March 2008
My wife's a keen cyclist, and has now bought a border collie. Any suggestions for any make or model into which she can throw either without dismantling? (The bike, not the dog!)
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Can anyone beat this?
Just rang the dealer to get prices of a set of wipers for my Japanese MPV as they are different lengths either side and I thought that it might be easier/cheaper than going to a motoring shop.
Price inclusive of VAT = £49.80
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£26.37 for a set of front and rear genuine spares for my 03/03 Focus from a Ford dealer.
Hi, does anyone know if it is possible to convert a focus estate on a 53 plate to a 7 seater? If so any ideas where to look for the conversion?
many thanks Read more
Here's one.
www.luxury7.co.uk/
i have a 1998 mondeo td estate. the anti roll bar has come lose, will this cause any problem till i can get time to sort it out?
(year & engine details added to subject header. Sarcasm mode on - Maybe we ought to start asking people to do this for themselves by means of 2 sticky messages and a further request under the subject line when composing their question - sarcasm mode off) Read more
Cannot complain at 10 year old but I might complain whne I see the cost.
Bushes were £15 ea and labour was £60 then there was the bit for Gordon Brown Esq (I know it is a new chap with grey hair and brown eyebrows but I think it is the Brown bit that does the work of screwing the motorist and taxpayer in General)
We have got a 1.4l Getz Gsi with air conditioning, which is coming up to its first annual service at 5500 miles.
Supplying dealer quoted £200 to include a filter in the air conditioning. SWMBO will not go for that price. It is more expensive than a Passat service.
Must be joking surely.
I'd have thought £100 max for an oil change and safety inspection.
Any suggestions to reduce the price and retain the warranty? We live in the Chesterfield area.
(year & engine size added to subject line as per the ignored requests) Read more
Hyundai cars are cheap but the service and parts are not. I think you will find that you do not need to use Hyundai parts-just ones made to the original specifications of the Hyundai parts.
2.5litre 51-reg Mondeo used for occasional trips to the dump a few times a year. Was £210/year to keep on the road.
Now £430. PX value was £2.5k. How much is it worth now? Could be as little as £1k I think? Because any buyer knows they will be the last owner - because in a couple of years it would be down to £1k anyway just by normal depreciation, at which point paying £430/year VED makes no sense, so the car is basically worthless.
At what point (in terms of value) will it make sense to crush cars because the VED is too high?
Perhaps the market for exporting cars to Poland will increase (this is where mine went). All those nice comfortable large cars, just a few years old, now consigned to imminent scrapping would be worth several thousand pounds in less countries that are not quite so eco-bonkers. Read more
Bad news for anyone who currently owns a vehicle which will be so penalised but it might paradoxically be of short term advantage to someone who would like to buy one. Consider this scenario. A person who takes the white goods attitude to cars ie run them till they are broken. Might fancy an ST220 or the like. Because of the VED increase the price will drop allowing the purchase of a better car for the same budget. If the planned period of ownership is, say +/- four years and the VED increase accounts for +/- £1000 extra over the period but the purchase price drops by say £3000, then it could look OK , especially for a highish mileage driver where the "saving" would help offset fuel costs. More than one way of flaying felines.
Headline news here today - Gentleman was leaving a supermarket and was approached by 4 young thugs who demanded his groceries, wallet, and car keys. Gentleman objected, whereupon thugs started to beat him up, until another motorist yelled that he was calling the police. Thugs took off with groceries in their stolen car. Enraged gentleman followed and rammed them, but not sufficiently to stop them. He stopped at a petrol station to call the police, and then saw thugs at another supermarket carpark, so Gentleman rammed them from the other side, rendering thugs' car undriveable. Thugs fled on foot, but were rounded up forthwith by police dogs, and are now in custody.
Newspaper photos indicate that he certainly knew how to ram. Quoth the Gentleman at interview [ and with apologies to the swear filter ] " Although they hurt me, I was so furious that I wasn't going to let the b's get away with it".
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I have to confirm Dr Duffy's comments about N.Z. driving abilities { ??? } As I have mentioned in other threads where the difficulties of driving in Naples is spoken of, I found Naples just like Auckland, and therefore no difficulty at all.
