March 2003
for a while now i've been looking to buy a 5-10 year old e-type merc. I've been told that buying from abroad is the best option. Have any of the more experienced buyers out there got any thoughts on:
a) buying from europe - i'm told that an average LHD import from europe will cost 2-3,000 less than buying a normal RHD in the UK. Is a LHD on UK roads really that much of a problem and is it a problem trying to resell a LHD car later on?
b) Also, have been told that due to their 10 year scrapping Law, singapore is a great place to source cheap, relatively modern and most importantly RHD Mercs. Has anyone gone down this route and can they advise if the benefits of a cheaper car are outweighed by wait, import costs and shipping costs?
Or, should I just bite the bullet and buy something from my local merc dealer!?
Thanks for the help!
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Hi there guys, I realise this post may be a bit of a long shot but maybe someone will be able to help!
I have owned a citroen zx1.9td aura k reg for 3 months now and i've been having terrible trouble with the brakes-I'm getting very bad pulsing through the brake pedal and a very funny sounding banging/knocking/juddering noise under hard braking. I have fitted new discs, new pads, new cylinders, new shoes, new drums, new rear wheel bearings but to no avail! I took it to a garage to investigate the problem as I began to suspect suspension bushes etc. They agreed there was a problem and put the front then back on the rollers. The fronts showed almost no imbabalance/vibration and all the bushes checked out ok-in fact the front 'p-bushes' (ones at the back of the wishbone) had been recently changed apparently. When the back went on the rollers it was a different story. It was jumping around all over the place it would seem that the offside rear drum has high and low spots obviously causing pulsing through the pedal. Also the nearside shock absorber bush has gone being described by the guy as 'not quite MOT failure bad, but not too far off' so I guess this could cause a banging noise under hard braking? Incidentally the spare wheel cradle has been tightened up and the banging noise is still present even with the spare removed. Also the handbrake is not working on nearside (I knew this already) as the auto adjuster is not working, you adjust the thing up then a couple of hundred miles later the brake pedal travel increases and hand brake stops working on nearside (arrrghhh these brakes are doing my head in!).
My main question is this:
I'm thinking about doing a rear disc conversion, what would I need?
I would get a Volcane (mine is an Aura with rear drums) rear axle complete with discs, calipers and hand brake cables. My question is can I just swap the stub axles, back plates, hubs, hand brake cables etc and connect the calipers up to my existing braking system or will I need a different master cylinder/routing of brake pipes and different pressure compensators etc I know both disc/drum and disc/disc ZX's use a diagonally split braking system, but will I have in correct brake balance if the calipers are hooked up to the existing system? What parts would I need to change apart from affore mentioned?
I appreciate not many people are gonna have a clue but any help appreciated!!
Regards
Guru-Meditation. Read more
Hi all,
I have been having severe problems with my brakes on my 93 zx td aura. Ever since I\'ve owned it I\'ve had severe vibration problems from the brakes-sometimes the car would vibrate around really badly under braking with the brake pedal pulsing very strongly, basically making the car a nightmare to drive as it felt so horrible (car doesn\'t have abs). I thought it might be warped discs as the ones on there didn\'t look too clever so I replaced those, same fault (I don\'t have a dial btw so they weren\'t actually tested for run out, although when I fitted them the hubs were scrupulously clean etc). Rear brakes-new cylinders, new shoes and new drums, new bearings. When I fitted the drums the offside one seemed to rotate freely then bind, rotate then bind (not so strongly that it couldn\'t be turned just noticeable strong resistance) etc I thought this was just normal manufacturing tolerances. Same damn problem with the brakes :-( I took the car to a garage where it was put on the rollers. It would seem fronts are fine but rear bad-the car was actually visibly jumping up and down on the rollers on the footbrake. Seems the offside is responsible.
So I\'ve bought two more drums, two more bearings, new shoes and had this garage press the new bearings into the new drums and mark up the drums, both seemed to be as round as possible. I fitted the new shoes and drums and the brakes seem smooth now, maybe a tiny bit of vibration but a BIG improvement.
My burning question is this: I have adjusted the brakes so that the shoes are slightly in contact with the drum (it seemed hard to avoid doing this in truth) ie the drums can both be easily rotated by hand (the resistance does vary slightly through the rotation but not too much) but if you give them a hard spin they would stop within a couple of revolutions due to friction from the shoes-is this good or bad? Should the drums be adjusted so that there is NO contact at all? Obviously I realise that any increase in friction is a slight fuel consumption penalty but what I\'m really worried about is the drums becoming distorted (ie through heat build up), I\'m sooo paranoid now that next time I touch the brake the vibration will return. I\'ve only done about 30mi on them since tuesday so if I am risking my drums then I\'m prepared to readjust the shoes again so that they don\'t touch the inside of the drum at all.
