> When did the ones that recorded on 3.5" floppies come out, I wonder?
> 

Ooh I remember those. I just didn't remember where it went... I asked my 
dad and apparently it rolled down some stairs. *ouch*

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scott wrote:
> It's probably not turbo lag, more the fact that the turbo doesn't work 
> properly until around 2200 rpm and the throttle is very heavily damped 
> by the ECU. 

I've driven several cars where stomping the gas pedal just makes them 
downshift two or three times until they decide they're in the right 
gear. That little 2-second delay can be rather annoying.


-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New wrote:
> 
> I've driven several cars where stomping the gas pedal just makes them 
> downshift two or three times until they decide they're in the right 
> gear. That little 2-second delay can be rather annoying.
> 

I'd think most of the cars at Europe are manuals. If that Astra is, 
there is no kickdown ;).

And yes, randomizing gears seems to be problem only for "intelligent" 
automatic gearboxes that they produce atm. All old mechanical automatic 
gearboxes I've driven have been completely logical.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Am Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:43:39 +0200 schrieb Eero Ahonen:

> scott wrote:
>> 
>> I have a 1.9 Astra at the moment and I hate it (I didn't have any
>> choice in the matter).  A) the turbo-lag is so bad that it's dangerous
>> sometimes, you put your foot down and nothing happens for at least 1
>> second, *then* it goes.
> 
> Astra 1.9 DTi (the now-selling common rail engine) and a over second
> long turbo-lag? Sounds like something's seriously wrong - Saab 9-3SC
> with the same engine has one of the unnoticeable turbolags I've ever
> driven.
> 
When I've bought my current car (Ford Focus II 1.6 TDCI) I've test-driven 
an Astra 1.9 CDTI (or what permutation they use) first. It *was* horrible.
After test-driving the Ford, the decision was done and I'm happy about 
it. Except that the generator failed about 6 months after the 
manufacturer's warranty expired (and 2 months after the dealer's).

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Michael Zier wrote:
> Am Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:43:39 +0200 schrieb Eero Ahonen:
> 
> When I've bought my current car (Ford Focus II 1.6 TDCI) I've test-driven 
> an Astra 1.9 CDTI (or what permutation they use) first. It *was* horrible.
> After test-driving the Ford, the decision was done and I'm happy about 
> it. Except that the generator failed about 6 months after the 
> manufacturer's warranty expired (and 2 months after the dealer's).

After 2003 olst, meaning the common-rail diesel? If so, maybe they have 
seriously messed it up at Opel.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Am Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:49:04 +0200 schrieb Eero Ahonen:

> Michael Zier wrote:
>> Am Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:43:39 +0200 schrieb Eero Ahonen:
> After 2003 olst, meaning the common-rail diesel? If so, maybe they have
> seriously messed it up at Opel.

Yes, it was the common-rail. Didn't like it at all.

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And lo on Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:50:58 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> Personally, I'm still annoyed that I can't link to my Zazzle gallery  
>>> from my blog. (Or rather, I can, but WordPress strips the star off the  
>>> end of the URL...)
>>  In the "is it turned on, is it plugged in" category, did you %-escape  
>> the star?
>
> Yes. This causes WordPress to leave it in, but confuses Zazzle.

Hmm just tried to add the flash panel to my sidebar, scaled it down to  
210x140 to fit. Hmmm so you can't remove the title bars to enlarge the  
viewing section, it's also constantly loading from zazzle and slowing  
everything down. At least you can advance through the images by clicking  
on the next/previous one, unless you zoom in at which point you have to  
zoom out again (rather then click on the still visible next/previous  
image), but click on the zoomed in image (or not) and it'll both open a  
new page and display a copy/paste url overlay which you need to close,then  
click on zoom out to restart the slideshow. Wow that's crap, don't they  
offer a basic RSS feed with the last 20 images or so?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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>> It's probably not turbo lag, more the fact that the turbo doesn't work 
>> properly until around 2200 rpm and the throttle is very heavily damped by 
>> the ECU.
>
> Still I'd say there's something wrong.

Well I don't know, I've only got it for another 6 weeks then it's getting 
replaced.  It's only done 60000km and has been serviced properly at the 
right times by the official Opel dealer, so I think it's probably a 
"feature" of the car ;-)

I get the feeling the car is designed to be comfortable to drive, not to be 
very responsive.  Even if you sit at 2500rpm in 2nd gear, if you jump on the 
accelerator pedal you don't get any jolt of acceleration because the ECU 
smoothes out the throttle input, I'd say with a time constant of about 0.5 
seconds.  In some cars you can push the accelerator pedal up and down 
quickly and the car responds instantly with forward and back jolts, but not 
this car.

> Turbocharger actually removes some torque from the really-low revs ('bout 
> <1500rpm), after that it starts to wake up and gets torque much higher 
> than with naturally aspirated engine.

Makes sense.

> After driving 6 years with turbocharged cars, I wouldn't even think about 
> naturally aspirated one :p - once I got used to the sub-rev torqueloss, 
> I've just let myself enjoy the long and stable torque (expect for the 
> Audi, which has only a short spike of torque, but it's cheap to drive, 
> so...).

Give me a turbocharged petrol car and now we're talking :-)  I think the 
basic problem is that a turbo makes the engine only usable above certain 
rpms, and diesel makes the engine only usable below certain rpms.  So the 
combination of turbo diesel is a bit of a disaster compared to normally 
aspirated petrol.

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scott wrote:
> 
> Well I don't know, I've only got it for another 6 weeks then it's 
> getting replaced.  It's only done 60000km and has been serviced properly 
> at the right times by the official Opel dealer, so I think it's probably 
> a "feature" of the car ;-)

That's what Michael said also, so I'd guess it's just nasty programming :(.

> I get the feeling the car is designed to be comfortable to drive, not to 
> be very responsive.  Even if you sit at 2500rpm in 2nd gear, if you jump 
> on the accelerator pedal you don't get any jolt of acceleration because 
> the ECU smoothes out the throttle input, I'd say with a time constant of 
> about 0.5 seconds.  In some cars you can push the accelerator pedal up 
> and down quickly and the car responds instantly with forward and back 
> jolts, but not this car.

That sounds reasonable. Such soft response is actually much nicer to 
drive and still a car can perform pretty good accelerations and it's 
easier to handle.

> 
> Give me a turbocharged petrol car and now we're talking :-)  

Give me 2300 euros and feel welcome to drive one of them away ;). Saab 
900 CD* Turbo Automatic '84, containing cruise control, air 
conditioning, electric goodies etc.

*) CD is a long version, only 590 pcs ever produced.

> I think the 
> basic problem is that a turbo makes the engine only usable above certain 
> rpms, 

Basically yes, but with proper tuning those revs can be somewhere around 
1200-1300rpm. And even if those revs are higher, if the engine itself is 
powerful enough it doesn't matter. Eg. old Volvo 700-series with a 
good-conditioned D24T (2,4 liter 6-cyl turbodiesel) pulls from 500rpm, 
while the turbo (Garrett T03) wakes up around 2krpm.

> and diesel makes the engine only usable below certain rpms.  So 
> the combination of turbo diesel is a bit of a disaster compared to 
> normally aspirated petrol.

No, it's not diesel that makes the max.rpm be low, it's today's emission 
controls combined with engine management systems. Again the D24T, when 
it's in good condition, pulls up to 5500rpm (and sounds nice, think 
about 6-cylinder diesel with those revs :p).

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Michael Zier wrote:
> 
> Yes, it was the common-rail. Didn't like it at all. 

Nasty, they've ruined it :(.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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