Or, you know, this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQMenB7ZEB8

I'm going to be putting a decibel meter near it soon, as it might actually be too loud to compete at the moment...

I'll watch them later at home, or forget.

The Porsche flat (it's flat, right?) six can be really quite satisfying, I should say before writing the 6cyl off completely. So it was nice that about half the population of Berlin drives a 911, and my thanks go to the man who saw me looking at his Turbo on Thursday night, turned round and booted it past me.

Just not massive simple V8 satisfying.

Not on a MK5. Apparently the on/off is sent digitally and not via analogue.

I don't intend to leave the unit on. But I'm just concerned there may be battery drain even if the radio is in the off state as the voltage won't be cut. Anyone got any thoughts?

Wonder if it will turn off after 10 minutes? My old Golf used to have some kind of relay that tripped after about 10 minutes that cut all internal power and put any internal lights left on onto a special dim mode.

Heh, the nearest I've ever come to death whilst behind the wheel of an automobile was going home one night on the M25. I was doing about 50-ish, keeping a nice distance from the car in front when suddenly it occured to me his brake lights were on. "Oh," I thought. "I wonder why he's slowing down?"

Then it dawned on me that he hadn't slowed down at all but had in fact stopped, whilst my speedo clearly still read 50mph. Fortunately a large enough gap appeared in the lane to my left that I was able to swerve out of the way and dump enough speed quickly enough to not end up staining the rear seats of the car in front with bits of my car and body. I found that my life did not flash before my eyes as I was too busy thinking "OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT".

I'm a bit more observant these days.

Set Wolfsburg on fire, the over-complicating-everything fucks?

Well, it'll consume some current but very little. I doubt it will noticeably make the battery go flat quicker (which it will do anyway over the course of a few months, if you weren't using the car).

Best vehicle noise is reserved for my 5.9l straight 1 Field Marshall.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/grim/2470874514/

Yes, you read that right.

"Straight 1" is an oxymoron*, surely?

Still, that's some top-notch metallurgy gone into that.

* I almost certainly don't mean oxymoron.

Well, true. Still - six inch bore. Oh yes.

Same for most modern cars sadly. Everything is computer controlled and its easier to send signals digitally than it is to convert the digital bits to analogue. So I'm told anyway.

Of course the car *does* have the ability to cut voltage when you take the keys out but unless I fancy wiring a new fuse into the fusebox it's a non starter.