August 2003
OK, I\'m as guilty as the rest when it comes to whingeing about the state of the roads, speed cameras, traffic calming (ha!), etc, etc, etc & there\'s no water in the taps, no water in the pool & only a pink fluffy diced lizard in the bidet!
But there\'s still loads of fun to be had out there. Just been camping near Edinburgh. Get off the main routes & you\'ll find miles of traffic free roads to enjoy. Makes having a motor worthwhile! Read more
I just don't understand what is going on.
I'm buying parts at trade prices for various makes on a daily basis....with a particular bias towards Citroen/Peugeot.
It used to be simple. Public paid retail and the trade paid trade prices. Now it is all over the place.
It is now almost impossible to buy at the local motor factors as they are undercut by two shops in the city that open from 9-6, 7 days a week...and with lower prices.
A local town shop and another town garage sell oil at half the factors trade price.
I wanted a brake caliper the other day. Main dealer wanted £153, factors "special" price to me £112....yet a credit card order found a mail-order specialist delivering it next day for just £52! And this was an OE part outright with no need to return the old unit.
My local factors mumble about dodgy parts in white boxes and the fact that the mail-order don't have the overheads of a depot in every town plus a fleet of vans to run.
If they bury their heads in the sand like this they will find others with their business.
Amazon car parts anyone?
And what about the car makers? If ??? can knock out these brake calipers (for example) at £52 how much should the dealer reasonably charge... 50% more? ...100% more? ...but 200% more...come on guys.
M.M
Read more
MM,
I used to work for the firm making engine mounts (among other bits) for the old frontera. We sold them to Vauxhall at less than 2ukp each. Go into vauxhall, ~12ukp each. Needless to say, the owners of the three fronteras in the car park all had a complete set!
Joe
p.s. the firm made less than 10p per part!
Hello Folks,
When I let the car cruise (at low speeds), not accelerating, no radio etc there is a grinding noise from the left (passanger side wheel). I took it back to the dealer and they replaced the brake pads and the discs (which I found rather surprising as the car has only 12,000 on the clock). I am sure however that it sounds like the brakes are not releasing?
What could it be?
By the way huge amount of threads relating to peugeot's...or is it just me...?
Thanks...
Read more
I wonder if anybody can help me? I've got a 1999 mk4 Golf GT-TDI 110 which i've had for 1 year. Last week i suffered a catastrophic failiure of the gearbox, which resulted in a £900+VAT bill from VW for a replacement - the problem according to the independant mechanic who repaired it was that 'a retaining pin on the driveshaft sheared causing the cogs to smash through the gearbox casing' on a car that's done 55000mls . Tried to get some cost towards it from Milton Keynes..could hear them laughing down the phone! Has anyone else suffered such a pocket-emptying experience with the GT-TDI? The other point is that the car is now flat-spotting on acceleration and has become very sluggish - have been informed it could now be the Air Mass Meter - does this sound ok? apparently another £200 !!! "If everything in life was as unreliable as a ..." Read more
Fred's site is excellent.......one of the best car sites on the net IMO
Why do customers ring and make an appointment, then don't turn up?
Why do customers ask you to get parts in for a repair, then not turn up (and don't call either)?
Why do customers get the hump when you tell them you can't fix their a/c that afternoon, on the hottest day of the year/the day before going on holiday?
Why do customers look at you like you just raped their wife when you tell them that just putting gas in their a/c won't fix their problem?
Why do customers moan about paying 1 hours labour, when it's taken you 2 hours to fix their dodgy wiring?
Why do customers complain about the poor quality of their car/cost of parts etc. When it was them that bought the car in the first place?
Why do customers complain their brakes/steering/lights etc. now don't work, when all I did was remove the a/c service port caps, fill the system with gas, and put them back on again?
Why do customers complain when you charge them a nominal amount for checking out suspected compressor noise, when all it was is the exhaust heat shield rattling as the idle speed changes when the a/c is switched on?
Why do I charge £40/hour labour? To make up for all of the above! Read more
& how come they are ALWAYS losing £100's a day, in
lost wages 'cos the £2,000 van they bought from us &
didn't service for 18,000 miles has let them down?
I cant afford the van to be off the road for a service - it would cost me £100's in lost wages
& complain that they're not VAT registered & can't claim the
governments 17.5% back, despite the quoted earnings, above?
VAT? dont pay that, or tax, thats why I earn £100's a day
& think we can do a deal for cash & 'forget'
about the £7-800 of the VAT on a newer van?
I work for cash, why cant you?
& why didn't I listen to my Mum & get a
proper job?
You need a job that pays £100's a day, no VAT and no tax
I suffered a offside front blow out at speed (over 90 mph) today in lane 3 on the M4 (- anyone see me sitting up the bank just after J17 westbound with my laptop while I waited for the recovery people to change my wheel - between 7 and 8 am?).
