A few months ago, some boys dropped a concrete block onto the A45 near Wellingborough and this resulted in the death of a lorry driver. One of them has been convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to 40 months youth custody. I don't suppose he will be away for long. Maybe if we had adopted the controversial law the Archbishop of Canterbury referred to , the Sharia law, this wretched boy might have been sentenced to a punishment more fitting to his crime. And we would have been better protected in the future. Read more

Is my 147 1.6TS developing a problem?

When I accelerate in 1st gear up to 6000 rpm and then declutch, the revs take a long time to drop down. If I engage 2nd gear, I get a veritable surge when I lift engage the clutch because the revs are still so high. It takes some three seconds for the revs to drop significantly.

My previous 1.6TS 145 did not do this.

Somewhere I recall reading that this may be due to lack of compression in the cylinders as there is not enough engine brakeing to retard the engine.

Someone has also suggested that it is the clutch release bearing.

The engine uses oil (1.5L in 5000 miles, so far), but mpg is quite good (37mpg).

yet another person who fails to spot the 3 separate requests to include year/engine in the subject header Read more

I've had conflicting advice on how to correctly warm up a diesel engine.

1) change gear at around 2.2k rpm

2) change gear at around 3k rpm

... changing at 3k does make it warm up a lot quicker and even improves fuel economy but i was told not to rev too high or hard until warm.


My engine hits max hp at 3.6k and drops off at 4.2k so 3k seems high to me especially as max torque has been and gone.


As you can see i do care about turbo health :) Read more

Hello folks, my first post here though I have been reading for a couple of years whenever Ive had a Xantia issue.

Problem: engine fast idle is too high with engine warmed up, drops sometimes to normal. Found that what I assume is a vacuum pipe has come off but my STUPID problem is I cant see where it goes back on!

The pipe is only 10cm or so long, and has marks on the very end that suggest it pushes onto something, there is nothing I can find within 50cm let alone 10cm 8/

Haynes is no help as it seems to refer to an electronic thingy in a later engine and says nothing about a pipe.

I think I have a bosch pump, the idle mechanism seems to be like this if it helps:

lever on rear of pump/wire cable/ 2cm thick round disk on a bracket/approx 4mm black rubber pipe 10cm in length......

Thanks in nervous anticipation.

Mark Read more

My friend has the above car and needs to replace her wipers. She went to the local autostore but they advised that they don't sell wipers for this and she would need to go to a Ford dealer to get them.

Anyone know of an alternative to the Ford dealer, preferably on the web? Or how much are they in dealer?

I remember being pleasantly surprised at how reasonable my Skoda wipers were from the main dealer but not sure if Ford are the same (my Renault Scenic were extortionate from the dealer)
Read more