March 2004
Do i have an Head Gasket problem? Before i changed top hose engine seemed to run better when expansion tank empty and less water in engine?
620si Auto (Honda Engine) was losing a litre of water about every 2 weeks (found small crack in top hose, have replaced). Now as soon as engine gets warm expansion tank boils spurting steam and water up into the air. (while replacing top hose replaced rad cap and a tested and found faulty thermostat).
Bugman Read more
Had a good drive today in a demo Nissan Primers 2.2 DCi (138 bhp). Excellent car and seems very economical. How much should I pay for a 2004 model with 3000 miles? Dealer kindly let me take it home for my wife to try and will bring it back tomorrow. Thinking about £11-12000. Am I too optimistic? Read more
Well collected car yesterday and I'm well chuffed. Smooth, quiet and loadsa toys and very torquey. Will keep you posted.
Charles will remember the first.
I was looking to buy a car for the girlfriend (now my wife) when I happened upon this lovely little Peugeot 104 in musterd yellow with matching interior.
£150 later I had said car and boy that was one mistake I could truly put down to experience!
Charles (also on this forum) will remember my sighs when I removed the plastic trim over the NSR coil spring only to find that this NSR coil spring was 2/3rds of the way through the wheel arch! This was whilst he was trying to find some floor pan to weld to.
I eventually got rid for spares. Strangely enough I sold it to some student who wanted to put the engine and box in a Talbot Samba for £180! Unfortunately I had spent money on doing a few other bits to it so a profit was not to be had.
Lets have your stories here!
Hugo Read more
Got a few tales from the selling side - a lot actually.
When my father had a garage from the 60' through 70's into 80's I used to work there on and off.
A lot of people would come in for something 10 years old and costing a few £100's and expect it to be like a new car.
One thing I hated was selling any Renaults or FIATs we had in. You just *knew* there would be trouble and the customer would be back. I don't think the older Renaults ran for more than a month without breaking down (even from new) so you were bound to get 'screamers'. In the end we stopped buying/selling Renaults altogether.
I remember selling a rather tidy Renault 25 (big car, like a Rover 800). It was manual. The customer rang us up a week later to say the hyraulic clutch had failed (pipe blown off slave cyliner). We refitted it. Blew off again. New pipe and fittings. Blew off again. Sent to Renault dealer (costing us money now). New M/C, pipe and S/cylinder. Month later pipe blows off again! Customer stranded for umpteenth time. Renault totally clueless - but tell us hydraulic clutch system has a design fault!
In end buy it back off angry customer and send it to auction.
I've had a hatred of Renaults ever since.
Give me a nice little Datsun Sunny or Toyota Corolla - customers were always happy and would come back for servicing and in a year or two's time for another car.
We once had a Sunny estate sold to local chimney sweep. Did about 200k miles and the head cracked. That was the only one I ever remember going wrong.
Similar threads have been run in the distant past, but now we have some new members, I thought it may be a good idea to kick this one off.
Starting with me
Best cars I ever owned:
Renault 11 GTL 3 Door 1985MY. Reliable, solid, drove well, covered over 40,000 miles in it 5 years.
Citroen 2.0 16v Xantia VSX. Excellent drive, very fast and comfortable. I was sorry to see it go.
Discovery 200 TDi (current) passes MOTs with style! Excellent drive, economic for a >2 Tonne 4X4.
Worst car I ever had:
Fiat Regata Weekend (Estate) 1989 G - so called because it took several weekends to try to figure out why the hand brake would never work. I had to keep adjusting the 'self adjusters'. It failed nearly every MOT on the handbrake. It never passed an MOT first time. It had the charisma of a trench block. It leaked rainwater when I first had it due to a manufacturing defect in the bodyshell. Spares were a nightmare. Even Fiat decided to stop stocking essential bits like the distributor, which also suffured from a really basic design fault. To cap it all it took me 7 months to sell it. The problem was that people didn't know what they were. I was REALLY pleased to see the back of that one!
Hugo Read more
Best car :
My current W reg Subaru Impreza Turbo. Serious performance, wonderful handling, faultless reliability, glorious noise and the best seats in the business. A true modern classic, and rightly so. Downsides? Thirsty, expensive to insure & maintain.
Honouable runner up :
'91 J Rover 216 GTI. Yes, the one with the twin-cam Honda engine.
