[PetrolRider]

Originally Posted by sridhu

Surprising - in the US cars I have driven, you can press the accelerator pedal to increase speed temporarily when CC is engaged. If you let go of the throttle, the car cruises at the set speed

If you touch the brake, cc disengages. And you had a single button 'resume' to go back to the same speed.

Would be very surprised if the implementation is very different nowadays

Yes, you are correct. It falls back to original set speed. What I meant is to rapidly increasing the set speed and be at the spot.



There is no resume button on Verna, rather single tap on "up" doubles up as resume. I guess, similar feature varies between cars to cars.

[AKTRACK]

Someone I once knew used to drop his sister to her college on his bike. He used to turn the indicators on every turn. His sister, of course noticed the indicators turning on before the turn but not the flicking of the switch. Intrigued, one day she finally asks him - "How does the bike exactly know where you are going to turn"!

[Mr.Boss]

Originally Posted by Tapish

All of us have some degree of knowledge & expertise with regard to automotives

Really? Do we still believe after looking at few of the posts here (The most useless features in cars)?

This happened during early 90s,
Having grown by seeing only rear wheel drive vehicles (mostly trucks, buses, Padmini, Ambassador) with propeller shafts I was surprised on seeing a M800 without a propeller shaft. Upon further bending down I could see 2 small tubes that run from the engine bay to each rear wheel. I was in a assumption that those small metal tubes carry a flexible shaft inside (similar to the speedo cable inner ) and that drive the wheels.

Later understood the concept of FWD and 'those tubes' on M800 were the brake tubes.

[TangoSierra]

I was in school back then, 9th grade I guess, raring to drive cars. we used to have an ambassador. Now, I have seen our driver shake the gear lever every time before he starts the car.

One fine evening, when no one was at home, I thought "Let's try and start the car". Took the keys, went to the car, slotted in the key, turned on the ignition and shook the gear lever, just as our driver used to do and turned the key further. The car didn't start, but jolted forward and stopped. I was sweating, fear-stricken. Turned off the ignition, removed the key and went inside home as if nothing had happened.

Poor me, it took me some years, when I started learning to drive, to learn that he was shaking to see of the car was in gear or in neutral. Didn't know we could depress the clutch and start the car.

[StepUP!]

This happened with me when I had hired Jetta through self drive. The person dropped car at my place and left. I started from my place in Jetta. Tried reversing the car. I tried multiple times to engage reverse gear but car always chose 1st gear! I was like what the heck, I can see 'R' on the grarstick beside '1' but each time it engaged first gear!
I called up the person who had dropped the car to ask how do I engage reverse! Then he told me to press the gear lever down before engaging reverse. I felt very stupid when I disconnected the call.

It didn't end here. I started. Traveled few kms and was very happy driving Jetta on highways and pushing her to limits.

Then I realized I have to tank up. I stopped at the bunk and started searching for the fuel lid opener. Checked at usual places - on the floor beside my right leg, on the dashboard. I searched everywhere but didn't find. All this hustle I was doing waiting in a queue! When my turn came, I simply skipped as I couldn't find the button. The petrol bunk guy game me puzzled look. I made a sheepish face.
I parked Jetta sideby. I was ashamed to call up the dude again and ask how do I tank up? I took out my phone and googled! Then I realized there is no button or lever, fuel lid is integrated with the central locking. So have to just push the lid to open it!

In a separate instance, it happened with my wife. She had learnt driving and used to take out our car, Figo, to her office sometimes. On one fine day it was raining and she got late. When home, she told me AC is not working! I was like how did this heppen as I had used it on the previous day. She was trying to turn on AC and blow air on the windscreen as it fogged with windows rolled up. Figo has manual AC knobs.

I asked her exactly what was she doing. She said, many times she pressed AC button but, it simply showed red dot light when pressed indicating 'ON' position and went off immediately to 'OFF' position.
It took me a while to realize the issue. AC was working fine but, the blower fan speed knob was at Zero! So even if you press AC button, it won't start.

[R-Six]

So, here is my automotive oops movement!

Incident dates back to 2002. During a weekend, one of my friends drove up in a shiny Tata Sierra. Being fascinated with that beautiful machine all through the childhood, couldn’t resist taking her out for a spin.

In all my excitement to drive her, asked for the keys and off I went. I didn’t even take my wallet or mobile phone either. So, the drive went on smoothly for a few kilometers until I thought I had enough and should go back home and chit chat with my friend.

