May 2001
Has anyone ever calculated what it would cost to build a car from parts as per the manufacturer's parts/price list and compared that to a ready-built car.
It might be a good way to see if a particular model was a good buy for long-term ownership.
My guess is that an £8,000 car may cost up to five or six times that price from spares, but it would be interesting to find out. Read more
Does anyone know where I can get hold of Holts Bugshifter Screenwash. Halfords, Wilco and Discount Autoparts in Cambridge do not stock it and / or have never heard of it. I would prefer somewhere in East Anglia, or a firm that offers mail order service.
Many thanks,
Nicholas Moore. Read more
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. Just in case anyone is ever bothered to scroll back this far, here is the source that I finally tracked down:
The Motorist Centre
Ely,
Cambridgeshire
Tel 01353 664508 or 666020
They don't keep it in stock, but can get hold of it is around 3 days at £1.85 for half a litre that dilutes up to 2.5 litres.
Anyone not near Ely might like to phone Holts on 01625 526838 and ask about their nearest stockist.
I have an Audi A6, which I purchased from new and have serviced according to the manual. last year I went to collect it from it's service and the dealer tried to charge for changing the brake fluid, it is recommended for change at two yearly intervals, I pointed out that it had been changed the previous year and was shown as such in the service book, I did not therefore pay for it, when I got home I looked in the service book, which had been left in the car prior to collection, no note was made of the fluid change! I was told by a self employed VW Audi specialist that one of the fitters from the same Audi dealership had offered him new oil filters, when I enquired how he was obtaining them, the reply was, when your on bonus you don't bother changing them every time, just give the existing one a wipe round, then throw the new one in your toolbox and dispose of it later.
The previous year I had a service, I queried the price of the oil, as I had never seen any that expensive, the reply was oh yes XXX service stations sell it at XXX per litre, I replied, but I'm buying a quantity, and nowhere is that quantity sold at that price, the response was, well that's what we change and that's it. When I got home I checked the sump capacity, plus filter, and they had managed to squeeze in an extra litre. I complained to Audi UK, what a waste of time, the response was in short, they can do as they like. The moral of the story, it appears cons are condoned! Read more
Gerry Hunt wrote:
>
You're suprised that dealers do a crap job at top prices?
Why? I thought it was common knowlege...
I have to change my company car in a few months. Apart from the obvious debate as to whether I go for one or not (research in hand!), one of the cars I was considering was the facelift model A6 due out soon in the TDi 130bhp version, as an Avant.
I've read a lot about the inferiority of the Audi in the ride & handling department over other cars with a similar market (e.g. BMW etc), does anyone out there have any first hand comments? Obviously I'm going to try one for myself, but there's no substitute for long term experience! I do about 25,000 miles a year, a 50-50 mix of cross-country & motorway including long continental trips.
To be honest, the favourite is a Saab 9-5 3.0TiD estate (I can wait!), but on paper the A6's credentials look good. Read more
Mike
A BMW will be a revelation after a Saab 9-3. I'd agree with you - we had a 900 for a while; smooth and comfy on a motorway, but hopeless anywhere else - it leaned over more than a sailing dinghy. My wife liked it, but the sloppy handling drove me mad and I wasn't sad to get rid of it apart from the wallet flattening depreciation. I'm amazed you like the diesel though. I had a diesel 9-3 when my car was in for service. Noisy, rough and gruff was my view. Plenty of torque and economical, but I couldn't have stood it as a permanent feature. As for complaints about Vauxhalls - I was running a Vectra at the same time as the Saab, and frankly the handling of the vectra was way beter than the Saab. However, now got a 323 coupe, and the handling is way better than both Saab and Vauxhall, not to mention the smooth engine and the performance. Does over 30 to the gallon too.
Cheers
John
HJ says look at the ash tray which I always thought was a good idea.My friend at the local Opel house tells me they fit new ashtrays to any vehicle where the previous owner was a smoker.I think it is better to be able to read the glass markings
regards Andy Bairsto
Germania Read more
Not just the plastics, either. On Peugeots you can often find a date stamp on the top of the radiator, on many of the fatter cables and hoses, and on some of the older pressed-steel wheels. Also on the newer models some components under the bonnet have bar-coded labels full of data, if only it could be interpreted.
Has anyone out there got any experience of Ford rapid fit centres in servicing say an R reg. Mondeo or cars around that age. They are promoting themselves as Autotrade Fast Fit of the year winner for the fourth year running.
Are these centres in general more effective or less effective than main dealer servicing or the hard to find good local independent ?
Or is it all a gamble to find a servicing garage that will do all the work required on a service? Read more
John Kenyon wrote:
>
> Dave wrote:
> >
> > Andrew Scott wrote:
> > >
> > > Could anybody tell me whether Fast Fit are likely to use
> > > genuine Ford exhaust
> > > sections on a Fiesta? in my opinion these are likely to be
> > > better quality than other manufacturers 'pattern'
> > > replacements-But I guess others may disagree!
