[Soumyajit9]

The year is 2017. I am in USA. New license. First time left hand drive experience.
The only cars I had driven in my life were a Chevy Beat and a Wagon R.

So I booked a rental car through Enterprise Rentals for a weekend getaway with wife and kid. Lot of prayers done at home, that I would be able to drive on the "wrong side" of the road, etc etc. Lots of YouTube videos watched on how to drive, rules to follow, etc etc.

I took a bus and reached the rental outlet. Formalities done.
I was handed over a Hyundai Elantra.
The guy hands over the key and points outside and said there is your car.

I walk up to the car, open with the remote, sit inside. Mumbling to myself about rules, what to do, what not to do, etc etc. Then started the mistakes:

1) Started fiddling with the dashboard to find a keyhole - After 30 seconds, realized it was a push button start. Immediately memory in action - Okay, press brake, press accelerator ? then press button ? Ugghh...After another 30 seconds, was able to start the car.

2) Where is the handbrake ? Ughh, no handbrake, no steering mounted handbrake either (like old Fiats, pickup trucks, etc). Great, press accelerator and start driving. After hardly 50 mts, alarm started sounding. I got nervous whether I should immediately headback to the shop or keep driving till home, park and investigate. Stopped on the road side, unbuckled the seat belt, put back the seat belt, switched off the car, started again, start driving. Again alarm. Dashboard showed the Traction Control light highlighted. Not sure what it was, drove till home - 2kms from shop.
Ran upstairs, opened YouTube and Hyundai Elantra manual. Whatsapped a few TBHP friends in India. Got various responses like brakes gone, ABS gone, Engine failure, etc. Spent a good 30 mins finding the fault.
Then it stuck that I never released a hand brake. But where was it ? Again Hyundai Elantra manual. Found it to be an electronic handbrake. Most US cars have moved to this stuff and it was unheard of for me !

Next panic - Damn, brakes would have totally conked off or so. Looked closely at the pads, wheels, smelled for any burning smell. All was normal.
Headed off for the drive.

Kept getting rentals for 6 more months till I bought my 2017 BMW X1 - With Electronic Hand Brake

[akshay380]

Is it only me who took 8 years to understand MLCP means Multi Level Car Park?

[NaXal]

Smoothness of Petrol Engine

Drove a Diesel car to a friend's place. Took out his Punto Petrol and went for some work inside traffic congested city streets. Traffic was as bad as it gets in central Kolkata.

As I was making a turn in a busy intersection, I found the steering wasn't correcting itself while I was completing the right hand turn. Being used to power steering, my weak arms were working over time to correct the turn as a chill went down my spine. I screamed on top of my voice, steering had locked up as my friend seating beside screamed at me "What"??

Punto was slowing down since I was taking time to correct the turn so people behind started hocking. I had to give the A Padal a tap to close the gap in front and I realised, err, I had stalled the engine.

Such a shame. Didn't even care to look at the RPM meter before panicking and scaring the hell out my friend. I guess side effect of too much time spent on 1.5 TDCi..

[RYP]

This happened last year when we bought our first car - Swift. During the 5th day of ownership we all went to a friend's place and i was toying with the key fob by spinning it around the finger out of sheer boredom and suddenly it flew out of my fingers and hard landed on the floor, I inspected it and all seemed ok. We came back to our car, got in and i inserted the key and tried to crank - nothing. The key will not turn, i applied a good amount of torque, still nothing. Then it hit me, because of me dropping the key earlier i thought it had damaged it somehow and now i must be prepared to take the heat from everyone and has to go back home all by myself to bring back the spare key. As a last resort i googled 'Not able to crank car key' and there it is, you just need to turn the steering and try cranking the key at the same time and VOILA it worked and it worked like a charm. I must have turned the steering wheel after removing the key when i parked, so it jammed the cylinder somehow. Long story short, it was an oopsie! But honestly i felt like i went back to the era of Ambassador/ Contessa for a moment as we expect our modern cars to take care of these trivial things

[sridhu]

Originally Posted by RYP

...I must have turned the steering wheel after removing the key when i parked, so it jammed the cylinder somehow. Long story short, it was an oopsie! But honestly i felt like i went back to the era of Ambassador/ Contessa for a moment as we expect our modern cars to take care of these trivial things

This is actually a safety feature in a lot of cars where you use a key to crank the engine (a dying breed, I know!). If you yank the wheel far enough after taking out the key, you will lock the wheel. To unlock, you yank the wheel a bit and then turn the key. Works like a charm.

