May 2006
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Possibly looking at a 160k mile 1.9 tdi pd sport later today, it`s at £2900 fsh etc,years mot. i have looked at the car breakdown,anything else i should think about or is that a good car for the price or too higher a price.
Cheers
Ray
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25k a year is good -- beneficial, healthy -- mileage. price doesn't seem out of kilter with those found on a quick AutoTrader check. If it has been looked after, it must be good for another 100k at least.
As a lot of you will know i enjoy my older cars.
Just looked through practical classic magazine.Ah it must be spring time or early summer, as the headline is "Go topless this summer" Groan! i've seen this headline in just about every Classic mag.
All these mags if you read every issue for about 2 years sure enough they start to recycle articals .
How many articaqls on a buyers guide to morris minor do we need!
One make magazines are even worse Landrover owner for exmple. I used to subscribe to, but how many times do we need to know where the weaknesses of a series 3 LR are!
I know these mags only have a limited subject but a bit more of a dynamic way of presentation may help Read more
>The four main classic car mags, Classic Car&Sportscar, >Classics, Classic cars and Practical Classics seem for me as a >monthly reader of all of them, to be split into two catagories.
>In the main, Practical Classics and Classics concentrate on >cars the most of us can afford to run, whereas the other two >feature many more exotic cars that even if I had money, I may >never see one.
I've read this before & it's wrong, Classic & Sporst Car is the only mag I subscribe to, why? A. the excellent journalisim
B. the deadly accurate writing & mostly the fact that they cover the broad spectrum. Grabbing one at random off the pile in my office (April 2006) it covers buying a cheap super car for circa £5K up, the indepth buying guide is the Mazda MX5, yes their is an article on a one off rolls royce & a secret corvette but I enjoy those articles as much as the one about the day to day tribulations of running an MG Midget or a hybrid Mk1 Escort.
Classic Cars has lost it's market dominating position & is now copying C&SC, the other 2 are so downmarket as to be not worth worrying about. Incorrect & poor articles with facts generally wrong, endless repetition, articles using wrong info off of the web.
My factory-fitted Rover Blaupunkt CC32 radio cassette player in my 25 IXL has developed "wow and flutter" symptoms on Side A and also emits a tape transport mechanism click. I've tried both wet and dry cleaning tapes to no avail. Side B plays perfectly. Any ideas please?
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>>Can you use surgical spirit then??
Yes, I have often used it on video machines so will do your cassette
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Steve
My wife hasn't had a car for over a year and she is yearning for another, but she is on maternity leave at the moment so finances are tighter than they have been. We were discussing this and agreed that when she goes back to work a priority will be a car for her.
Last week she was out and saw a notice on one of the lamposts on the street next to ours. It was from the Council and said it is applying to provide parking for 'Leeds Car Club'.
Went to the local library and it seems we are to get two 'pay as you drive' cars in our area. The current scheme in Leeds is done through 'Whizzgo' and looking at the info this could provide a good answer to my wife's car needs as she only needs a car for occasional journeys.
Join the club for £25, pay £4.95 per hour plus 4p per mile (first 10 miles free) - this covers ALL costs (cheaper if you buy blocks of time). Her last car cost about £400 a year just to insure, so on this basis she could have a Whizzgo car for 70-80 hours a year.
The only major downside is you have to drive Citroen C3 (only joking!!).
Is anyone a member of such a scheme and is it as cost effective as it appears?
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It was the Channel 5 car show (5th Gear?) that did a piece on Streetcar - it was a postive piece and there's a link to it on their website - streetcar.co.uk
As it happens I joined them a couple of weeks ago. No joining fee - you pay a £150 deposit, refundable when you leave. The whole process was simplicity itself - I signed up via their website, they called me minutes later to confirm my identity via a conference call with the DVLC and my membership card arrived in the post the following day!
That afternoon I was cruising round Richmond Park in a brand new Golf that I had collected from its reserved parking space at Richmond station car park. The pricing is fair - £5/hour with discounted daily and weekly rates. Over 30 miles a day you get charged something like 19p/mile. Thus far I've always got a car when I wanted one - there are several fairly close to me in Twickenham, Kew, Chiswick etc. The cars are insured with a £500 excess. If you pay a monthly fee you can reduce this to £250 or £0.
For someone like me who only needs a car occasionally it is ideal, and I'm sure that this could be a viable alternative to running a second car for many people. Of course it will never be as convienient as owning your own car, but it's close enough and it saves me the money and hassle of a car that just sits outside my house most of the time.
