I picked up my nice shiny mk2 on Saturday, and while trundling down the motorway on the way home (roof down, of course!) I was having a play around with the bits I could reach. One thing I noticed, when I dropped the windows, the car suddenly felt a lot more twitchy, as if it was getting caught in a crosswind, or similar. When I put the windows back up, it went back to normal. I was wondering if this was likely to be caused by the wind catching on the style bar :
It’s fairly chunky!
I was going pretty quickly when this happened - motorway speeds - so I’m guessing it was the wind catching on the car. Does anyone else have experience of these bars causing this?
The other thing is the car has a wind blocker (you can just see the hinges for it behind the headrests) which flips up and against the back of the style bar. I put it up to see what it was like, promptly forgot about it and then left the roof up for a very short trip. Heard a rattling noise, got rather worried, then realised it was the wind blocker banging against the style bar. Is this because I had the roof up? In normal driving, I guess it would be held against the bar by the wind…
Apologies if these are dumb questions - obviously I’m very new to the car and still learning about it!
Well you seem chuffed to bits!
Top down I tend to lower drivers window - sounds daft but it reduces driver turbulence.
Can’t comment on wind blocker as I can’t fit one with Hard Dog cage (could fit permanent perspex, but not really that bothered).
Rattle - might be worth finding contact points and using a sticky felt pad or something to cure it - or just put wind blocker down! [;)]
When I have roof down it saves me £s - I tend to drive slower… [A]
I’m very happy indeed with it! I went outside earlier to move it from in front of my work building into the car park at the side, a drive of maybe 500 metres, and even that put a smile on my face. It’s fantastic.
I’ve got electric windows, controlled from the centre console, so it’s easy enough to drop both windows, so (to hint back at the OCD thread in the Other Car Stuff forum) I think I’d do that to keep the symmetry! I’ll try only lowering one though, next time I hit motorways. Was just wondering if anyone else had found their cars getting twitchy like that. I’m not too bothered about the wind blocker - as you said, it’s hardly essential - but the twitchy feeling bothered me a bit.
I’m going to have to remember that about the roof down saving money for next time the other half complains about me wanting to motor topless!
I’d check your tyre pressures - these like to be at around 26psi ~ I run at 30psi on Toyos as they have a softer wall apparently.
Maybe it’s just a case of getting used to it - after Mrs Goof has been wallowing around in her Modeo Ghia X for 2 months, she now dislikes the silly red car… shakes her t*ts off apparently! [;)]
A visit to Wheels In Motion is worthwhile - approx £100 for a fast-road setup from the geometry guru…!
True, I’ve not checked the tyres - probably should do! It came with Toyos, so I guess I should play at 30 too! The twitchiness was definitely when I lowered the windows, and went away when I raised them, so I think it has to be something to do with the airflow. The car’s already been to WiM, the previous owner seems to have been taking very good care of it!
I think I just need to let her drive it - I’m sure she won’t be able to criticise then! At least, I hope not… ¬_¬ But the problem with that is that it cuts into my valuable driving time!