Jon's SportKa type thread thing

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jondot
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Cheers chaps :)

Rotary Junkie
Steering wheel looks rather awful.
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Mmm, although it's lovely to hold. I didn't take it from a particularly flattering angle either.
 
Needs moar Fiesta Zetec-S steering wheel.
 
The steering wheel looks pretty good for me for such a car, better than the bulky Honda or Mercedes wheels.
 
Famine
Needs moar Fiesta Zetec-S steering wheel.
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Good wheel, bad colour. I've no idea why Ford chose a shade of blue for that wheel that didn't match the paintwork. Couldn't have been that much of a hassle to make the leather darker, could it? The alcantara on the Ford Racing Puma's wheel was much better.

(You got me looking at Mk5 Zetec Ss on ebay... they're fantastic looking things, aren't they? One of my favourite sporty Fords ever. Especially in blue)

The wheel from the StreetKa might be a slight improvement.

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Not that I'm suggesting immediately changing the airbagged steering wheel on a fairly new car to another airbagged steering wheel. I just think it'd look better. If there's one thing that I've always been iffy on it's the Ka's steering wheel. Though admittedly, it suits the car.
 
Had a slightly odd experience yesterday. I was driving home (from Sainsbury's, of all places) and had just got back into Leeds and was stopped at a traffic light. The lights changed, I accelerated away at a fairly mundane pace and then suddenly there was no response from the accelerator pedal. I'd got up to about 20mph, had my foot still on the pedal and then nothing. I took my foot off and pressed it a few times with no response, and then suddenly 5 seconds later it inexplicably woke up again.

I wasn't doing anything particularly odd. It's not like I'd even be driving for a long time or distance - I'd just gone about 4 miles down the road and back. And it didn't even behave like this consistently. There's about a dozen traffic lights and/or junctions between the shopping centre and my accommodation, and it only chose to do this at one of them. Very weird.

Any ideas?
 
This happens to Mum and I,only it is a Subaru Legacy Wagon and only when it's cold and it does it when we go around a roundabout.
 
Momentary fuel starvation? Might just be a completely one-off thing.
 
SVX
This happens to Mum and I,only it is a Subaru Legacy Wagon and only when it's cold and it does it when we go around a roundabout.
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Interesting, so it's not uncommon then. Although I was definately going in a straight line, and neither the engine nor the weather were particuarly cold.

homeforsummer
Momentary fuel starvation? Might just be a completely one-off thing.
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*Shrugs* Presumably, as I've driven it for over 1,000 miles now and it's only happened that once. Oh well, probably nothing.
 
Bad quality fuel perhaps? I had something along those lines with my car last winter. It was cold and damp outside as well, but poor quality fuel contributed to this as well. The dealer even checked the car out afterwards and said it was fine.

Your injectors could be clogging up too, maybe trying some fuel system cleaner?
 
I have always loved Kas (in fact, I WANT one as a first car) and altough we dont get the Sport version, I see you did... awesome car!!! awesome blue! awesome everything. give it some trash once in a while. Congratulations.
 
Joey D
Bad quality fuel perhaps? I had something along those lines with my car last winter. It was cold and damp outside as well, but poor quality fuel contributed to this as well. The dealer even checked the car out afterwards and said it was fine.

Your injectors could be clogging up too, maybe trying some fuel system cleaner?
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Thanks, I shall give it a try if it happens again :)

Holdenhsvgtsr
Is the sportka not drive by wire? could just be that?
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Probably not. I doubt Ford would bother with it to be honest. Servo assistance yes, drive by wire... mmmno.

Cano
I have always loved Kas (in fact, I WANT one as a first car) and altough we dont get the Sport version, I see you did... awesome car!!! awesome blue! awesome everything. give it some trash once in a while. Congratulations.
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Thanks :D
 
Yeah, nothing about the Ka will be drive-by-wire, if it's anything like my old Fiesta. Which it is.
 
Where has Sporky been today?

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That's right, the Yorkshire Dales.

Decided to go and stretch the SporK's legs a bit, and so headed north for the afternoon aiming for the Ribblehead Viaduct (that thing in the picture, in other words). It's a fairly impressive looking thing, and if you're into tall structures made of bricks then you'll probably remember seeing it on TopGear when Jezza tested the Jag XK. See, here it is. Anyway, it was rapidly getting dark by the time I got there, so you'll notice a decidedly dark theme to the following photos.

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w0gmiv.jpg

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2wd4mko.jpg

(That last one is a little over-photoshopped)


Aside from photo taking opportunities, I did give it a good spank around a couple of surrounding roads which was a laugh :D. I'll have to go earlier next time and try to venture up a bit further.
 
Cool pictures 👍!

You need brighter head lamps though, those things look like candles in a jar.
 
They're on low beam or whatever you call it :p

One below what you'd normally drive around on, if that makes sense.
 
They're probably quite good even on low beam. The ones on my Fiesta were surprisingly very good indeed.

Nice pics though. If you're anywhere around Yorkshire between Christmas and New Year Jon let me know, we need to take Danger Mouse and SporK out for a blast.
 
homeforsummer
They're probably quite good even on low beam. The ones on my Fiesta were surprisingly very good indeed.

Nice pics though. If you're anywhere around Yorkshire between Christmas and New Year Jon let me know, we need to take Danger Mouse and SporK out for a blast.
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Actually they're a bit crap. On dipped they're ok, but putting it on main beam doesn't really increase the brightness much at all. I was thinking I might buy myself a new set of bulbs as it happens. I'll have to go and hunt down one for the nearside rear anyway as that seems to have gone.

