December 2003
Please bear with me, as this is motoring related.
Yesterday I watched a recording of a BBC program, Bodsnatchers, which was broadcast last Wednesday. It\'s a program about parasites. Towards the end of the program they mentioned Toxoplasmosis. Cats are a natural host to Toxoplasma, and they expel it\'s eggs in their faeces. The eggs then form into larvae and need to find their way back into a cat. They do this by hitching a ride with rats, and they very cleverly alter a rats behaviour, by making it less risk adverse, inorder to get the rat caught by a cat. They showed a laboratory experiement which demonstrated this.
They then went on to say that we humans very easily get toxoplasmosis from under cooked red meat. 50% or Americans, 33% of Britons, and a massive 80% of French have toxoplasm. Experiments have shown that reaction times are impeded, and that 2 in 3 people involved in road accidents have toxoplasma.
{tongue in cheek mode on}Isn\'t it time that this government started to legislate against red meat, rather than speeding and mobile phones, as it\'s involved in 66% of all road accidents{tic mode off}
There are 2 BBC news items here :
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2176548.stm
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/850556.stm
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I took a test drive in the manual version last Saturday, boy am I glad I did. This car has bags of grip and power. Even in the high gears, 4,5 and 6 you can still get plenty of power down. The grip is also stunning. It was wet roads on Saturday and this car stuck to the road like ???? to a blanket. I only had my A3 since September but already thinking of trading it in. What a car at only 24,000. Read more
It will have the badges, still very stealth though. Make sure you go through a broker or haggle as that grand off might make it more tempting.
....and having discovered the joys of bangernomics with a £100 88 Nova I find myself with a situation that I haven\'t come across before. All the cars I\'ve owned previously have never had frozen door locks, but this one is so bad I couldn\'t even get the key into the lock of the tailgate. Any favourite cures from the backroomers for home and on the road? Read more
The oil method seems to be the best but, If you are accidently stck at home, get out a hairdryer and heat it that way. If away from home try leaning your bum against the lock for a while. Lift your coat first, of course.
Hi all,
My 'new' M reg 1.6 LX Escort has a heated rear windscreen which doesnt seem to be doing anything.
Looking at the Haynes manual i have deduced that;
There is a fuse in the fusebox, but it is 10A rather than the specified 25A, however it hasn't blown, which makes me think that the current isnt even getting that far.
I can hear the relay click when i switch the dashboard switch on, which according to Haynes means that's ok?
The next step is the main fuses in the engine compartment. It says there are 5 in my car, but only three are present in mine, each with a cable running off it to somewhereorother. The one involved with the heated rear windscreen doesnt seem to be present, and even if i put it in its slot there is no cable obvious to take the current away!
Is the Haynes manual wrong about this, or is it possible that the fuse is somehow linked to one of the cables on the other fuses?
This is the first problem i have found with my Escort and so a swift and easy solution would be a confidence boost for inevitable future niggles! Read more
I cannot thank you enough- I had been scouring the internet for answers to my Escorts rear window wiper not working. I read your post and found and cleaned these contacts and hey ho! the wiper works again. I had just picked up a motor from the scrappy so you've saved me replacing it. I must say this made my day as I am a total novice who usually only gets as far as oil, water, tyres.....thanks again.
...
All,
I\'ve just posted in another thread and reminded myself of something I was wondering a while back. I\'ve got an old (1970 - worst year for rust apparently) Volkswagen Beetle sitting on my parent\'s driveway and rusting away. I\'d like to restore it but I haven\'t the first clue how to go about it. In the meantime I\'d like to make sure it has the best possible chance of survival - does anyone have any tips to belatedly prolong its life?
It\'s been sat in one place for several years now, on its wheels. The tyres are completely flat, the exhaust has pretty much disintegrated, and the body work is coated in green scum. Am I too late to save it do you think? How much would it cost me to get it restored to driveable condition at a guess, assuming all that was really wrong with it was some body rust that could be filled out and some exhaust etc rusting? I know that\'s an impossible question without examining the car, but has anyone seen a similar case and know what that cost?
First step (obviously) clean it up and treat the visible rust - Would it live longer on axle stands? Or will any suspension damage already have been done?
It was really annoying having to stop driving it. A woman in a rover pulled out in front of me and I slid into the side of her car. My car was pretty much undamaged but hers was big time dented and she was making out it was as much my fault as hers. Cue forms to the insurers to try to sort it out, and the temporary loss of my NCD pending investigation. Of course I was third party insurance tho so my insurers didn\'t have anything to gain by chasing it if the other woman wasn\'t bothered and hence they didn\'t give a toss about whether I could afford to run it at the higher rate (which I couldn\'t). The woman never bothered filling in a form and sending it back (must have decided to get the work done herself) so I had to wait a full year while my insurers tried to get her insurers to send them a form. By the time they said \'OK you can have your no claims back\' the car had been sitting for a year and wasn\'t (at the time) possible to bring back to drivability.