Two things - smoking and pets in the cars are not allowed, and one way rentals are not possible - you must return the car to where you picked it up from. >>
My other half has been borrowing my car. He bought another one but couldn't pick it up for 2 weeks because his insurance company took 2 weeks to send out the new paperwork. I consider this incompetance. He rang up several times and they couldn't even tell him what date it had been processed! My car was damaged while parked outside his house. It was damaged this last week. Had they got off their bums and sent out the insurance docs it wouldn't have been there. Is it possible to sue his insurance company for the damage? If I claimed on my comprehensive policy that has him as a named driver would my insurance company be able to sue his for damage, win and make sure my ncb and his ncb on his policy was unaffected?
I know it is a long shot but I am p'd off at having to pay out to repair the dent due to a) local scally so and sos that want drowning and b) insurance company incompetance. I am pretty certain which little yobs caused the damage but without proof the police will do nothing and I want my pound of flesh from somewhere :-)
teabelly Read more
You've still got a case (or rather he has) for making a big fuss - chase them hard, and offer to take them to the insurance ombudsman if no joy.
I have a BMW 520, year 2000 model. When I apply the brakes, there is a severe juddering noise from the offside front side. Also the ABS and the ASC warning lights come on sometimes, although not all the time, not necessarily while braking. I took it to a BMW main dealer who thought it is probably a siezed brake caliper and possibly a bad ABS sensor. They think it will be around £500 to repair. Does that sound like a reasonable diagnosis/price?
The problem first manifested itself when the car came back from some bodywork repairs. The repairs involved replacing the nearside front wing (i.e. the opposite wing to the brake that has the caliper problem) and spraying the front bumper. The bodywork repairs were carried out at a bodyshop unconnected with the BMW dealer that looked at the brakes. Could something have happened during the repair process that could have given rise to the brake problem?
thanks
Julian
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This certainly appears to be a misbehaving ABS system. To prove it remove the ABS supply fuse and try out the brakes again. If the fault has gone then in all probability the ABS sensor and/or the wiring back to the ABS electronic control is damaged. The diagnostics on this vehicle shpuld, however, identify the fault to the dealer's test gear.
Why don't they give change? I had reason to visit Stockport town centre for the first time in a while, and had assumed parking was still £1 for the first 2 hours, but no it has gone up to £1.40 (presumably to encourage more shoppers!). As I didn't have anything smaller than a £, had to give the machine £2, for which I got the same two hours.
Bad enough the charges have gone up, but could the machine not be set to give a longer time if a higher amount is put in (there is no time limit after all - you can stay all day if you pay enough), or better still could it not give change? Read more
It would surely be easy to calculate how long you can stay based upon a cost per minute. Checking for expirey would be no more complicated than it is now and would certainly be more popular than the licenced robbery that currently takes place.
How many people faced with the choice of overspending by a quid simply opt for the not paying and taking a flyer at it option?
I doubt if the fine covers the cost of prosecution.
JaB
......
BMW 850, mid to late 90's.
Does this make me:
a. insane
b. blind
c. Someone who truly appreciates a classic modern car, a car of my youth, that really sums up the in-yer-face yuppe mentality.
0 t0 60: 5.8secs, 20mpg, 380BHP, 5.6litre V12. What more does a man want? Oh, insurance group 20 as well.
So, who wants to have me sectioned and who agrees? Oh, and I seem to remember Adam wanted a V6 a while ago - how about this - its not a V6 but a V12, see twice as good.....
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Drive Your Way - If anything can, TerraCan
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If I won a big jackpot I'd still drive a fairly ordinary car most of the time - probably a new VW Touran TDI. Then I'd buy a selection of more interesting vehicles, some old, some new, plus somewhere to keep them. I don't think there'd be a Bugatti Veyron or any Ferraris, Porsches or Lamborghinis or similar in my stable though.
My girlfriend has just bought a petrol 1.4LX Peugeot 306 (x-reg)which stalls when the engine is cold/warming up. It starts first time when cold and idles perfectly but after you drive off and then have to stop for traffic at a junction,or just slow to 1st/2nd gear speeds,it stalls. Once the engine has reached normal operating temperature the problem disappears. The fault does not cause the engine management lamp to come on. I did suspect the throttle idle valve/sensor but on the other hand the problem would surely be present when the engine is warm aswell. Anyone else had similar problem to this?
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I had similar problems on my 406, replacing the stepper motor solved the problem.
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>>Does anyone know of some decent software that will do this cheaply?
>>
how about this:
www.customerservicepoint.com/free-crm-software.html
www.freecrm.com/