Don't you just hate it when?

[Mikw]

....You've driven 180 miles to the seaside and back - faultlessly - get 78mpg for the trip, then clonk your tire on a kerb right near home and are worried you've knock your wheel alignment out?

I don't know why but i keep hitting kerbs (hard) with my left rear wheel. Really takes the shime off what was a good day, and an enjoyable driving experience.

[Cyker]

Ha, funny you say that as I did that to my front right on Friday!

Was again thinking how glad I was I 'downgraded' from 17's to 15's as the sidewall of the tyre took the brunt of it, and only minor scuffing to the wheel trim.

I'm still finding I haven't got a feel for where the corners of the car are - They're further out than I instinctively feel they should be because the wheel arches are flared out so much!

 

[MikeSh]

49 minutes ago, Mikw said:

I don't know why but i keep hitting kerbs (hard) with my left rear wheel. 

Given the lousy lock you must be pretty clever to do that 🙂

But seriously, I am quite neurotic about that and try to turn wide and/or watch the clearance in the mirror.

Modern cars do seem to have evolved shapes that are really hard to judge their extents. I had a Kona before and for the life of me could not park it straight in a bay ... 

[Mikw]

1 minute ago, MikeSh said:

Given the lousy lock you must be pretty clever to do that 🙂

But seriously, I am quite neurotic about that and try to turn wide and/or watch the clearance in the mirror.

Modern cars do seem to have evolved shapes that are really hard to judge their extents. I had a Kona before and for the life of me could not park it straight in a bay ... 

Yep, it's weird.

you know, i was thiniing how lovely the car is, and how well it coped today with the roads and how balanced it felt, then THWACK! and i somehow manage to clobber into a kerb that i thought i'd left plenty of room for. I feel stupidm and it'll niggle away at me for a while.

You're right, modern cars seem to be really hard to judge, i reckon my back left tyre makes contact with a kerb at least once a fortnight. All my own stupid fault though.

[bathtub tom]

10 hours ago, Mikw said:

I don't know why but i keep hitting kerbs (hard) with my left rear wheel.

How do you manage that, handbrake turns, drifting or reversing at speed?

[TonyHSD]

New Yaris has wider track and probably slightly longer wheelbase from the previous generation but it’s not much if at all a bigger car., maybe you need some more time to get use to in comparison with what you had been driving before. I personally always try to stay away from kerbs as I hate to touch them too and get my tyres or wheels marked, lower profile tyres especially are horrible and wheels get damaged so quickly. 

[CPN]

3 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

New Yaris has wider track and probably slightly longer wheelbase from the previous generation but it’s not much if at all a bigger car., maybe you need some more time to get use to in comparison with what you had been driving before. I personally always try to stay away from kerbs as I hate to touch them too and get my tyres or wheels marked, lower profile tyres especially are horrible and wheels get damaged so quickly. 

That's one of the reasons why I made sure that the winter tyres I bought (Continental) have a protruding kerb protector ridge all the way around. I also think that the Mk4's fulcrum point has moved back slightly compared to the Mk3 due to the extra rear track dimensions and the tighter steering geometry of the Mk4. Ever since I've had mine, during summer with the standard Bridgestone tyres on (no rim protectors), I always poke the nose beyond the corner just a tad more than I would have done in my Mk3 before I start to turn and it seems to have done the trick but even doing that, I have still managed to gently scrub the inside rear tyre wall a couple of times going round left handers... (luckily on lower kerbs)

[Cyker]

For me it's a combination of the car being significantly longer and wider than the Mk1 and Mk2 Yaris, the wheels protruding out further than the body, and the general visibility in the car being much worse than the earlier models I had. I'm having to 'Use The Force' a lot more when trying to park in tight spaces! And I'm not like those insane truckers who can execute blind side reverses all day and manage to consistently not run over any fences/kerbs/squirrels/grannies etc.

The parking sensors help, although they are definitely not calibrated to London levels of closeness  I do regret that the Euro-spec Mk4 doesn't have the 360 degree camera the Jappy spec ones do - It'd be good being able to visually see how much closer I can get with the full 'tone' when parking, and also judge wheel position easier!

Actually, one thing that I wish they'd calibrated is the vertical lines on the reversing camera (The horizontal ones are fine and match up well with the parking sensor beep levels) - On other cars, they either indicate the extreme edges of the vehicle or the wheel track, but in the Mk4 they just seem to be completely arbitrary - If I park with the lines lined up with the kerb, the car is over a foot away from the kerb! It doesn't help that it's a weird fish-eye view so judging distance with it is virtually impossible.

One thing I am immeasurably thankful for is the wing mirrors haven't been sacrificed like they have been in so many other cars!

