October 2004
I think that I must be sharing my plip code with someone else. Tonight I came out of the supermarket with trolley full of shopping to find the car unlocked. I know that I locked it because I checked, heard the locks go home and saw the indicators flash the requisite number of times. I take the precaution always of putting on a locking steering wheel bar, and generally leave the glove box open. I hope that it doesn?t happen again and the wrong kind of person notice it.
Come to think of it, did I unlock someone else?s car when I arrived?
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Clapton loses licence in France
Eric Clapton won't be driving in France for a while. Police said yesterday they clocked the rock star speeding down a highway at 134mph, 216 km/h and suspended his licence. Radar caught Clapton whizzing down a highway in his Porsche 911 Turbo at 53mph, 86 km/h above the speed limit, police said. He was stopped near the town of Merceuil, south of Beaune, near Dijon and 300 kilometres east of Paris. Police confiscated Clapton's British driver's licence, suspending his right to drive in France. Clapton, 59, a 16-time Grammy Award winner, took the bad news well, agreeing to a photo session with gendarmes. After paying a £515, 750-euro fine, he then rolled away in his Porsche -- this time in the passenger seat with his secretary behind the wheel, police said.
Clapton can still drive in Britain, but he will have to recover his licence through a diplomatic route, police said.
Has anyone else lost their licence this way in France?
If so how long did it take to recover the licence? Read more
Juan Pablo Montoya got done by the gendarme last year in his BMW X5 doing 126mph. He got a ?1200 fine and a ban for four months.
His responce to the gendarme was "I don't see the problem, I'm used to going fast..."
I have a new C-Max. The Message Centre in the dashboard offers a choice of "steering settings": Standard, Sport and Comfort. This feature is not described in the manual. The Ford telephone helpline can't offer technical advice and the dealer who supplied the car has never heard of it!!
Does anyone know what this does? I've tried changing the settings but can't detect any difference between them.
Mike Read more
5th gear, testing the new Focus referred to three settings for the electic power steering.
Some commonality there?
i have just got a turbo diesel astra. when i start it from cold it pumps out loads of smoke for about 30seconds/1 min then all is fine. it only smokes lots from cold. should it do this or not as this is the first diesel i have had. Read more
Try tracing the cable back from the glowplugs. It is fairly large, and unlike the other underbonnet cabling. Even if it disappears into a harness you should soon locate the same size & colour cable.
Relays for this usually on inner wing, and pretty large. May have an integral control unit for timing, and will have a pretty large feed from the battery
Tough about the plugs being tight. Previous strings pointed out this could be a problem. Should only be about 11lbf or less
Looks like my heater matrix has sprung a leak since I've changed the coolant, maybe my efforts to purge an airlock damaged it, or the crud inside it has unblocked a leak.
Looking at the Haynes manual I am cross-referenced to virtually every chapter where it seems I have to take the whole insides of the car apart to get the thing out. Has anyone attempted this job, as is it as bad as it seems?
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Megane heaters seem to be a problem at the moment! I flushed the system out in mine a couple of weeks ago to try & get the heater working but I was only partially successful - it only works when the engine has few revs on it and is pumping the water through hard! I too looked at the Haynes manual and it looks a nightmare to change - luckily I don't think I've got a leak so I'm getting the local garage to flush it with something more powerful than I can get in the local motor factor.
Good luck.
Taking the Passat into the dealer today for a warranty item, when bing bong dashboard lights up with CHECK BRAKE PADS.
What was going to be a free visit turned into £123 for changing the front pads. £45 pads plus one hour labour £60 pus VAT.
Must be grateful that discs are still OK at 54K.
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I wasna fu but just had plenty. Read more
BMWs have condition-based servicing (like many others) - i.e. the green lights vanish progressively, and when they are all gone a yellow light appears asking you to take it in. If you are naughty and forget, a red light appears.
I phoned the dealership to tell them that my car had asked me to arrange a service. They said that they knew - they had a remote control which they activated when they were short of work.
