December 2006
I am about to buy a new shape Ford Transit and have been offered "Traction Assist" as a £75 (plus VAT) option. My questions are....
1) what is Traction Assist?
2) Is it worth the extra?
Thanks for any advice. Read more
Surprised this has not been posted already.
www.cps.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/175_06.html
The link is to a press notice, the full consultation (a hefty pdf) is linked from there.
Views? Read more
can anyone help? a renault megane scenic with no fault codes after running for 20 mins starts to hesitate on excelleration,new plugs fitted and one new coil. Read more
Tony
The coils are wired in two series. 1 and 4; 2 and 3. Usually it's a HT side fault, so that doesn't cause a problem; but if one coil shorts internally on the LT side, it can also affect it's "pair."
The plug-well "tide mark" is significant; once the water gets past the coil's rubber seal and gets trapped, it causes internal tracking inside the coil and that could fit your symptom. Beru are a lot better than Sagem; but not quite as good as the Denso ones - I've never seen a [dry] Denso one fail yet.
Whilst working today a main dealer 'delivered' the owners Beema convertible after completing the MOT, being a nosey person I had a look at the invoice (owner, who is on hols somewhere expensive had given them a credit card number to charge to)
Is it me or does this sound a tad excesive
MOT - £50 plus vat, OK, nothing too serious there
Change a headlamp bulb - £25 plus vat, surely a bit high but they have to make up some money as they collect and deliver.
Xenon bulb - £107 plus vat, theyre having a laugh arent they!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They also noted damage to side wall on a tyre and damage to alloys as part of the official advisory on the MOT, I checked, am no expert but one of the guys I work with is very knowledgable on motors, there was a very small nick to one tyre, 5 mm, no depth (he said he couldnt beleive this would be put down as advisory note) and some light scratches, hardly even curbing to the alloys. Trying it on for a few hundred more quid?
But as long as numpties like the owner will hand out a blank cheque I suppose it will always happen, I was never a fan of main dealers but now I wont ever trust them, or is it just me?
--
Drink Lager, Talk Piffle,
Read more
Aha... so the VAT on 35p is 41p then? That'll be why petrol's got so expensive...?! ;-)
I think I got my maths wrong somewhere. Adding VAT onto 35p makes it 41p (0.06)
No wonder the spreadsheet I created this morning for work purposes doesn't make any sense.
When i say vibrations, i mean shaking itself apart!
When i bought it, it had a slight vibration through the steering wheel at speed, which was resolved by replacing front tyres. All has been great with the car for a year, now i have a different vibration. Most notably between 50 and 60 i get a real vibration through the whole car - if i am pushing it (such as motorway slip road) the car seems to want to resolve itself into its component parts. It "feels" like its coming from the rear. For info, the car is on the 17" alloys (the dark grey ones)
Im thinking it needs looking at, but where to start. Is it likely to be a tyre problem or should i be looking to suspension? Should i take it to my tyre guy, my local mechanic or a main dealer? Im a bit stumped about where to begin.
Any ideas on how to approach the problem would be great. I dont really want to go to the main dealer with a vague description of a problem - that could get expensive.
One point that may be relevant is that due to a flooding problem in the car park at work, the car is often in deep puddle. I dont recall if the puddle comes over the tyre to the wheel, will check tomorrow.
thanks in advance. Read more
hopefully my last post on the matter!
car went in today, had the driveshaft and the anti roll bar link replaced and all appears well.
I still dont understand why i couldnt feel it through the steering and it definitely felt like it was coming from the back.
But its all fixed now and im about £600 worse off.
Just glad to have it back to normal - now back to those racing starts ;)
Noticed on the 'Car by Car' breakdown that the Primera was axed in October - didn't realise this. Do Nissan have a replacement lined up?
