March 2006
Did anyone else have fun in the strike-related chaos yesterday?
I was unfortunate enough to have to attempt my 30 mile commute across Newcastle city centre. This was made 100% worse by the Tyne bridge being closed due to some looney climbing up it!
In total it took me around 3 hours to complete my normal 1 hour journey and I was slighty miffed to say the least.
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I have a SE 300 auto. H reg.. For some reason the car looses power as soon as I try to go over 70mph.
I have taken it to a Mercedes garage but they cannot find anything wrong with it.
It has 35,000 miles on the clock and has been seviced.
I have already paid quite a bit for the service and to Mercedes to check the car.
Does anyone have any pointers please?
Thanks.
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Thanks for reporting back - much appreciated.
A timing problem on a 35k car? If you find out any more about why and how it happened, that will be of interest too.
My parents are going away this weekend and as they are flying from an airport near us are leaving my mum's 5 year old Fiesta at our house.
My mum rang her insurance to put me on her insurance so my wife could use my car. They initially quoted about £20 - £10 to add and £10 admin. When she called back with a bit more info this had increased to £65 for one week's cover. Needless to say she told them where to get off - her annual policy is only £104.
I'm late thirties with a full NCB, held a licence for 20 years and never had an accident, so hardly a risky driver.
The irony is the car will still be left at our house and will still be covered for theft on my mum's policy and I can drive it on my own policy third party only anyway. Read more
Ah, I see now.
Hi Guys and Ladies,
Going to change my tyres this week and wanting to pay Kwik Fit / ATS prices, anyone recommend a good independent in the Manchester Area (north/central) for tyres? Looking for Goodyear NT5's 205/55/16 or similar brand.
thanks
Lee Read more
I've also used Thistlethwaites in Bolton and had good prices and good service.
Preston might be a bit too far for you to go- but Jewel Tyres on Fylde Road, Presotn are good in my experience. Its a small back place off Fylde Road, no thrill's but good prices and don't expect to pay on plastic !
I have to carry-out some work on our Peugeot 306 which involves draining the coolant. As I have a full bottle of VW G12 antifreeze I was going to use this for the refill. Am I risking disaster? Or if I make sure I completely flush the old stuff out should I be okay? Or should I just use "normal" antifreeze? Read more
My Glysantin G33 mix is apparently ethylene glycol based AND OAT.
www.performancechemicals.basf.com/ev-wcms-in/inter...s
A trade centre near me has plenty of one year old new Focus 'Trend' Tdci 90s. They look to be good value at 12000 Euros (about 7,800 pounds??) with 18000kms (about 12000 miles)on them. The estate is 13000 euros. They will have and one years factory gaurantee left on them. They will be due their first service after being bought.
I was just wondering if this car feels underpowered, it having the smallest power output on the new Focus diesel range???
Any experiences???
This centre is in Grenoble, France. You often see good deals on good cars in which the French have little interest, e.g. Fords, Skodas, Nissans. The French buy French cars.' Why'would start a very interesting thread.
You can take a look at ac38.com
Then click on 'notre stock'
The word 'break' means estate. Otherwise, you should understand I think. Cheers and thanks to all for the pleasure of reading your
postings. Read more
>>it's the torque and there is plenty of that.>>
Plus knowing exactly when to change up...:-)
Which is what many people don't understand about diesels.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
I am currently looking at a Ford Focus estate for a new company car and have a few questions
Why has Ford appeared to have replaced the PSA 1.6 diesel with the old 1.8 ?
(I know this has been covered in a topic on the C-Max recently but if anyone knows any more it would be much appreciated as I have a mental scar with Ford diesels dating back 10 years to my first company car, a 1.8d Escort)
How will either engine compare to the 1.9 Tdi 105 ?
I do around 50k miles a year mainly on A road dual carriageways and single ones with lots of hills and good overtaking oppertunities
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I seem to recall there were supply problems with the PSA diesels early on in the Focus 2's life. A friend couldn't even get a build date for a 2.0 TDCi 136 he wanted to order. He was told by a dealer that PSA were apparently prioritising their own models when allocating engines, and Ford were simply getting what was left over. Plus of course the diesel Focus is itself a massive seller.
Maybe this situation has something to do with it??
On Monday I visited a local retail park and parked next to a new Lexus 300. When getting out of the car I noticed a mobile phone in the pocket between the seats and thought 'there's an invitation for a local scroat'. I then look in the car further and there was a Nikon SLR digital camera sat on the passenger seat. Needless to say sitting on the backseat was a lovely looking Dell laptop!!
There was so much hi-tech gear in there I was suspicious of it being a set up, but I have the feeling the owner was just plain stupid! How many times do we need to be told not to leave valuables on siplay? Read more
Around 1960 a frisky Guards officer of my acquaintance stole a
Lancia B20 in Chelsea and drove it to Oxford and back,
making the return trip on the old A40 from Headington roundabout
to Denham in an alleged 37 minutes (I wasn't present so
didn't time it myself).
Afterwards he returned the Lancia to its parking place. We used
to wonder whether the owner had even noticed.
Denham Eh! Did you ever use the Lambert Arms P.H. just off the Denham roundabout on the way into Uxbridge? circa 73-77
Happy days..............M.D.
Guys - My 2002 Mazda 323TD has just failed the N Ireland MOT because the smoke readings exceeded the limits by a wide margin (avg 8.7m-1). My local franchised Mazda dealer prepared the car for me (£600, including new timing belt!) and they will be taking the car in again for adjustment/retest. My question is can they reduce the readout down to 3.0m-1 simply by adjustment or am I looking at a major part replacement? Read more
Im not familiar with the 323 but on some diesels the injection timing is mechanically controlled (eg a seperate belt that drives the pump) and there is plenty of scope for incorrect adjustment of the pump to cause problems. If the dealer has just replaced the timing belt then I would have thought that they will have had an impact on the injection timing.
My company has suffered twice in two visits to a well known auction in witney,
First time a towbar pin and jump socket were removed from our recovery van and today the blighters removed all the lenses from our light bar(breaking them in the process)
Now im not blaming the auction as the van was 500 yards from the site but us traders need to be aware that these lowlifes are targeting recovery/breakdown vehicles in the surrounding roads BEWARE
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That wasn't the picture that was painted by the local BBC news! When I watched, I seem to recall that they thought traffic (in the morning at least) was not as bad as was expected. Seemingly then, the afternoon rush hour was a different matter.
Because my Uni was shut due to this strike (even though I wasn't supposed to be in anyway) I worked from home. A mate came over by bus in the afternoon, and because my car is currently paralysed I couldn't give him a lift home, so he had to catch another bus. This was when I was made aware something was wrong, because it took 50 minutes for a bus to turn up, and it wasn't the one it was supposed to be. A bloke rang Nexus (Tyne and wear PTA technically) and was told Newcastle is a standstill. In other words all the buses that had gone to Newcastle were stuck and thus hadn't come back!