(And especially that they are real and not these horrible digital camera ones that are starting to creep in to higher-end cars - The field of view and resolution in those is just terrible; Literally zero advantage over real mirrors and nothing but disadvantages!)

 

[CPN]

Just been out looking at the car again and I've come to the conclusion that there are lots of optical illusions created around it purely because of the way they have changed the shape in certain areas. For example, if you look at the rump of the car at a roughly ¾ view off to the side, you'd swear that the track was wider at the rear than it is at the front! A tape measure says otherwise! 😉 You would also think that there is massive negative camber of the rear wheels when looking directly square to the rear but if you go down lower and focus on just the tyres (ignoring the sexy wheel arches!), you realise that it is not as much as you thought! This new Yaris body is definitely different in many ways...

[Cyker]

Yes! It's quite a shock how different the design language is compared to the previous models.

Another 'illusion' I realised is, if you have the wing mirrors set correctly, you don't see the flare of the wheel arch, and so think the car is narrower than it actually is - I've deliberately angled mine lower than I normally would just so I can see the wheel arches and that seems to be helping a bit...

As 'sexy' as the massively flared arches are, I can't help wishing it was flatter like the previous models now that I'm finding the downsides! (Or widen the interior of the car to match!)

 

[flash22]

My last car, i curbed it within 10 mins of picking it up - those granite curb stones are not very forgiving

[Cyker]

Ack that stings... at least you didn't crash it like my friend did - Owned a Hyundai i30 for 2 hours before writing it off on a motorway on-ramp on the way home! He's the only person I've ever known who had to claim on the drive-away insurance...

Somehow got more for the car than he paid for it tho' so at least there was a silver lining...!

 

[MikeSh]

3 hours ago, Cyker said:

if you have the wing mirrors set correctly, you don't see the flare of the wheel arch

What is 'correctly'?

I always set mine so the side of the car is just visible (because otherwise you don't know how far out they are - eg. if they've been knocked skew by a pedestrian) and angled down as far as possible while still being able to see traffic behind, so I can see the kerb, etc. as near as possible. (Occasionally in a tight spot I'll resort to using the joypad to go further down, but that's rare.)

[Cyker]

The way I was taught, horizon level and just a tiny bit of the body of the car for reference. That's what I've done with pretty much all the cars I've owned, until the Mk4 - With this I now have horizon about a third which lets me see the wheel arch as well as the body, at the cost of reduced visibility on e.g. hills., which felt a bit uncomfortable at first but I'm compensating by relying more on the blind-spot sensors when changing lanes in such situations as they seem to be able to pick up approaching cars from further off than just the blind spot area! (Or just not changing lanes on hills if I'm not sure!)

 

[TonyHSD]

Mirrors, come on guys 😊, remember the days when the cars had only one mirror located at the drivers door corner 🤭👌🚗,. That’s normal sometimes to hit the kerb, we all do it, the problems is if you hit at speed or that bad to cause damage to the tyre, wheels or suspension. The op just shared his frustration I believe and tbh I feel for him since I am as much upset when happens to me too especially when you hear that screeching noises from the wheel scrapping the kerb 🥲🙅🏻‍♂️. Just another reason not to choose larger diameter wheels if you have choice. 👍👌🚗

[flash22]

Nobody likes the sound of alloy against stone/cement, especially in slow motion - It's like nails down a chalkboard (pc definition)

[Cyker]

I cringed just reading that!!

[Roy124]

Regarding all round cameras, and lack thereof, I was exiting an old coaching inn passage and was unable to line up for the exit.  I had all the proximity alerts going with two red bars on my side.  I could see I was too close to open my door and I could not see down.  I should have dipped the mirror down but didn't think of it at the time.

There was also discuss here about the mirror angling down automatically when you select Reverse.  I think the consensus was  it could but no one had discovered he process for enabling it. (That was for the Corolla and the online manual did not say you could).

[Yugguy1970]

I would not want that to happen automatically.  I need to see my posts when I'm backing onto the drive, not the floor.

[MikeSh]

2 hours ago, Roy124 said:

I was exiting an old coaching inn passage and was unable to line up for the exit.

Should've reversed out ...

We have two cars and a double garage. One car goes in forwards, the other backwards. The forward one is much more nerve wracking - but fortunately is the much smaller car 🙂

[Roy124]

Mike I know what you say but I don't think it would have helped.  The problem was a large car parked across the access and about 15 feet from it.  Probably getting my passenger out, opening the tail gate, and reversing would have worked.

Or checking out a promising exit hidden behind some cottages.  The exit was indeed available as we found out later.