Well, I\'ve been thinking (dangerous passtime, I know) - I\'ve currently got two cars (the FC vert and a Honda CRX I use as a station car) and put a deposit down on an FD in the One True Colour[1]. Now I think that three cars maybe slightly OTT for a single person household :Giggle, not to mention that I\'ve got parking problems and spend too much time fiddleing with them at the moment.
So I was wondering what people here think about using an FD as a daily driver (6/8 mile roundtrip to the train station every day in the winter, taking the bike to work in summer so that\'s not relevant). If I didn\'t use the FD as a daily driver I\'d be looking at ~300 quid/year insurance, as a daily driver this would shoot up to ~800 but I\'d save the additional costs from running the CRX (tax, insurance, additional maintenance plus mods) so it would probably work out flat, but I could free up what little capital I\'ve got tied up in the CRX.
My main worry is that while I know I can get the engine up to operating temperature on the way to the station I\'m not sure how much the regular short trips would affect the overall lifespan of the engine? Anybody got a handle on this?
[1] Black, of course.
As far as I\'m aware, an FD does need a good longish journey from time to time just to clear it throat, so to speak. Running any car on very short distances on a regular basis doesn\'t really do it much good. If anything your battery will suffer the most! I\'d imagine you have a fairly decent alarm that is constantly draining the battery and the short distances doesn\'t give it much chance to charge itself up again.
On the money side of things, If I was paying that money on insurance, I\'d have about three cars! lol
If you\'ve got the opportunity to keep a daily drive I\'d most definately keep it. It\'ll work out cheaper and less problematic in the long run. Owning cars like an FD as a daily drive that you rely on is fraught with stresses. After trying both ways I would now do whatever I can to run a daily drive rather than any high performance car every day. Even if it was a £100 banger its worth it IMO. I\'m sure it would pay for itself very quickly.
Dave
I work 5 miles from my house and have used it daily for years with no problems.
My main concern about your post is I wouldnt like parking it every day at the station car park!
Apart from what you can\'t see inside the engine as its getting started and stopped every 5 miles for many years,.....;-) Driving a rex such short distance isn\'t really justified if you can get a cheap sacrificial banger instead. Obviously practicalities such as parking space often make this impossible, something I\'m having problems with at the moment having moved into a house with only space for two cars and both me and the missus have daily drives for work.
Are you sure you\'re going to be happy leaving your FD at the train station car park each day for however many hours at a time?
Well, the problem with cheap (or not so cheap) sacrificial bangers is that you\'ll either get the crappiest car on earth and don\'t invest any money in it - which gets a bit old for me by now as I\'ve been doing this for a long time- or you\'ll end up with another car you have to maintain, which costs both time and money. And time especially is a problem for me as I spend too much time commuting, so everything gets crammed into the weekends.
Once we\'re getting into the realm of having the banger serviced professionally it ceases to be a way of saving money. Basically, I would at least have a nice banger that\'ll make a few MOTs with reasonable care, hence the CRX. But then I\'m suddenly looking at a grand\'s worth of car plus a few hundred on maintenance, parts, ICE and all that. And all of a sudden there\'s me thinking - heck, that\'s almost an engine rebuild right there.
I take the point regarding the station car park although there are a bunch of nice cars there (a few RX-8s, at least one Integra Type-R and a bunch of expensive Mercs and BMWs) and I haven\'t noticed any problems there yet. But that\'s probably because I\'m using one of the carparks for the Eurostar terminal in Ashford (which have barriers and CCTV all over the place) and not the regular station car park. If I had to leave it in the latter I wouldn\'t even think about this.
What got me started on this is that I know how often I use the FC - not very, actually. It was bought as a classic car and I don\'t really use it for short journeys anyway, but in the end this means that I\'m driving it 2-3 times a month. If I buy an FD and drive both the FC and FD once or twice a month the money would be better off in the savings account :rollin. Actually I\'m beginning to think that by the time the FD is run in, I\'ll be back on the bike again anyway and then I can see if I really need the CRX as well...