> >
> > A mate had a new ford exhaust rust in 2 years and 8 months.
> >
> > IMHO genuine parts are no different to pattern parts. Prolly
> > made to the same tolerences...
> >
> > Filters for my bike are made in the same factory. Only one
> > letter in the part number written on the filter denotes
> > whether the part is destined to be genuine or pattern...
>
> Most of the larger exhaust manufacturers make upto three
> types of exhaust
> OEM (Original Equipment Manufacture = original kit)
> OES (Original Equipment Spares = Manufacturers spares), and
> "Aftermarket".
>
> OEM kit has to meet the manufacturers requirements regarding
> uniformity
> of fit, and quality, and most importantly the warranty period.
>
> OES kit may be made to the same design, but the material and
> standards
> may (and I stress may) be lower.
>
> Aftermarket kit will in general be built to a different
> design (to reduce production costs), using cheaper materials.
>
> The top and bottom of it is, that you have to find out
> exactly who makes
> the best exhaust for your car. Manufacturer A may be better
> at making
> Ford spares, Manufacturer B may be better at making spares
> for Fiats.
Sound advice!!!
Just over a year ago I bought an approved Used VW golf from a franchised dealer, the car came with 12months Warranty and 12 months MOT.
When I returned for the MOT a few weeks before both it and the warranty expired, the VW dealer "found" over £ 400 worth of work than was needed in order to obtain a further 12 months MOT,
You should have seen the look on the guy's face when I told him that was his problem as the car is covered by VWs warranty.
The car had only covered 30 000 miles yet I was told I needed loads of work on the front suspension, bushes etc.
Eventually the garage agreed to carry out the work at no cost to myself, however I would hate to think that they would have overlooked this had they known they would be covering the cost............ Read more
Cor blimey! Exactly the same happened to my brother about 8 months ago at at the main vw dealer in south yorkshire. He bought a 93 golf 1.8 with 12 months mot and warranty etc. About a week before they ran out he sent it to the dealer for the mot, who said it needed new bushes on front and rear suspension to pass costing over 300 quid. When he pointed out they were covered by the warranty, they thought it had already ran out (admin error had put the wrong expiry date!), then had to stump the bill themselves! Whether or not they did replace the bushes or if they needed replacing is another question. Perhaps this is a common trick to rake in a few more quid??
Is main dealer service history etc really worth it ??
I have never done this before but honestjohn recommends it so I tried in on my 78,000 mile van. The old fluid coming out looked relatively clean but when I looked at the drain plug there were lots of metal spikes attached to the magenetic drain plug. Guess this comes from years of previous owners crunching gears. So well worth doing. Like changing brakefluid, something I never see big garages doing for their customers.
Very satisfying doing your own maintenance. When I cannot do it, I can tell the garage specifically what I want done, rather that hoping they will do a proper general service. Read more
Few gearboxes have drain plugs these days. The answer is that you have to remove a cover plate or some other component to get the oil out, and Haynes manuals are sometimes helpful in indicating what you need to do.
eg on a Corsa you remove the differential cover plate, and as this the lowest point on the box. It's a good drain point, but messy. I changed to synthetic, as it seemed to have a beter performance and was a wider range multigrade too. Has it improved gearshift quality - not sure; maybe a little.
Regards
John
We are going to collect this week, a new VW Golf 1.6SE which has been imported from Sweden. Whilst researching possible sources and pitfalls, it came to light that some VW's are manufactured in South Africa and are exported to Europe and it has been suggested that they are of inferior quality.
We know also that it is possible to identify the country of origin through the VIN and we think that the first letter identifies the country.
Can you tell us the different country codes - our Golf VIN starts off WVW ZZZ, which we think (and hope) is Germany.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards
Howard Collin Read more
sorry guys, i found this by luck in an american vw car forum (www.tdiclub.com/)
My VW Golf came with an "Experian" report stating that my car only had one previous owner, hadn't been stolen, etc. The VW dealer also told me it had one previous owner, but the V5 states that it had two previous owners! Why should I believe any aspect of the Experian report when it gets the most obvious information wrong?! Has anyone else discovered such glaring errors on an Experian report? (It doesn't bother me that my car has had two previous owners just that Experian can be so wrong.) Read more
My experience of the Data Protection Acts in business and personal life is that they are a pain in the rear for legitimate transactions and do nothing to control the cowboys.
The only advantage, of being able to examine your record, presumes that you can find out who has records on you in the first place.
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When I was studying engineering at university (1985 - 1988) a fellow student (called Piers Bennet but I guess that is not important) told me about his year off working at British Leyland as an engineering apprentice to gain work experience for his chatertered engineer qualification.
Apparently one of the employees had been sacked (and then prosecuted) for stealing (or attempting to steal) a mini in spare parts - i.e. he had been taking the spare parts out of the factory at the end of his shift and assembling the car at his home.
In the court case it came out that while the cost of the car new was around £4-5 k the total cost of the individual parts (if bought as spare parts) amounted to somehwere between £15-20 k.