New Alpine A110 owners experiences and photos.

Think I'm going to need a new screen too soon, but from a bloody stone chip. Only noticed it when washing the car a couple of weeks ago. Just under where the wipers sit so I'm not sure if it will be repairable. And the repairers are shut indefinitely at the moment too.

If you get a cracked screen out of warranty, wouldn't your insurance normally cover it? I guess if there's a lot of claims and they are expensive then it might get excluded for our cars or a higher excess put on.

And cleaning it over the weekend it looks like the windscreen has a proper crack in it. Not sure when this appeared as it's been sat in the garage for weeks:


Hopefully it will be a warranty claim, but will have to wait for GH to reopen. Don't know if the stone chip will affect that either.

[stephendell]

Unfortunately these are becoming far to common. Hopefully Alpine will sort a permanent t fix.

Autocar have just released a video comparing the standard A110 vs the A110S vs David Pook's Life110 version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oENAmI8gcdg#action=share

I am currently running David's setup on my car (springs / Evo Corse wheels / S spec tyres) with his geo settings and it is fantastic!

have just discovered, on a lonely mountain road, that “ESC track” allows for highly amusing tail out at low speeds eg at T junctions but Sport mode is rigorous in cutting power when it finds absolutely any traction loss at all. Before you even feel it.

So my question is this, how much tail happy is track mode with “ESC track”, allowing. Is it low speeds only? Is it only mild tail-out no matter how heavy your foot? Do you yourself never use track mode on the road?

(am booked into a skid and slide (on wet tarmac) day so look forward to seeing how much one can abuse track mode with ESC on, without swapping ends).

have just discovered, on a lonely mountain road, that “ESC track” allows for highly amusing tail out at low speeds eg at T junctions but Sport mode is rigorous in cutting power when it finds absolutely any traction loss at all. Before you even feel it.

So my question is this, how much tail happy is track mode with “ESC track”, allowing. Is it low speeds only? Is it only mild tail-out no matter how heavy your foot? Do you yourself never use track mode on the road?

(am booked into a skid and slide (on wet tarmac) day so look forward to seeing how much one can abuse track mode with ESC on, without swapping ends).

I spent some time on the Thruxton skid pan. It is extremely slippy, like driving on ice rather than wet tarmac. The car was no fun at all in Track mode - the power gets cut before you get the car at all sideways. With ESC off its a different matter - great fun and remarkably benign considering how slippy it was. Of course you will spin if you take any sort of liberties, but it wasn't too difficult to drive around on full opposite lock. To be honest I would have liked more grip which more represented what you might find on a slippery road. I have also been around Thruxton circuit when it was damp - but Thruxton is very grippy even when a bit wet.

Where are you sliding around? Please give us a report - I might try it if it's more representative of road driving.

In track mode, without turning off ESC, I enjoyed some minor tail out when turning at T junctions and mountain hairpins but these are roads around kangaroo valley, which by the name I think you can guess are a bit far from you..

The upcoming "skid and slide day" will be in cones, on tarmac at Sydney Motorsport park.
I guess they soak it to allow fun and training without any speed.

Thanks for your answer I'll not even bother starting with track mode ESC on, just go straight for ESC off.

Any pirouettes are not going to be a problem there. Kind of surprised that Sport or Track isn't up for some rotation at any speed, by default. but no bother. Turning it off, and learning to balance it, is fine by me. Then I'll book a track day at SMSP as well.

Shame about that... Quite possible I will be in OZ sometime - my daughter-in-law is Australian (my son raced in F3 there) and we have been there a couple of times. Won't have the car though so no chance of trying it on track.

cool. well if you ever make it down under send me
a pm we can go for a drive and I will give you the key.
I don't plan to sell this thing for many years.

Given the cars don't have an LSD, I do wonder how quickly lots of sideways antics will kill the rear brakes (AIUI, the rear brakes are used to stop the inner wheel just spinning up as a true open diff car with no electronics does).

On the windscreen front, they've agreed to replace under warranty but GH St Albans have been bloody useless at communication and keep lying to me ("It'll be a couple of days" - a week later no call. Or "It will be here tomorrow, I'll call you then" - no call). I get that things are a bit crazy right now, but don't lie to me. If you don't know, tell me you don't know. /first world problems.

Given the cars don't have an LSD, I do wonder how quickly lots of sideways antics will kill the rear brakes (AIUI, the rear brakes are used to stop the inner wheel just spinning up as a true open diff car with no electronics does).

.

When I was at Thruxton the brakes didn't give any bother - but then it doesn't take much to stop the wheel spinning when you are only on very light throttle.

HOWEVER a few days later I got a brake warning light and eventually a hydraulic pump had to be replaced. Can't say for sure it was related but I suspect it might have been.

Trickle charger fitting

I've not seen anything on this, but with the car being parked up for a while, it's been needing a charger a lot So far I've just clamped onto the battery having removed the plastic cover, but that's a hassle and I wanted a longer term solution. I was loathe to cut any trim, and realised that running the cable to the screen wash flap would be a convenient point to connect.

So to do this...
Remove the panel above the battery at the back of the frunk (just unclips). Then 5 torx screws for the luggage compartment

These were pretty stiff and looked like they'd been locktited.

The side panels left and right of the compartment each have 3 torx screws, then unclip:


The side trims need to be unclipped before you can lift the luggage compartment out, then you get this view.


You could probably do this without unclipping everything, or just removing the trim panel around the brake reservoir and screenwash, but taking everything out made it easier to see how it would all fit.

Another forum I'm on often recommends the Maypole 7423 as a cheaper and more reliable option than CTEK. The kit also includes a set of leads with O-ring terminals which are just the right size to bolt to the battery. On the +ve terminal I used the screw terminal nearest the front of the car. On the -ve, the terminal with a small screw is actually captive, so instead it's connected to the clamp.

The lead is then /just/ long enough to run via the brake fluid reservoir bracket

A cable tie secures it in place - there was already a hole in the bracket to run the cable tie through. I put a second cable tie loosely around the charger lead and the screenwash pipe too to try and stop it dropping away from the flap.

And here it is all back together


The supplied lead from the charger is not very long, so I've ordered an extension. This should allow me to run the lead out from under the bonnet top edge while it's charging. Maypole don't list an extension, but it looks like standard SAE connectors - eg https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07PNB7981 should work.

Hope this is useful to someone!

Thanks for that. Haven't needed to charge the battery yet though - seems to be fine for at least 3 weeks. Even with only a 6 mile round trip every week or two during lockdown, it's starting instantly.

That's good to hear. I SORNed mine (other vehicles to use), particularly with the cracked screen too. And I killed the battery on one of the other cars by leaving it too long, so was anxious not to repeat the exercise with the Alpine! I think as they've got stop/start, the batteries may well be larger than could otherwise be used which may help too.

Windscreen replaced under warranty. Assured issue now resolved, unfortunately some early warranty replacements were from the early faulty batches.