I was happy that despite a fair amount of noise etc, the car (Omega MV6) handled extremely well, and I was able to safely slow down and reach the hard shoulder. (Which, btw, allows me to in future smugly answer those who fret in other threads - what if you have a blowout when you are "speeding"? :-) )
The wheel was duly changed. Needing two rears anyway, I called my tyre depot to also order a front, thinking that I would get them to swap the Brand New original from the spare onto the alloy wheel, and use the (still legal) good front on the spare. They had to order the (235x17) tyres in.
Tyre depot was extra busy this afternoon, over an hour waiting. When the fitter finally called me in, he said that the spare tyre is a different size from the rest. He called it a spacesaver, but the tyre is fatter (higher profile) than the rest, and is a W instead of Z rating. This is the original as supplied with the car from new. so I now have to buy 4 new tyres instead of 3, and keep the brand new original on the spare wheel. Can't see it getting a lot of use.
Why do they do this? Rhetorical question I suppose, it's bound to be to do with cost...
(And of course I have to waste more time tomorrow going back for the fourth tyre...)
(I've browsed around other threads and am aware that it could be deemed an offence to use the spare in anything other than an emergency...)
Read more
Ahhh...OK.
250 miles on the new rubber today. No vibration, no tramlining, Avon's seem OK so far. Grip seems fine, although not driven in wet conditions.
I'm still on the space saver (till tomorrow am) and even with this on, I was happily able to exceed HMGs speed limit without 1) any effect on the drive and 2) losing my life
Dropped in today to get £260-worth of exhaust fitted. Fitter removed old pipes and showed me corrosion on the tops of both pipes just in front of the rear boxes, satying "that's where they usually go". I wonder if anyone's told Vx that?
Just the MOT on Thursday, then the credit card can have a rest...I hope!
Hello,
My father has a BMW 5 Series, 2.5 TD 1996. In the past week he has had problems when starting the car first thing in the morning. The car will start, then after a second, suddenly cut out, and it takes an age for it to start again. When you try to start it again, the engine turns over, but does not start.
Once it has started however, it works fine all day, just curious if anybody has any ideas? Read more
I concur - the 6 cylinder BMW lump seems to need glow plug activation even for a warm start. The engine spins over for a while before firing, compared to the usual quick fire-up of a PSA XUD engine.
I own a 2001 Rover 75 2.0 CDT auto. This car uses the BMW 2.0 litre diesel engine. In June this year the engine began running rough on idle and cutting out. The problem became worse and eventually it was diagnosed as a faulty pressure sensor in the high pressure fuel rail. After replacement the engine was fine. A few weeks later, in July, the identical problem returned while I was on holiday. The local dealer misdiagnosed the problem as fuel contamination but the sensor had failed again. After replacement the engine was fine again. Now, a few weeks later, the same problem has returned again. What can be causing repeated failure of this pressure sensor?
Kev Read more
Kev,
I think Renault Family makes some very good points re: bad connection or shorting, although these ought to have affected the full engine power/speed range. From the way the engine behaved, do you think that the sensor worked OK at higher pressures but gave out incorrect signals at lower levels, i.e. only when the engine was idling? Since accuracy of injection relies on the pressure that is sensed I feel sure you would have known if the problem existed at speeds other than idle, especially if the sensor had terminally failed.
I assume that the same sensor is used in the BMW 320d since it will almost certainly be a proprietary part from whoever makes the injection system (I assume Bosch but could be Delphi, Denso or whoever). Have any of you 320d-owning Backroomers come across pressure-sensor problems with BMWs?
How's this for coincidence ?
About 6 months ago my brother traded-in his little KA for somthing a little bigger, about a week or so later I noticed that a couple across the road had bought his old car.
Then on Saturday the new V5 came through for our year old punto, and it turns out the original owner was a chap about 7 doors down from us.
Anyone else had similar happen ?? Read more
I saw my father's old company car parked outside my local watering-hole in Cape Town.
What's so co-incidental about that?
It was from a company in the town of East London - about 1200kms away - and is a 1980 Cortina estate, which the old man got shot of in 83! Bizarrely, it still has the same radio, the same ding in the front bumper AND there is still the 'stump' of a CB radio aerial attached to the top of the tailgate!
Hello
I recently purchased a 2001 Nissan Almera with 18k on the clock from a dealer. The garage had only taken the car in that day and had not cleaned it up. My query relates to the tyre condition.
The two front tyres were pretty worn and the two back ones were fine.
Does this indicate a problem? Could the car have been in a crash?
The steering wheel also shudders at 70mph on the motorway.
Thanks for any input
Read more
Thanks for all the tips. I normally buy 2nd hand Nissans/Toyotas within the manufacturer warranty, keep them for a year and upgrade, because of this I haven't a clue about servicing, normal tyre wear etc.
Normally before a garage presents a car for sale they would change tyres and give it a general clean-up, so I wouldn't have notcied the tyres. The garage did give me 2 new tyres as part of the deal, but just had a niggling fear that tyre wear was excessive.
Thanks for relaying those fears, I know where to come for advice on my next purchase
Browse
.jpg)
Thank you, Eric Idle (as echoes of 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos' fade into the distance)