But nevertheless, keep \'em coming as I\'m really interested in hearing from people who are using FDs as commuter cars.
Oh, and KJ_MC - the cheap inswearance hits you shortly before you need a Zimmer frame and start wearing a hat while driving ;). Which is a polite way of saying that I\'m likely to be a tad older than you, but not necessarily any wiser.
Quote from: elford_timOh, and KJ_MC - the cheap inswearance hits you shortly before you need a Zimmer frame and start wearing a hat while driving ;). Which is a polite way of saying that I\'m likely to be a tad older than you, but not necessarily any wiser.
ha ha:rollin
I suppose that is one very good benefit of being around on this planet a little longer. he he
I can\'t really justify buying a runaround because I dont really think it will save me money in the long run, I pay 2k insurance on the FD as it is:2Mad , so buying a second car an insuring it would completely exceed my budget. I\'m just very worried about how I\'m going to get to work if it snows!:o
I ran my FD for 12 months 11 miles to work 6 days a week with no probs and i had no intention of perchasing a banger, but here i am with £300 worth of fiesta diesel not wanting to put unnessasary miles on my beloved FD that i have spent so much time and money on.
If you dont now you will l8tr.
I run mine as a daily car, normally to 20-30 miles a day with the occasional long distance run (went to Aberdeen in it earlier in the year).
As for reliability, as far as i\'m concerned it\'s more reliable than any £100 banger would be! Only times I\'ve had issues were when my clutch slave cylinder sheared the bolt. This was down it only having one bolt fitted intead of two so in my view I can\'t really hold that against the car... And when i went to the USA for two weeks the battery went flat so I ended up flooding it when i tried to start it. Again this wasn\'t really the fault of the car (although it was a bugger to de-flood it)
I absolutley love driving it every day, I\'m constantly smilin!
Only complaints are the fuel bill and thats its rediculously difficult to obey the speed limit.
Quote from: steve garbuttI ran my FD for 12 months 11 miles to work 6 days a week with no probs and i had no intention of perchasing a banger, but here i am with £300 worth of fiesta diesel not wanting to put unnessasary miles on my beloved FD that i have spent so much time and money on.
If you dont now you will l8tr.
Know what you mean but the more i spend on mine the more i want to make the most of it every day :)
Quote from: FLAT4MATTI run mine as a daily car, normally to 20-30 miles a day with the occasional long distance run (went to Aberdeen in it earlier in the year).
TBH with that kind of distance I wouldn\'t be worried. My main issue is that the sensible roundtrip to the train station is a lot shorter and as we know, no engines do like plenty of short trips and that\'s before we go anywhere near "ours are more fragile than others".
i run mine work and back only 3 miles, for 2 years now iv had no prob
Quote from: KJ_MCAs far as I\'m aware, an FD does need a good longish journey from time to time just to clear it throat, so to speak. Running any car on very short distances on a regular basis doesn\'t really do it much good. If anything your battery will suffer the most! I\'d imagine you have a fairly decent alarm that is constantly draining the battery and the short distances doesn\'t give it much chance to charge itself up again.
On the money side of things, If I was paying that money on insurance, I\'d have about three cars! lol
I agree on the battery thingy, maybe.
But can someone please tell me scientific or technical details of exactly what harm it does to a car to be used like this?
I had a battery problem but I just bought a new one, and the car has be spot on since then. I run my car every day to work, its only a 5-10 min drive and it runs fine and no had any problems. Take it for a 20 min drive and take it up to the red line at least once a week though to give it claer out plus I love doing that and hearing my car beep then pop with a flame.. :L!!
Quote from: MartinyBut can someone please tell me scientific or technical details of exactly what harm it does to a car to be used like this?
Not overly technical but applies to all engines.