Thanks for the advice.
Gurumeditation.
As this question is on the same theme as your original question, I\'ve joined them together. DD.
Driving to work this morning along the A14 in my newly inherited Citroen AX. 70mph, outside lane, about to overtake a truck, everything under control - BANG! And my forward visibility disappeared.
The bonnet had flipped up and smashed into the windscreen. Braked hard, hazards on, located verge by looking out of side window. Aren't I lucky that:
1. It was a straight, wide piece of road.
2. There was nothing immediately behind me.
3. It didn't happen ten seconds later when I would have been alongside a 38 tonne artic.
4. Even cheap old Citroens have laminated windscreens.
Anyway, the bonnet is hopelessly crumpled, plastic scuttle panel badly gouged, windscreen broken and the roof is dented where the leading edge of the bonnet hit the roof mount for the aerial. And I guess the bonnet latch needs replacing as well.... At 8 years and 95,000 miles, it could well be 'game over' for this little car. It is still insured in the name of my mother, who died two weeks ago - my sister rang the insurance company, explained the circumstances and got them to issue a cover note valid until the 23rd, with myself as named driver. So presumably an insurance claim won't cost me the NCD on my policy.
Question - if rear-hinged doors were outlawed years ago, why are car makers still allowed to fit rear hinged bonnets? If my mother's old car had been a Renault, this would never have happened.
Richard Hall
bangernomics.tripod.com Read more
May I also wish you well following your recent loss, Richard?
Re. the bonnet.......when cars catch light and it takes hold, the bonnet release cable and it's associated gubbins cease to work. It then becomes a case of a crowbar to try to prise the bonnet open in order to add water to what remains of the engine compartment. You would not believe the sweat you can build up trying to get the blessed thing open - it becomes embarrasing with people standing by watching as you wield this high tech crowbar for ten minutes with little success.
And yet you can adopt 'auto open' mode on your Mum's car without even trying! I think you have due and just cause to feel a tad miffed at the way things are going right now for you and I hope things improve.
Good wishes,
KB.
I needed to top up my oil VERY early this morning before setting off for scotland, but for some stupid reason I accidentally topped up with antifreeze instead of oil...
The car ran fine, and I am now in Edinburgh... there are no problems so far, but will this cause any problems?
Moby. Read more
OK, OK! The bottle I had in the garage says "will cause corrosion"
rather than having the "corrosive" hazard warning label. Also remember (he says with hindsight) most fixed hydralic brake pipes are steel (protected on the outside with plastic).
My error.
I still stand by the opinion that antifreee is not corrosive....in its normal location (ie within the cooling system) it will be in contact with most types of metal present within an engine, brass aluminium, iron, steel, gaskets, seals. It is the water in antifreeze that can cause corrosion, not the glycol and the antifreeze mix contains an inhibitor to prevent corrosion.
However, what happens to the glycol and inhibitors under the high temperatures of the oil is anyones guess.
regards
Ian L.
I've always liked these strangely ugly cars!
Now thay've dropped enough so that I could almost buy one.
98s, about 60K advertised at £17k.
98s, about 40K " at 19.5K
Will it cost me a fortune to run (about 8k miles a year)
are gearbox/clutch etc up to 320BHP? Any weak points? - suspect they'll eat tyres for fun!
How much would you expect it to depreciate over te next couple of years Read more
Browse the postings, checkout the classified on www.zroadster.net
Must: FBMW sevice history. Very desirable: (transferrable) BMW warranty,
£400 p.a, covers nearly everything including exhaust and gives breakdown service.
Avoid non-UK dealer sourced.
Are you sure about the warranty cover costing only £400?
I am led to beleive that these 'Rolls Royce' of warranties were last issued in Feb 2006. Since then there has been a massive hike in the warranty fee (£1000+), and there is a hefty excess of £250 or so per claim.
What were those straps that hung down under cars and touched the ground? I used to see these when I was a kid but you don't see them so much now. Was it something to do with static electricity? Read more
>>excellent password
Yeah, in so far as they can be guessed by anyone who knows you.
If it is a password that matters, you should take a word you know well, mis-spell it, and then insert a numeral in the middle of it.
e.g. password/passwurd/pass3wurd
The standard of driving in my neck of the woods is dubious to say the least - the road system around Redditch is bad enough without the likes of youth in Saxo to compound things.
