h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, floppy gearsticks. I remember them well

My 306 *always* had a floppy gearstick. At every repair or service the mechanic would say, "Your gear linkage feels a bit floppy." To which I'd reply, "Yes I know. I like it that way. Cheers."

110,000 miles later my clutch cable snaps at a set of lights on a Saturday afternoon in darkest Fulham.

The garage that repaired the cable took it upon themselves to tighten stuff up around the gear shift. All of a sudden my gear lever stands there erect and unvibrating. It barely moves when I shift a gear. No more generally swatting in the direction of the lever to change gear as I was want to do.

It took me a month to learn how to drive my car again. Cheers guys

I've had a few cortinas which popped out of second gear as you went round a corner, so you had to drive round the corner sort of holding it, and sort of keeping the clutch down a bit. Not sure why I kept buying cortinas!

Hey, I can beat that- try a Series 3 with a chipped cog on third, that was fun. Any time you we're in third you had to hold the gear stick, but not too tight- grip it hard and you'd lose another tooth when it knocked, too loose and it would pop out altogether.
We didn't use third very much.

6,

I'm not sure which one it was, I'm in the states and by the time I got my hands on it they wern't even made here anymore, I only remember one other person who had one. I don't even think it was a 2 liter engine 1.7 liter i think. It was a 4 speed and to get in reverse you had to pull up on the shift to bring it down into reverse position, it went from difficult, to get in gear, to I was the only one able , to nobody was able, I spent a fair amount of time in the junk yards till I found a shift that was intact and then it was a bitch to put in. That car took me on my first trip across country over the Rocky Mountains......I was about 19 yrs old treking out to Vail, Colorado but when I hit the rockies I noticed that the higher I climbed the less power the car had.
Now in case you don't know(which I came to find out after i rolled into Vail village) that for every 2000 feet above sea level you go, you lose 2 horse power. Vail is 8000 feet and "The Pass" is more than 10,000 so you can imagine how much power I had left as I got close to the peak, needless to say I had the pedal floored the last 1/2 hour of my climb and was about to start tossing valuables if it got any worse......lol I'd give anything to be back there now, beautiful country side! and quite an experience!

I don't think third is worth using - although my mum insists on pulling away in third. 'you can in this car' is what she says. I'm not sure she should though. Not 'every' time.

the only car i ever owned that had strange particularities was my first, a 1960 MGA 1600. the gearstick throws were about three inches north/south, but between 1st and 3rd there was less than half an inch. 1st and reverse had no synchros, so you couldn't actually get it into the wrong gear, but it would bark at you if you weren't careful... other endearing qualities included the turn signals (a kind of thumb lever on the dash which turned itself off by a spring, which was retarded pneumatically; the pneumatic device had a leak, which meant you had to hold it yourself, no mean feat while preparing to turn), the door "handles" (wires on the insides of the doors, which eventually were too loose to actually unlatch the door; with top down you just jump over the door, but in winter, getting in and out was tricky)

it's funniest trick was one day it threw a blade from the fan right through the aluminum bonnet.

i loved that car!

You know, I haven't owned a car yet that hasn't had some sort of little fault or idiosyncrasy that I call "yeah, it does that" factor about it.

There's always something. Although I have never owned a car less than 7 years old, and only one built after 1974, the year of my birth - so perhaps that explains it in my case.

You know, I haven't owned a car yet that hasn't had some sort of little fault or idiosyncrasy that I call the "yeah, it does that" factor about it.

There's always something. Although I have never owned a car less than 7 years old, and only one built after 1974, the year of my birth - so perhaps that explains it in my case.

Aah.. Xantias

My parents have had theirs for at least 6 years now- a white one, looks very barge-esque. At the moment their gear box isn't wekk, so it keeps on dropping out of gear. They've also had problems with the hydraulics and the fuel injection system. Each time it messes up, da always says "that's it, it's off"- it's still sat on his drive

I'm gonna have to learn to drive soon. It's a bit isolated up here

"You know, I haven't owned a car yet that hasn't had some sort of little fault or idiosyncrasy that I call the "yeah, it does that" factor about it."
I had a van with a water leak and low water level light on the dash. For some reason - I kid you not, this happened nine times out of ten, the light would come on when a gay friend of mine was in the van too. We called it the 'Pooftah On Board' alert

You still interested in that Get Carter soundtrack btw?

So... are you running toward it with outstretched arms?

In the words of that henchman off of Dangermouse:
Si, baroni.

You'd better send me some details then. Are you still on the Scouts list? You can get my email address from there and send me your snailmail address so I can post it to you... once I've burned the remix disc

I thought I did, shortly before I said "Si, baroni" although I suspect my home email is a little flaky sometimes. Your g-mail account is the right one, no?

6, do you know yet if you're going to make to the meet? Coz we all want you to....

If you have any one of my gmail accounts you can get me there GD knows of at least three of 'em if you have his address. If not I'll post it here.

Kerr - that's very sweet, and I would love to meet up with everyone and I'm determined it will happen one day. But this time it was a combination of work *and* real life...

First Radio London offered me Colchester v Brentford, and then it transpired that it's also Saturday the 5th on which two of my better friends decided to have a first attempt at putting on a club night (well, an afternoon, in fact) in honour of the birthday of one of them.

So I've had a lot of thinking to do, and ended up opting for the thing which is least likely to be happen ever again, which is the clubbing thing. It's also a factor that I've been off work for half of yesterday and today with the flu and too much travelling at the weekend probably isn't such a good idea.

Hopefully there will be a meet in the summer that happens outside the season and I can actually go to that...