April 2006
Hi there,
Please can you help?
I own a motorhome with a 2.5 Diesel Fiat Ducato engine. I believe this is from a 1985 model (fitted by the previous owner)
Unfortunately, due to the weather it has been standing idle for two months. I seem to have a problem with the gearbox or clutch.
The vehicle is locked in reverse and no amount of brute force or ignorance will move it. I believe it is a clutch problem, because the vehicle moves backwards when turning the engine over with the clutch pedal to the floor. Cable was recently replaced and may need adjusting. I have had difficulties changing gear in reverse on occasions.
Thanks for reading my mail. Any advise would be welcome.
Mike
Read more
SWMBOs Ka in for MOT today and passed as expected. Adisory note that the rack was 'damp'!
Car/Ka is 02 plate with 24k on the clock-seems a little early to be replacing a rack although the car by bar breakdown does mention reports of this.
The test centre had another Ka up in the air having the rack replaced at 4 years and 5900 miles. The owner had approached main dealer as was as shocked as I was especially at this mileage. Dealer sent the lady away with a flea in her ear .
I will keep an extra eye on the fluid level and rack, is the only option to replace or are there any servicable seals in the rack itself?
Garage quoted around £250 + vat to replace when the time comes although he did say it may get worse very slowly and not need replacing for quite some time as long as we keep an eye on levels for safetys sake Read more
seem to have opened a bit of a can of worms here!
have read up on the fluids available and opinions seem just as split here as on the wider net.
thanks for all the info - some head scratching ahead
will keep a close eye on the level and see what happens over the next couple of months. Could be that a stop leak fluid buys some time that could be needed with a planned house move this year .
Agree with the last post- I don't suppose that banging the wheels into the kerb every time the car is parked will have done the steering much good either but there you go . Wheel trims are cheap-maybe this more expensive job could help cure a couple of bad habits at the same time
Just round the corner from home there is a short, straight stretch of road that currently entertains a 30 mph limit, this road has no side turnings and it is generally thought to be daft that it is a 30 and not a 40 mph limit. Nevertheless there are a lot of drivers that will accelerate to 50 or 60 mph before braking in advance of the corner at either end, today I stopped to have a word with a police officer who was pointing a radar gun out of the window of his car, I was interested in whether it was a revenue generation exersise or a genuine attempt to catch the flagrant speeders.
I was pleased, though somewhat surprised, to be greeted with "you are lucky sir, I have the limit set at 40 today and you were only doing 38". While I would not have thought that I was doing 38 mph (and I had better not rely on the Mondeo speedo being optimistic from now on) I was also pleased that the officer did seem to be taking a reasonable approach based on the road conditions and was only targetting flagrant speeders. Read more
Sightly off thread but who dreams up these bizarre limits? Near me there is a charming little village with about 30 houses on one of the road, hedges and fields on the other and signs saying "Please drive slowly thru our village". The legal limit on the road is 60 mph but no one in their right mind would do much than 30 mph anyway. BUT there is a 50 yard cul de sac, as a turning off this road, and that has a 30 limit in it and a de-restriction sign as you turn out of it onto the road thru the village. You couldn't make it up!
A friend of mine has an intermittent starting problem with her 2002 MG ZR 1.4 petrol.
It goes like this:- Get in car, put key in ignition and turn key. Nothing happens. No starter, no click, no sound, no petrol pump noise....nothing!
The dashboard lights come on. The radio works. But nothing happens in the engine dept when you turn the key.
Then count to 10; turn off the ignition, turn it on again and it usually fires up. Doesnt always start 2nd time though. Sometimes you have to repeat this about 6 or 7 times.
However you do have to wait 10 seconds or so before retrying or it just wont fire up. A couple of mechanics have looked at it and have no idea whats going on , nor have they ever seen anything like it before.
Needless to say shes about ready to smash the thing with a tree branch!
Anyone any ideas please?
