If I ever win the lottery, I’m going to do two things: buy a farm in Tobago and commission a ground-up build of a 280Z with modern materials and methods. I miss that car every day. I have a poster in the bonus room that serves as our closet of the Z cars from inception to the early 300ZX. There’s a 1976 smack in the middle (same body as my '77). When I bought my RSX it was because it evoked a bit of the joy of the Z. The new Zs just don’t do it for me.
This is quite the tangent, but it’s more pleasant to talk about than crappy OS “upgrades”.
Having a tach in an automatic is silly. What purpose is it serving you? Especially if your newer Toyotas are also equipped with the continuously variable automatic transmission like my stupid Prius is.
See above re. paddle shifters. Not that I ever use them but then I don’t pull a trailer.
On the other one I use it as a visual indicator that automatic hill braking has set in correctly, but on that one it’s quite small and unobtrusive. I guess someone thought the information comes out of the OBD-2, why not display it?
When I had a Prius it occurred to me that rather than the silly transmission display it would be nice to have dials for all 3 motors - one of which, of course, can go backwards - so you could actually see what was happening. It’s quite interesting, especially when one motor is spinning backwards to control the IC engine revs while delivering power to the other electric motor. Just thinking about the control algorithms does my head in.
For those who miss instrumentation, can I suggest a device that plugs into your OBD and sends a signal to your phone? I have one to simply troubleshoot the check engine light but you can have it stream a ton of data to your phone which you can display in a variety of ways. http://www.archer-soft.com/en/blog/7-best-obd-apps-your-car
I love having a tach on my automatic (also a Toyota). You can do it by sound, same as you can drive a standard by sound, but it’s good to watch the revs when you’re accelerating (like getting out of a painfully cramped on-ramp and up to normal highway speeds). Automatics are never as nice to their own transmission as they should be.
They are a lot kinder than most human drivers. Mechanics used to have a variety of technical terms for transmission abusers based on whether they had rounded dogs, chipped teeth, worn selectors, worn clutch actuators, burnt plates or just general oil full of filings. Nowadays I think they rarely see the inside of gearboxes, the last auto box I had fail had to go back to Stuttgart to be looked at after a swap. It was an incorrect shim.
Also, the latest CVTs manage the torque and speed very carefully. I saw an AISIN presentation which explained how the computer keeps the force on the belt (which is compression, not tension) below a safe level. Modern CVTs, in fact, wouldn’t work without modern computers, unlike the original DAF which used rubber bands and a crude governor - and if I remember correctly, needed new belts fairly frequently.
I discovered this the other day:
What is currently the highest performance volume rear engined car other than the 911?
It’s the Smart Brabus forfour, which has a 900cc turbocharged engine.
It produces more power than the last version of the original Porsche with its 2 litre engine, and would comfortably beat it on a racetrack.
When a very small city car outperforms what was once an exotic sports car, you know there’s been progress.
To be fair, the handling of Vincents terrified me. And I don’t do drugs. The suspension and forks were…interesting. Fine for motorways and cruising on good surfaces, twisty bits would be left behind by a 350 Velo with 27BHP.
To add even more perspective, the standard Vincent was 1000cc and 45HP. That was in the early 1950s. Twenty years later the Kawasaki S2 (which I had for a couple of years) developed 44HP from 350cc, and due to its small size was faster.
I have got an iPhone 4, 5, and 6S. The 4 is dead. The 5 has a mangled screen, but could be fixed. The 6S is my daily phone.
My next phone is going to be a brick phone, and I have mounted my GPS in the car so I don’t need the phone for that - and I will keep the data plan on my 6S for work email, and that should -ideally- solve most of the problems I have with the phone at the moment.
Yeah, me too. Even on a CVT, it’s nice to know I’m not pushing it as hard as it feels like I am when I accelerate. Without my tachometer, I’d accelerate as quickly in my fairly new Toyota as quickly as I did in my Volvo (frustratingly gently).
On (iOS 11) topic, I’m starting to get really irritated with the battery issue.
I don’t think they really exist in the US, but in my humble opinion the best iPhones are the Sony Xperia Compacts. By which I mean, OK Android but nearly identical screen size (4.6 vs 4.7), slightly smaller overall due to no home button, SD slot and excellent battery life. And cheaper. And still has a socket for my several sets of headphones that needs no dongle.
The latest one falls somewhere in spec between the iPhone 7 and 8, and GSMArena rates its battery at 108h versus 66 for the iPhone 8. The simplest explanation is that the battery is nearly 50% bigger. I’ll probably get it when my Z5C (roughly equivalent to a 6s) dies.
