January 2005
My Jazz is going in for its first service on Tuesday. In the FAQs on running in a new car it recommends having the transmission oil changed after the first year. A few questions on this...
Is this a fairly normal request at first services?
Being a fairly cynical person where garages are concerned, is there any way of checking that the job has been done as requested or do I just have to take their word for it?
How much is it likely to cost on top of the full service fee?
Thanking you in advance :o)
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If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished Read more
I have the latest Honda Accord with the optional 17 inch alloy wheels. The car was delivered with Mitchelin Pilot 225/45/R17. I had not realised they would give so much more road noise, especially at higher speeds.After a short time I changed the tyres to Bridgestone Er 300 Touring tyres 225/45/R17. Noise levels in and around town were much improved but not at higher speeds.
Not sure to revert to the standard 15 inch alloys with 195/65 R15 or try to find a tyre they will run quieter on the 17 inch alloys than the current Bridgestones.
I have heard that Continental tyres are very quiet albeit soft and wear out quicker.
At the moment I am leaning towards going for the 15 inch tyres and although this would lose some grip should give me a quietr ride over the 17 inch wheel size.
Your comments please.
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Tyre presuures are always as per the Honda recomendation as duplicated on the drivers door post. They are 33 /32 psi f/r.
It all seems to point to the wheels size as mentioned by other authors.
I have a 2004 fiesta & am currently installing a Microscan 400 series alarm.
-- having a bit of a nightmare working out how to wire-in the indicators & courtesy light circuit
Tried the fuse box, can't find anything - wired the alarm wires for the indicators into the column switch originally & this didn't work
I have a copy of the Ford TIS CD but the wiring diagrams on there confuse the hell out of me
Please can someone tell me where to wire-in the alarm triggers for the indicators (L & R) & the interior light circuit
many thanks in advance !!! Read more
DOORS AND BOOT (interior Light)
SWITCHES
Connect to the BLACK/BLUE wire, at the position nr.3 in the dark grey connector,under the steering column, driver?s side.
DIRECTION INDICATORS Connect to the BLUE wire, at the position nr.7, and to the BLUE/RED wire
position nr.6, in the light blue connector in the under the steering column,driver?s side.
I have a Vectra 2.0 DTI - 2001 registered. The dreaded ECU/Problem Light has come on. The light comes on once the car has warmed up, i.e. after 10 minutes driving. The light then stays on and the car dramitically looses power. When standing and revved, it will refuse to exceed 3,500 rpm whilst the light is on. Once the light goes out, its right as rain. Also, since the light has been coming on and the loss of power has been present, when revved, the exhaust is making a strange "whoooossssshing" noise. Ive had the car taken into 2 seperate Vauxhall Garages and had a Tech2 Diagnostic check done. The code displayed is P0400-Critical System Malfunction! The chap at the Vauxhall Garage said to me that its the air flow meter. Luckily for me, ive got another Vectra DTI, so I swapped them over, BUT the same problem persists. I had a similar problem on my 2nd Vectra DTI, on that one it turned out to be a really small vacuum pipe that had come off by the battery, but on this one, IM STUMPED. Can someone please shed a little light on this for me please as having read all the horror stories of Vauxhall Dealers, im very reluctant to take it in. PLEASE PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP ME. Thanks!
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Try VVOC.com, very useful site
For those with broadband
www.tv-ark.org.uk/commercials/commercials_g-l/leyl...m Read more
Thought it was a great site. One of the most reliable cars I ever owned was a Triumph Acclaim. As for the Supermirafiori a neighbour who is a vet had one for over 100,000 miles. Sold it as wreck three years later and told me that he was 'blown off' by it several years later out of a roundabout when in his new BMW 320 ! Liked the Leyland Cars bit best though!
I was at a car lot today, and noticed that they have a v. nice volvo S40 sitting there for £2495.
My car is a 1998 Astra(newer shape) R Reg 1.6 CD 16v with 104000 on the clock
The volvo is 1999 T reg, leather int, climate control, cruise control.... the works... only drawback is it has done 127000 (ex fleet car, FVSH up to 97000)
I can have the volvo for my car plus £200
what do you guys think? Read more
I rented a new S40 and it was absolutely terrible. At any kind of speed the front felt like it was floating off the road. Cramped inside too. I'd keep the Astra!
Recently came across an out-of-warranty Mecedes A-class that was lacking power and generally running badly. I took a look at it and advised the owner that the AFM was probably at fault.
As A-class owners may know the AFM is integrated into the ECU and sits on the right hand side of the engine as one unit. An entire new unit would be needed, so I suggested to the owner that she go to the dealer to get them to sort it out.