Between Christmas and New Year I'll probably be back down in Kent, but I'll have to be back up here by the 14th of Jan purely to hand an essay in. But yeah, we'll have to do that sometime :)
 
So do cars in the UK have three light settings? I only have two, normal and extremely bright. This may be a misunderstanding of terminology here, I don't really know what dipped means.
 
That's one kick-ass Ka, Jon. 👍 👍 👍
 
Thanks Codename L :)


Joey D
So do cars in the UK have three light settings? I only have two, normal and extremely bright. This may be a misunderstanding of terminology here, I don't really know what dipped means.
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Yeah, we've got 3. Although the exact terminology is thrown around all over the place. Some sources call the normal setting 'main beam', while others call it 'dipped' for example.

But, according to the show-me-tell-me questions you get with your driving test... here's the standard teminology.

Setting 1 - 'Side lights', 'Parking lights', 'Low beam' etc. These are more to allow other cars to see you, and don't really provide any light for you to see with. If you were parked at the side of a dark road, for example, it'd be sensible to leave these on. Sporky is on side lights in the pictures I took.

Setting 2 - 'Dipped'. These are your normal headlights - bright enough for you to see, but not so bright that other road users are dazzled.

Setting 3 - 'Main beam', 'Full beam' etc. This is the stupidly bright setting, in other words.


There's 2 settings on the indicator stalk (or light switch if you're in a VW) - side lights and dipped - and then you pull the stalk towards you (or push away from you) to engage main beam.
 
Joey D
So do cars in the UK have three light settings? I only have two, normal and extremely bright. This may be a misunderstanding of terminology here, I don't really know what dipped means.
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You don't have parking lights?
 
ND4SPD
You don't have parking lights?
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I think that's what Jon was referring to with...

Jondot
Setting 1 - 'Side lights', 'Parking lights', 'Low beam' etc. These are more to allow other cars to see you, and don't really provide any light for you to see with. If you were parked at the side of a dark road, for example, it'd be sensible to leave these on. Sporky is on side lights in the pictures I took.
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...that. As he said, there just happen to be umpteen different words for the same thing.
 
Joey drives a BINI. On the "sidelight" setting, as we'd call it, he has a set of running lights in a separate cluster which light up. The original Mini had it too - ickle circular fresnels below the headlight lamp. The MX-3 has it and your MX-5 has it.

But on most non-Japanese or non-old cars, there's a 5W filament in the main headlight bulb we call "sidelights" (and, yes, "parking lights" in the US, even though parking lights are something completely different), a 40-50W filament we call "headlights" (or "dipped beam", since the focus is about 40 feet away) and a higher-power filament we call "main beam" (where the focus is non-existant - the lights are horizontal).
 
Ah thanks for clearing that up, I understand now. Parking lights on most cars in the US are just amber lights that are often the same as your indicators. As Famine pointed out, I do have these lights which are in the foglights which fit in it the "low beam" category. I've always heard them called city lights.

For us, low beams are what you normally drive around with.

Foiled again by a language barrier!
 
It is technically illegal to drive with sidelights (parking/running lights) and not dipped beam in the UK. Since, notionally, you should only use lights when visibility drops below a certain threshold and, legally, you must run a minimum of dipped beams when it's dark, if you use the running/parking/sidelights you recognise it's dark and should use dipped beams.

It'd take an amazingly petty copper to pull you over/fine you for it, and it'd never get through a court.
 
My car has "side lights" separate from the indicators, at least, up front. Oddly enough, there's no side indicator anywhere.

In this state, Dipped beams are required at night, as well as during any sort of precipitation - fog, snow, and rain. The rule is if the wipers must be used, then the lights must be on.
 
Jim Prower
The rule is if the wipers must be used, then the lights must be on.
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That's pretty much the rule here too. If you have reduced visibility then your lights should be on.

As Famine mentions you shouldn't technically drive with any less than your dipped beam on in reduced visibility conditions, but I tend to run with just my sidelights in light rain or snow, and knock the dipped beam on if it starts getting dark or if there's heavier precipitation.
 
Ho-kay, little update with a few issues.

Firstly, stupid hands free thing that Halfords so ably fitted doesn't like cold weather, so it turns out. Which is unfortunate considering my current location and time of year.

Secondly, I think the front pads are on the way out. There's been a delightful low pitched grind coming from them in the last fortnight, and I'm guessing that's probably the cause. It was just doing it when the disks were cold, and me being me decided it was probably normal in a car with 0 soundproofing to hear the brakes ever so slightly. But today I noticed that they're pretty much doing it constantly, and I'm fairly certain that the noise level has increased. So I've probably ruined the disks too by now.

Thirdly, no idea what's going on but I can hear a horrid, rather loud, totally different grinding noise from the driver's side of the car when I turn left sometimes. Seems to appear rather randomly - it did it at about 2mph as I was turning onto a road one day, and it's done it since at about 20 when I turned reasonably sharply the other day. And it's done it a number of other times, the details of which I can't quite recall - but all of which while turning left. Doesn't seem to be anything rubbing, and it's fine on full lock basically. It's just every now and again the weird noise appears. I have a feeling it's something suspension related - I might be imagining it, but I think the ride is a little harsher than it should be (even for a Sport). Also the issue seems to replicate most when I have other people in the car, so it seems logical that it'd be the culprit.



Any insight into issues deux et trois?
 
You won't ruin disks that easily.

The last problem sounds like a wheel bearing. Jack up the front and spin each wheel round. If it goes all grindy on one, wheel bearing. Also grab the wheel top and bottom and wobble it in that direction. It shouldn't wobble at all - if it does, wheel bearing.
 
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