Posted: 3/7/2008 8:55:58 AM EDT
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I am curious. Are they all the same? The reason why I ask is that I ve been in some small town PD ride alongs here in the Bay Area of San Francisco and their cars suck....squeaks and rattling and lots of pitch and roll in the bodies of the cars. Seats hurt too so I cant ride in them too long without back pain. Last night I rode in what was considered a very old Police Inceptor with the California Highway Patrol. 87K miles and almost end of the line. Went on the some high speed chases thru thick traffic in San Francisco. Car was tight...no wobble. It felt sturdy and safe. Hit 120mph. Did a left turn off a freeway ramp at 60mph with lights and sirens on car drifted a tiny bit and went straight. NO body lean or roll. There was a fight on the side of a freeway and officer needed back up. Them boys know how to drive and drive very fast at the CHP. The seats were very comfy too. I was surprised as they look the same. Thought they were the police Recaro seats. Also would like to add saw a bunch of badge bunnies. Asian hoes, white hoes, you name it. They all rolled up and starting honking and waving & blowing kisses too. WTF? Yes they were too skanky for my tastes. The officer was like ugh...nasty.....meth whore. |
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It is mainly about maintenance. My Pd won't fix it unless it fell off AND the car won't start because of it. I have more strobe lights out then I can count, brakes have been changed once, tires were completely bald, out of alignment, and my spot light doesn't work. My car is a 2002 and has 81,000 miles on it. We are a small town. I convinced them to change the tires, alignment and brakes. The rest is not important. Like I said the CHP most likely has a very good maintenance program. Ours consists of an oil change every 5,000 miles. P |
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The seats changed in about 2003 or so, IIRC. They went to a wider seat bottom, with the seat belt latch coming up out of a hole in the seat. This style seat, while more comfortable to sit in, my holster catches on it and twists my belt a bit in the seat. My old car, an '01, had the older style, thinner seats. |
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There are minor differences year to year. Performance can also be effected by loadout, tires, maintence (or lack threrof) and fuel. Most of our older CVPIs (02-05) tend to understeer a little more than newer ones. The latest CVPIs (06-07) have sharper acceleration but the steering is not as responsive. They are comfortable cruising, but manuevers at speed are a little sloppy. The suspension is a little better on the later models, and the weight transfer is not as dramatic. The only problem we have seen with the latest generation is for some reason about 25% of the cars have a "stutter" in the power steering at wheel lockout. If you want to see some fancy CHP driving, here is their EVOC chevy demo guys: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqJyyxM2QB4 |
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Depends on the agency & how well their fleet maintenance mechanics do their jobs. It also depends on how well the individual ofc recognizes a problem with their veh's & get them written up for repair. I know a lot of guys with take homes don't like to write up issues if the veh is still driveable because they don't want to be stuck in a crappy pool car. Some dept's have too many veh's to maintain & not enough money to replace veh's when they should be replaced & guys are driving veh's with over 75K miles until the wheels fall off. There are a million variables for so many agencies across the nation that it's impossible to determine how certain dept's deal with their fleet. Many dept's order their veh's with different features than others. I had an 03 CVPI that was a pos along with the other 03's with suspension & fuel problems. Our 06's had power steering issues. Our 00's or 01's were catching on fire which originated in the trunks. Our 08's seem to be ok. |
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it really has to be maintenance. When I started, I had a 99 that had 140000 miles on it. when the engine blew @156000 miles, i got an 00 with 120000 miles on it. they both sucked. rattles, squeeks. They ran like crap and handled worse. Then I got an 03 with 53000 miles on it, and i thought i was in heaven. Much better car all around, handled soooo much better. Dec of this year I got a brand new 08. My favorite one so far!!! |
IIRC, there was a recall on some '06 and '07 CVPI for the power steering... seems it would lose pressure at high speed maneuvers and you'd lose steering power, sending you straight when you wanted to be turning... We've got one '07 in our fleet and it was fixed under the warranty. We buy new cars in chunks, a bunch at a time (b/c we can't get our town council convinced to buy us 2-3 new ones each year as part of a confirmed budget). We've got a bunch of '00's that are hitting spare status now, and close to 10 '05's. Every single one of the '05's have had catalytic converters replaced. Mine's had 3 converters in 10K miles. We also seem to go through rear ends and the local SO seems to go through transmissions. |
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It also can just boil down to the individual car...I've seen 10 come in at the same time and only 2 to 3 will be near the same in performance and handling; then by the time they are hitting 50,000 to 60,000 some sound like our 120,000 cars. The "06"s have computerized throttles and Jaguar based steering components which gives it the odd resistance in the steering which takes some getting used to, not sure if we had any of the recalled steering issues in the fleet. We have a great vehicle service schedule which usually catches most brake and engine issues early on as well as tires are replaced and not patched for duty vehicles. |