November 2001
I always keep my cars a long time, and I change my 11 year old 180K Cavalier's oil every 5 -6000 miles. My 11 month old C type 200 K's on board generated service intervals however, are apparently happy to take the car to 10K miles or more between the service intervals that I am obliged to follow to maintain the cars 3 year warranty. I would very much like to source the tool to remove the oil filter cartridge in order to change the oil myself and impose intermediate changes of approx 5K mile intervals. If anyone has a contact address for locating a tool I would very much appreciate hearing from them.
Interestingly, I discovered the local agent evacuates the oil via the dipstick hole and then uses a flushing oil briefly before evacuating again the same way and refilling with semi synthetic. Are there any "Home" systems allowing me to evacuate the oil in a similar way? acessing the sump drain plug means removal of the cars undertray otherwise.
Thanks,
Julian Read more
Off the point of motoring, I know, but can anyone recommend a website as useful as this one for computer suffers? Read more
Couple of other possibilities:-
www.pcpitstop.com includes a forum and a tune up utility. Also the ever informative www.pprune.org while principally for professional pilots has a range of forums including PC/Internet. You need to register a username first though.
Clio Versailes "P" reg. Just started to leave the poor thing out in the rain and find when turning right I get a bootful of water out of the footwell air vent. The passenger gets it when I turn left. The water is not out of the windscreen wash reservoir - any suggestions (apart from wearing wellies or driving in a straight line)or similar experiences.
Ron Y Read more
David
Thanks - not heater matrix - the water is fresh. Leafy we are!!
Ron Y
New bargain toy to report on, sort of motoring associated.
Have always wanted a pressure washer on the place but never really got round to it as I can borrow them locally. Garage in town has one that would cost about £1000 and shift all sorts. Also a local farm contact has one that seems to have a V6 engine and takes three men to hold the lance.
But the other day I thought one might be useful here to clean up the old Land Rover bits etc. So I bought one of the bottom of the market devices like you see in Argos/DIY shops for about £70.
I expected it to be rubbish frankly but it's really good. I cleaned off a Land Rover gearbox with years of mud/oil and got back to a shiny casing in ten minutes. Think I'll call that one reconditioned now!
It cleaned green mould from nooks and crannies on farm equipment that stands out all year. Even the wooden shed comes up as new.
In fact our yard has clean test stripes across almost everything now!
David Read more
I only of course wear mine because I don't want to offend who bought them or me - honest!
I'm thinking about migrating to New Zealand in about 9/12 months time and am investigating the pro's and con's of exporting a car there.
The New Zealand car market seems to be flooded with imported 2nd hand Japanese cars with dubious model names such as "Chaser", "Windom", "Regulus" and "Chariot" - (Do you know anyone that would buy a car called a "Chariot" ?! ).
Anyway, I digress, the prestige (German) brands such as BMW, MB, Audi etc. seem to hold their value extremely well - i.e. A 96 BMW 528 with 70K (miles) will fetch around GBP 19K - where in the UK this car would probably only make around 11/10K and even less at auction. Overall there doesn't seem to be such steep depreciation for medium/larger cars as in UK. Is it worthwhile shipping such a car over there and how much would that cost ? I know I won't be able to sell it for around 2 years or so but I should still enjoy relatively depreciation free luxury motoring during that time.
The other option is to buy a car in NZ - My budget is up to GBP 12K and I'm interested in buying something like a Toyota Landcruiser Colorado/Prada - The Toyota dealers in NZ want around GBP 15K for a 1996 5 door 3.0 diesel Auto with around 100K (km). The Japanese imports seem to be priced keener (2-3 K less) and also have more "goodies" such as CD player Climate etc as standard. Are they worth a look ? Also they seem to have loads of the older Landcruiser circa 1990-1996 (bigger, rounder version) before it was badged "Amazon" for anywhere between 7K to 12K. I've always thought that they looked the dog's.
Any thoughts or ideas would be welcome.
PS. Do you have any experiences of life/visits in NZ - I'd be glad to hear. Read more
Chad
I've spent most of my life in NZ but have been resident in the uk for the past 3 years (5more yrs to go). The 2nd hand import market is certainly flooded at home and you're right about them being higher spec'd than the locally sold models.
