December 2001
At 137,000 miles I had my radius arms repaired with bearing kits etc -price £160. 20,000 miles on I'm told they need repair or replacing again! How many miles could I have reasonably expected the repair to last under normal load usage? What should I now expect to pay if the parts are less ie GSF charge £21 + VAT for a kit. Read more
If the Government is going to make cameras more visible and move them away from behind bridges and so on, how does it propose to deal with the cameras behind the variable speed gantries on the M25 etc.
Discuss. Read more
OOOOH-Gaaaaahhh!
To follow Ian's tale, I have today been issued the first of my Christmas tickets in Manila. The offence was "swerved suddenly to avoid another vehicle". Said vehicle being a large bus, and me on a motorbike. The offence indicated on the ticket is "Reckless Imprudence" (500 pesos), and I was fined another 50 pesos for "Arogance" (spelt thus), because I stupidly said that if I hadn't swerved I would have been a traffic accident. Total cost about 8 quid and, sigh of relief, I kept my license, after bunging an extra hundred each to Officers Smith and Wesson respectively.
Well, makes a change from faceless letters coming through the mail and points on the license..... Read more
'Tis the season to make Lolly, tra la la la la!
I have just fitted a pair of Philips visionplus bulbs to my car, I am not sure if the 50% gain can be justified or not but they certainly are brighter and not blue which some of the more 'tacky' performance bulbs seem to be nowadays!
I would recommend them to anyone
Comments anyone?
Cheers,
Andy Read more
Agreed! AutoExpress rated them highly in their tests - though in another article they did say that they had a lower life than normal bulbs.
They made a noticeable improvement to my 97 Passat, and at £20/pair for H7's, are cheaper than many sources of std bulbs (I found my local VW dealer the cheapest(!) for std bulbs - though on the Continent, H7's on Swiss service area were less than £8 each - ripoff Britain again...
Any ideas about how to re - stick the interior mirror in my son's Fiesta. It fell off in the hot weather this summer and now won't stay attached. Apparently super glue is a non starter, it damages the glass and the mirror won't break off in an accident situation, making it dangerous. Autoglass's sticky pads lasted about three days.
Colin Shawcross. Read more
I tried using Glassbond from Loctite and it didnt work. Then tried a special purpuse made adhesive from Halfords (with the wire mesh) and it didnt work either. Called BMW and they say the windscreen must be replaced.
Anyone have any ideas? I cant go spend 6-700 quid for something as silly as this.
T.r.y mybest wrote:
>
> go to your local ford dealer and buy a proper ford mirror pad
> cost you about 20p
Yesterday I posted an item ?If you really want to pick fault with company car tax?, (unfortunately the ?tax? bit disappeared from the title). For the first time I scored a duck, with no replies and I would appreciate some feed back.
I posted the Item because I have defended some aspects of the new company car tax system and to give a balanced picture I wanted to draw attention to one part of the regime that I think is absurd and is evidence of stealth tax elements of the system.
Was this too technical or just too boring to be of interest to the backroom? Read more
Thnaks Paul,
Your explanation seems fair and I do not not know why these were excluded.
I will download the booklets and have a good look back in the records. Have to wait till next week when I'm home.
Thanks,
Stuart
Anyone seen that infuriating Mini commercial about the Curse of the Mummy that makes your whole screen go black? Keeps getting me when I'm accessing the Telegraph. Now that really is a stupid piece of media tech-tripping. Nearly gives me a fit thinking something deadly has struck, nit to mention the lack of courtesy in interrupting me.
I remember a while back these pages got annoyed because some seat-warming Ministry wimp wanted to ban an MG ad. If he wants something useful to do he should write to the Telegraph about this one. I'm going to. Read more
You have a very good point... the ET was not the place for this sort of thing... but then the ET of today is nothing like as good as the ET of say 5 years ago... that ET was bar none the best newpaper website in the world... fast loading strong search engine etc etc.... it has been all downhill at ET for last 20 months or so...
these Mini adds would be fine on their own web site for example... or perhaps even on this web site in the car by car breakdown area if the user selects info on the Mini then one of these adds would launch... esp if on the first page of the Car by car breakdown area you had a selection to enable 'targeted adverts' as you looked up info on diferent cars
~R
Ralf Schumacher to be first F1 driver to wear glasses
Ralf Schumacher says he will be the first Formula One driver to wear glasses.
It comes just a week after he crashed into a queue of cars on a motorway.
The 26-year-old younger brother of four-times world champion Michael says he is short-sighted.
He is to put vanity aside and settle for glasses rather than contact lenses.
He has already made one public appearance wearing glasses and has ordered his team to get him some properly-made racing goggles.
He told German tabloid Bild: "Yes, I decided to test some glasses in the car. I am slightly short-sighted, one and 1.75 dioptres. That's not much but the glasses could help in a race."
A week ago the race ace smashed his and three other cars when he caused a pile up on a motorway, ploughing into the back of a queue of cars after failing to stop in time. Read more
i meant "stuffed" in the legal context of the word. say you hit a kid and it's investigated and discovered you should have been wearing glasses........
My toyota avensis came with satellite navigation as standard. It is pretty accurate, though sometimes it goes a bit "funny", eg telling me to go left instead of right, or maybe thinks I am somewhere I am not (say out by half a mile, but infrequent).
I am generally happy with it and it has turned out to be useful. Most people are amazed by it.
Does anybody else have sat nav on their cars? What cars are they and is the sat nav any good.
FfwlCymraeg, who admits he bought the gadget not the car! Read more
Brill wrote:
>
> Sue,
> You're a spy aren't you, the pink caravan is clearly the
> entrance to an underground bunker :0)
That may follow when the caravan floor rots completely ...
David W wrote:
>
> And I bet it's got a tunnel leading straight to Whitley Bay.
Long walk! Maybe we should install one of those underground railways a la Gringotts?
I bought my Renault Megane Alize in January 2001, with 19,000 on the clock. A sticker on the inside of the windscreen says, next service at 36,000 miles or January 2003. I have just reached 30,000 another six months to reach 36,000. Can the service period be really 18 months or more? Read more
Colin M,
I suspect that manufacturers take the view that the majority will achieve a milage approaching a 100K, irrespective of these harsh service intervals, and that selling the "product" must be their priority.
Bods who follow the owners handbook to the letter, do a large number of short runs, and buy new for reliability, are clearly the most vulnerable. The elderly or retired who meet this criteria, will often be hit particularly hard and I feel that this is not acceptable.
America's business style and values have been warmly grasped by most, if not all of the principal industrial nations as the way forward in this brave new world of ours. In so many ways the practices resulting have a backlash, and this is just a small example.
Regards,
Julian
Browse
Andrew,
It is true a badly worn arm can have the bearing housing damaged allowing water ingress to the new bearing. If so shame you weren't given the option to discuss this at the time of first repair.
The ultimate answer is a complete exchange arm from Pleaides (01487 831239) in Cambridgeshire. They machine the damage from the arms and fit inserts prior to the new bearings.
Thing is their arms are about £150 a side and you need to add a new wheel bearing to that as well because they come without. To fit a couple of their arms, w/bearings and labour will take you over the value of most BXs. But it is the ultimate quality answer if you have the cash.
David