I suspect I may have been wished an interesting life as very little runs smoothly. I'm still having awful broadband problems (0.2mbs current speed) despite changing supplier - I suspect they're all as useless as each other.
I changed my car in May for a Skoda Fabia 1.6dti. I've had niggling little problems with it ever since. It goes very well but the exhaust emissions control is so complicated that it goes wrong very easily resulting in flashing lights on the dashboard. My local garage have been very good at trying to sort it but so far without luck. Guess what, I've just had confirmation that it's one of the affected ones ie it has the VW engine which can distinguish between an emissions test and butter - possibly the wrong advert - oh yeah, and the real life test or whatever. I have to await further information from Skoda as and when. They have 131, 000 to sort so I doubt it will be very soon.
I'm away from Sunday next for a week so I won't be able to guarantee any Bike during that period, though I will have my netbook with me so will try and do some writing.
Comments
Was wondering why you chose it over a hybrid
It's scads cheaper then say a Toyota Prius.
The problem w/ a Prius is the batteries!
When you count in the carbon footprint of building a prius, which we all should, It's dirtier than the Hummer. Ni-Cad batteries are very dirty to build. Operating a Prius for ten years might cause you to break even. But then you have to replace the batteries and the whole ghastly cycle starts over again. Then there is the environmental cost of recycling those Ni-Cads.
Of course, if fuel economy is your only concern, then it's not a bad car, just not very "green".
Liz
Could be worse
My dad's friend bought a new VW only 4 days before they admitted that they had cheated... Although he could get a ride form one of his subordinates as he runs a local apache squadron... But on the bright side, you will be able to enjoy riding your bike...
Sn1per01
Never surrender!
I thought they made Tractors
I saw one that was built before WWII that was 1 lung and ran beautifully. No emission controls on that.
Have a good time.
Gwne
murphy
sounds like you are related to murphy as in murphy's law. maybe we all are who visit this site with some closer than others. i think murphy must have adopted me without telling anybody. lol
What O'Toole said about Murphy
Murphy is famous for his notorious Laws, just about everyone has heard of them.
Another Irish Philosopher, O'Toole, may not be so famous but he was more profound - his Comment on Murphy's Laws were
"Murphy, was an Optimist ! "
O'Toole somehow did not get the same publicity as Murphy, so possibly some of us have not heard his contribution to scientific knowledge.
Briar
Houston/Harris County is
Houston/Harris County is talking about suing VW, because there are apparently about 6,000 'affected' diesel VW's out on the road, that supposedly are causing a massive increase in pollution. Mind you, that's 6,000 out of about 1 million cars on the road a day, not to mention the heavy vehicles.
It _really_ makes me wish we could attach 'stupidity' electrodes to our bureaucrats. Considering the foul black smoke belching monstrosities that they don't bother going after, a relatively clean, low emission car engine isn't something to worry about. We have _far_ more than 6,000 badly tuned 18 wheelers, dump trucks, and heavy diesel engines out there. You can tell by the giant clouds they make as they run down the road. You don't see them from the VWs. By the time the engines on those get to that point, they've been recycled.
You want to reduce the pollution? 1) convince companies to encourage their workers to live close to work, and 2) get the cops off of the road so they stop causing traffic jams. Spending an hour at idle is _more_ pollution than 20 minutes at 60mph. (Well, and 3), start fining the companies that won't get their heavy engines maintained)
(Yes, I _hate_ being caught behind a school bus that's blowing clouds of evil across the road. But, since they're owned by a government, HEY, they don't have to follow regulations. )
BW
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
I agree with this
I live in the greater Brisbane area of Queensland Australia and the amount of of trucks and buses and 4wd that are badly in need of a service and or tuning is flat out disgusting, thankfully a quite a lot of the City Council buses are natural gas instead of diesel but you see some of these vehicles take off and watch the clouds of black unburnt diesel billow into the air or in a lot of cases open car windows.
The City of Houston and
The City of Houston and Harris County probably produce more vehicle pollution than those 6000 VWs.
On the other hand those 6000 VW owners deserve compensation.
Why should they be
Why should they be compensated? Their cars are running fine. I hadn't seen anything in the reports about car problems - just that they were faking out emissions tests through legitimate modifications based on engine/vehicle behaviour. (the modifications are legitimate, the end result is not. Those modifications are used by ALL vehicles on the road to adjust performance and consumption).
Just don't attack those few owners for the actions of the company - go after the above polluting diesels, not the clean ones. (Even the 'dirty' standards of those cars is far and above a heavy rig)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Because they were sold a
Because they were sold a product that isn't what they were told it was. If you buy a box of 12 cookies and there are only 10 in the box, don't you deserve compensation? If you bought a case of diet soda, and found that the cans were filled with regular soda wouldn't deserve compensation?
Couldn't agree more
I think Bib is saying that he would not deserve to be compensated if the hemi engine was supposed to put out 400hp but is only putting out 300hp but, hey, it's running fine otherwise.
He is very easy to please then.
Sounds like he does not seem to care if car emission controls get mucked with as long as something else is far worst. Gotta fix it somewhere.
Keep in mind that the faulty diesels are putting out 10 to 40 times that of an engine that meets limit. Based on standard emission tests in the past that I've taken most small car gas engines are way under the limit really so the ratio is actually far more skewed. Those 6000 polluting diesels is outputting at least the equivalent of 60000 automobiles but is more likely closer to 200000 to 250000, a fifth to a quarter of that hypothetical million.
No, that's not what I said.
No, that's not what I said.
1) We don't know what the adjustments are. I haven't seen anything specific, other than that they drop into a higher efficiency mode when the system thinks it's being tested or emissions. Going by odor, they're not that polluting - compared to the average school bus.
2) Unless they plan to steal the cars from the people that own them, the people are getting _exactly_ what they bought. A diesel engine in a car. The only reason to compensate the people is if the cars 1) can't be resold, or 2) they're going to be taken from them. Most folks I know that bought diesel cars in the past drove them until they were worthless anyway. (My grandmother's Rabbit had holes you could put your fist through before she gave it up)
What you're complaining about is as if someone bought a 10 lb walking stick to use for self defense, and later found out that it had lead in it, instead of sand. It's still a 10 lb walking stick. You would insist that they have to be compensated for the weighting material being lead - despite that NOT being the reason they bought the stick.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Broadband speeds
If you're just using a service which goes over your phone lines, then the phone lines are the limiting factor. It won't matter who is connected at either end if the copper isn't good enough or is too long.
If you have access to cable (Virgin Media) you might try that. We had that for a great many years and found no problems with the broadband aspect of it. It was just the ever-increasing charges for TV that we didn't watch which made us lose patience and change.
Penny