50+ and proud of it.

Ok, now this tale comes from a lecture I attended at Swansea University in about 1975. Truth is, I don't know if it was made up by the lecturer, whose name I forget, or whether it's a fact. Googling comes up with nothing. Anyhow, here it is. The subject was "How much does an error cost to fix?". The lecturer wrote a single line of FORTRAN code on the board: DO 10 I = 1,3 "Now when the programmer took this down to be punch-carded onto Hollerith cards the typist made a mistake. They entered: DO 10 I = 1.3 How much to fix the change from a full-stop to a comma?" A long discussion followed - nothing if the programmer had spotted the mistake by checking the card immediately, more if it was found during testing and finally a lot if the project had already been delivered. He gave us the answer: "$50,000,000. It was in the aerial alignment code of NASA's Pioneer spacecraft. It should loop 3 times to line " 10 CONTINUE " in an a...

Well, after about 3 months of waiting, Dacia UK have finally got back to me about the roof rails on my Mark 2 Duster. I asked a simple question - "Are the ' holes ' at the front and back of the roof rails load-bearing?". Reason being is that the roof bars supplied with my Mark 1 (top pic) don't fit around the thicker rails of the Mark 2 (bottom pic):    (photo from DaciaForum.co.uk) The old bars do fit through the holes , so you are tempted to fit them at that position. However, the reply from Dacia is as follows: Initially, we thought that the holes at either end of the roof bars were load bearing, should you want to fit a roof rack to the bars, however, after having contacted the Product manager from Dacia, I have now been informed that they are not load bearing for you r Duster MK2. So, no, you can't safely use the holes. HTH 

We went to the Lake District from Kent last weekend towing a 1300kgs caravan. On cruise control at 60 mph it returned 25.6 mpg. At 55 mph it returned just short of 30mpg - and that figure was rising. A significant difference. Ok, it's only done 600 miles yet so the engine is still tight and I had to keep it under 2,500 rpm - interesting to do with an auto up some hills. "Towing with a new engine?!" I hear you cry? I confirmed with The Dacia Helpdesk that "keeping below 2,500 rpm and not racing a cold engine will be OK" They then followed that up with "...should be OK". "Should be"?  Thanks.

Just got off the virtual phone with an agent at Dacia who confirmed that the towing weight of a post-2013 (MkII/Facelift?) Dacia Duster DCi 110 Diesel Automatic 4x2 is 1500Kgs with a nose weight of 75Kgs. This is in conflict with a lot of info on the "net" that says it's only 50Kgs - not true. Posting this in the hope that it helps someone.  Update: I found that towing with a nose weight of about 80-85kgs towed better than 75-80kgs.