mystery machine

I'm no fan of loud exhausts at unsociable hours myself, BUT - if keying your motor is this guy's way of dealing with his grievance then he is quite frankly a cowardly scumbag who deserves every last slap he can feasibly be dealt.

That's good clean ice though, Welsho I wash mine in the street, which is a no-no on a day like this - strong chance I'd knacker an OAP by turning the road & pavement into Braehead arena...

Quality piece of trolling (by the OP on the Mustang forum). Next it'll be 5w40 treacle to sweeten the mid range...

I misread your thread title as "Help, PORN broke" I was gaunnae say: "All hands on deck! Man in trouble! Whipround, telethon, ANYTHING!!!"... P.S. If it's not an electrical supply problem, sometimes they can fail after getting clagged up with dirt, salt, etc - you can usually still hear the motor working (from outside the car). Easiest just to replace in this case, IMO.

Braw Frank - it's a p1sser trying to keep a motor clean at this time of year (mine's no' seen a sponge for three weeks) Good thing being able to wash it indoors too, saves you the pain of having to smile politely at all manner of comic geniuses wandering past suggesting you might "clean theirs when you're finished" (ooo, the banter!)

Actually Welsho, perhaps that's what started it - aliens seeking 'total flying saucer alignment'! I mean, you've seen all the science fiction movies - those intergalactic cruisers crab to the side like a bast*rd!!! I'll know it's true when I see the Millennium Falcon poking its erse out of the garage door at Hypertech's new rolling road

Who would've thunk it? I mean, not only is Bonnybridge THE centre for extra-terrestrial activity in Western Europe, but it's also home to not one, but two 4-wheel alignment specialists

Cheers again for the info, Gav. Are ProGrip associated with Hypertech at all?

Aye, I reckon it would be interesting enough to make my 'back end' go

No strange noises from the steering, Gav. Re the Bridgestones - they had been swapped front/back by the seller before I took ownership of the car, so perhaps that mitigated things a little in my case. If a pressure increase doesn't make any diff, I might swap front/back. A diagonal swap would be best, but then of course I'd need to have the tyres off the wheels. I suppose it'd also be worth measuring the tread at various points in the tyres to see if they're wearing unevenly - I had a quick butchers', but couldn't see any obvious uneven wear (they're only three or four months old). How are your guys in Ian Grief's fixed for diagnosing this kind of thing, Gav? I only ask because I know you don't do wheel alignment. Cheers again.

That day can't arrive too soon

Thanks for all the replies, folks. Sounds like it's worth experimenting with higher tyre pressure (assuming the edges of the tread are wearing faster than the inside). Incidentally Gav, the original Bridgestones didn't exhibit this problem and they were very unevenly worn (by the previous owner). zarabad - mine's the same - doesn't seem to be a problem over 50mph, seems worst at about 35mph. I'll be scunnered if these new tyres are wearing unevenly, especially after having paid for four wheel alignment. Never had a problem with uneven tyre wear with previous motors (most of my mileage is covered on the motorway). Hmmm... Cheers again.

Does U.G. = United Glass, by any chance?

By the sounds of it they wouldn't be the easiest tyre to shift during winter, hence the discount. Good time to buy four to store for spring, perhaps...

Just nipped ootside to check tyre pressure - all four are sitting around 29psi (slightly harder at the front, slightly softer at the back). That's a touch on the low side I suppose (which I'd attribute to the considerable drop in temperatures since I last checked them), but certainly nothing to cause the kind of weirdness I'm feeling through the steering wheel, I wouldn't have thought. P.S. They're all running in the proper direction - something I always check before leaving the tyre fitters. Never fully trusted any of them since that time ten years ago when some basturt battered chap-on weights onto my rims after I'd asked for stick-ons...

Cheers for the reply, Gus. I visually inspected the tyres when I began to suspect a problem (I check the pressures now and again anyway), and the garage that checked the alignment the second time also checked the pressures and found no problem. I know what you mean though, it does kind of smack of a partially flat tyre - although the steering doesn't feel any heavier than it ever did...

Over the past few weeks I've noticed my Hawkeye WRX's steering reacting increasingly to ridges, ruts and seams in the road surface. It only seems to be a problem when these ridges run parallel with the tyre (i.e. parallel with the kerb). Travelling across them causes the steering to twitch one way and then the other - in extreme cases the car's travel is kicked out of the straight ahead and has to be corrected. It feels like it's being sucked into the ruts and repelled away from the seams... The most obvious possible cause I could come up with was wheel alignment, but I had that set a couple of months back by a reputable Scooby-aware garage - and just to be sure, I had it re-checked a couple of weeks ago by another garage, who told me that it is "spot-on" (it's a standard 'parallel' setup, as opposed to 'fast road', BTW). So I don't think that wheel alignment is the problem. The only other thing I could think of is that my tyres are gash. I had all four fitted prior to the wheel alignment being set - they're a 'mid range' brand with a 'V' tread pattern. Car felt fine when they were fitted though - like I say, this has come on gradually. It's becoming a right pain in the erse, as I'm starting to pay more attention to the road surfaces than what's up ahead on the road... Anyone else experienced this? Any ideas what may be causing it? Many thanks. P.S. I'm considering swapping my tyres back->front just to see if that makes a difference.

From Crieff?! Are you kidding? Crieff has to be one of the most genteel little towns in Scotland...!

The perils of peer pressure (PPP).

Your motor looks the coo's clangers mate Despite the detractors, I must admit to being a closet bugeye fan - I generally prefer them to the blobs.

You're absolutely right Steve, and I for one embrace that change - new words is good [sic]. I could barely imagine a world without 'mingers', 'neds', 'chavs', 'weedgies' or 'ASBOs' (which makes it all the harder to ignore Strathcylde, I grant you ).But when it comes to text speak, I think it's fair to say that there's still a sizeable enough proportion of us for whom it's clunky at best, incomprehensible at worst - so for anyone wishing to get their message (msg?) across to a wide audience on a web forum, it's best avoided IMHO. But yeah, give it a generation or two and the OED will chock full of 'anyone', 'm8' and '4skin'... Makes Irvine Welsh and his bunch sound like pure fudge-nudgers!

Jings, that beggars belief... I guess that would be one way of dealing with it, but it's a shame when it has to come to outright banning - there's way too much rampant banning of things nowadays, IMO I'd be more in favour of higher-profile forum guidelines as a start.

Looks like someone entered some perfectly sensible Japanese prose into babelfish, hit 'translate to English' and just went with whatever came out the other end - classic

Oh yeah - livin' together in perfect har-mon-ee, baby...!