Herbie

I would have used 'poser' but the dictionary said 'poseur' was more correct. However, being from Preston in Lancashire, I would have normally used what Mincey's cousin did but I knew the board wouldn't let me use it anyway

The ones with X3 or X5 make me laugh out loud - especially when no longer on an X3 or X5

Well, you did ask Personally I don't see the point. Pretentious poseur with more money than sense is what they say to me However, each to their own

If you right-click the video a context menu will pop out and you can copy the video URL. Open another tab in your browser and paste the video URL to see it on YouTube:

Sorry Harry, I've only just seen your post. Click on this link for both answers mate.

As Paul says, this just isn't possible without spending money to add in extra components. I have a Grom Vline2 and at about £530 it's not cheap. Hell, it's not even perfect and it does have its foibles, but it has the potential to be perfect and it's close now. They're an American company so no language barrier when dealing with their great support team, if needed. The great thing about it is that it's a full-blown tablet and whereas Apple CarPlay or Android Auto are restrictive in what apps they allow you to run, with the Vline you can download apps directly to its internal memory and run them directly from there, without the need to invoke ACP/AA. Have a look at my (admittedly poor) attempt at a review below:

Yes, you can just replace the top mounts. I know one or two on here have done it, or rather sent the struts to a guy called Brian at an engineering company, but I can't remember any more details. Someone else will be able to tell you more, but at least you now know that it can be done.

Quite simply, another RX. I've had three of them now and I just can't think of any better car

And you give us 3 seconds to decide what it is Only a guess but I would think it's a fan or a servo just overrunning. See if there are any OBD codes and if not, don't worry about it.

It is actually the official figure but it's obviously unobtainable in reality. I honestly don't know how manufacturers get away with it.

According to this, none of them:

We all take out various insurances hoping that we'll never need to claim. In more than 40 years of driving I've had five punctures (touching wood so as not to tempt fate) so on that record, I'd never bother with tyre insurance.

Prevention is better than cure, so I use a nice bright yellow Stoploc Pro Elite in my RX to act as a deterrent and hopefully make the scrotes think that it's too much hassle and that they'd be better off with an easier target. This is my old car but I'm still using it on my 2018 4RX:

Hmm, good to know - one in the list of companies to never use. I don't know who told him that but it's utter codswallop. It's perfectly acceptable to do it that way and probably more convenient too, but it's equally as acceptable to connect jump leads to the battery itself, under the floor of the boot. I would imagine that that's the CCA (Cold Cranking Amps) rating. It's good to know, but in reality it doesn't make a difference to the hybrids (a) because it doesn't crank the engine, and (b) it only takes around 20A to get the hybrid system up and running in READY mode. Fingers crossed that it's all sorted for you now mate, and that you can just get down to the business of enjoying the car

Yep. In theory at least, although a small jump start battery pack is really the way to go and it's very handy to keep in the car.

Yes Peter, that's correct. The 12V boots the computers and operates a 12V twin-relay interlock to bring the hybrid system onstream and into READY mode. After that, the hybrid system charges the 12V battery via a DC/DC converter that converts the 288V from the traction battery to about 14.5V to run the 12V systems and also charge the 12V battery. The most worrying thing about this is that, to quote the OP: All he needed was to read the fuse box label and find one that is ignition-switched. Even if the fuse box lid is missing, two minutes with a multimeter would have found one. I'm beginning to wonder if he's wired it to a permanent 12V supply and this is the cause. EDIT: Another very worrying point: What sort of technician doesn't know how to jump start? This job wasn't done at Halfords was it David?

Are they paying for this or are you? If you're paying I would insist that they bypass the air drier with a short length of pipe to see if that improves the situation, or take out the filter if it's removable, before spending any money.

The aim with hybrids is to read the road ahead and brake gently so that all the energy that would have been wasted in friction heat is instead turned into electricity to charge the traction battery. If you need to anchor on in an emergency then the hydraulic brakes come in straight away, but under normal, gentle braking, most of the stopping is done regeneratively. Regarding the size, you've passed a driving test and you've got a driving licence so you should be able to handle it no problem. Two or three days at most and you'll be familiar with it. It's not a big car. It's only 18mm longer than a Ford Mondeo - that's less than 3/4 of an inch. I forget the exact width but I think it's only half an inch wider than the Mondeo. In other words, it's just 'family car-sized', just like millions of other family cars on the road.

And just to add to that - for even greater accuracy, a multimeter isn't really any good. It needs a proper battery tester that simulates a load. A multimeter may show, say, 12.6V but once a load is applied, that may drop like a stone if there's a bad cell or something else wrong.

I didn't know that, cheers. I'll never use it but it's good to know about it.

It doesn't do either of those. If you wander over a line without indicating first, it vibrates the steering wheel as a warning - feels similar to the vibration of a mobile phone.

1. Possibly, but not necessarily. Once you've jump started it, are you taking it for a good run (at least an hour, preferably two or more) or are you just doing short journeys and not giving it time to charge? 2. The system works this way: Let's say that you're sat in a car park waiting for someone and you want to listen to the radio. If the car is in ACC mode then you may get about 20-25 minutes of the radio before a message comes up onscreen saying that the radio has been turned off to avoid a flat battery. However if the car is in READY mode, instead of shutting the radio down, the hybrid system will fire up the engine to keep the battery charged up, and it will do this cycle as often as needed. So, when they fitted the Road Angel, was the car in READY so that the engine could fire up as and when necessary? If so, then it wouldn't have flattened the battery unless something was wrong with it anyway. If the engine was firing up then it was actually helping the battery, not killing it. 3. All you need to do is to connect another 12V source to the cables immediately before you release them from the battery posts. The little jump start battery pack would be ideal, but you could even do it with a pack of 8 AA batteries. EDIT: I have no idea what a 'Road Angel' is but are you sure it's not that that's draining the battery?

Paying for what the car already comes with.

First of all, this chart is quite useful: I don't know much about the Clarke jump starter but as Machine Mart seem to be the only place selling Clarke stuff, I'd stay away from it just on principle. I've always found Machine Mart to be way overpriced. I got the Tacklife T8, which was about £60 at the time but I believe it's been superceded by an updated model now, something like the one below: These things look small and do indeed have thin leads, but they do pack a punch and will start most cars without even breaking a sweat. This is especially true of hybrids because the system only takes around 20A to achieve READY status. I went for a fairly beefy one so that I could offer a jump start to someone with a conventional car if they needed one, because although it's perfectly safe for a hybrid to receive a jump from a conventional car, you should never use a hybrid to jump a conventional car. Regarding the -ve post in the fusebox that you mention - I'm not sure there is a -ve post in there. If you mean the bare nut that I've connected to in the photo below, that's another +ve one, not a -ve one: If your fuse box is different and it is actually a negative terminal then yes, it would be safe to use it. The advice to use an unpainted nut/screw/bolt as the negative refers to the battery posts. A charging battery can cause gassing and if there are any sparks generated by removal of the negative lead, it could cause an explosion. From an electrical perspective, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever whether the negative lead is connected directly to the -ve battery post or to some other part of the car. Your final question opens a can of worms. Fitting a larger battery can be done but may require some modification. Electrically, a larger battery will hold charge longer, but is it worth all the faffing around? Only you can answer that one.

It does have a place and a reason to exist Piers. As soon as you drive your brand new car out of the dealers it drops in value by a few grand. If you were to write it off a few days later, the inurance will only give you the lower value so the GAP insurance makes up the difference so that you can have another brand new one again and not be out of pocket. As for not needing it... that's what we hope of all insurance policies.