In keyless entry systems, this lock is motorised I believe. It unlocks when it senses the key & start is pressed.

[TejasKinger]

Switching between a manual transmission vehicle and an automatic transmission vehicle.

My daily driver is a Grand i10 Petrol with manual transmission. Recently on a trip to Kerala, I had hired a self-drive Vitara Brezza Diesel AMT. The first leg (pun intended) was extremely smooth. I was able to drive comfortably on the highways maintaining a reasonable speed, remembering not to do anything with my left foot and only modulating the Accelerator and Brake pedals with my right foot.

Post lunch when I began the second leg of the journey, I found that the car was jerking violently, almost stalling. Unfamiliar rental car, unfamiliar roads - I broke into a cold sweat. Pulled over to the side and turned off the car. In my nervousness, I forgot that this car had no engine stop-start push button and desperately began looking for one out of habit.

Realized a few seconds later that I had to turn the key. Slotted the car into 'N'. Tried starting the car again, only to find the violent jerking behavior repeating. I happened to look down and glance at the pedals and that is when it hit me. I was using both my legs to modulate the pedals simultaneously trying to mimic the behavior of releasing the clutch and pressing the accelerator, instead, in this case, I was pressing the brake pedal and releasing the accelerator pedal simultaneously.

[SpideyBoy]

Happened to me when I bought my new Nexon, super excited, super nervous about being one of the few to buy Tata car amongst my circle that too very close to when it's launched. I took my car to my friend's place to show off naturally. They started showering all praises about the looks of the interior and my face was beaming with pride until one of them in the rear seat couldn't open the door from inside to get out. All that beam turned grey all of a sudden I started to panic. I felt like I was a guinea pig to try out the first lot and started to worry about my future with the car. Took it to the service center immediately and had lost my colors on my face when the service center guy just flipped the child lock button to off. Yes too

[King_pin09]

An automobile was a distant dream in my childhood. All I could construe about a car / motorcycle was from TV serials, advertisements and a thousand of Bollywood movies. Thus, my understanding of vehicles at one stage comprised the following,

1. Car needs two fuels to run viz., water and petrol. For a car to run both are to be filled. In case petrol gets over, get it filled at a petrol pump into the tank. If water is exhausted get it from a Pond/ River nearby and fill it directly into the engine. A personal caution to myself, once I grow up and own a car: Any long journey has to be planned in such a way that at any given point of time, I am not far off from a Pond/ River.

2. A car cannot be stopped, if the brakes fail.

3. A motorcycle has a feature / controls that make it jump high into the air from a flat ground. (Inspiration courtesy, an old Hero Honda CD 100 advertisement).

4. A car can be better protected by welding a latch to all four doors and securing with padlocks. Co-incidentally, Mr. Bean too had the same solution.

[MukundanMK]

I purchased my first car, Maruti Alto in 2005. I booked this car when I was still learning to drive a car. The car was ready for delivery, before an expected date. I got the car delivered to my home (no PDI done or didnt know that a few things had to be checked). Later that night, I had to park my car in the parking slot, which was till now parked in the street. With lots of butterfly in stomach, I decided to do this act. Wifey supportively sat next to me in the car. I started the car, applied gear and was ready to accelerate. But all of a sudden, the car moved slowly without me applying accelerator. I thought that the car is doing something wrong and being an IT person, the only solution that I knew at that time was to shutdown the car and start again. Car repeated the same thing and I was kind of panicked. I told my wife that the car is defective and that we need to fight with the car dealership and return this. It was pretty late in the night and the dealership was closed. Hence left the brand new car parked in the street that night (covered the car) and next day morning I called the dealership. Then they told me about something called CREEP feature, which allows a car to move very slowly when the car is in drive mode and car brakes are not pressed. I didnt take the car out for almost 10-15 days and I waited till my driving class was completed and I got a proper license. Feels really embarrassed till date!

[porsche_guy]

So this is back when we had just bought our Vento.

So after the delivery in the afternoon, we had gone to show it to a few relatives and had decided to go out for dinner. So we reached the place and everyone went ahead to reserve a table while dad wanted me to guide him while he parks since he was just getting acquainted to the car. So he put the car in reverse and to my horror, only the left reverse light was working! I was horrified and immediately told my dad about it. He was laughing for the next 5 minutes and then told me that Vento has only one reverse light. I had never thought that a car could have only one since we had only owned Japs till then!

I was finally relieved but was feeling so so

Cheers!

[somspaple]

My 'oops' moment:
New car and a trip was planned along with my friends and their families. We all met up on the outskirts of Bangalore early in the morning. Rearranged luggage and people such that all women/kids are in the other car. It was I and one of my friends was with me in my car.

