February 2007
I just got a shock over the phone from my current insurance company. I've had a Toyota Starlet and just bought a Volvo S40, called my insurance to change the vehicle on the policy and they're asking me to pay additional £509 for the remaining 6 months. Whereas I've rung other companies, including MoreThan with whom I've got another car covered and they've quoted me £539 for the whole year. What shall i do? Shall I just get a new policy with someone else and let the old policy on the old car until it expires or shall I call my current insurance company and ask them to cancel it? I could tell them to insure me on say Micra or Fiesta to reduce the premium but I don't know if that's right! Please help. Read more
Number 2 son is about to change cars. For the past 3 years he has driven a 1.4 Almera which has been totally reliable over 80k miles. Most of his driving is on motorways where the cornering and 0-60 times are pretty irrelevent. He needed reliability, a reasonable level of comfort and decent economy. This he has achieved in his Almera. Boring but reliable is how he put it. (It should be noted that he also has something rather different for evenings and weekends) He is toying with buying another Almera and reckons that as they are discontinued they should ber dirt cheap. But just how cheap should they be? Any ideas Read more
Most indie dealers and online brokers were flogging 1.5 litre base S, and SX trims for £6500 - £7500 right after Almeras were discontinued. Special edition Flare models could be had for as low as £6300 new. Petrol SXE trims (sat nav, all mod cons) with delivery mileage could be found for up to £8500. Diesels fetched around two grand more, closer to 10k mark. Looking at autotrader it seems used 56 plate base trims are being flogged for more now, perhaps it's the "rover" effect - people want to score bargain so badly the prices are higher than before the item fell into "grab a bargain before it's too late" category...
--------------------
[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
We have got the 1.6 diesel and it is proving both economical and fairly sprightly. However I have had two occasions when leaving a roundabout I have experienced significant loss of power. The engine does not seem to want to rev, even after using the kick down or the manual gearshift. Rice pudding skin and pull are words that come to mind. On both occasions pulling over as soon as convenient, switching off and restarting has cured the problem. My local main dealer, I still have three months left on the warranty, has had no experience of this problem. And they're only solution is to drive the car to them if it happens again! I of course would like it fixing before the warranty expires. Do you have any ideas?
Read more
Sounds like you've got the auto transmission? I've read some reports of hesitations or loss of power in C-Maxes with CVT transmission.
Might be worth posting on one of the Ford Focus specific forums out there on the web. There are a couple of decent ones I visit fairly regularly:
www.ffoc.co.uk
www.focusowners.co.uk
I own the 1.8TDCi C-Max myself, but I've only had it 7 months.
i recently noticed a parking bay (4 car approx) outside a paper shop but it had double yellow lines running across it,not following the line of the kerb but straight across (imagine a hacksaw the blade being the yellow lines if you will) what does that mean? either no parking at all or park when u like im puzzled on that one Read more
It will be lawful to use the parking bays but not stop on the road unless TRO has something different to say.
My one horse town High Street, single carriage way (2 way traffic), has yellow lines down the side, the other side of which is marked off with parking bays along its entire length, both sides.
dvd
Morning Everyone. I'm planning to buy a pressure washer mainly to wash cars. I've got 2 cars in the house and I tend to wash them both every other week which can be a pain if dong with the buckets and can never clean the alloys/wheel arches etc.. Luckily Thames Water have lifted the hosepipe ban so it means I can use hosepipes now. I've seen quite a few in Argos book/online but don't really know which one shall I go for. I don't want anything expensive, just something that'll be good enough to do the job. Any suggestions? Read more
Tell that to my bil.
Sliced through steel toe caps and nearly cut toes off! Hospital did good job though! Fact not fiction !
More likely the shoe leather, rather than the steel itself.
That aside, I can vouch for it cutting into flesh, or more precisely my finger can!
And if any of you have ever watched any of the Dirty Sanchez episodes on MTV, you'll have no doubt seen the weal marks left on the backside of one of the welsh nutters after playing with a pressure washer.
I'm very close to choosing an approved BMW 320 M Sport Touring on an 06 plate. It's £21000, which is well over my original budget that I set when looking for a new car. The problem is that with the £15000 budget I had, I couldn't find anything that I REALLY liked.
Now if I got this car, I would either have to go for a deferred loan through a bank or the BMW pcp scheme. BMW have said they would be prepared to drop the APR from a high 10.9%, but wouldn't give an exact figure until I committed to buying. Payments (with a £7200 deposit) would be £171/month (at original 10.9%) with a GFV after three years of £10500.