Going slightly off-topic, we have been governed for the past 9 years by a gang of social engineers, which has resulted in the police and judiciary falling way down the totem pole of trustworthyness in the eyes of the general public. In a couple of recent cases, the jury has thrown out charges that, in earlier times would have resulted in conviction. Interrogation of the jury is contempt of court here, but the consensus of opinion is that the juries didn't trust the judges to take proper account of the strong mitigating circumstances. Whilst the purists howled for abolition of jury trials, the great majority of us felt that the results were just despite the legalities.
It will be interesting to see whether the police will bring charges against the rammer in this case, as they could go before a jury. No mention so far.
In the 'budget VED changes' discussion, Devonboy78 asked:
"what is the lowest band MPV that will take 3 car seats across the rear bench under the new regime?"
Well, I have the exact same question, as do many others I suspect. Note that we are talking about three children that must by law go in child seats, this does limit the options somewhat.
I like the idea of a TD estate type car, but I'm not sure that 3 seats will fit across the back.
The DFT website shows the ford focus C-max as being the best MPV at 124g/km
www.dft.gov.uk/ActOnCO2/index.php?q=best_on_co2_ra...s
2 questions:
1 - can anyone suggest anything better?
2 - does anyone know if it will take three child seats in the back? Read more
Saw a Mazda 5 the other day - thought it was nice looking car. Ddin;t realise they had sliding doors, might have to look at them in a bit more detail. Thanks for the tip.
... are in the worst state that I can remember in nearly 40 years of motoring. Potholes, patchworks of indifferent repairs, sunken drains and manhole covers. (Oh, and speed humps too!)
I tended to think that those who complained about the state of the roads were exaggerating rather - things never seemed that bad to me. So if I'm moaning things must be bad.
But now, on anything but M-ways and trunk roads it seems, the situation is appalling. Our politicians would have us believe we are even less able to afford decent roads these days. Better that people spend their own money on repairing damage to their vehicles. Read more
Zookeeper, you're right...
What annoys me (apart from the fact that lousy surfaces make driving so unpleasant) is that we seem to be able to find plenty of money to over-engineer revisions to road layouts - traffic lights, controlled crossings with silly names, lanes and road markings in abundance, coloured tarmac and a profusion of signs - but there's nothing available to keep the basic infrastructure in decent order.
The irony is that many of the new road schemes cause congestion - and thereby pollution, more CO2, etc. Must be that these are done in the interests of 'safety', so therefore must be worth the money. I suspect that in many cases the cost-benefit ratio must be poor indeed.
One of my friends announced at the weekend that he was getting a new TV and his budget was up to £1500. This provoked a discussion about how you could buy a car for that etc.
However it did make me think. Say a bog standard car that costs £10k. I think you could probably get a Focus for that for argument's sake. If you had to rebuild the car from all its individual parts, how much would it cost? I realise dealer parts prices inc a margin but do you think it would cost more than 10k? Remember to include the labour for putting it all together! IIRC you can be about £2k for a full car respray although perhaps some of that cost is down to labour intensive masking of parts, preparing surfaces etc.
Then the manufacturers tell us that every new model costs them stillions in research and development. How do they recoup that cost? When a 40/50 inch TV can cost £1500, does a 4/5metre car represent good value? Thats lots of electronics, metal, plastics, tyres, etc etc!
A mobile phone at say a few hundred or even ipods at similar prices - surely the electronics and chips in them don't cost that much to mass produce?
It starts to look at better value when you maybe look at the cheaper Japanese cars at around the £7/8k mark?
Its amazing what you can discuss when you have a few pints in you!
You can then take it to the "bangernomics" stage whereby the value of the parts most definitely can be worth more than the complete car!
So should we be happy that for some cars, say sub £10k, that they actually represent good value for money for what you are actually getting? Read more
There is an old adage that short circuits a lot of, sometimes quite logical, argument here. Namely, "The price of something is what you can get for it"
That is no bad thing, it is what makes the economic wheels go round; and far better than "it does not matter what it costs if it buys votes and we can screw rhe taxpayer for it"!
Browse
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Policeman knocks on house door and says to Lady, "Neighbours have reported your dog chasing a man on a bicycle". "Won't be our dog", says the Lady, "She can't ride a bike".
Makes you gag, doesn't it !