Engines are designed to run at an optimum temperature and reaching this optimum temperature cannot be achieved constantly running short distances. The water temp guage may say its running to temp but the oil takes longer to reach its running temperature. If the engine is constantly run " cold " then the engine metals don\'t expand fully, the oil viscosity is higher ( thicker ) and the fuel does not vapourise fully. If the engine constantly performs in this condition this leads to accelerated engine wear , higher fuel consumption and a carbonised engine ( poor running ).
Bob
I use mine daily and drive 0.5 miles to work and back and never had any problems over the last year doing that. There are reasons other than me being lazy...lol. I generally leave the turbo timer on in the morning so it gets to operating temp before turning off + lots of spirted driving at weekends :driving
Rich
Rich, no offence meant, but surely you can walk half a mile in less time than it takes to warm up the car, drive there and cool it down again? Unless I\'m missing something?
Quote from: Rich CheungI use mine daily and drive 0.5 miles to work and back and never had any problems over the last year doing that. Rich
Running a car constantly over short distances is not a short term problem. The car may not perform as well as it should in the short term because of carbon build up but it will not suffer major failures because of constant short trips. The effects will be seen in the long term in the wear and tear on the engine. It may need replacing/ rebuilding sooner due to the accelerated wear.
Its really a huge variable as a car completing short journeys but well driven and looked after could survive a lot longer than a car badly driiven and abused over long journeys.
Any car well driven/maintained, regardless of what journeys it undertakes, will out live any Vauxhall !!
Bob
RemarkLima Rich, no offence meant, but surely you can walk half a mile in less time than it takes to warm up the car, drive there and cool it down again? Unless I\'m missing something?
Sounds lazy I know but the reason is to get home at lunch, walk the dog, eat and get back within the hour. If I didn\'t have the dog Id walk, well probably.
Rich :)
Ah no worries, thought there may be a reason... Could you not walk the dog to work and erm... Leave him in your car... Which is now at home... Hang on a mo\' ;)
Quote from: buckman67Its really a huge variable as a car completing short journeys but well driven and looked after could survive a lot longer than a car badly driiven and abused over long journeys.
Bob
My point exactly. There are too many variables to make a sweeping blanket statement like " short journeys are bad for a car ".
This car was designed by Mazda to be a road car. I cant see any problems with running it 2 x 6 miles every day.
A quick calculation tells me this engine will see 3000 miles a year. lets say the scare merchants reckon a shortened engine life to what, 40k instead of 60k? The car is going to last 13 years ! Now, if you can afford the insurance etc, wouldnt you rather drive an FD every day, rather than some D reg diesel Peugeot?
And, you\'ve got a nice weekend car into the bargain !
Well, in my particular case we\'re talking 2x4 miles/day, but only for about 4 months out of twelve; the rest of the year I\'ll take the bike to work anyway, just when it\'s cold and nasty I don\'t and go make SouthEastern richer. So that\'s less than 700 miles/year spent commuting, but in the worst weather as well.
Problem is that I don\'t really want to drive the FD to the station if there\'s ice on the road which means I\'ll probably end up with some crappomobile anyway, but at least I don\'t need to absolutely have to buy one.
Just a quick bit of personal car history...
This time last year i had the two bugs (which are both quicker than the FD) and a sensible daily car. A brand spanking new SEAT Ibiza 1.2 which i got for the grand sum of £7k, plus £800 for the 17" OZ Super T\'s ands Toyos. Looked respectable enough and i was getting 50 odd mpg.
Got VERY VERY bored with it while i was rebuilding the bugs motor so sold it and got the FD.
Granted i get a 5th of the fuel economy from the FD but the SEAT lost a grand in a year, used as much oil and i even had some minor engine starting problems in the cold weather. The ride was no better, nor the road noise (probably due to the wheels...) and it bored the hell out of me!
