Driving one of these things today (the 2 door) made me wonder what on earth people see in them? Slow, extremly noisy, the engine refinement possibly the worst i've ever experienced in 20 years of motoring, awful gearbox not only to try and figure out how to use but the way it's an auto trying to be a manual by dropping rev's and lurching through each gearchange. I felt positively unsafe at 70mph, very unstable, damm frightening when your're overtaken by a lorry spraying up water. Cramped inside, Engine difficult to access and so is washer bottle etc etc

So why the loyal following? Now i'm a petrolhead and I tried hard to like this car but what's the attraction? Owners just love 'em. Just can't see it myself. It advances the art of driving pleasure not one bit. (Mods: not an anti-car rant just at a loss to understand this vehicle)

Any Smartheads out there want to comment?
Read more

Just a quick point i would like to put forward. Sometimes the make of tyre recommended by the manufacturer is recommended for a reason.
I learnt the lesson the hard way on our X300 jaguar. The tyre size is 225/55/R16. When i needed two rears, i went to our local Merityre, where the fitter told me to fit only the recommended Perilli P6000J (Z) 225/55/R16, and that he would not fit any others on the car. At £125 a shot (even though a lower price than any other outfit for the same tyre) I thought he was trying to scam me, so i went elsewhere and got two Continental sportcontacts 225/55 R16W's. From then for 2 months the car started to tramline from the back end on motorways, making for very scary driving. I went to make sure balancing was fine, and it was, so i went back to Merityre where the bloke took one look, tuttuted and scolded me for not putting P6000's on the car. He told me that the Perillies were designed specifically for the Jaguar (hence the J marking next to P6000 on the sidewall), and that they were different from other tyres as they had re-enforced sidewalls, on a car with a weight and power such as this, at motorway speeds the sidewalls start to deform slightly, leading to tramlining, which can be very dangerous.
The cost of the whole incident was 2 (refurb alloys from our local specialist at 50 pounds a shot, since the tyres were almost new and 80 pounds each, and thus could be used as a spare instead of the space saver), and two new perilli 6000's from the tut tutting gent, who i must say has been fab. Which immediately returned the car's handling back to the original handling.
Sid Read more

I seem to recall that it was illegal to display advertising alongside motorways. I know that some people get 'round this by using lorries parked in fields, but yesterday whilst travelling on the M4 I noticed two large wooden hoardings, supported by hay bales, just before junction 18.
Have backroomers noticed any more of these?

Happy Christmas to you all!

P. Read more

Hi All,

Does anyone know if the post office forward date Car tax when it runs out on Jan 1st? Or do I need to wait until Jan 4th to get this if I dont want to lose a month?

many thanks

Sophie

Read more

we have a new 2.2 HDi and have noticed over the past month or so 2 particular problems/issues
i. after normal round town driving of 10 minutes or more, there is a growing smell of burning which is stronger at the front of the car, but is also making its way into the cabin. It is a 'plastic/rubber-burning' type of smell. Occassionally there is a small whisp of smoke/steam that comes out from under the car, again front left/right.
ii. when we stop the car and turn the engine off, there is sometimes a whine-ing noise coming from under the car, as if there is a small motor still running. The only way to stop it is to open and close some/all the doors and un-lock/re-lock the car.

We have had RAC (AKA Citroen Assist) out twice. The first time the guy found some bitumen type material on the exhaust. This may be from the underneath of the car or from the road. It seemed to make a temporary difference to the smell problem.

However smell problem is growing again, so second RAC man here just this morning. Took it for a drive but could find nothing. Maybe the rain and wet roads was preventing whatever is burning from getting hot this time round.

Clues from previous postings here and elsewhere are:
i. handbrake not fully released (warning light needs to be adjusted by software apparently)
ii.bitumen-tpye material fallen onto exhaust
iii.FAP problems: stands for Filtre à particules and is a device to remove sooty particles from the exhaust stream.
iv. Aux-Heater not working properly. Don't have much of a clue what this is.
v. Motors that drive the electric sliding doors are not switching off properly.

We are about to head down the M4 to Wales for Xmas so we'll see what happens. Any further info I find out I will post here but if anyone has any thoughts,ideas, answers, etc. they would be gratefully recieved.

Read more