My daughter has just had her first service (7k miles) on her Ford Ka, and was somewhat taken back by a charge of £115. For a comparison the first oil and filter change at 6.5k miles on my 320d was £77 which included the cost of 5 litres of Castrol SLX synthetic oil at £11 per litre. For a mere oil and filter change, are Ford not being a trifle greedy ???? Read more

Hi all

I did a quick search for this and couldn't find anything. Basically a friend of mines Mondeo failed the MOT for 'yellow' headlights. Evidently the reflectors go yellow after a time, I have got the parts, the ford info is

Lens 7304999 price 15.16 plus vat and
Lens 7304997 price 19.45 plus vat

In case anyone else needs these.

My problem is that i've got to remove the bumper to gain access to the light unit clips or do I??

If so what's the best way to attack this/where are the attachment points.

Ta in advance.

Baldrick
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I recently took out two car insurance policies with the same internet insurasnce company.

They seemed the best deal at the time.

Since then, however, they have debited the relevant bank account with the money from the 2 policies, when I had only authorised them to take one, until mid-month.

I had only ensured enough cash was in the account to pay for the policy that I had authorised them to take for. They have, however, written to tell me that they have charged a fee of £25 for me not having the money for both policies available.

As I said, it is basically an internet company. I have tried their 'e-chat'service with no response, I have emailed them 3 times now with no response, despite their promise to respond to all email queries within an hour. It is impossib;e to contact them via telephone.

Any ideas as to what I can do greatly appreciated.

HF

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Thinking of going for a new Corsa, the deal on odffer is too good to turn down. Only thing is - do I go for thr 1.0 or 1.2?

As an inexperienced driver, can anyone list the pros and cons of each engine?

Cheers. Read more

I\'ve recently bought a second hand Escort 16V 1.6 Auto Ghia (thankfully, it\'s the Zetec-E version, so the gearbox hopefully won\'t pack up on me).

It\'s a \'96, done 39K, and been regularly serviced (stamped up roughly every 6-7K), and in very good cosmetic condition, having been previously owned by oldies down in Worthing.

1) The thing my girlfriend noticed right off the bat was the fact that there\'s a wheel bearing/fanbelt slipping sound between 20 and 35mph (1.5K - 2K revs). This is probably where 90% of the cars life has been spent. I\'ve seen another post here that indicates this sound could be down to worn engine mountings, but the sound doesn\'t occur when stationary and straining against the brakes. Any thoughts on this would be very welcome as I\'d like to get it sorted out while still under warranty (and before my girlfriend gets so wound up at the sound that she drives the thing off a cliff!)

2) I know that automatics (and particularly CTX) aren\'t particularly zippy, but there doesn\'t seem to be an awful lot of power behind the kick-down acceleration. When I put the boot down, there\'s about a 1 second pause for throught before the car rather sedately takes off. Having said that, it\'ll happily bomb along doing a ton (once it gets there). Is this typical of CTX gearboxes?

3) Just the other day, one end of the spoiler suddenly popped upward. The nuts are still in place (in the spoiler leg), it appears that the boot lid at that point has rusted through in a little hole. What\'s the best way of repairing this? I was thinking of aralditing (or spot welding if I can find one) a back plate on the underneath of the boot and putting the bolts back through (onto bigger washers).

Other than that, I love the car. Beats the heck out of my old Tipo!!

Many thanks.

Pete.
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