Worst car :
1996 Ford Fiesta 'Classic' 1.3 (partner's company car).
Ancient pushrod engine, stone age gearbox and suspension, horribly uncomfortable seats and a grotty 70's style interior. The 'Fester' was indescribably awful to drive, with all the performance and refinement of a 1973 British Leyland Allegro.
The Fiesta Classic was the last genuinely carp Ford (until the Fusion, anyway). It simply defies belief that a major manufacturer could sell such a car in 1996. Makes me shudder to remember it.
Hi,i've bought a g-reg golf driver a week ago and i'm happy with the car apart from the way it behaves in the mornings.It starts without a problem but until it warms up its very hesitant pulling away and a few days ago when it was really cold the choke seemed to kick in and reved very high for about 5 minutes and then suddenly turned itself off.
The hose from the air cleaner to the manifold is intact could it be the waxstat i've seen mentioned????or possibly a service plugs,air filter etc.
Any advice appreciated cheers........Andy Read more
waxstat replaced still no improvement,choke just dont seem to kick in ????????
Not really motoring I know but,
On Saturday my wife gave birth to our first child, Andrew was born at 7:30pm weighing 6 pounds 7 ounces. Both Mum and baby are doing fine. :) Read more
And cuddles from your child mean everything! I'm lucky, I still get hugs from my two even though they are now 14 and 9 respectively. Different hugs than you can do with a baby, of course, but it means no less. I *did* get told a few months back by my older one that he no longer wished me to say goodnight with an 'I love you' theme, but I still get the hugs. And a few days ago, when he was in trouble, I actually got an 'I love you mum' type of comment from him.
You will never lose this with Andrew. Be there for him always, and you will never lose that feeling of cuddling him.
I wish you all well, and please do update us when he is well enough to come out of hospital.
Good luck OP,
HF
A wee bit of advertising, if permitted...?
Chelmsford IAM Group are offering a full refund of the £75-00 fee for young drivers under 21 taking the course and passing the test.
Also - a refund of £40-00 for drivers aged 22/25 taking the course and passing the test.
Details on chelmsford@groups.iam.org.uk
One in three crashes involve young drivers under the age of 20 - only 7% of road users are under 21, but account for 12%of drivers injured in road accidents.
Rant over.
Matt35 Read more
Vercin,
My oldest pass, so far, was a young 72 year old...never seen one happier to stick the IAM sticker on the rear window!
Matt35.
Our 17 year old son takes his driving test in 10 days time, and if he passes we intend to buy him a car as a present.
He will mainly be using the car for his ½ mile journey to college, and for his part time job delivering Pizzas, so the Mazda RX8 is obviously not suitable.
This narrows the choice down to a Peugeot 206cc, Peugeot 306cc, Chateram 7, Masda MX5, MG TF, or Morgan 4/4.
Which would be the more suitable?
Insurance is not a problem, as we will be insuring the car in his Grandmothers name, and adding him as a named driver.
Read more
Kept warm with the afterburners the pizza needs to be ordered "crispy"
Eye-opening comment from Birmingham Post today:
"Hospital-acquired infections strike about 100,000 people each year in
England, costing £1 billion and resulting in an estimated 5,000 deaths".
And a fact:
Deaths from road traffic accidents were 3,450 in 2001.
No comment:-(
madf
Read more
Can't see how this one will stay even remotely motoring related. Thread locked.
No Dosh
mailto:Alan_moderator@honestjohn.co.uk
Software delays have pushed back the roll-out of systems to computerise MOT car tests and remove one million illegal and dangerous cars from Britain's roads.
The first computer terminals were due to be installed in MOT testing stations in February 2004, but were delayed until April because of software development problems.
However, a review of the project conducted by PA Consulting and QuinetiQ then concluded that additional testing would be required, delaying the roll-out further.
www.computing.co.uk/News/1153614
Read more
Wager a virtual fiver that EDS have got the contract.
according to www.computing.co.uk/News/1153614 ...
the supplier is Siemens Business Services (SBS)
How do you want to pay me the fiver? {{grin}}
Browse
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Thanks, Dave. I have no problem with that.
"Buyer beware" is fair enough if the buyer is in the trade. Traders that give a "guaranteed minimum trade-in" will have already built a contingency into the car they are selling to cover problems with the traded-in car.
In fact, I think you'll agree, the guaranteed trade-in figure will often already be added in full to what would be a fair price for the car being sold. They give you £1000 trade-in but the car you are buying is £1000 above its true value.
Sorry to have got a bit off topic.