So, I quickly pull over to the edge of the car and try to put the car in reverse since I did not have enough space for a U turn. But no luck! It wouldn’t slot the gear into reverse. Now I’m amused. Went closer to the gear knob and had a good look. Yes, R is marked clearly and I’m trying to slot it in the correct position. But for some reason, it just won’t let me slot it in reverse.

That is when I realized that I did not take my mobile nor my wallet so that I could call my friend and check. Instead of taking a U-turn and driving back around 4 km, I went straight till I could find a roundabout where I can take a U-turn without engaging the reverse gear. The total test drive became 22 instead of 8 and all the time my friend was waiting back home thinking where I disappeared with his car.

He later explained how to slot the gear into R in a Sierra. To those who are not sure what I was doing wrong, gear lever should be pulled up to slot the reverse gear which I had no clue of.

Ever since that incident, I make it a point to get a quick rundown of the gears as well as basic switches and controls before taking any car for a spin.

[avingodb]

At some point I used to believe that car's price did not include tyres in it at all and that one had to pay separately for getting the car rolling off the showroom.

[Anirudh_sai]

Originally Posted by PetrolRider

Yes, you are correct. It falls back to original set speed. What I meant is to rapidly increasing the set speed and be at the spot.



There is no resume button on Verna, rather single tap on "up" doubles up as resume. I guess, similar feature varies between cars to cars.

The implementation is same in Verna too. On the cruise control toggle there is +/Res & -/Set, once the speed os set using set you can accelerate using A pedal temporarily if you want to set new speed then press -/Set again otherwise let go of A pedal and the car returns to previously set speed. Same way if you press the brake to re-engage CC to previous speed just press +/Res and it will accelerate to previously set speed(gear must allow for the speed set).
I have a Verna AT Petrol SX(O)

[400notout]

Originally Posted by dailydriver

New Car Owner (NCO): Looking for sun film. What do you have?

Lol. When I went to set up sunfilm in my spark in 2009, the guy set it up in a fashion which made it look like the lines in a defogger. And that's what I thought every car had till I actually saw one on a TBHP review

Originally Posted by StepUP!

This happened with me when I had hired Jetta through self drive. The person dropped car at my place and left. I started from my place in Jetta. Tried reversing the car. I tried multiple times to engage reverse gear but car always chose 1st gear! I was like what the heck, I can see 'R' on the grarstick beside '1' but each time it engaged first gear!
I called up the person who had dropped the car to ask how do I engage reverse! Then he told me to press the gear lever down before engaging reverse. I felt very stupid when I disconnected the call.

Same story. Car: Skoda Fabia.

Other than this the usuals;

Car felt sluggish to drive. Reason: handbrake engaged. Car: M800

Car would not reverse. Car: Spark. Reason: Handbrake engaged.

Turned indicator but wiper engaged. Still do this every once a while I switch between my city zx and spark.

Forget to press clutch in my Spark after sometime in my City zx CVT.

Car: Spark. Drove the front tyre into a ditch twice. Once I forgot I had parked right behind a newly dug one, the other I didn't pay heed to "Stop!!" shouts from the person guiding me to park.

Took an i20 (previous gen) diesel out for a spin, couldn't figure out how to reverse, sensing my confusion, the owner came running and I found out that the reverse is ahead of the 1st gear.

Well mods, I feel there should be a relaxation to smiley usage limits in this thread. I need more I'm stupids.

[arunrajk81]

This was another oops movement for me that happened two months back. I was asked to park my Brother-in-Law's Vento inside garage since he left it at road side after a shopping and went for some other stuff. For parking at the garage, I have to take a u-turn and it was a village road. Taking U-turn at one stretch is not possible since the road is too narrow, I have to take a turn, and then take reverse and turn again to complete the u-turn.

For that I took the car and started taking turn and the car is now in a position fully perpendicular to the road and blocking entire road. After that only I realize, I haven't driven Vento before and engaging reverse gear is slightly different and nobody is near to help.

I have driven Dusters, Paleos and Sumos which has additional mechanism to engage reverse gear. But in a hurry, I was unable to find that knob in Vento and the car now is a position that it's blocking the entire road. It took a while to find the switch that need to be pressed to engage reverse gear. Luckily for those two minutes of time, no other vehicle came via that road. Same situation happened to my friend and he was taking U-turn with a Sumo.