I\'ve gone down the sensible car root, and it was BRAND new and i still honestly think i\'m better off driving the FD. As for the comment about them being more fragile, i dont think they are at all. Yes they need rebuilding more often but i think over that period it\'ll be far less likely to let you down than any piston equiped counterpart of the same age. There\'s not much in the engine itself to go wrong, other than the affore mentioned wearable items.
Try driving a fiesta diesel the same way you would an FD and see how long it lasts ;)
Thats the way i see it anyway :Santa
Well, I\'m beginning to lean towards using the FD as a somewhat daily driver once it\'s run in properly...
Mainly on the assumption that if I keep it for a few years then the money I have saved not buying crap station cars will probably be enough to pay for an engine rebuild anyway...
Quote from: elford_timenough to pay for an engine rebuild anyway...
Yes, and we have seen no evidence at all from the scare merchants to support their statements.
Just something from my experience. When I bought my car it was fitted with a kenlow coolant warmer kit, fitted by Pip. The engine let go at 42k, but it was a few months after getting the rebuild done that i phoned him up asking him about this warmer kit. I told him my registration and he said he fitted it because the other guy was a plonker, and drove the car 3 miles a day without warming it up and kept flooding it etc, and pip was fed up with towing it back to WGT and fixing it. He told me that short journeys are big killers for these engines.
I guess I should probably ask the guys who\'re building my engine as well :Hammer.
I have no doubts that using an RX on short journeys will shorten the life of the engine, much as it will do it for any other car as well. Of course part of the problem is that nobody knows by how much it\'ll shorten the lifespan (plus there\'s the other school of thought that leaving the car unused for several weeks or longer doesn\'t do it any good either) - if I split my time between using the FC and using the FD, I\'d probably do something like 7000-8000 miles/year in the FD. If I only get 40k out of the engine then we\'re talking five years here and I have only one vehicle (a very rare motorbike) that I\'ve kept for that long. Mind you, unless I decided to sell the FD to buy something like a classic Ferrarri for my pension pot, there isn\'t much out there to replace it that isn\'t stupidly expensive. But I don\'t even know if I\'ll be in the UK in five years time so that\'s all a bit academic.
In my personal experience, cars I don\'t drive often are more problematic than the ones I do. They are built to move. Leaving them standing seeems to create problems.
Hi ya bud, i used my FD as daily drive and for the first year it was only a 8 mile round trip and it never caused any problems. the only extra expense i incured was some tw#t keying the car by the station. But i always took it out at weekend for long drive and never really much of an excuse to drive it somewhere. haha
just my thoughts though, enjoy the FD.
Stu
Thanks Stu, I remembered that you did use yours as a daily driver but couldn\'t remember what your daily roundtrip was like. BTW, any plans for another East Kent meet?
Well, I had a long chat[1] with David at RoTechniks today when I went there to pick up my convertible[2]. His view was pretty much that yes, it doesn\'t do the engine that much good to drive it short-ish distances and he recommended that I\'ll try to find a slightly longer way home but overall he thinks that as long as take the car for a longer drive on the weekend I should be OK.
So the current plan is to keep the CRX until the FD is run in and then use the FD as the daily driver. By the time that I actually got my hands on it and have it run in, it\'ll probably be May anyway and I don\'t need a station car tat that time of the year anyway...
[1] Apologies to everybody who will now get their cars at least an hour later because I kept David from working :D
[2] Now with working aircon, yay!
I\'ve used my FD as a daily driver for the past 20 months. Originally I was doing a 15 mile roundtrip (better that the 2 mile roundtrip the lady I bought it off was doing), which has been extended in the past 11 months to about 20 miles.
I can\'t say I\'ve particularly had anything but the normal problems you\'d expect from a 13 year old car. I think as long as you warm the car up (maybe a bit tricky this time of year) properly and let it idle for a bit when you stop, you\'ll be fine. I tend to take it for a bit of a blast at the weekend just to let it stretch its legs a bit.