Generally, I will let matters go if I am cut up, etc, but every now and then I feel that the driver should be reported. My mate is a copper and he reckons that I should report dangerous driving but I doubt if anything will be done.
Has anybody tried this? Read more
All this talk reminds me of a demo drive years ago after a "classroom" discussion session which included escape routes.
Location: Undivided B road, out in the sticks, no entrances/buildings, GLF limit, where after a long straight the road went ~45 right.
Sergeant instructor in full flow, zapping down this road at warp factor (a very big number) commentary going something like
"... and I'm using acceleration sense to adjust my speed for the right hand bend.... (snip).... still using acceleration sense...."
Afterwards the three others of us in the car confessed we were all thinking "for chrissakes begger acceleration sense use some blooming common sense and brake!" (or words to that effect)
Just as we were all bracing ourselves for the inevitable, he bailed out down an unsignposted C class which none of us pupils had seen and went very slightly left at the apex, ideal escape route and one he'd planned right from the outset. The GIT, the utter utter GIT!
However a salutory lesson in quite a number of areas, but I still worry that behaviour like that doesn't necessarily do anyone any favours.
i have a citroen zx 1.9d and its not performing as well as it used to when i first got it about 1 year ago, could the problem point to the injectors? Read more
In my 10 year experience with the ZX 1.9D, performance will suffer (due to partially blocked injectors?) if it is run on anything but Shell or Texaco fuels. Mine drastically lost power and smoked badly once when I used French supermarket fuel, and also ran badly on Sainsbury\'s diesel (but not City Diesel). Regular use of Millers Dieselclean as recommended by Honest John also maintains performance and stops the injectors bunging up.
Was looking at an article (website noted below if you want to read the whole thing) written about the Nissan X Trail and it included a paragraph which I just had to include.
www.whatsonbristol.co.uk/reviews/nissan_x_trail.ht...l
"The X-Trail is up against Land Rover's great compromise car, the horrid and woefully badly built Freelander. I'd rather have my liver torn out with a rusty hook than be seen in a Freelander, dead or alive. All of which makes the X-Trail a far better proposition"
Regards,
KB. Read more
Nearly but not quite, Mark.
In the course of my work have driven three Freelanders in my time, a 1.8, a Td4, and a V6 ES three-door, but never owned one. Every single one developed a fault (two were wiper failures, one was a water leak), so I concur completely with the comments about reliability; new Range Rover excepted, anything which comes out of Solihull makes me shiver.
But so does drippy, lazy, casually insulting journalism.
1996 Sharan. I was cleaning the car and accidently sprayed the cleaner down the steering wheel. Now the airbag light stays on. Any ideas????? Read more
What sort of cleaning fluid was it? If just water-based then I would run the car with the heater on full blast for a while, aircon (for dehumidifying purposes) as well if you have it. That should sort it out. Failing that, blast a hairdryer down the same gap!
If it\'s likely to have left some sort of sticky residue you could always try WD-40 to free up the contacts, always works on the inside of my indicator stalk switch.
Or, it could be a connector or switch under one of the front seats, these are the usual cause of rogue airbag light illuminations. It\'s quite possible if you were getting *that* keen on cleaning the car that you may have knelt on one of the seats with one knee (harder than the average posterior would press), causing the wiring to be twisted or stretched in a way it never has before.
Hth.
Browse
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In the late 90s there were quite a fair number of RHD Mercs (W124 shape) brought in from India. They were mainly E220 petrols and E250 diesels and were all manual gearbox versions as far as I am aware.
I bought one of these cars and did over 100K miles in it. There were one or two teething problems at first, mainly with electrics, but from 20k miles onwards I found it completely reliable. The independent Merc agent where I had it serviced told me that the overall build quality was superior to current German built Mercedes cars.
The model I had was the E250 diesel. This was very slow acceleration wise but was very comfortable and very relaxing once up to speed. I found the manual gearbox very smooth even though everyone tells me that Merc manuals should be avoided like the plague. It did around 42 mpg during the time I had it.
Eventually I succumbed to my wife's persistence that it looked old fashioned and traded it in but I have regretted it ever since and really wish that I still had it. I have seen one or two advertised in Autotrader and been very tempted. So if you can put up with the old shape this may be an alternative to importing, as most of these cars were built between 1995 and 1997 (from kits shipped over to India, I believe) so are within your timescale.
I hope that this may be helpful