[Jaguar]

This happened some years back. A few of us (including some BHPians) had gone on an early morning drive to test some mods in their cars. Between stops, one friend handed over his Punto to me as he wanted to drive another friend's car. That was the first time I was driving the Punto and it took me a while to get the seating right be able to see over the high dashboard. By that time, the boys had taken off and I started pushing the car to catch up. Suddenly I hear a beep and instinctively slowed down and looked at the dash for any warning lights, nothing, sometime later heard the beep again. It took me while to realize that Punto had a high speed warning and it beeped everytime the car crossed 100


Same time, I was also trying to turn on the AC. The car had a dial for the fan speed but for god's sake I cound't find the AC switch. So for the next 20 odd KMs, I just suffered with the fan blowing hot air. Only when we stopped at again to swith cars the friend showed me that the fan knob itself was the AC switch and you just need to push it to turn on the AC

[lexusES350]

About 5 years ago I was visiting Switzerland and we rented a car which was Opel Something (I forgot the name but was a station wagon type). After driving the car for couple of days, it was running low on fuel so we pulled into a fuel station in Interlaken and tried to look for a button (electronic release) to open the fuel door so that I could refuel it. However, to my surprise even after looking endlessly, I could not find the electronic release button to open the fuel door. I then found car's manual in the glove box but it was in German so both me and my wife tried to decipher it. Eventually after trying for 15 min. gave up and went inside the convenience store attached to the fuel station to seek help. Surprisingly, the worker there didnt understand English and we couldn't understand German as Interlaken is in touristy area and generally everyone is bilingual there. After using sign language and what not, somehow I was able to let them know that I need help to open the fuel door on the car.

The nice lady comes out, walks around the car then checks the dash area to see if she can find the button to release the fuel door. Eventually, she tried reading the manual as well to figure it out.

After our ordeal of 30+ min. another gentleman approaches us who had stopped to fuel his car. Fortunately he understood both English and German so he was able to explain the station worker that he would handle this and they can go back inside.

To my surprise, the fuel door was not locked and it was simply a toggle spring action mechanism which would open the door by pushing onto it.

I never felt more stupid than that day as I had never come across a car with such mechanism even with my extensive US driving history on various cars such as Civic, Toyota Highlander, Camry and my own LexusES350. Till that time, all cars I had driven had a fuel cap release button somewhere in the dash or door area which would release the fuel cap and I never knew such toggle mechanism existed.

[Gildarts]

During my college days, in my CV I had given Automobiles as an area of interest. I had even taken Automobile Engineering as one of the electives. In my BE final year campus selection, during my interview with IOCL I was asked "which is the most commonly found system in road cars FWD or RWD? and Why?" I very confidently replied RWD. He even gave me a 2nd chance rethink my answer bya sking "Are you sure?". I just ploughed through confidently with "Yes sir" and started blabbing about reasons for the same like weight distribution, etc. I guess I equated road cars with BMWs. That was my automotive OOPS moment.

[roby_dk]

Ah I have one more funny experience to share. It was my 1st year in college, a time to meet and greet new friends and I was on a formal date with one of my classmate. I was driving my Santro car and I suddenly felt something wrong with front left tire. It got punctured but I didn't have courage to came out and fix it in front of her. I kept driving my car and called my friend to rescue and exchange his car with mine. The tire gave up after few kilometers and car was shuddering like anything before I stopped. Help came in 5 minutes of time and we exchanged the cars and I left to drop her. My friend arranged someone who got the stepney replaced with the damaged tire.

The major OOPS moment was when my dad saw the damaged tire next day and was shocked to see its condition. He checked and confirmed with a mechanic that this is a pure case of intentional driving with a punctured tire. He scolded my like hell but was not convinced that I was driving the car. Since he know my driving abilities he was sure that this car was being driven by someone else other than me who might be a newbie. It was quite disappointing for me and I would have avoided that scenario easily.

[aniyo]

It was when I was learning to drive. I used to practice in the morning and late evening.
I was driving it at 10 in the night and as luck would have it the signal was red. This signal was on an incline and this was the first time I was stopping on the incline. Boy did I frustrate everyone behind me. The signal turned from Green to red and all I could do was move the car backwards.
Finally I let the car go reverse on the incline and this time carried momentum and crossed.
My father and brother had a good laugh on me and taught me the handbrake trick