The deferred loan would be about £11000, at %6.4 would work out around £210/month with approx £4500 left. (Are you keeping up!)
I've never considered a pcp before as I never liked the idea of being tied in. Dealer assured me there were no penalties for early settlement. Just looking for experiences of others and any comments regarding pros and cons. (I know neither option is the sensible thing, but I might get run over by a bus tomorrow....and the wife gets my money then)
Read more
BP, have you factored-in that 2.9% flat-rate actually
works out roughly, to 6.2% APR ?
I never take any notice of APR's - I simply add up the monthly payments & deposit so I can see the total cost in £. I'm not sure it's valid to compare APR's on savings and loans anyway?
In very simple terms, if you borrow £20K for 2 years then you pay interest on £20K for the first year, then on £10K for the second year.
The £20K you kept in the bank earns interest on £20K for both years (plus of course interest on the first years interest).
I think the savings interest rate was 4.25% (3.3% net) and even adding on the set-up & final costs (which with such low interest rates start to look considerable) the loan would have been cheaper. Now interest rate is 5% (3.9%) net it would have been even cheaper to have taken the loan.
I would also hazard to suggest that the actual price of the car was fairly fixed
This was at MB Direct, who sell used MB's, and the car was a well loaded 5mth old C270 Avantgarde Estate which was listed at £26995 and I paid £23500.
Wrote down a list of jobs that needed sorting under warranty for Renault to sort out whilst doing the 35k service. Here is the list:
1. N/S rear pillar interior trim loose, keeps popping off leaving unsightly gap.
2. Rear sunblind snapped again.
3. Leather on drivers seat cracked on outer bolster.
4. Paint around airvent on dash flaking.
5. Other rear sunblind hook keeps bending down.
Unbelievably they've told me none of this is covered by the warranty - they reckon the trim has been pulled, the kids have snapped the sunblind, the leather is normal wear and the paint has been rubbed off the dash when adjusting the vent.
What do the panel thing?
Do I have a vaild claim?
Car is a 54reg Renault Scenic February 2005.
Thanks. Read more
My dad bought a used Renault 12 back in the early 80's and it was a very reliable car. Leaked like a sieve in anything more than a light shower, but it always got us about.
I had limited (3 months - 7,000 miles) experience with a brand new Megane 2 1.5 dCi 106 in 2005 and it was a lovely car in many ways. Comfortable, smooth, quiet, good to drive and economical. The materials inside were also of a much better quality than I'd been led to expect. Unfortunately it also had constant electrical problems and the assembly quality was dreadful. Uneven panel gaps, poor paint and misaligned interior trim panels. My two local dealers were completely hopeless, and I say that after 3 years in a Ford!
Cheers
DP
A item in today's Daily Telegraph reports the following
"Trials by Transport for London have shown a potential weakness of a satellite link to a "black box". The study, on 108 miles of roads in the City of London and Southwark, had cars fitted with a "black box" to collect journey information.
In all, 17 firms' technology was tested in two weeks. When they used their own systems to calculate charges there was a 6.7 per cent error in bills and a 5.4 per cent error in length of journeys.
According to the study the greatest problem was "location error", with the car being incorrectly tracked."
I am not going to £600+ to have something that inaccurate put in my car!
Read more
what's this accuracy of 10mtrs? we and a lot of others have a gps guidance system on tractors which is accurate to less than 1ft from the free egnos sattelite and will give guidance to sub 4inches with a subscriber sattelite. by the way i'm dead against road pricing. jag.
I want to get a handle on the financial situation of some people who viewed my house yesterday. I spotted that their car had a personalised number plate and I've asked a company via t'internet how much they would offer me for it. Have I done anything illegal? I made sure I didn't actually say I owned the number. Please don't point out it was being sneaky, because I already know that!
--
L\'escargot. Read more
The margins in the plate business are huge, so the owner of the plate may have paid much more for it than a reg dealer will buy it for.
Of course, a flash car and a flash plate do not by themselves indicate wealth - in today's debt-driven society, it may just indicate an ability to pay the loan, not the (prior) posession of the capital required to buy them.
Does anyone know how I might go about replacing a lost transponder key for a Renault Clio (2003)?
I have one but have lost the other.
Does it mean a trip to the dealers for a lock change, or can a key be cut and a transponder bought and reprogrammed somehow?
Regards
Richard Read more
Thanks to you both for your help on this matter.
Regards
Richard
Browse
Got both cars insured with the same Insurer now and I'm going to cancel the Insurance I had on the car which I've sold now, Its going to save me few £££!!!! :)