Belatti wrote:mx_tifosi wrote:Belatti, haven't you learned from Fangio that automatics are the way to go when not racing? Automatico para el uso diario.
Unless it's a sports car of course, but I don't think you're getting one.
Yeah, Im aware he said that. He felt it like working
Of course I dont work like he did (racing) so in my case it feels like... boring! (Unless you are in a traffic jam, where the auto is comfortable but mileage drops...)
I disagree. I'd say the way to go for either driving or racing is sequential! Unless you find a fast and inteligent automatic gearbox, you're just going to feel frustrated by it's delay and it's lack of pertinence in shifting up or down sometimes.
I recently had to drive for more than 500km in a Citroen C4 Grand Picasso, and the gearbox was sooo slow I felt it was even dangerous sometimes. Ok, it's most probably unrepresentative, as this very gearbox is reputed to s*ck, but I felt much more comfortable switching to sequential mode. The original auto mapping is "economic", and guarantees sloooow accelerations and intempestives downshifts at evry slight deceleration. Strangely, if you use speed regulator's "pause" button to get back to planned speed after braking, it suddenly over-revs and accelerate aggressively
(although poor wheight/power ratio makes it more noisy than impressive lol). Worst of all, lack of clutch control makes you powerles at very slow speed
(like in traffic jams), as the car is constantly shaken and pitches ridiculously up and down while the piloted gearbox struggles to maintain the clutch at given level
(it seems almost on/off). Pathetic...
Back to the Smart case, first I must apologise for being such an uneducated guy that I made you lose your time guessing about a motionless fan... which was the one of the intercooler!
Shame one me, I only realised that yesterday when I found there's a little radiator in a more conventional place
(inside the front bumper), and despite marcush hinted at the car being turbocharged I lost a whole week staring at the wrong place...
Still, the real radiator's fan don't seem to work anyway
(but that's guessing just by the lack of sound from it when the car gets hot again, I haven't unmounted the front careenage yet). The car still tends to heat up very quickly
(up to 80°C in less than 20km) and cool down very slowly
(still in the 60°C range after half an hour parked in the shadow).
The good news however is that I'm not missing cooling water anymore, looks like the anti-leak granules worked well. It's puzzling that I couldn't spot the least drop of fluid under the car while it was parked, because it's obvious now there was a leak. But it was leaking only when the car was in motion apparently. A friend suggested today that maybe the leak was heat-related, occuring only when some ducts extremity were dilated, or something like that.
Anyway, I'm still unhappy with the car, because it warms too much
(but no bip alert anymore), so I feel uncomfortable driving it. Must investigate the damned fan in the next couple of days.