At the end of the day having an RX7 is like having children, you don\'t do it to be rich. So as long as you accept this, you won\'t have a problem.
Apparently, I don\'t know, I don\'t have kids.
Quote from: elford_timBTW, any plans for another East Kent meet?
Always up for a local pub meet and so will Carl \'Brunge\', couple of others who may be too. Maybe Ashford thid time?
Any thoughts?
Stu
Quote from: Stu.WilsonAlways up for a local pub meet and so will Carl \'Brunge\', couple of others who may be too. Maybe Ashford thid time?
Any thoughts?
Well, quite busy at the moment but I\'m definitely up for one in January. Mind you, the main problem is that I haven\'t found a good pub in Ashford yet - I\'m not that big into going to pubs anyway so I haven\'t really looked.
That place near Sturry that we met up the last time is cool with me if we\'d want to do this again...
Jan sounds cool, even though i\'m a FD widow. haha, will pop a post up around mid jan and be looking at last weekend of jan or something.
S
FD widow? How did that happen?
Towards the end of Jan sounds good, although I may have to turn up in a Honda as I\'ve pretty much run out of miles on the FC\'s classic car policy...
Had ta sell the car to buy new house, just wasn\'t affordable for me to run it with a house. Should be bk behind the wheel of an FD some time next year i hope.
I\'l check dates with carl and shall chat ta him about poss pub\'s in the area and then post date and location up.
Stu
used mine as a daily - hanged around outside waiting for it to warm up on me drive for 10 minutes while i had me cuppa tea and a cig - then easy goin for about 3 miles and then a couple of redlines in the late half of the journey.
then on the weekend id go for a longer drive down my fave country lane to give it a good run.
shame it costs so much in juice (£350-400 a month) but for a while it was the only reason i had a smile on my face goin to work and the drive home was something to look forward to as well. i did change the oil n filter every month... and did the g/box diff oil.
a couple of weeks ago i bought an old polo with 6 months MOT for 200 quid as a daily drive and it costs me 15-20 quid a week in juice and 150 quid a year on the insurance (about a months fuel bill) so as you can see im going to save a couple of grand easily over the next year - which ive decided to put away and use some for a respray and a power fc / tune.
i would be paranoid as hell to leave my car at a station or somewhere, so unless you have a secure carpark - save yourself crazy fuel bills and worry buy a ****ter.
I bought my FD as a daily driver, and used it for 2 years doing the 15 miles each direction. Tuned up to a reasonable level on the stock twins (details in my sig). Never failed me once, all I did was regular usual servicing, and kept and eye on dials, etc to make sure there were no warning signs.
I have now got it in bits doing the final phase of my modifications, which involves considerable engine work, and a blinkin expensive paint job. That will be the end of my commuting days in the FD - one of the \'modifications\' I have purchased is an Alfa Romeo 156 !!
I decided that I would ruin the paint job running it daily, and getting power up to high 400s would make it OTT as a daily driver, hence the purchase of an Alfa.
This is the second FD I have owned, both used as daily drivers.
Craig
Quote from: KJ_MCI\'m just very worried about how I\'m going to get to work if it snows!:o
simple.............................................................................. a combination of side ways and backwards :rollin :rollin . just allow an extra 5-10 mins per mile to get to your destination. to allow for fish tailing, turning around after spinnin and the like.
Quote from: D1 WTFsimple.............................................................................. a combination of side ways and backwards :rollin :rollin . just allow an extra 5-10 mins per mile to get to your destination. to allow for fish tailing, turning around after spinnin and the like.
Hummmm...... sounds like fun:Giggle
Quote from: KJ_MCHummmm...... sounds like fun:Giggle
Snow rules in the FD!!
as long as there is lots of big wide open roads, how else do you think D1 drivers practice? they take there cars to the alps and go up and down the windey snow road 10 times a day, its called intense training i believe (more fun with the traffic also).:Giggle :Giggle