Ask Honest John

Most recently answered electrical faults questions
I had a long standing airbag warning light fault in my 12-year-old Mercedes-Benz E Class and took the advice you gave to another reader, to contact www.airbagman.co.uk. They were remarkably efficient with...
The air-conditioning of my wife's 2003 Honda Civic 1.6 VTEC auto packed up recently and I have been quoted a figure of £391 to fix it by our Honda dealer. Apparently there is a coolant leak and the condenser...
My 10-year-old, 30,000 miles, serviced by Mercedes-Benz A-Class suffered the dreaded ECU fault warning light. The Mercedes-Benz garage informed me a repair would cost £1700 if it was the gearbox or £6000...
The alarm on my Passat keeps going off. I do not want to spend money on diagnostics as my experience is that these problems reoccur. Is it possible for me to immobilise it completely? If so, how?
Based on excellent reviews, I encouraged my young daughter to buy a 2006 Fiat Panda and up to now she has been very pleased with it. It has now done just 19,000 miles. A problem has now occurred with the...
I have a 2009 Golf 1.4 TSI SE which is still under warranty. Last night we had very high winds and heavy rain and, when I looked this morning, all four windows of my car were open at the same level and...
I have a 2005 BMW 318d Touring. Recently the airbag warning light has been coming on. BMW says the problem is a faulty passenger seat sensor and I am told that this is a failsafe system, where the fault...
I discovered that my car keys worked normally away from my house, but not close to it. I infer that there is some kind of local interference weakening the signal from the key to the car, possibly RF. There...
Mercedes-Benz has confirmed via diagnostics that the SBC unit on our 2004 E320 CDI has gone. I am aware there have been problems with this unit, possibly even a recall. Mercedes-Benz has offered to go...
Earlier this year I purchased a low mileage Volvo S80 SE from a Volvo dealership with a year's warranty remaining from new. Almost immediately I had a problem with the electronics, which are quite sophisticated....