June 2007
I have a Megane 2001 1.6 petrol 64000 miles that is not starting first time unless it has been stood for a while ,sometimes it takes up to 20 turns to start .It seems to be getting worse.Any helpfull advice from any body would be welcome. Read more
My car insurance renewal notice has arrived (in plenty of time - renewal date is 30/6). As usual the brokers assure me that they have trawled the market and my existing insurer offers the best value. Frankly, I think this is unlikely. There are several errors in the broker's paperwork, although the paperwork from the insurance co is correct - so I don't have a lot of confidence in the broker. I renewed with them, and the same insurance company, last year as there was a claim being processed and it seemed simpler to stay with the same company.
I am trawling the online quote services/companies to get alternatives. However, my problem relates to the NCB. I have 65% protected NCB - which is stated on the "Premium Advice Notice" under No Claim Discount Entitlement. However, I did make a claim in March 06, so under No Claim Discount Years the entry is 01.
The quote services sometimes ask for length of NCB entitlement, sometimes for number of years, not usually for percentage discount. When I put in 1 year, I can't get a quote with protected NCD. What should I be putting in these boxes?
I suppose I will have to ring them up, but does anyone have a definitive answer?
Ideally I would like to go through quidco, where I can get up to £100 cashback - but if you have to do the insurance over the phone, it won't qualify for quidco - needs to be all online.
Hope I haven't lost you all in the rambling. Any advice gratefully received. Read more
Thanks - and obviously I would declare the accident so all info is available.
The renewal forms say 13 years and also 65% protected - although only 1 year since the last claim.
Time to change the oil in my '99 Citroen Saxo 1.1i on 75,000 miles.
I usually use Magnatec but its expensive, especially now they started doing it in 4l cans for the same price as the old 4.5l cans...
So I was wondering if people could tell me:
Am I better off getting a "good" (branded) oil or getting a cheaper oil that is a better spec (fully synthetic???) or just getting a cheaper standard oil and changing more often... or any other options!??!
Cheers
M
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It's always worth keeping an eye out at Halfords as well. They periodically do half price offers on their own brand oils which I understand are blended by Comma.
At the Mondeo's last service, my local branch were selling 5 litre cans of their own brand 5W/40 fully synth diesel oil at half price (£16 for 5 litres). Almost certainly overkill for this engine, but at that price, who cares? They had semi synths and minerals at similar discounts too. The car's done 8,000 miles on it (2,000 left to go until change time), and it's not even needed topping up yet.
Cheers
DP
Literature suggests that a drivers? range of acceptable behaviour, bound at the upper limit by a risk maximum and at the lower limit by a boredom threshold, is subconsciously set and continuously changing dependent upon journey goals, perceived capability and effort motivation.
It is known that both ?emotional state? and ?motivation to save time? are factors which can influence a driver?s behaviour in the short term. The literature also indicates that other factors are likely to have an effect; although it is not known what all the influential factors are, or their relative importance.
I aim, for the purposes of my PhD, to investigate the circumstances under which drivers change their behaviour in the short term (i.e. during a particular journey, from journey to journey and from day to day).
Initially, I intend to carry out some broad research around the subject of short-term influential factors on driver behaviour. I am hoping that people on this forum can contribute to the study by telling me, through examples of past experiences, about factors which they feel influence their driving behaviour.
For example, I was driving home on the A686 the other day. It is a glorious road with some fantastic bends. A lot of the time you are dancing between 2nd and 3rd gears. Anyway, the sun was shining and the roof was down, and I was on my own in the car. I'd been looking forward to the trip for about a week. On the hill-climb, I got stuck behind a Landrover, towing a trailer full of Canoes. I was missing out on loads of glorious hair-pin bends. I was really close, looking for an opportunity to pass, but the bends are tight and close and there wasn't an opportunity. Then, I rounded a bend in 2nd and saw a clear straight and went for it. I didn't think. Just saw it and went. In hindsight, it wasn't ideal, because if there'd been anything coming the other way at high speed, it might have been close.
The above is a situation where I raised my risk threshold momentarily, either that or overstepped my risk threshold. In any case, I took a risk that I wouldn't normally take and a lot of factors probably contributed to that. For example, the weather; the car; the engine noise; anticipation of the fun I would have; the road; being delayed; being on my own in the car and so on.
Please can you tell me about situations where your driver behaviour changed from 'normal'.
Looking forward to some interesting responses,
Simon
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I take it you mean getting flashed by a speed camera? Does that make you
slow down everywhere all the time for good? I doubt it.
Why did you get flashed anyway? Aren't they big yellow boxes which you can see
from miles away?
I've been done twice by speed cameras, and it slowed my driving down too. Both times it was a mobile camera van that got me before I saw them (one was over the brow of a hill). For nearly a year I had 6 points on my licence and didnt want 9 points, so decided that instead of buying a camera detector I would drive a bit slower, which has worked for 4 years and counting.
By far the most frequent short-term effect on my driving is running late for a meeting/ appointment, etc., where I will drive faster than normal. I like to think though that that when doing so I may be putting my licence at slightly increased risk but not an increased risk of collision. I drive slower than I did in my 20's.
