Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Vintage Fly Guy]

[MikeEdwards]

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1976 Vauxhall HP Firenza, 1976 Vauxhall Sportshatch (x2), 1986 Audi coupe quattro, 2000 Audi TT

[Ray White]

I would think that must be Mk 4 Zodiac; the zephyr had just the two headlamps. I remember Dad working on a Zephyr in the Garage; he was not very impressed with the handling which suffered from understeer due to the nose heavy design; they put the spare wheel under the bonnet. The V4 engine was also a disappointment.

Still, despite all the negativity some have survived so they can't have been that bad!

[Penman]

An Instructor I knew, when in Lancashire, had previously been a Class 1 police driver at a time when they had MkIVs. On one occasion he was called to do a high speed organ run from Rochdale to Blackpool, there were few motorways in the area then so it was still a cross country route in those days. He told be that he had the bonnet removed for that run because of the road holding and the engine cooling.
It sounds to me as if the problem was aerodynamic and that the understeer was caused by too little weight on the steering.
Too heavy would generally cause the tyres to "dig in" which would give oversteer unless the tyres were the wrong type for the geometry.
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Bristols should always come in pairs.

Any 2 from:-
Straight 6
V8 V10

[Ray White]

[Rusty]

[bjacko]

I remember driving driving a Volvo 340 in 1985 and when it got to 85 with 3 adults aboard it lost the feel on the steering giving no steering, on the M6. I believe it may have been aerodynamic pressure on the little aerodynamic fairing along the top rear edge of the boot lid.
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1938 Morris 8 Ser II Coupe Utility (Pickup)
1985 Rover SD1 VDP

[Rusty]

[Penman]

[Ray White]

[Penman]

One intermittent problem I did have with the 340(1.4 petrol basically a Renault engine), which was not identified by a number of mechanics and also AA drivers was a habit of misfiring and engine dying on cold winter nights with a high humidity. 10 to 20 minutes later the engine would fire up and run apparently normally. One night it started to misbehave on the M6 and I started to gradually edge it over onto the hard shoulder from the LH lane because I was only edging over gradually the car got a good shaking from the red cats eyes rumble strip. This cleared the problem and after checking for traffic I got back on the carriageway. I did stop at the next services to give the engine as much of a look over as I could at night. Didn't see anything so wondered if it might have been muck in the fuel tank getting sucked to the outlet and then shaken loose by the rumble strip rattling it got. A couple of weeks later I was doing something under the bonnet and noticed that the intake nozzle for the air cleaner wasn't in it's winter position, so I moved it down to suck up warmer air from near the exhaust manifold.
Didn't have any more engine problems. Eventually chatting to an RAC engineer he told me he used to work in the lake district and had gone to people with the same problem. It was Carb Icing, cold damp air drawn into the carburettor builds up icing round the carb air inlet shortage of air being drawn in causes misfiring andor stoppage. Wait for a while and the heat under the bonnet warms he carburettor body and melts the ice from inside and outside. Engine now starts. The Rumble strip rattling had shaken the ice loose before it had totally shut my engine down.
What I found particularly galling was that having flown light aircraft I was aware of the Carb icing problem because we used to have a Carb Heat switch which was put on in such weather and also at critical flight moments such as Take Offs and Landings as a just in case precaution.
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Bristols should always come in pairs.

Any 2 from:-
Straight 6
V8 V10

[bjacko]

Carby icing is a problem on piston engined aircraft and despite all the warnings over the years rookie pilots occasionally get caught out with it because they had either forgotten about carby icing because they only fly on warm summer days or they didn't think it was cold enough!
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1938 Morris 8 Ser II Coupe Utility (Pickup)
1985 Rover SD1 VDP