December 2007
Phoned my wife's insurance company yesterday to add my daughter as a learner from her 17th birthday.
Car is a 2001 VW golf 1.4 so nothing fancy, wife has several years protected NCB, schoolteacher, low mileage, so no great risk there. We have been with them, and the company they took over, for about 25 years always happy with price, service etc.
So how do you lose a customer? You tell them it will cost £3000 per year to add a 17 year old girl as a learner using the car for a bit of practice.
24 hours later we are now with Elephant. Customer loyalty has its limits. Read more
What is the lifespan of an airbag? Do they need to be replaced at some time? Read more
You might be here but how many were killed and injured?
Several! Which is why I no longer ride 'bikes....
According to Reader's Digest, if you pour warm water onto the screen to defrost it you should have the wipers operating at the same time. This helps to stop the screen re-freezing. Read more
Hilarious Dipstick ! - Reminds me of when many years ago a mate of mine and I used to subsidise our weekend skiing at Aviemore by borrowing his Dad's old Range Rover to tow out snow stranded cars or get them started if they had flat batteries. We used to charge a fiver. On this one occasion we couldn't, or maybe more accurately, couldn't be bothered, to crawl underneath one our "customers" cars to find a suitable attaching point for the rope. Having done it many times before we just hooked the rope round the bumper and pulled. Well....not only did it rip the bumper off, but the catapult effect sent the bumper through the back window of the Rangey ! :-(
Bad enough placating the customer but the subsequent " Dad ...you'll probably laugh when we tell you but........." Severe wallet damage ensued.
Hi
I am looking for some help. I have a SEAT Leon 1.6 S 2001 with a 16v engine. I bought this car from new and had it serviced at the correct times, mileage 75K. It seems to have developed a consistent fault.
On starting from cold the engine does not want to start. What I mean is that the engine turns but fails to fire, with short twists of the key. It appears to fire but at once dies. On calling out the AA/RAC they tell me that the engine has flooded. They start the car by keeping the starter motor running until the engine fires and keeps on running. Sure enough this works. What appears to happen is that the engine fires up dies and then re-fires up in 5 seconds and then its OK.
I have had the car serviced and the fault is still there. Once the car is running I can stop and restart with ease. So a bit difficult for the mechanic to spot. To be honest this fault has been with the car since new in which it has happened three times in the last 4 years. The dealer and now my mechanic have not found the fault, but now its always happening. I have been driving for 30 years and I know something is wrong here but what.
On starting the car from cold the rev meter jumps to 2000 rpm, then drops to about 200 and then goes to about 1200 revs once warm it settles down to about 850 rpm.
Any ideas gratefully accepted
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Thanks for your help screwloose.
Appears problem solved by cleaning air intake and throttle assembly!!! Car now starts up in an instant (like New). However, the starter motor is now not disconnecting on start up!! so another issue to be solved. I guess it gave up to to the over use.
This is a slightly superior version of System Restore. I had it on my computer and uninstalled it. Now 3 months later I want it back and it won't install as it says "Unable to determine which drive you use to boot your computer" or words to that effect. As I only have one hard drive and it isn't partioned I can't identify the problem and the error message doesn't give me any link to a troubleshooting opportunity. Any ideas please?
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>>tried to install the latest version of ZoneAlarm on it without success, being informed it was not compatible;
The Vista dedicated version of Zonealarm installs automatically from an 205kB file
download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/1025_update/zaSetu...e
When starting the Focus TDCI there is a knocking and banging sound from the engine area. Looking in the engine, when starting the car, the engine rocks about while the banging is going on.
This problem has been getting worse in the last few weeks and the car doesn't start as well as it used to. There are no lights on the dash. (bad ones I mean)
I called at my local garage today, but they were too busy to have a look. I wonder if someone has any idea what the problem is please? Read more
Mine did the same thing - it was the starter motor in the end. Luckily it was done under warranty at about 50k miles
hi just changed n/s dip-bulb;all you have to do is remove battery cover and battery
(65 min) a bit fiidely removing and refitting but nothings easy nowadays with cars
1.9 dci .I fitted a temporary supply to pos+ and neg- leads(12v m/cycle battery) but later found not necessary all u have to do on completion is re-code radio unit Read more
You don't even need to remove the battery if you're prepared to lose the skin off your hands.
Cheers
DP
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04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
For no obvious reason, the headlight adjustment on my 2005 Peugeot 206 1.4HDI is way out, on main beam the lights give less visibility than a normal car on dip! Adjusting the the control inside the car does not improve the situation. I don't see how this can be a mechanical problem as nothing has been changed, can anyone point me in the right direction with this please? the car is still under warranty, but the main dealer is 20 miles away so I'd rather use that as a last resort. Read more
Can it be that your reflectors have melted from the bulb heat.This happened to me after I fitted extra power bulbs,the beam went lower and lower as the plastic softened in the heat.
Geriatric
Weird one this - I borrowed my wife's Ka this afternoon. On opening the drivers' door I noticed some rust smears on the door rubbers down by the sill. When I had a look underneath the door there are a couple of 1p sized rust patches on the underside of the door. To add to the worry this part of the door seems to have almost no paint on it, just a light spraying over the undercoat. I have never noticed this before as you have to look from underneath to see it. Out of curiousity, I checked the passenger door and it is fine ( and also has full paint cover )
We have owned the car from new ( March 04 ) and it has only had light use ( 16k mls ) and it has never been in an accident.
My concern is that it is now out of warranty by 9 months. I will of course invite our local Ford dealer where we bought it to comment, but what do others think are my chances of getting this attended to without incurring too much cost ?
Are there any useful ( polite ) phrases I should use ?
I know it "only" cost us £5k but it strikes me that this is a bit early to see this sort of problem ? Read more
Well .......I've been to our new "all singing all dancing" new gin palace of a Ford dealership. They were as predicted, not terribly helpful, other than to explain that bodyshop enquiries are all dealt with at their "sister" branch which is 20 miles away. I guess they must have been having a pre-Christmas rush or something because the salesmen, who usually give a cheery greeting, all seemed terribly busy with urgent paperwork !
Thought about going to the other branch, but then decided I can't be bothered. It looks a pretty easy fix anyway. Now let's see....wet 'n dry, rust stuff, primer, paint and some engine oil...right, Where's me overalls .......?
PS - My wife still thinks my son was making it up about the "pour oil into the doors thing" ! Quote......... "Don't be silly darling....Daddy wouldn't do that to my car !"
Hi,
My mazda6 keeps getting what appears to be a flat battery. Its happened three times now and its always after my wife has done a very short journey (<3miles) and had the headlights on and air con to demist the windows. Its done this even though the previous journey was fairly long so i would have thought the battery would be fairly well charged. When i put the battery on charge, the charger shows the battery to be fully charged after just 10mins.
Basically is my battery just knackered? Its 5 years old.
I hope somebody can give me some advice
T, Mr Read more
i changed the battery so only time will tell if that fixes the problem. The car does seem more eager to start though.
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no broker involved, we have always dealt directly with the insurance company in question as they used to have a special deal with my wife's teaching union
Maybe a supplementary question, do most people use brokers? are we unusual in not doing so for normal insurance business.
Interestingly we have used brokers for both classic and disabled/converted car insurance