Cheers
Trev Read more
Not sure of MG, but IIRC 400 immobiliser supplies the earth to starter relay and I think the fuel pump relay,so it may be that thats playing up.
its a fairly common problem on both 200/400 series Rover,though unless its just relays playing up(doubtfull)would look at immobiliser-just a thought as this fault is hard to find?
--
Steve
Hi, I wonder if anyone can help with advice on a small problem with my otherwise-briliant Nissan Almera: an uncooperative 12v socket.
I hadn't bothered with it so far, but set off last week on a long journey (900 miles in 4 days) and tried to plug in the charger I'd bought for my Nokia mobile phone. No luck, so my mobile conked out while I was away. Grrrrr! :(
It's a standard charger, bought from Tesco, worked fine in other cars (VW, Volvo etc): it has two springy things on its shank, and a pin wot sticks out at the end.
When I remove the cigarette lighter and poke the plug into the socket, it won't go all the way in, and the little red light on the charger doesn't shine.
I then thought that it might be a good idea to try the cigarette lighter, and it doesn't work either :(
Peering inside the socket, I see that at the inner end of the socket there appears to be some sort of padding or something like that. Does anyone know if there is something in there I should try to remove, or is this a back-to-the-dealer situation? Read more
The socket on ours works fine - both the lighter, and a speed camera detection thingy I plugged in to test it.
I did notice the adapter only went part way in until wiggled it a bit, then it clicked home.
Sounds like it's the fuse in your case.
Our mains feed has a suspected leak, I think it's coming from where the plastic pipe joins the old copper under ground. Am I expected to pay? Read more
Mark,
"Passing quickly over the 'Pioneer don't make hi-fi' argument"
the Pioneer PL12D turntable was widely regarded as a budget hi-fi deck in it's day.
JH
My 1999 Fiesta has a leak from the cylinder head core "expansion plug" whats the best way to get the rusted plug out of the head once ive taken the head off and the best way to replaced it Read more
thanks ill let you hnow how i get on
Whilst dring home last evening I lost power from the engine and when trying to acellerate heard rattleing noise from the engine. Further on when moving off from the traffic lights clouds of smoke came from the exhaust.
I feel this could be expensive !!
Has anyone any ideas of the problem and if so is it a stock fault and do BMW help with costs? The car is four years old an has covered 40K miles as has been regularly serviced.
Peter T
slt Read more
Bmwland.co.uk is the best forum for info, a 320d or 330d just blew its turbo and there is a thread or two on blown turbo's.
www.bmwland.co.uk/talker/viewtopic.php?t=27135
Rest assured this isn't another choose my car thread, but having spent the afternoon buried in What Car, Test Drive and various websites, one question is plaguing me.
At what point does it make economical sense to switch to diesel? 20,000 miles per year, 30,000+ or as little as 10,000? The initial price of the new car is higher and the diesel itself is more expensive (I think - sure it was last time I looked) but it lasts longer. There must be some kind of cut off point, and I'm sure someone somewhere has done the sums!
Read more
Irrelevant...keeping an old car or buying second hand is far more 'green' than buying new. The costs of production and 'whole of life' costs must be taken into account for 'greenness'. An old Mondeo V6 (say 1999) bought now and run for three years is far more green than buying a new TDCi and more economical.
The Derv v Petrol cash question only comes into play if you are buying a new car and must buy a new car. For the rest of us, buy what want, what suits your pocket, lifestyle etc etc.
Thats why we have a Subaru Forester XT for my 8,000 suburban miles pa and my wife has a diesel Trajet for her kids rota and family trips doing just over 10,000 miles pa.
--
Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
Those who have these cars may already have experienced how difficult it is to change these bulbs. Having invested in a Haynes manual, it is much much much easier if you remove the wheel arch liner first.
HTH Read more
Now you tell me!!!!
When I was doing mine I had a look at the wheel arch but that didn't (at first glance) look too easy either!
Browse
.jpg)
Thanks, I took your advice.
Mike.