October 2001
From 1 January 2002, all second hand goods sold to consumers will have to come with a one year warranty. This applies to £300 Escorts from cheap car dealers, and £100 engines bought from scrappies. I have a feeling that, contrary to what the legislation intends, the long-term outcome for banger drivers will not be good.
For more details go to
bangernomics.tripod.com/eurotrash.htm Read more
You might have heard these, but there amusin anyway and maybe some of you can think of some more.
IF MICROSOFT MADE CARS.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road, all cars over two years old would need a new engine.
Occasionally your car would stop on the motorway for no reason. You would just accept this and restart and drive on.
Now and again when you selected reverse your car would stop and would not start again till you removed and then refitted the engine. For some strange reason, you would also accept this.
You could only have one person in the car at a time unless you bought car98 or carNT. But then you would have to buy more seats.
Mackintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, twice as fast but would only run on five per cent of the roads.
The brakes would say "Are you sure?" before operating.
When you turned on the heated rear screen, the indicators would only work above 50mph.
You would crash twice a week, and you would have no idea what happened.
When you put luggage in the boot, at the end of your journey half of it would have disappeared. You would find it on the roof rack one month later.
The oil, petrol and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single general purpose warning light.
Changing to a different brand of fuel would cause the engine to cut out everytime you turned left. Read more
If microsoft built cars:
After buying your car you would have to repurchase it from them every 3 years, (but they'll update your seat covers with the very latest designs).
Over the last few weeks I have been looking for a replacement car. When I last did this, I remember having to be at the newsagent at sunrise for the autotrader and start calling anything decent by 8.00 at the latest or you would be beaten to it. This time, there have been very few cars around (comparatively) and you can phone on the following Tuesday and still get a viewing. They just ain't shifting. I managed to get a M reg E320 estate for £1200 below the lowest Parkers value. Yes highish mileage (140k), but it's a silver Merc and seemingly a good one. (I will know what I missed as it's in for a service/check next week).
Is it just my imagination or is it dead out there? Read more
A good car at a sane price,in fact.
You did well,and you can probably afford the odd little difficulty!
In the answers to my Mondeo v Rover 600 question (still haven?t come to a decision by the way!) several people mentioned the matter of Mondeo clutch changes. I know from the car-by-car guide that the Vectra is also criticized for having complicated and expensive clutch changes.
Purely out of interest, are other similar fleet/family vehicles from the last few years just as troublesome regarding clutch changes or have some manufacturer succeeded where Ford and Vauxhall have failed, in this respect?? Read more
Given correct usage yer modern clutch is capable of 150k plus,so no manufacturer is going to care a fig how long it takes to replace it.
In fact,the converse,because it makes more work,hypothetically,for their tame dealers.
My VW Golf will be due a service soon. Last year I took it to my local VW dealer and I was very disappointed with the service, infact I went to City of York Trading Standards because some of the items that had been ticked on the checklist had not been looked at (two broken bulbs had not been replaced).
I am loathed to give VW anymore of my money. My car has depreciated by 40p.c. in the last 18 months (remember the advert? I am the guy who put all his money on black and it turned out red) The point is however, my car has a full VW service history and i am just wondering if I should pay for bad service in order to preserve the FVWSH. I think I will hold onto the car for another two years. Your comments please? Read more
actually i think halfords/the AA now own the servicing places do a better than average service for much less than the main dealers, and you can stand and watch and they dont mind, and they are allovertheplace
plus you have a much bigger/more reputable company to chase if anything ever did go wrong
Sitting in the permanent Hindhead holdup I thought about the names the manufacturers give to their products.. Vauxhall had a thing about alliteration some time ago,-Cavalier, Calibra, Corsa, etc. I always thought that they missed the boat with the Nova and Astra- the Nova could have been the Casanova, but the Astra marketed as the Castrati may have had problems!
Also, I felt that the Matra Rancho should have been the Matra 'Macho'.
Finally, BL could have saved a few pence with the Metro City by replacing the first two letters with an 'A'..
Any suggestions for further name changes?
Peter. Read more
Ja,
Just as the Clairol 'Mist Stick' was dropped...
I drove one of these this morning out to the airport and back, a new one. What a lovely car.