All charged up I cranked the car and started following the other car in front of us slowly. Soon, my car started giving out a light chime. We were all buckled up and hand brake was retracted but still there was this chime and there were no warning lights on dash. I switched off the car waited for couple of mins and restarted. Within few seconds chimes re-appeared. Now the other car had already disappeared from view and we were to reach Mahabalipuram by afternoon. I was like should we call off this trip and head straight to HASS!?

One last try - I asked my friend to crank the engine while I took a look around the car - didn't find anything suspicious. I asked my friend start driving at slow pace while I walked along the car - there you go!! I had unlocked bonnet instead of boot while loading the luggage. Don't ask me how!? :embarassed:

After exchanging choicest of expletives with my friend - we restarted journey in full josh!!

[Newpunter]

Originally Posted by King_pin09

An automobile was a distant dream in my childhood. All I could construe about a car / motorcycle was from TV serials, advertisements and a thousand of Bollywood movies. Thus, my understanding of vehicles at one stage comprised the following,

1. Car needs two fuels to run viz., water and petrol. For a car to run both are to be filled. In case petrol gets over, get it filled at a petrol pump into the tank. If water is exhausted get it from a Pond/ River nearby and fill it directly into the engine. A personal caution to myself, once I grow up and own a car: Any long journey has to be planned in such a way that at any given point of time, I am not far off from a Pond/ River.

2. A car cannot be stopped, if the brakes fail.

3. A motorcycle has a feature / controls that make it jump high into the air from a flat ground. (Inspiration courtesy, an old Hero Honda CD 100 advertisement).

4. A car can be better protected by welding a latch to all four doors and securing with padlocks. Co-incidentally, Mr. Bean too had the same solution.

This is so funny and so true, especially the first 2 points. After watching our movies at the time, I used to believe these as well .

[Highh5]

Recently I have used a friends car for some work duty while I was in Delhi. Car in question is Wagon R CNG (Factory Fitted).
I went to a CNG pump first time in my life and opened the fuel lid while waiting for other cars to clear off the queue. Moment i started the car again, it refused to start. I tried multiple times but car refused to start. Wondering what went wrong suddenly, called my friend and told him everything along with my whereabouts. The moment I told him, that I'm at a CNG pump, he identified the problem, asked me to close the fuel lid and start over again. And Voila it started in a single crank, I was laughing at myself.

[skchettry]

Had never driven an automatic car till the date this one happened.
Working abroad, my company used to have pool cars. All were manual. Then suddenly one fine morning, I was offered an automatic one. I was nervous; so told the attendant that I can't drive an automatic one and that he should give me a manual one. He just smiled at me and said you are the first person asking me for a manual one when all others would ask for the automatic one. He simply told me ' take this car today and I am sure next time when you ask me for a car, you would not like to take a manual one anymore'.
Although I had to ask him a few questions to ensure I don't look stupid in front of others after I am gone from that spot, I am happy that I gathered enough courage that day.
And yes thereafter I made it a point to see I had an automatic one only and would settle for a manual one only in case I was convinced that the person really had no automatic cars left in the fleet.

[FarPatel]

Some years ago, I had faced a peculiar problem with my car, when on hard braking, I heard and felt a harsh grating sound, much like sandpaper being rubbed against some part of the vehicle. The sound would disappear as the car slowed to a standstill and would reappear when braking the next time.
Couldn’t figure out the cause, so took the car to the ASS immediately. They checked the brakes, no problems there, took her out for a test spin and there it was again. Couldn’t understand it again. The technician then decided to sit in the rear seat and asked me to drive out towards the ASS compound gate and brake hard, while another technician stood outside to observe from his vantage point. Voila, the cause was soon spotted and I was left with egg on my face!

To explain, the year was 2000 and my Qualis was experiencing her first monsoon. I had noticed a lot of muck being thrown up onto the rear screen by the wheels, probably due to eddies and so thought of an ingenious solution to stop this ‘blowback’. Bought a couple of large mudflaps and affixed them to the bottoms of the original flaps, with the help of cable ties threaded through some holes I made in them. What I didn’t foresee was that this arrangement made the double flaps unwieldy and caused them to flap around while the car was in motion. On braking they obviously swung forward, rubbing against the tyres until the car lost momentum, when they fell back to the vertical position. This was noticed by the technician on the ground and all of us had a good laugh. Needless to say, I cut off the cable ties then and there, using my Swiss knife, thanked the guys and took off, happy it was nothing serious.