You can pick up good ones but you have to be sooo careful. Igot burnt on a toyota spacecruiser luxury van thingee, diesel and it had been to the moon and back, but had 50000km on the clock, head gasket blew and once the head was off there was at least a 3mm lip in the bore, doh. Having said that I've also had a few good ones,Nissan crew cab ute and a Nissan laurel, 2.8L 6 cyl. diesel, both gave no trouble and were very well appointed and the price was right.
Also, be aware that kiwis don't tend to put the same emphasis on servicing/ looking after their vehicles as a prize possesion as appears to be the case in the uk, not that they get neglected re: oil changes etc., but treated as just a car.
There are heaps of 4x4 type vehicles on the road of all description, spoilt for choice really, but at the end of the day well worth spending the dosh to have compression and in depth mech checks done, especially on the jap imports.
When I go back I intend taking an audi TT or MB soft top or MB 4x4 or maybe all 3...nice thought...
Good luck and I hope you make it there...
How can I find out if an import company is safe and reliable to use? The import agent that I am considering is "Premier Autos" (www.premierautos.net), is this a sound import company? Also, is price negotiable with import agents, ie. can I "haggle" with them? Read more
Of course, not forgetting that my note makes no sense at all unless you remember that I thought I was answering in the "export a car to NZ" thread.
doh !
I recently parked my 1997 Ford Scorpio for several weeks at an airport, and the battery will have run pretty low.
When I returned to the car, it started and everything is fine EXCEPT, the onboard multi-function computer reverted to metric units and will not reset to imperial units.
I tried disconnecting the battery completely and then reconnecting and restarting, but that has not helped.
It just will not respond to the "S" button.
Any ideas on what can be done????? Read more
I used the web site and found details on resetting the climate control computer. Did as described and it worked . Got heat in the car where it had only been warm it's now hot. An interesting site
Is this the right place to ask for technical advice from anyone. Recently the rear inside door handle does not open the door (the child lock is not activated) although it can be opened normally from the outside.
Does anyone have knowledge of this problem or how to remove the inside door lining so that I can examine the mechanism? Read more
Brilliant - why didn't I think of that - many thanksMark (Brazil) wrote:
>
>
> > Does anyone know of a dedicated BMW site
>
> If you go to the front page of this site, there is an option
> on the left entitled "directories". One of those directories
> is "Car Clubs".
>
> Guess what was in there ???
>
> www.bmwcarclubgb.co.uk/indexfiles/mainfram.html
Madame has been driving around in the spare company Golf after I inadvertently trashed a brake caliper on the AX. She has taken a shine to it, especially as the AX is a walk to the pub away from 100K miles, and wants me to buy one of the other Golfs off the leasing company when their time is up (shortly). It's would be a '99T TDi 90 in silver with 50K miles and full VW history. Carview values it at £7.5K which would get me a younger Citroen Xsara HDi (my preferred choice) if I felt like spending the money.
Anyone any experience of dealing with leasing companies? Any comments? Any idea of the Golf's real value in County Durham? Read more
I know, somehow people just look bemused when I get I excited 'Look at that wicked CX!'
I want one of the Turbo Diesel ones, don't know much about them, but I know they were the fastest diesels available at the time :) Maybe I'll get one when I can afford to pay someone full time to keep it on the road!
Sorry for taking over thread....
1987C BMW 316 with 97k on the clock. Parked overnight in the garage.
On my daily 22 mile drive to work, the gearbox is "tight" for the first few changes, which are between first and second gear. After that, as the car begins to warm up, the gearbox loosens and is very smooth.
Do these symptoms indicate that the gearbox oil needs changing? I have not owned the car for very long so have no idea when it was last changed. Whilst I will happily change the engine oil and filter, I have never replaced a car's gearbox oil, so I would appreciate any advice or comments, as well as any suggestions with regard to the specification for the replacement gearbox oil.
Many thanks in advance.
Andy Read more
David's right about using one of the semisynthetics. Some (all?) are multigrade so should help those first few miles.
Regards
John
Browse
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Peugeot dealer told my chum that he always removed the oil via plug as it got the lumps of metal out.
So when we came to remove the tray next day there were all the little bolts in virgin condition with an undisturbed even coating of grime all over the undertray.
I even had to drill one of them!
Never been off in their life,more fables from your friendly local franchised Aesop.
Bearing in mind that we now have 100% filtration why DO we not just suck the lot out anyway?
I mean,these are not Morris 8 s with no filter at all,are they?
My last and biggest mower even had full flow filtration.