Anyway, I saw her yesterday and asked how it had gone. Apparently the ECU cost about £600; 'fitting' was a whopping £100, but what astonished me is that they charged her almost £200 to connect the new ECU to their diagnostic computer to 'code' it to the vehicle chassis. Basically the a new ECU won't talk to the exisiting components unless they all have the same chassis code. An astonishing charge for a couple of minutes work. Read more
I think Merc have, or are, moving over to a situation where the computer in the dealership can't actually do much any more. For the bigger jobs like coding ecu's, they have to plug the car in, then the computer has to be linked up to the central mercedes computer, and that does the recoding remotely. It's all part of the deal to cut out independants. Basic OBDII stuff can still be done as that's a legal requirement, but for an independant to be able to do the bigger stuff like coding, they have to buy the computer, buy an 'account' with the main computer, and put in an ASDL line. Of course, the manufacturers claim this is the only way to ensure all repairers only use the latest updates, which is true to an extent.
This applies to pretty much everything on cars now, even disconnecting things like zenon headlamp modules with the battery disconnected, that headlamp won't work again until it's 'spoken' to the factory.
Doesn't justify £200 though, but may go some way to explaining the high costs. Plus, being an A class, they probably had to recode a load of other stuff that used to work, but then didn't after they'd fiddled around with the software trying to get everything to communicate again.
Did anyone else watch this on Ch4 last night?
It exposed the tactics of some coucil traffic wardens with their easy targets like mums dropping kids off at school (£50 a time) and the parade of shops where anyone shopping or delivering goods gets clobbered too - shop takings down by a third in all of them, so goodbye shops/jobs/council tax any day.
Another scam, which I hadn't heard of before, was the bus lanes where you can drive your car during certain hours/days but the times change along the same lane, with a tiny sign parallel to the road to say so! Naturally, there is a CCTV camera at that point so, unless you know the area and you're pretty nifty, another nip up your shirt.
Finally, we have all wondered where those "increasing numbers" of policemen went. Well, some of them were seen attached for protection to 'environmental wardens' as they issued £50 tickets to people for dropping cigarette butts amongst all the far larger detritus presumably dropped outside the office hours the wardens are bound to keep.
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>>>>What better source of mindless pettiness than the motorist?
DVD I am hoisted on a petard I must have missed and you have pointed it out. Delete "of" and substitute "for" and that was the thrust of what I meant. Put it down to a long hard ride yesterday through some spectactular countryside in perfect weather, followed by a platter of monitor lizard stewed in coconut milk -- yes it does taste just like chicken -- and the Monday morning after effect of an injudicious amount of Pinot Grigio, poured generously by a beautiful and solicitous partner....
At the same time I do concede UK motorists can be astonishingly petty (dons Kevlar and picks up riot shield...)
But surely no more mindless bureaucrat could have conceived the scheme I posted about a few days ago to criminalise the common man: to wit, trucks with bamboo poles festooned with wet rags
designed to soak jay-walking pedestrians. Well it's in operation in Metro Manila and today's papers quote city officials as having made the remarkable discovery that it works only when the trucks are approaching, so that devious (sic) pedestrians simply wait until the passing of the truck before resuming the habits they've claimed a birthright to for decades, i.e. wandering into the road anywhere at any time for whatever reason.
Maybe they should have hung bureacrats off the poles. Not a lot of difference between them and wet rags anyway........
Once in a while we read HJ recommending a reader to reject a car and telling him /her how to go about it. Does anyone know, once the car has been rejected and dealer has taken it back, what happens to it ? Just idle curiousity.
Regards,
John
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DP act refers to individuals and their personal data - info about a car is outside the scope of the DP Act. The freedom of Information Act has just arrived but still only applies to public bodies so car dealers are outside the scope of that as well. Looks like there is no way that info about a rejected car can be made publicly available unless of course someone starts rejectedcars.co.uk and anyone who rejects a car posts the relevant info there (business oppportunity?)
With acknowledgemnets to Pocket GPS World, have a look at the latest Microsoft route planning technology:-
Go to tinyurl.com/4dcn5 and enter the following:
Start: Norway, city Haugesund
End: Norway, city Trondheim
Then press "Get Directions" and lean back for a nice chuckle... NAVTEQ maps, by the way.
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The most obvious flaw in this program is that it fails to take ferry crossings into accounts when it's calculating distance. A flaw I hope you can disable (i.e. "Don't go by Ferry" option) in AutoRoute.
Or should there be a "cheapest route" option?
Browse
The Peugeot 104/Talbot Samba/Citroen equivilent also shared the same engine/box oil.
H