Passengers: I sometimes drive a bit slower with my girlfriend in the car and always slower with parents in.
Other cars: Now I do more than double the annual mileage I used to do, I try hard not to get wound up by other drivers actions. But I can get wound up by drivers with bad lane discipline, lack of indication, those that are generally ignorant, selfish, or inept.
I can sometimes get impatient behind drivers dawdling along way below the speed limit, and will overtake when I get the opportunity.
Re: Luds point about 'watershed moments'. I spun off a wet corner into a wall and wrote the car off when I was 19; a simple case of going too fast for the conditions. I learnt from it, but as I was at Uni without a car, doing very little driving at the time it took a long time to get my confidence back on wet roads.
Our local council provides "door step" recycling, but only takes paper, metal, and glass.
In order to recycle our cardboard and plastics, we (and presumably every household in the area) have to drive 6 miles to the nearest recycling point.
I can see the benefit of recycling, especially as we are running out of landfill sites in the UK, but surely the amount of CO2 emitted by vehicles transporting recyclables must be on the increase.
Why do we let our councils pick and choose the items they will collect for recycling? Obviously they only collect the materials that they can sell on, but if global warming is as serious as is implied, they should collect ALL recyclables in order to negate the CO2 emissions from private vehicles transporting items for recycling.
The situation will only get worse when we are all expected to pay for waste disposal based on the weight of rubbish collected. More people will be inclined to recycle, which in turn will equate to more vehicle mileage and more CO2.
Throw in the prospect of "pay per mile" road charging schemes, and you have a catch 22 situation - you either pay more for rubbish collection, or more in road charges.
We need more carrot, and less stick please!
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Colin-E
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Can we use a practical example woodbines?
Like the sea ice has increased by 8% in the southern hemisphere, that should be sufficient. Let along migratory birds arriving back in the southern hemisphere later due to the extended cooler temperatures. I may have used those examples in my manifesto :) at the link above so apologies for the repeat.
I really truely and utterly hate the fact that BBC have this mini advert going of some crazy guy in a boat sailing through the polar ice caps showing all the ice falling from the land. Its the way which they twist the truth, the ice breaking up there is as common as autum leaves here.
Its sooooo far fetched!
I'm more worried about the practical things like particulate in our airspace from diesels or the so called smog over cities, the quality of the air, the of use of our finite resources by greedy nations. CO2 is an easy way to create awareness and view bigger issues from a high level, basically treating us like dummies into believing an unknown truth.
Following a discussion with a friend on the renewal of tax discs on the DVLA web site, he informs me that after using a Visa card to renew the disc, the card was fraudently used to aquire goods via mailorder.
Has anyone else been trouble by fraudsters, after using the DVLA site. I for one renew all my cars this way. Read more
Most women in prison are there for drugs smuggling. Certainly in Lincoln Women's it is 55%.
This video seems to show a rather spectacularly easy way of removing dents.
Other than the spelling in the captions, can this really work so easily? If so, it would be a lot cheaper than getting someone to do it for you for minor supermarket dings.
Anyone know if this really does work or it a clever fake for reasons that would escape me?
tinyurl.com/3dmwzs Read more
This technique does work to a point. I once tried it years ago on a dealer bodyshop course where we hammered a dent in a door, then heated the door skin up and then cooled it rapidly with a damp cloth. Works by shrinking the metal back into shape that hasn't gone beyond a certain limit of deformation if I recall correctly.
Just spoke to my dealer about my wife's car whose sliding seats (middle row of MPV) will not lock into place. I had the car serviced with them 2.5 weeks ago and had by now expected the parts to be in (especially as I suppose that if I had an MOT now it would fail).
Was told that the parts weren't here yet and that sometimes it takes 6 weeks as it is often on backorder and needs to come from Japan. Is this really possible or did someone forget to order the parts? Read more
They are VW after all;I was talking proper manufacturers.
The remote boot release has stopped working on our 01 focus saloon.
There doesn't seem to be any fuse issues going on and there doesn't seem to be anything else obvious. I've no idea where to look next to diagnose the failure.
Any suggestions or notes from previous experience would be much appreciated. Read more
On my KA the in-car boot release only operates below 5 mph. and not at all if the doors are locked.
Can someone advise to the dreaded mondeo clutch problem please!! I have 2x mondeos, one with a seriously slipping clutch, the other I?m toying with selling before it gets one!! Both are Mk3?s. The one with the slipping clutch is a 2001 1.8 zetec with 150k miles (I got it ex-fleet with 129k on it, so don?t know if the clutch has been done before), and it started slipping badly going uphill about 50 miles ago. What can I expect to pay to get sorted?
The other is a 2003 2.0 LX with 65k miles. It?s in top nick, and I don?t particularly want to get rid of it, but when can I expect the clutch to need sorting?
Many thanks.
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Do petrol Mondys have the DMF?, I thought it was the Derv Donkeys that had those?
160K seems ok for a wearing item
Browse
thanks for your reply xileno.
yes peter when it does start there is no smell of fuel or engine stutter.thanks for that
looks like i will be changing the crank position sensor, heers hoping.Thanks mph-turbo.
thanks for your time screwloose.
{Four replies merged into the one post to make tidier - DD}