It was just lucky that I had the accident in April and then my insurance renewed in May - otherwise I wouldn\'t have been able to cancel the insurance until the claim was resolved. They tried to stop me anyway. There\'s an insurer I wouldn\'t go to again.
-- Kev Read more
Cheers.
Might finally get round to cleaning the paintwork and putting it on eBay unless someone on here shows an interest.
-- Kev
Well, i\'ve been well and truly convinced by the Toyota Hilux on Top Gear, to the extent that last friday i went out and bought one - a 1986, 2 litre petrol 4WD.
A couple of bits and pieces need seeing to, first of all the engine runs fine, but as you come to a standstill the revs seem to drop very low, and occasionally it stalls. It starts up again fine, but it\'s quite inconvenient having to start it again at every junction! Any ideas? I\'m planning to change plugs, points rotor arm and distributor cap - any other things which are likely to be causing this?
Also, anybody out there with any experience of these? What other things do i need to keep an eye on?
TIA. Read more
Just an update on my knackered old truck, if anyone's interested...
Couldn't get the engine to idle steadily enough to make any carb adjustments, so decided in my "wisdom" that i should strip the carb down. Did so, put it back together, and it didn't work at all, so bought a weber replacement carb (£225!!) Fitted that, and it now runs fine!
Saw on last weeks 5th Gear a shot of a newspaper article about a Royal Mail van that had been wheel clamped, and it included a photo too.
I was under the belief that it is an offence to interfere with the delivery of Royal Mail, and I think I got that impression from a thread of a few months ago about Royal Mail vans being able to go through red lights, for exact same reason.
Or am I just making all of this up in my own mind? Read more
Topaktas.. I can only presume they are not Government vehicles or things have changed. I worked 30 odd years in Government service and we were informed that insurance was not carried.
The reason given was with scores of thousands including military the Crown carried responsibility to deal with any claims and dealt with it themselves.
Also any claims under any other circumstances such as third party accidents were dealt with by the Home OFfice solicitors themselves. Maybe our friendly legal eagles know more on this.
A non-technical friend of mine here in Jordan has had a persistent problem with his 2.4i petrol Terrano. Only in damp weather and typically driving around town the car will get an intermittent misfire, hesitation, flat spot and even occasionally stall.
As we have 300 days of sunshine annually and Jordan is one of the 10 most water-poor countries in the world he has not done much to get this fixed as it only happens on a few days a year.
However he will soon be moving to a much wetter country in Eastern Europe and is now anxious to get it fixed.
Does anyone know if there is a specific problem with this engine that might be causing this?
What should he be getting the garage to check? I would be grateful for a back-to-basics check list I could give to him.
(It sounds to me like HT leads or damp getting into the distributor cap).
The car, he tells me, is a 1997 (German-spec) model with the KA24E engine.
Thanks from me (and him) in advance. Read more
I'd concur with you. An HT system overhaul is called for - and it needn't cost a fortune.
Spark Plugs and HT leads are the most likely culprits followed by the distributor cap & rotor arm.
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groups.msn.com/honestjohn - Pictures say a thousand words.....
does anyone have any experience of a 205 leaking into the rear footwells? My girlfriends car (1991 peugeot 205 grd with the vacuum operated sunroof) has started to leak into the footwells and the metal depression where the rear seats sit (i.e. making the rear seats completely s**den). The water seems to be leaking into both footwells pretty much evenly. In addition to this after leaving the car for some time and then driving it again, the handle which operatesthe sunroof mechinism starts to drip water all over the people in the front seat. i've checked the sunroof channels using a watering can and they seem to be draining to the right place (just behind the front wheels and just behind the back wheels). des anyone have any ideas/tips for trying to locatethis very annoying leak. i cant find any obvious reason as to where the water is coming from.
thanks
Richard Read more
havent had a chance to look at it again unfortunately. hoping to get some time over christmas. according to girlfriends dad it does appear to be both door seals. seems funny to me that they've both gone at the same time though. i'll keep you all posted. thanks again for the replies
Hi guys!
Would someone kindly advise me what could be the cause of the following? On a 1985 VW T25 Transporter non-turbo 1.6 Diesel: has developed intermittent shuddering and 'misfiring' with a severe loss of power and white smoke from the exhaust when it throws a strop. Tends to be worst from start-up and gets a bit better when warms up but it can happen at any-time.
I've had a suggestion that the valve guides are worn. Whilst I'm fairly genned up on mechanics I'm not totally sure what the consequences of this are. Will it need a new cylinder head or just new valve-guide seals fitted?
Or is the problem something completely different in your opinion?? It had a life of short journeys for the past two years without much chance to warm up. It's quite an overstressed engine for the size of vehicle.
And advice would be VERY much appreciated!
Cheers, Stefan Read more
Could well be a malfunctioning fuel injector....the list is endless
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groups.msn.com/honestjohn - Pictures say a thousand words.....
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Yes, I think this has gone quite far enough. Thread now Read only, not deleted.
No Dosh
mailto:Alan_moderator@honestjohn.co.uk