Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Get back to Le Mans. The night time footage is mad!

Looks tiny next to that humongous Fiat.

Lovely.

Duxford is only 10 mins up the road for me now. I really should make the effort to go.

It's £20 to get in but we pretty much spent the whole day there. Saw lots of spitfires out doing barrel rolls etc which was a nice treat. Do recommend, also walking through the workshops where the restorations happen it's seriously impressive - seemed like mostly retired volunteers.

So I bought a Bluetooth ODB2 reader, now what? 🤪

Plug it into the OBD port, download a suitable app on your phone, profit?

Done all that but I can't actually change anything in the car with just an app, can I? That's what I was hoping for anyway... I figured there must be settings out there on the internet that I can download and flash to the ECU...

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Depends. On my old Subaru you could use an app on a laptop called romraider, which let you upload engine maps etc. Pretty easy to completely fuck the car though...

What do you want to do?

Improve the fuel efficiency, which shows what a massive tightarse I am... I just filled up during happy hour at my favourite 'servo'... Stupid cheap, Caltex up the road was 163c/l...

But yeah... I'd like the car to be as fuel efficient as possible...

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That's £0.61 per litre, it's £1.33 here for standard.

What MPG is the car returning at the moment, and do you have any fault codes?

Mk5 golf drive well and decrnt inside, but they be rusty. Average mk4 will prob outlast a similarly maintained mk5

Done!

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Not exactly sure about the mileage, somewhere around 550kms on a full tank so 10kms per litre... Haven't checked for fault codes yet, will do that today...

You're not going to get much better than that. Maybe save a bit if you ensure your tyre pressure is perfect.

The mazda is a 2 litre auto right?

Infact you may get better economy using premium.... But would probably even out cost wise

Always thought Gandini was better than Ferdinand. 😎

Replacing both rear tires at the same time (one has a big split, rather than wear) is advisable or just a moneymaking scam by the rubber/car consortium?

Edit: I'm not with the car so cant assess wear, and need to book it in this morning

I’m going for money making scam on the grounds that I’ve never replaced both even when using high performance cars which were going to be driven hard on the road and someone else was paying and had no issues whatsoever. It’s not as if tyres wear evenly either. Unless of course they’re both borked.

I would always replace both sets on an axle together, unless there is very little wear to the non-damaged one. If they are driven wheels then any more than a couple of mm difference in wear will cause premature wear of the diff.

Also you will quite often find that a tyre that has been on the car for a while is no longer available and will have a newer version out - mismatching tyres can cause some unpleasant handling characteristics.

I am all for skimping on stuff, but tyres (and brakes) are the exception, it's literally the only connection you have with the road, so why be so cheap about it for what is likely the cost of a tank of fuel or two.

Well I've gone for just the one for now, will compare it to the other and can always get the 2nd replaced later in the week.

I'm with Dan, I'd always (and have, in the past) replaced both tyres on one axle.

I've been out in a car that had one 8 year old tyre and one 2 year old tyre on the rear axle (tread depth the same) and it oversteered under power when going in a straight line, which was interesting.

I think an eight year old tyre is likely to be well past its best regardless of wear on it and would be in the borked category

The rubber hardens and it has way less grip, hence power-on oversteer (the car had a locker).

But the same applies to (radically) different tread depths - if you mix tyres on the same axle with differing amounts of grip then you are creating an automatic lane changing function under power or braking.

Mazda is removing touch screen functionality:

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles

They're going back to relying on tactile hardware interfaces: knobs and buttons.

At work we never replace tyres as a pair and the cars and vans regularly get thrashed with hard acceleration, up in the three figures for speed and hard steering and braking, no automatic lane changing functions apparent (obvs with provision tyres are safe to use)