April 2007
hi,can anyone help me please?i have an old non-running motorbike in my garden and am having it towed away.i would like to keep the plate but everyone i have asked tells me that the plate can only be transfered from a vehicle which is .taxed,mot'd and insured.as this is never going to happen in this case does anyone know a way round this.thanks Read more
Saw this in the paper today,
It weighs just 900lb, has a top speed of 101mph -and is made entirely out of wood.
It took furniture maker Friend Wood, 46, more than 2000 hours to build his three-wheel, tear-drop shaped car, which he has named 'Tryane II'.
The wooden car has a top speed of 101mph
The two-seater was put together using the chassis and 602cc engine from a Citroen 2CV. Mr Wood then built up layers of African mahogany around a basic mould using a boat-building technique known as 'cold moulding'.
The car is a a three-wheel adaption of the classic four-wheeled 1969 Citroen Diane and is able to do between 55 and 70 miles per gallon. Read more
Exactly, we don`t want hard wood in the cockpit.
Hi,
I am a noobie, so please be gentle with me!
I want to check the repair history for my BMW. The main dealers can do this, by performing a lookup against my car?s VIN and running a detailed ?Vehicle History Report?, but won?t do it in the depth I require unless they receive written authorisation from the previous owner. Which probably won?t be forthcoming.
The type of information I want to find out includes the service codes, showing the issues the car had when it came in for each service.
This is an example record:
Repair History
RO # Claim Repair Date Entry Date Mileage Dealer Service Code Location
1??0?8 0?9?5 04/1?/200? 04/1?/200? 9?,5?? 1?2?8 11530115UW
Has anyone been in this position before? If so, did you manage to find out the information?
Ta,
Bimmer07
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Shame this site doesn't allow you to post pictures otherwise that would be worth a golden shovel.
Car insurance renewal dropped through the door today. £582, or £635 by monthly payment.
Ouch.
Quick trip online, out popped £387, 0% APR for monthly payment - so just 60% of the quoted price of the renewal. And to save a further £40 I could remove the protected NCD that I'd never asked to be added to the policy
The only difference is that they had reduced my excess to nil (explains why I couldn't find it on the renewal quotation), whereas I had it as £350 with the online. That made under £100 difference to the renewal quotation, BTW.
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Online quotes from a company are normally cheaper than by phone - operating costs are lower. I always check online before renewing car insurance, no matter who the insurer I'm with.
Had the same experience with the Pru building and home contents insurance in February. Been with the Pru for more than 40 years, but about two years ago Churchill commenced underwriting for it.
This year, the Pru wanted £430 so I went online and Churchill came up with a figure half that price...:-)
So the Pru lost a long standing customer.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
Hello,
My Passat has a Sony CDX-4108R stereo with the removable front.
It is faulty so I want to remove it.
The manual mentions some sort of key, but I daon't have a key and there is nowhere to insert one wanyway.
Has anyone got any idea how to remove it?
Thanks for your help.
- Stephen. Read more
Thanks for your advice.
It worked perfecty.
No need to buy prongs, just used a bit of stiff wire.
Oh venerable backroom, grant me the knowledge of thine collective wisdom as I am going in flaming circles trying to work out what to get as a replacement for my wife's M Reg Fiesta!
Cash spend budget up to £3,000, plus trade in of said Fiesta, most local small traders have said they'd offer around £500 for it in p/x, so ticket price of new car to be up to £3,500. Needs to be economical, cheap to maintain & repair, low insurance group and have enough poke for motorway and duel carriageways.... so no 1.0 engines, methinks... :-) Would prefer it to be something at least as new as a 2000 reg if poss...
OK, so she mainly does school runs with about a weekly 60 mile motorway round trip to folks thrown in. All of the family is tall (I'm 6'5", she's 5'8", daughter #1 is 6'1" (at 13!) and daughter 2 is 5'2" (but she's only 9...) ) so a bit of room is needed in the back. They manage ok in the back of the current Fiesta, but they don't have much room.
As my wife complains about lack of bootspace and the girls aren't getting any smaller, I am at a loss as to why she wants another Fiesta and I started looking at 206's, Fabias and Clios before realising that they are (apart from perhaps the Fabia) equally as small as the Fiesta, so I'm now thinking of Focus or 306?
Is the Fabia notably bigger that the Fiesta? I've seen reviews saying it's way better than the Fiesta and also reviews saying it's cramped... depends on who's in it, I suppose...?
Any recommendations you can chuck in please? Read more
Yeah, I saw an Alera the other day and thought it was worth considering. Then I lloked at What Car's verdict... "First, the downsides. It?s cramped by the class standards and rear room is particularly poor, although the boot is a decent size." and thought again!
