March 2004
Sorry big G, couldn't resist bringing this to your attention ;-)
www.americanprofile.com/issues/20010930/20010930ne...p
andymc Read more
Iam considering buying a headunit for the car- as I am going abroad - will buy from there (cheaper as always!).
The question is - will it pick up uk radio frequency - different uk stations - including using the search function?
Or will it have to be modified/ tuned to do this?
I suppose anyone who has imported a japanese car will know this? Read more
Affects AM as well Im afraid. Am stations are on different offsets in diffrent countries. Wasnt a problem with old analogue twiddle the button tuners, but is with digital ones.
For my motorbike, it is a mandatory condition of insurance that it's not just alarmed, immobilized, and chained, but also garaged whenever it is left unattended at home.
My wife's 306 is also garaged overnight, as is our - not 'my' as she has a car and 'we' have a car! ;-) - V70, so knowing that 'her' garage will be out of commission for a few weeks whilst building work is done, I thought I'd ring the insurer to notify of the change of conditions.
Was there a change of premium? No
Were they interested? No
Were they surprised I bothered to call? Yes
I asked why, as the schedule clearly says 'garaged overnight' and this must have an affect on risk, and the reply was 'we just want to know, that's all. There is no affect on premium'.
Amazed. Read more
When you get home, and get out of your car to open the garage door, ring your insurers to let them know your car will be unattended with the keys left in for about 10 seconds.
Just to let them know, you understand: there would be no increase in premium, and no risk. Until you claim, that is.
I?ve got a fairly complicated scenario that I?m hoping that the backroom can help me out on:
I?ve just bought a car. The previous owner only had the car for four weeks, and has sent the top of the V5 off to register the car in his name. He hasn?t received the new log book back yet. All I?ve got is the bottom green bit of the V5, which is blank (i.e. he hasn?t filled in his name).
The previous owner will (hopefully) forward the new logbook when he receives it, at which point I will then send it off re-registering it in my name.
In the meantime, the tax runs out at the end of March.
How do I go about taxing the vehicle? Should I fill in the green bit with my details? Will this allow me to tax the vehicle, bearing in mind I do not have the reminder slip?
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Cheers Richard, i was hoping that it would be as simple as that, but anticipated some pointless red tape tripping me up at some point!
I did share your concerns about the length of time he had the car for. He did provide a credible reason (too long to bore you with here), and everthing else checked out 100%, so i had to take him at face value - time will tell if i was right to or not!
After the car (Honda Accord) has been running for a while (20 minutes plus) there is a distinct burning smell coming into the car when the aircon is on, but not when the normal heater/fan are on. It\'s a sort of an electrical burning smell.
Anyone know what this could be? Read more
Thanks, I'll have a look - how do I check the compressor - what would I be looking for???
I think I can see which belt it's run off.
Travelling east as a passenger on A64 round York yesterday saw an unmarked small van in a layby with two cameras on tripods behind it facing traffic flow. After everyone had checked their speed (!), when you were close enough to read the portable roadsign by it, it said "Road tax enforcement". Anyone else come across on of these?
Tim{P} Read more
They are doing good business this afternoon on the A308 by the Thames at Hampton Court.
Several drivers were "answering questions" as I went by.
Off with their heads I say.
We are used to the vans in our region but this was the first time I have seen a 5cwt sized van doing the job. It had both the back van doors open.
They leave the signs out for a few days to get a few more thinking. A very cost effective warning.
I thought of this question this morning, stuck behind a tanker and thinking too of the thread on taxing caravans.
Is the tax on an articulated lorry assessed on the tractor unit or the trailer, or both?
A local haulier has a fleet of tankers, adapted for food, hazardous chemicals, farm supplies, grain, etc, and also trailers for containers, cattle, etc.
Presumably he doesn't need a tractor for every trailer, so might have perhaps 50 tractors and 100 or more trailers. The trailers are obviously the bits carrying the weight, ie damaging the roads, but he can only be using 50 at any one time.
How is vehicle licence tax assessed, and would this have a precedent re taxing caravans?
And when I see a trailer unit parked on its own in a lay-by, its tractor having gone off to pull a different unit, does the trailer have a separate VEL identity, or is it just a non-vehicular piece of metal left in the road? Read more
It's the tractor that attracts the tax. The rates are astronomical compared to cars but entirely justified in terms of wear and tear to roads - I read somewhere once that road damage is proportional to the fourth power of the weight - so (if this is true) a rig that has 10 times the weight of a car will wear out the road 10,000 times as fast. Hence the grooves in lane one and two, but not in lane three.
Hi all,
I've been looking through the previous threads looking for an answer to a problem that I'm having with my 2.0 DTI 1999 Vectra. So far I have found a few links, but they nearly all point to the Air Flow Meter (AFM), I have tried swapping it with a spare, but it didn't make a difference. However when I unplugged the AFM my ECU light came on and I couldn't rev the car over 4000 RPMs. So I'm doubtful that could be the problem.
The problem is that when you accelerate between 2500 - 3500 revs the car seems to loose all power for about 1-2 seconds. It then picks up and continues to accelerate for a couple of seconds before loosing power again. It just keeps doing it in all gears except 1st (and only in 2nd when very cold). In all other gears the problem is constantly there. It get's really annoying accelerating from 70-80+ mph.
Anyway when I first noticed the problem I took a look under the bonnet and I could hear air from somewhere. I traced it to a split in the Turbo pipe, which a local garage replaced for me. I had assumed that replacing the pipe would fix the problem, but no such luck. Has anyone got any other ideas on what could be causing this.
Thanks for your time guys. Read more
Thanks for the reply. I decided to ring Vauxhall and let them know that I had unplugged the sensor a few weeks ago, and asked them to let the technician know so that he could double check that the sensor did need replacing.
Anyway I picked the car up after having the sensor replaced and it runs perfectly.
I often hear people in places other than the Backroom going on about how cheap cars are on Ebay and what bargains they get, yet my recent studies of cars available on Ebay have made me decide to try and sell my car there when i choose to do so. Look at this:
cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2465...4
That price is just silly. A 96N E34 540 touring apparently sold for £5100 on there the other day as well.
Yet some stuff receives quite derisory bids:
cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2465...1
Is it a case of photographs not telling the whole story, or are there both very cheap and very expensive cars selling on Ebay? That 535 looked big value to me at that price if it was what it said it was.
Has anyone here had experience of selling their car via Ebay, i would be very interested in anything anyone has to say.
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For anything worth more than about £20, I almost always use a sniping programme on Ebay as I'm sure plenty of people do. My choice is www.bidnapper.com but a quick Google will reveal a few more.
Does anyone have any recomendations for a quick drive in and out oil change on my Mondeo- National, ATS, Kwik Fit etc? I remember reading National did oil changes with a 15w-40 oil for £15, but do any of these type of places have a cheap offer running for an oil change with 5W-30?
If its twenty quid or so i cant see the point doing it myself, last time 5litres of 5w-30 cost me about £9 plus £3.50 for a new sump plug (Ford changed the design, you cant buy sump plug washers for late mk.1 face-lift mondeos, you have to buy a whole new sump plug to go with it! Why!??)
Ben Read more
Oil and filter change using all Ford parts at our local RapidFit is about £24.99 IIRC.
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Interesting to learn I was never a serious rider; often I started off by myself, and anyway the others never kept up!