I know the guy - very good sense of humour. So I'm sure he was joking. well, 99.9% sure, anyway.... ;-)
Is it possible to edit ECN programming to allow controle for extra cusomized features Read more
Go on, give us a clue. The car involved perhaps? The features you want?
hi, i decided to take the good advice supplied by you guys and bought the volvo v70 t5 ,glad i did brilliant car, however one more question on perusing the owners handbook it states that the coolant needs never changing, which to some one who has in the past always tried to change it every couple of years seems a bit strange, any views bearing in mind the engine is all aluminium alloy construction and i would have thought corrosion could a problem, or has the quality of antifreze moved on to a stage where this is inded the case? lastly anyone care to recomend a particular brand as volvo want a arm and a leg for theirs, thanks Read more
My VW Bora has a similar "for life" anti-freeze (G12 A8D at 40 per cent concentration), which is effective down to -25C and protects alloy parts in the cooling system against corrosion.
If there is, by any chance, a need to top up or an additive with the specification TL-VW 774 CD listed on the container, it must be done at a 40 per cent concentration to maintain the protection.
VW highlights that it is the only coolant that can be used, cannot be mixed with other additives including its own G 11, that using the wrong additives can be very detrimental to the anti-corrison effect and that the subsequent corrosion damage can lead to coolant loss, resulting in major engine damage.
It adds that G 12 is red in colour - if it is brown its has been mixed with another additive and should be changed immediately to avoid potential serious functional failures or engine damage.
I normally take such "don't use other products" warnings with a pinch of salt, but in these sort of cases it's not worth risking your engine.
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What's for you won't pass you by
Some people's behaviour is just unbelievable at times.
On my regular route to work starting at 7am I get to recognise familiar cars and drivers each day.
There is one man who every time we stop at lights turns his lights out. Not just headlights - an old world piece of courtesy long since obsolete - but the sidelights as well. Then when we move again he invariably forgets to turn them back on, until a succession of cars have flashed him. As soon as it becomes only slightly dark, rather than pitch dark, he turns off all his lights permanently.
Just to complete the stereotype - yes, he is wearing a cap. Read more
What about a Renault Scenic? In the rain the windscreen wipers
turn off when you come to a stop to save battery power, amazing!
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It helps you to stay relaxed when someone hits you head on as you did not see them?
>>What will they think of next.
Maybe Ford will allow YOU to select wipers when you have wetted the screen rather than smear crud around. Progress?
Is automatically switching off dipped beams when the ignition is switched off a good idea. Having this feature on my old Sierra, without a lights left on warning buzzer, has saved me having a flat battery in the past when I have left lights on from 0900 to 1730.
We've all seen it..... pedestrian presses button on crossing, sees gap in traffic, crosses - then the lights turn red. So, if first to arrive, what do you do? Wait at empty crossing, trying to avoid looking at smirking pedestrian for fear of increasing blood pressure - or (heaven forbid!) creep over crossing and hope no-one of a constabulary nature is watching? Read more
Looking at it from a different angle here, and perhaps slightly off the subject, my use of crossings as a part-time pedestrian who is also a car driver is as follows:
1) I check out the whole scenario before deciding which of the following actions to carry out.
2) I don't interrupt the flow of traffic if there is likely to be a safe opportunity to cross fairly soon (depends on time of day, location of lights etc.).
3) If traffic is heavy and I have pressed to cross, but while waiting a suitable gap apppears, I tend to wait till the lights turn anyway - because I know how annoying it is to be stopped by a red light and no-one crossing.
4) If there are younger children at the other side, I (normally)use the crossing properly, irrespective of traffic flow, in order to set an example.
As a car driver, I find those stretches of road where there are Pelican crossings every hundred yards or so (as in the centre of Sheffield) extremely frustrating - they're a bit excessive, I think, but do they perhaps they have a dual purpose, in that they're also intended to break up the traffic flow?
But then again, Sheffield City Council don't much like car-drivers anyway.
Browse
Unlikely as it takes a fairly heavy impact to set off airbags.
In the course of a former job I came into contact with a very upmarket breakers yard on a regular basis and it was amazing to walk around the stored vehicles and see how bad some of the impacts were and the airbags had not deployed.
The really worrying part was the yard used to sell the undeployed airbags on to back street garage bodyshops!