My son has accepted a job and will have access to a cheap lease car so his (I paid for it) 52 reg 1.0 Corsa is to sell in a month or so.
It has around 17k miles on it and has been used to get him initially to sixth form after we moved and to work in summer holidays from University and very occasional use in between. Most of the runs have been 10-15 miles. It still has the original tyres (two only half worn - were switched front/back about 18 months ago) and the spare is unused. Everything works as it should.
It has been garaged since we got it (early 2004) and Vauxhall services up to end of warranty. I have serviced it since (Halfords semi synthetic yearly). It came with a Cassette player which he replaced with a Vauxhall CD player (we still have the cassette player)
It has a car park ding in one rear wing and an area of about 1sq inch on the bonnet where there is chip damage. Other than that paint is very good - Red car that has not faded - and he kept it clean and polished when he was at home. Wheel trims are scuffed.
Was surprised yesterday when I looked at 1.0 Corsa prices in Auto express and Fleabay so what is worth doing to this before we sell?
I had originally thought nothing expecting it to be 1-1.5k but at the prices that are being asked would it be worth:
1. getting ding fixed
2. getting bonnet damage sorted.
3. change radio back to standard and sell CD unit on E-bay
4. Re-paint the wheel trims (or replace if this does not work)
5. Establishing exactly what model it is - I think it is a Club (remote central locking, steel wheels, elec f windows, CD player, RWW, not much else).
And where is the best place to advertise (South Staffs).
Am sorely tempted to take the replacement car off the wife's insurance and keep it in the garage as a spare!
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Wheel trims tend to be cheaper on eBay:
These are good rip-offs for £25 tinyurl.com/2cnmvz
Or for £40 you can get the real thing: tinyurl.com/3dafcn
I never believe in reminding a buyer how cheap a car is to fix. Whenever I see that in an eBay ad, I assume the seller is lying. If it's so cheap and easy, he'll do it himself.
I'd be inclined to leave the CD player in the car; your target market for a Group 1 1.0 Corsa is under 20 and will not want the original cassette player under any circumstances. The old cassette might still make £15 or £20 on eBay though.
Other than that, a thorough valet will lead lots of buyers to overlook minor scratches. It's up to you whether you do it professionally but a good clean, vacuum and polish will pay dividends, especially if you sell via the local paper.
Please excuse me if this has been brought up recently - I admit to not having frequented the backroom much recently.
I find this interesting and thought some of you would, too.
It's the Tesla Motors new sports car. A straight electric with regenerative braking and a 250hp motor, I think it heralds the way of the near future because of its simplicity compared to hybrids. I think new rechargeable battery development encouraged by the needs of laptop computers is the key.
How about 0 - 60 in 4 sec, top speed of around 130 mph, 200 mile plus range and Lotus handling for $100,000?
The first year's production has been sold out and they are taking orders for 2008. "Downmarket" models are on the drawing boards.
www.teslamotors.com/
Meanwhile, an economy 4 seater from China - the Javlon - has just been announced. Scheduled delivery date is late 2008 at USD$30,000. Lower performance, of course.
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"fusion power and a superconductor national grid"
Some way off yet, I fear. Just hope it happens before we are all submerged...
White lie, actually. It's a Dodge Magnum and I've got it on extended hire at the moment here in Pittsburgh but, same horse, different race.
The central locking is annoying the hell out of me. Basically, when I press the unlock button only the driver's door unlocks. In order to unlock the other doors I have to press the unlock key 3 times in quick succession otherwise it doesn't work. There must be some simple way of reprogramming it to unlock all the doors on one press of the button as this is how the last 300C I had worked. Any Chrysler 300 owners out there got any ideas? Read more
Snap. We hired a Pacifica in Nov last year - and very nice it was as well (in a NOT a HEMI 300C type way !).
AS regards build quality. UK 300C's are built at Graz in Austrai, and they either use bigger hammers, or the Austrians are stronger, because my car is very well banged together.
Enjoy Pittsburgh.
MTC
My high mileage Astra 1.7dti (2000W) seems to have started making a high pitched whine when the engine is just idling. I think it is coming from the fuel pump. It disappears as soon as I start driving. Is this anything to worry about?
Thanks for any advice Read more
according to your avator you dont exist--------weird ;-o
anyway-
yes worry
i was speaking to someone today about these fantastic vehicles and he was quoted £650 for the exact same symptoms but worser
Browse
If the old vehicle is restorable, you will have to restore it to MOT standards and get it taxed. Then transfer the number, assuming it has not time-expired or is limited for some other reason.
If it is beyond restoration you need to invest in another vehicle that either is running or can be made so. After a lot of restoration work, you may well have cannibalised and swapped so many parts that it can be very difficult to say which vehicle is which.