my mk2 golf e-reg cuts off in fraffic it happened twice in the past month can anyone help, also smoke starts to come from the heaters. and fuel pump makes noises
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Hi,

I am after firing order direction looking from front of car (left-to-right, right-to-left), confirm that it is 1,3,4,2. And timing marks. The crank lines up with mark on block while the cam mark is lined up vertically with the top?

NB: the model is Cielo

Cheers,
Damon Read more

Hello all,

I' m considering a Nissan Tino 2.2 diesel as a relaible, no nonsense, no fuss, get in and go, carry the baby gear, carry the mountain bikes, tow the trailer, a2b mobile. Fancied the Toyota Verso, but at pushing 3k more for the same plate I backed off. Any comments on the Tino?

Cheers,

Madun Read more

Yesterday, in common with a great many people, I shifted about 3" of snow from the roof and windows of my car using a clean brush (ex dustpan and brush set from the kitchen). Somehow and annoyingly the sliding down of the snow on the windscreen has produced a near vertical light scratch in the glass, fortunately near the passenger's eyeline.

Deep down, common sense tells me that this cannot be polished out without causing an optical aberration, if indeed, it can be polished out at all. However I would like to know whether anyone has successfully removed a scratch from their windscreen without exacerbating the problem? Eventually, I'll get used to seeing it when I gaze across the screen but at the moment I am finding it most annoying as it is the first time in 50 years of driving etc. that I have ever done this.
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After some recent reliability scares, my wife and I decided to replace our Ford Galaxy (S REG Ghia X, fully loaded) with something newish.

Our budget was decided to be max £13K, and we wanted something 2years old or less with 20,000 miles on it or less.

Our family is 2 Adults and 4 children. The elder two teenages are obviously adult size, and the younger two are now passed the childseat phase, though do sit on small booster cushions.

So we regularly need to carry 6, and if we go away for a holiday, we need to be able to carry 6 plus luggage. To carry a extra 7th is a necessity as well, since we are regularly entertaining school friends etc at pick up time.

BUT, we wanted something where the rear seats fold down in to the floor, since even getting small bike in to the Galaxy is a nightmare, despite the large size of the car.

For the readers of this forum, I though it might be interesting to here what we arrived at and why.

Renault Espace: hard to find newish examples in our price bracket. Getting in to back row is tricky, children cannot tip the seat up themselves it requires two hands. Rear seats don?t fold in to floor leaving all the hassle that we have with the Galaxy seating arrangements still to live with.

Peugeot 806 / Citroen C8. My wife LOVED the sliding doors, but again the seating arrangements are no advance whatsoever on the Galaxy. E.g. like the Galaxy you cannot even tip up one of the rearmost seats unless it is slid backwards first, and seat in front is slid forwards. Meaning you forever have to move from back to side adjusting the seats before you can tip one up, exactly the kind of hassle we want to get away from.

Renault Grand Scenic. Darned fine car, but better suited to a family with younger/smaller kids, e.g. felt a bit cramped when fully loaded up, leg room in middle and back row not great. Terrible sales technique though, in front of my 6 year old, the salesman said ?be careful tipping the seat up before you climb in the back, lots of children hurt their fingers on the mechanism?? from that point on whenever we discussed the car, Antonia (age 6) piped up ?please don?t get that one, I don?t want to hurt my fingers?. It is essential for us that the children can get themselves in and out of the backrow. E.g. stopping to pick up an additional passenger, one child my quickly hop in the back to allow another in the middle row.

Ford Galaxy MkII. Our budget would only get us a used Zetec, unless we settled for something older. Much better interior trim quality than the Mk I, but no advance in seating arrangement. Zetec doesn?t even have elec windows in rear.

Ford S-MAX. Out of our budget obviously but we decided to look at it due to the rave reviews. I was thinking that if my wife fell in love with it, then maybe we could finance it differently. The demo car had the rearmost seats folded in to the floor when we first went to it. A couple of minutes fiddling around, and we could not find how to pull up the seat. Salesman came over, he couldn?t do it either, fiddled with this and that and got the seat up. Then a flappy bit of trim was hanging off the back of the seat, and needed clipping in to place, but the clip was broken. Since we will be very regularly putting these seats up and down, we walked away very disillusioned with the ?Car of The Year?. Not even interested.

Chrysler Voyager. What a waste of space (for us anyway). The seating arrangement is 2 + 2 + 3, meaning you cannot carrtymore than 4 people without using rear most seats. So six plus luggage is a real challenge whilst even all the 2+3+2 arranged vehicles you can remove or fold down (if possible) a seat accounting for half with width of the boot, so giving a 2+3+1+luggage arrangement. Or 5 +loads of luggage. The Voyager is therefore a complete non starter.

Vauxhall Zafira. Don?t like the middle bench seat arrangement which has to be slid forward before the rears can be dropped in to the floor. Never liked that, and was surprised they kept that when they went to Mk II. Too ?mumsy? you simply see too many of them at the school gates. We wanted something a bit more distinctive.

What else did we look at:

Honda FRV, only seats 6, not really capable of taking 4 adult sized and two smaller ones regularly, just too small. Same with Fiat Multpla. Citroen Picasso C4, too new, out of budget. Toyota Previa ? seating arrangements not suitable, plus too expensive for what you get.

So that leaves us with

Mitsubishi Grandis.

First thing to note was that there are plenty of Elegance models (top model) on dealers forecourts, all under 2 years old and in budget. Rear most seats feel comfortable for full sized adults, plus a) there is good luggage space behind them even when both are up, and b) they both fold in to floor regardless of position of middle row. Folding mechanism is a complete cinch, they are counterbalanced, and there are no flappy bits to secure in place (take note Mr Ford). Middle row is a 60/40 bench, but operating the mechanism to get in/out of the very back row is a doddle. Single lever, or foot switch from behind and the whole thing slides forward and tips to let you climb in to back. Good leg room in back and middle rows. Although not 3 individual seats across the middle row ? it still seats 3 comfortably across that row, permitting the 2+3+1+luggage mode we want occasionally. Diesel is out of our price bracket, but we are low mileage users and the petrol costs on our Galaxy never crippled us, Grandis should be a little more economical. My wife fell in love with the Warrior, leather stitched seats, flip down DVD player (to keep the kids happy), sports kit, etc. Dealer offered us a 21 month old car with 14,000 miles on it for £13,000, still with 15 months manufacturers warranty. Feels exclusive ? you don?t see many of them around, lovely to drive, a bit brisker than the 2.3 auto Galaxy, and a little more car like. Deal done, bought it, love it, and can?t help but think it is a very well kept secret and badly promoted by Mitsubishi.


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