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Cars are difficult


Smallfrog

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I'll explain that title a bit.

I've been driving for a few months now. I'm able to drive my instructors Citroen C3 fairly well, and feeling confident went out for a drive with my dad in his Skoda Octavia, with its 1.9l TDI. Lets just say it didn't go to well. I must have stalled the stupid thing 10 times in the three miles. I spent most of the time struggling to come to terms with the way it accelerated harder without the accelerator pedal down than the C3 does with a fair amount of pressure on the pedal, and the way it can cruise in 4th gear at 25mph without intervention. Only way I can manage to control it and stop it stalling is to lift the clutch 3/4 of the way up before applying any pressure to the accelerator.

So yeah, this is a sympathy call for my bad driving/poor clutch control.

Although it occurs to me that anyone who drives an automatic won't give me sympathy as they don't have to worry about that $%&@ clutch.

On another note, i did complete that 22 mile thing on saturday. Took me about 8 hours, disappointingly slow :(

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I think I might be able to agree with this. The Skoda will, I expect, have the same TDi series of engines as Volkswagen, and whether this is a feature of all diesels I don't know but we have a Polo (Bluemotion, we're environment saving :P) with a diesel engine and I had exactly the same experience when we first got it. You cannot, ever, take off in 2nd, even if you are already rolling, and starting off requires good left foot control. And yes, you need to be one gear lower than you do in a petrol car (although part of that is because it is set up with long gear ratios in order to save fuel).

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I think I might be able to agree with this. The Skoda will, I expect, have the same TDi series of engines as Volkswagen, and whether this is a feature of all diesels I don't know but we have a Polo (Bluemotion, we're environment saving :P) with a diesel engine and I had exactly the same experience when we first got it. You cannot, ever, take off in 2nd, even if you are already rolling, and starting off requires good left foot control. And yes, you need to be one gear lower than you do in a petrol car (although part of that is because it is set up with long gear ratios in order to save fuel).

Playing around in the empty car park of a supermarket this evening my dad got me to pull away in second just to prove it is possible. It's just about possible if you ease the clutch up very slowly and will only work if the car is on a flat.

The car I've been learning in is a diesel so I already know the pull away in first or stall thing, but in that car you have to use the accelerator to get it to move. So I think this only applys to the more powerful diesels. And yes it is the same TDI series as Volkswagen.

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