This maybe a simple question to most of you, but can anyone detail the basic pros and cons of choosing a diesel vs a petrol or vice versa?

I have always been a petrol guy - but a recent hire car experience has caused me to reassess this stance!

Obviously I am well aware of the economy advantage of a diesel, which can often be offset by the higher prices diesel models seem to achieve compared to their petrol equivalents. But, are there any other common factors to take into consideration such as reliability, difference in service/maintenace costs (particulate filters etc.) that one should take into account?

Thanks for all the help/advice

Rick

PS I am trying to choose between a (secondhand - about £7k - £10k to spend) Mazda5, VW Touran, and a Peugeot 307 SW - all would suit, but in order to afford a VW or Mazda, I may have to go for a petrol, and I am wondering about the hidden cost implications. Read more

Hi Guys,

I have an 04 plate C-Max Zetec

I hope you can give me some pointers because I have no idea...

Yesterday morning I had to drive through some rather deep water (up to about the wheel-arches) on my way home. Got through and apart from a little spluttering immediately afterwards all seemed okay. However, about ten minutes further down the road the power-steering failed! :(

I thought it might be okay after it had dried out and sat overnight but no, same failure message this morning too "Steering Assist Failure"

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Dan
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I've had this car for about 2 years now and whilst still under warranty several problems occurred (gear box fault - strange whining noise that gradually got worse and needed the whole box replacing; faulty back passenger door lock; odd problem with boot release, where it kept opening itself!; rust on bottom of back doors). All these were fixed by the dealer under warranty and I cannot really fault the dealer at all.

On Sunday though (car now out of warranty), whilst at the supermarket, I opened the boot to put the groceries in and then went to close the boot. It wouldn't latch shut. No matter how much I tried, it would just not latch shut. Luckily, I had a piece of string in my pocket and managed to tie it shut so we could get home.

At home (in the dark and cold) I tried to see what the problem was. When I pressed the boot release button on the dash, I could hear a noise from under the dash (a relay clicking), but nothing at the back of the car. Normally one hears the electric release mechanism whir. It appeared that the catch mechanism would rotate like it does when engaging on the locking pin, but will not lock into place. Anyway, after I could stand the cold no more, I gave in and tied it back down, put it into the garage (fortunate I have one) and left it overnight.

I took a look on the internet to see if there were any quick fixes mentioned, but sadly there were not. I found reference to similar issues on several sites (including this one), but no fixes (one site wanted £12.50 to register so they would provide an "answer" to this problem. Sorry, but no!).

On Monday morning it was the same, so overnight did not allow anything to reset. Since I could not leave the car anywhere, I had to take it to the dealer for them to look at. Despite having a backlog, they did look at it for me during the day and said the mechanism was faulty and needed replacing. Without much option, I agreed and had to take it back today for them to fix. £100 later, I have a working tail gate release mechanism again. I can't fault the dealer. They replaced the part and it fixed the problem (maybe the previous random opening issue was a portent...).

Crucially, I said I wanted the faulty part back (and I had marked it to make sure that they did in fact replace the unit like they said they had to - and they were honest, because I got back the marked part in the box that the new one had been in. I didn't think that they would try to stitch me up, since I have lots of experience of the dealer and trust them, but one can't be too careful...).

Now eventually to the info that others might find useful!

On these cars it looks like the electric release is actually not the only way to get the release to work and the body of the lock / release is designed to also work with a cable (or piece of string if you are desperate!). What appeared to have occurred is that the electric release motor got stuck in "open" position. Normally it pulls back a lever that releases the lock and then when you take your finger off the release button, it returns to the default position by virtue of an internal spring. Interestingly, when I looked at the faulty part, it behaved exactly in this manner, so I guess taking it off the car freed it up.

When looking at the lock mechanism from the back of the car with the boot open and trim removed, on the bottom right hand side, of the upper zink plated part, there is a gap where you can reach up in with a finger / bent piece of wire, etc and pull down on the release mechanism. If, like mine, it is jammed in the open position, this should force it to return to the default position where if you close the boot, it will latch shut. Don't do that though, since you might have problems opening it again! Test the electric release now, since maybe it will now work if all that has happened is that it had jammed open. If it works, you should be okay to use it as normal (but it might indicate that the mechanism is needing lubricating or is about to die - I stull have to test the part they took off mine to see which is the case for mine).

Crucially, what you can also do is tie some string around this part of the release arm (there is quite a big hole in the metal that actually looks like it is designed to have a cable attached to it), then work this up round the side of the casing and pass it through a cut out in the top of the casing (which, again, looks like it is made for a cable to pass through). Now, if you manually close the boot latch by pressing on it (it has two latched closed positions, the fully closed position and a safety latch position), you can pull the string and it will release the latch. It might be possible to drill a small hole in the trim so that this would act as an emergency release in case the electric release failed while the boot is locked (which with the trim in position and the boot closed, would make getting at the release mechanism to operate it very difficult indeed!). I will consider doing this myself just in case! It will not affect the normal electric release.

I have to say that the electric release is a luxury and I don't think anyone ever died from having to put a key in their boot lock to open it! Given that this mechanism does seem prone to failing, it is also annoying quite a lot of people who either cannot lock (like me) or unlock their boots (depending on how the mechanism failed). Maybe Ford should be trying to get back a bit more to their roots - you can have any colour you want as long as it does not need electrickery to make it work!

Anyone who wants to pay me £12.50 for this information, please feel free. I reckon 8 donations should just about cover the cost of the job the dealer did.... Read more

driving down motorway yesterday the wife's ka,1.3,03 reg temp gauge lit up she imediatley pulled over coolant expansion tank bubbling like hell!
let it cool some relieved pressure slowly from bottle,rad fan spinning,all hoses hot, suspect thermostat stuck,drove on with heater on hot fan blowing no other probs untill tried near home put it to cold and bingo did it again!
removed last night tried in hot water from kettle not opening, ordered new parts from ford at a wopping £42.00 new stat,o ring,& rubber gasket, don't think water pump is faulty would overheat all the time,
If head gasket has gone is this a chain driven engine? any probs with head cracking or straight forward skim new gasket's? any info greatly accepted thanks.. Read more

Ok heres my boring story im hoping someone can help me.

I bought mt BMW 316icompact 1.5 years ago. When i first bought it i noticed it was running at alot higher temperature than my Corsa 1.5TD. Assumed this was normal. 2 months later car severley overheats on the motorway i pull over and let the car cooldown coming off at the next exit and driving home carefully without the car overheating. Thermostat was jammed shut so i took it out as i was told i dont really need one till winter anyway. Still didnt fix the problem, so i replaced the radiator and water pump to then find out that the gasket needed replacing.

I was told at this point it was better to get a new engine because the local garage said the engine had severe problems. So takes me a few months to replace the engine to which im all happy about again as ill soon be back on road (They disconnected the heater matrix as one of the pipes coming out of it corroded, so they by-passed it). Car passes its mot but i notice that it gets to half temp guage way pretty quick after about 3-4 miles. Continue to drive etc and then eventually after about 20miles goes into the red again. Engine is severely pressurised as before. So this time ive had the water pump replaced again, just incase when i got my engine change they didnt change the water pump and the radiator cap. Still the same problem.

The main problem now is that it doesnt seem like the water is flowing back out of the radiator into the engine. Now ive been told this can be two problems either the radiator is blocked or head gasket is gone again. Or could the heater matrix have somehting to do with it.

Any help will be appreciated as i dont fancy replacing the head to only find out that it wasnt the problem in the first place. Does anyone think the matirx would be responsible.

Thanks for reading this wall of text.

Richard Read more