It occurred to me today that the aging population may have an affect on what cars people want. I know its a cliche, but down the road that I live, which is pretty well as retired middle england as you could hope to find, most of the elderly folk are driving traditional old folk cars.

You have Focus saloons, Corollas, Skoda Felicia, a Passat, Honda Jazz, Honda Civic, Rover 416, Astra, lots of Volvo S/V40's etc etc.

Since the older buyers tend to have somewhat different needs when buying cars in general, will this have any knock-on effect as they become a bigger car buying section of society?

It may have no effect at all of course, but with pensioners loosing money and worries over future pensioners not saving now, will there be a greater demand for cheaper, more practical cars in the future which just do the A-B motoring?

I just look at my dad for instance - hundred of thousands in the bank and he wont spend ten grand on a new car because he thinks its a waste of money, and hes not the only one I hear this from.
He said his Astra estate ( which was given to him ), is practical and costs very little to run, plus it would be hard to replace these days with a new car that wasnt overly complicated and therefore likely to cost money if you kept it beyond warranty period.
The only sort of vehicle he reckons is even close is one of the french vans with windows, but as a long term proposition, he would want japanese/korean, who dont offer such cars. Read more

ive got various vw's ranging from 1300 -180016v

the battery /starter cables are getting old and ropey and id like to make new heavy duty ones

how do i figure what minimum spec cable is req ? id like to make them on the beefy side just to be sure

the wiring catalogue lists 110-415 cable Read more

X-reg Nissan Primera 1.8S hatchback, QG18DE engine.

OK, here goes.

Primera needed a new clutch, as it was dragging (difficult to engage gear when stationary). Got a quote from my usual (reliable) back-street garage, £280 inc £140 for the part.

Anyway, I instead bought a clutch mail order from a motor factor in Wakefield. This is a Comline part. £80 saved, thinks I. Hah! Hands the car over to the garage, they fit the clutch. All simple enough so far.

Phone them up this morning, the whole thing has gone pear-shaped. They say they fitted the clutch, drove the car a couple of hundred yards down the road, all OK until there's a loud "ping" and the clutch is U/S. They're not going to know what the problem is until Tuesday when they can get hold of another clutch and see what the problem is with the car. However they're speculating that it's the cheap pattern part that's to blame, either one of the springs in the flywheel or one of the fingers on the pressure plate has sheared or otherwise popped out, preventing the clutch from functioning. There is now apparently a rattly sound coming from the unit, although I haven't heard this for myself.

This has left me in a slightly awkward position because I'm going to end up having to pay for two lots of labour, and two clutches, and claim back on the dodgy one, assuming it's that -- of course it could be the gearbox that's gone but I really don't want to think about that right now.

Couple of questions:

1) What is the likelihood of something like this happening? I'd have thought that if enough pressure was placed on a clutch to force something to break, it's more likely that it's been fitted incorrectly. Proving that is going to be hard I would imagine.

2) Comline's warranty excludes labour charges, but I think they are liable if there is a manufacturing defect severe enough to cause the whole thing to break within a mile of being fitted. I'd have also thought that something like this would be common knowledge if it's a problem with the pattern part, yet thousands of these things are sold.

Nightmare. Why did I have to break the Hyundai? Read more