This is a CDX and the standard of equipment was great. Lovely powerful & quiet engine, very comfortable seats, nice and smooth to drive.
Loads of switches and lights to press and look at, always something which impresses me.
Its a new shape, I assume, therefore, a new model. At least, it was a different shape/model than a 2.0 I drove in the UK as a rental a couple of years ago.
If only it wasn't a Vauxhall. (Actually, it isn't here, its a Chevrolet, but its the same thing).
M. Read more
We had one on our company car fleet. As a direct result of the problems we had with it, we now get our company cars on contract hire rather than buying them. That car cost as a fortune (including no fewer than six attempts to get the auto transmission to work properly). When we sold it at 3 years old, the oil cooler was starting to leak, there was a small coolant leak from the back of the engine that we were told was an engine-out job to fix due to poor accessibility, the car felt tired and sloppy to drive (with only 60K on it) and we only got three grand for it. At that sort of money a V6 Omega is probably worth the risk (ours was a lovely comfortable car when it ran properly) but I wouldn't pay more than £3K for one.
Have just had my 1986C BMW 316 serviced but the computer used to put out the service lights did not cover models as old as mine.
Apparently, bridging two of the connections with a paper clip puts out the service lights but all of my contacts cannot remember which ones to bridge, and BMW will not dsiclose such information.
Does anybody know the code to release the crystal?
Yours
Andy Read more
buy the reset tool from euro car parts its only a few quid and will stop u destroying the the pcb
Has anyone had problems removing a Peugeot 306 wheel with factory anti-theft wheel bolts?
I tried to undo one on my R reg GTI-6 and it snapped like a carrot! Luckily I was only trying to rotate wheels & not broken down.... I ordered replacements but a month later still had no word as the factory were 'changing their manufacturer' & couldn't even estimate when they would arrive.
Had to have them drilled out at the next service, but what struck me as funny was that the dealer already had a set of wheel nuts available that did the same job, but with a different part number. On inspection the new set were a lot more robust than the original part I broke, which makes my suspicious nature think the old bolt was thoroughly substandard & I am paying unnecesarily for Peugeot's flaky design. Read more
Its very depressing for Francophiles like me to have to watch their motor industry go the same way as the British one,and for the same reasons.
Reducing the cost of production by simplifying design and lightening parts is very laudable,but they do still have to work, out here in the jungle.
Anyone who owned a rover SD1 will tell you how easy it is to turn a very fine motor car into a spasmodically mobile heap of scrap,its called underspecifying.
The Industry leaders are still Ford.They wanted to build a Passat contender and forgot the only thing that mattered....real quality of manufacture.Its easy too,much easier than making the best handling car in its class,which they have achieved.
Most German cars are not that wonderful,dynamically,the last Passat I drove had terrible steering,for instance.They are just made of quality bits bolted up good and tight.
Its what the people want,so give them lots of it.
Does anyone know what the true situation is with the new style number plates? I received a leaflet from DVLA which states that the new typeface will apply to the plates of vehicles registered from 1 September 2001 and to all replacement plates issued from that date. Presumably this means that if you break a number plate and go to Halfords for a new one, the replacement has to be in the new typeface. Fair enough except:
1. Pre 1973 cars were previously allowed to use silver on black number plates. Does this concession still apply, and are you allowed to use the old typeface if you have replacement silver on black plates made?
2. Post 1973 classic cars - if you have just finished restoring, say, a 1974 Triumph TR6, do you have to use the new style lettering, which will look as much out of period as reflective plates on a Jowett Javelin.
3. Is it now illegal to sell reflective plates with the old style lettering?
And I wonder why they changed the typeface anyway. The leaflet states it is to make it 'easier for number plates to be read'. I suspect that the words the DVLA missed out on the end of that sentence are 'by speed cameras'. Read more
A visit to the 'drive the flag' site might be interesting. Try www.drivetheflag.org.uk
Andy.
Browse
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I can only speak for cars not anything on the commercial side.
Broadly speaking anything made after the mid 1980s will have acceptable standards....if maintained. And I bet most here are running cars newer than 16 years old.
As for the real "old sheds" they love them so much we don't even have to pay any RFL!
David