I reckon the current ones are bargains secondhand but visually look awful compared to the Mondeo or Vectra - all that flat metal, no side strips on doors and high waistline. Rear end not too pretty with poor visibility. Possibly the estate a more balanced car visually. Dash also was a bit OTT but brave by Nissan. Never driven one but wonder if it takes some adjustment. Shame as the original one introduced around 1993 was a cracker, and improved by each replacement until the current one - the 2.0 GT I particularly remember was a good buy for it's strong engine and handling. Read more
A difficult sector of the market - see that the Vectra is to disappear and become an Insignia - surprised that the Vauxhall name isn't going at the same time
New Year will see the improbable some might say terrifying spectacle of Nsar careering down the slopes (if some snow actually falls).
Not booked the flights yet so trying to decide which is the quickest airport for Courchevel. Please note quickest, not prettiest or most interesting!
Thank you Read more
Looking at the webcams and reports I think snow tyres/chains are
the last thing I'll need. I might pack a brolly though!
Don't bank on it, the last time I was in Meribel, just in the next valley, there wasn't a great deal on snow in the village until the Tuesday evening until it started snowing about 18:00. Snowed all night and dumped just over a metre by 09:00 on Wednesday morning!
The ski bus drivers were most apologetic because they were running about 15 minutes late as they had to dig the buses out of the depot!!
I know we're not prepared for that sort of fall in the UK because it rarely happens but we would have been paralysed for a month.....
Seems the brand still hasn't quite got it right in UK market!
Only 300 or so registrations this year - mostly demonstrators, too.
& now the Luton dealer is offering an 06 plate 2litre something or other spec, with £14999 stickers all over it. Plus smaller in showroom adverts of 3 years 0% & free servicing & goodness knows what else, on NEW models!!
It's a Stratstone dealership, with Jaguar franchise, alongside, so not sure who's kidding who, as to wether the customer is supposed to think they're BOTH premium brands, or the American range is offering better value!
Think Murphy The Cat made a better choice with his 300, rather than a Caddy!
VB Read more
Reminds me of when I was a teenager in late 60's
- had a mate with a Hudson - huge thing only
thing was it had a engine transplant to a Bedford Dormobile
engine - slow wasn't the word.
I used to occasionally see a Triumph Stag driving round Chesterfield, which had had a diesel engine transplant. And I'm talking years before common rail, it might not have even been a TD. Not only could you hear and see it was a diesel (the smoke); the car was painted semi-gloss black with "DIESEL" down the side in 4" high silver lettering. The mind boggles...
;o)
Reading that thread on the new Laguna got me wondering.....
I posted on here a couple of months back wondering whether to go for a new (ish) Mondeo/Vectra or an older 7 series beemer.
We've still not made up our minds about a new car and today my thoughts turned to the French!
I've always rejected the idea of a Laguna or a C5 because of the horror stories concerning reliability. However there seems to be some consensus that the recent facelifted models have ironed out a lot of the bugs. They are also very nice well-specced cars (when they go!) and depreciate faster than the cost of a last years pop idol winners CD, so represent an excellent bargain at 12-18 months old.
What do you think, still more trouble than they're worth or are they finally worth taking a chance on?
Steve Read more
I know, tempting isn't it. Even if you get a few more problems you've saved a lot of money which helps to smooth these things over. Having said that, VW reliability appears not to be too hot these days if experiences onthis forum are representative - although my VW's have generally been OK.
And no, I don´t mean David Gest, Toyah, Anne Robinson et al.
Saw a newish Laguna the other day - a smart original design wrecked by a clumsy mid life facelift. Same goes for the previous model Punto, that was turned into a bland Korean lookalike instead of its funky original front. I suppose the previous Hyundai Coupe falls into the category of ´should have left well alone´, as it looked dreadful with that goggly front end.
Why do the ´designers´ do this? Who signs the designs off?
Anyone think of any other examples? Read more
The Megane needs a bumlift. It's the original that's dodgy.
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L\'escargot.
Browse
Thanks for the replies, but does anyone have experience of this system and does it actually help?