apologise in advance for the long post...

I\'m going to try and be as calm as possible, because right now, I am fuming.

My clutch is playing up on my car, so I took it back to the garage I had it done at to have it looked at/fixed (it\'s 4 months and 5000 miles under a 2 year/20000 miles warranty).

I took it back in on the 4th October (last Monday) and I was told that they would need to make a few phone calls and to get back in touch with them later on.
I rang them up to find out what to do and was told to bring it in on Thursday (7th October), which I did.

When I took it in they said it should be sorted next day and they would ring me. They called me and said it had been fixed but wouldn\'t say what had been done, just that a mech had looked at it and it was \'OK now\'.

I went to pick it up and was told that the gearbox had come off and they had \'sorted it\'. It was EXACTLY the same to drive as when I took it in, plus now it had a squeak which wasn\'t there before.

I looked at it properly when I got home and the gearbox hadn\'t been touched.
It went back on Saturday morning with a few stern words and the garage promised once again to \'sort it\'.

It was there all weekend and I rang on Monday 11th October to find out the status and was told that the part was in and it was next on the ramps, and that it would be finished by that evening/Tuesday (12th October) afternoon.

I heard nothing all today and was passing on my way home so I dropped in to see how it was going, just as one of the mechanics got into it, started it from cold and proceeded to rev the engine until it hit the limiter.
He then went off for a mini joyride of his own (unbeknown to him that I was the owner and was watching).

I started to get a bit annoyed at that point and had a few more stern words with someone there who promised to deal with the mechanic and apologised.

I then spoke to the mechanic who was dealing with it, who informed me that he couldn\'t get a clutch for it for at least another two days (funny how they got one in less than a day when it was done first time) and advised me to take it home and call him in the morning to remind him to phone the motor
parts place to order a new clutch.

I parked it outside the garage to come back and pick it up later, only to find a scratch down one side, which was obviously fresh, and most definitely was NOT there when it was dropped off.

I called the mech out who was dealing with it and he just shrugged and said, \"what do you want me to do?\"
After explaining that I was becoming a bit frustrated with the situation, the fella turned his back and walked off.
I followed and an argument ensued in which I asked if they had a solicitor.
They have and when I said that they\'d be hearing from mine, the mechanic said \"You can\'t do anything, I know where you live. ha ha ha ha\"


What is my best course of action??
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While fretting over the new family car (<6k, must last forever, must be safe) I've been thinking about NCAP scores. Can they really be reliable. I mean that in the scientific sense of "If I did the test 50 times, would I always get the same result?"

I know a very little physics, and a little about how they do the tests. The problem is chaos. The human body can flop around in many differnet ways (it has about 50 degrees of freedom) and in a crash the movements of each of these will be determined by speed, mass, deceleration, involuntary muscle contractions and incidental impacts. Such a system can only be described as complex and will behave chaotically. Which means unpredictably. Some of this probably applies to the car, it will deform differently depending on the nature of the impact.

So when an NCAP report says the dummy received an injurious blow to the side of the head, how much can we read into that? Not much, surely. To really know how safe a car is, they would need to crash many of them in many different ways.

I'm not saying they shouldn't bother. Perhaps this unpredictability is already factored into the scoring (it is only a five point range after all). But I wonder if it's all nonsense. Read more

Peugeot 307 110bhp turbo-diesel, 2 years & 13,000 miles. Following its first major service it intermittently stinks badly of diesel in the cabin, most consistently after running normally a while from cold, until it's at least half-warm, then pulling up at a junction. Fumes clear on moving off. May recur at later junctions, but less.
Garage says 'no fuel system leak' and the exhaust is OK. I suspect an unburnt fuel build up somewhere on the inlet side of the engine which then blows back. I don't think its fuming all the time and I just pick it up in the cabin when I stop.
But why?!
Any clues anyone?
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Currently thinking of getting a diesel, and am quite keen on a Bora I've seen with the 100 PD engine. I have read CBCB (of course!)but would appreciate any advice offered. Is it underpowered for the car, should I forget it and get a 110 Tdi version or a 130PD? The car last had a service 4k ago, presume these have got variable service programmes?

Cheers Read more