May 2008
Hi All
Quick question regarding my mondeo. It's a 1.8TD P reg, 157400 miles on the clock.
It's started blowing black smoke from the exhaust when ever I press the accelerator, it seems to get worse once the revs reach about 2000, the car labours when accelerating then suddenly jumps forward as if it has just had a power boost it's at this point the black smoke puffs out the back.
It went to it the garage on Friday, they checked the air filter (replaced about 7000 miles ago at service) and fuel line for blockages, all clear. The garage think it may be a blocked intercooler and that it is affecting the turbo, at the moment I'm waiting for the garage to contact me as they are trying to find a second hand intercooler as they have said a new one will be expensive (the garage is very good and have looked after my car since I've had it).
Is there anything else this could be?
I've had a lot of work done on the car in the last 12 months (this is how long I have owned it), cambelt change, new starter motor, new brakes front (discs and pads) and back, new heater matrix, new radiator, new fuel shut off valve and full servicing and a bit more and the car is due it's MOT in about 4 weeks time, is it worth perservering?(spelling, sorry) the down side is I can't afford to go out and spend alot on another car. Read more
Just had my garage replace a speedo pod for me.(2002 SX HDi) The old one had an electrical fault (surprise!), and just kept on ticking up all the time. - Often parked at 80!.
I also asked them to see if they could get remote locking working again. - I had done all the 'key synch' stuff, and reckoned the car has just decided it wasn't going to play any more. (It had stopped working one day when I tried to start the car (by mistake!) while in gear. - The car lurched, the hazard warning lights came on, and remote locking has never worked since. I did inform the garage of this)
Speedo was a second hand unit at £50, rather than a brand new one at £500.
My questions: They didn't reset the speedo to match the rest of the car, which I understand does know what it is. - They said they didn't do it because it was (and I quote) "Impossible". - So had they fitted a brand new one it would have shown next to nothing. - I find this one hard to believe.
They faffed around with my keys, and came to the same conclusion I did. They are adamant that this cannot be resolved by resetting the BSI, and are '90%' certain that to get the remote sensor in the car working again, will need a new Comms 2000 unit at a total cost of around £250. Of course they won't offer any guarantees that a new Comms 2000 unit will get my remopte locking working again. (Several other people have reported on the web that non working remote locking has been cured by a BSI reset/reconfigure.)
Am I being fobbed of, or are my requests really unreasonable??
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I think part of the reason the Xsara (mk2 especially) is pretty good is the fact its based on the 306 and ZX chassis before it, so by now hopefully PSA would have worked out many of the kinks of the design and manufacture process.
Hi anyone know how to change the battery in the key fob for central locking.
Thanks Read more
With cars getting ever-bigger, and the popularity of 'on-roaders', by the time you've reversed out of a typical car park's bay sufficiently for your front corner to clear the adjacent car's rear corner, you're at serious risk of backing into the car in the facing bay.
(Yes, you could reverse INTO the bay and maybe gain a bit more clearance by driving out forwards, but then you have trouble at the boot-end with kids' pushchairs and supermarket trolleys, and the associated risk of scraping adjacent cars in your efforts in getting said pushchair/trolley to that location.)
The car park's through-traffic gets held-up by vehicles having to make mini '3 point turns' to get out of -and often into- their bays, when the turn has to be 90 degrees. And no wonder so many carpark dings and scrapes occur.
For the sake of losing maybe a couple of spaces per row, why don't car parks have angled bays arranged in herringbone fashion? Something that seems to be very rare in this country.
Surely things would be quicker, easier, and safer for everybody concerned?
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Agreed. One place that I travel to a lot is Telford in Shropshire and the
town centre car parks are mostly herring-bone layout. It does make life a lot easier.
I have excellent first hand experience of this. Originally this was in the standard format but about 10 years ago when i worked at the asda there collecting trolleys they totally redesigned the car park
They introduced the herringbone design and as a result of not needing to give as much manouvering room the roadway section could be narrowed quite a bit, this meant that they could squeeze in an extra row of parking so despite having a couple less spaces per row the actual car park capacity increased.
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I don't get chickens and things with Firefox, either.
I have a 2000 Astra 1.6 8v estate. The aircon stopped working and I found the clutch coil in the compressor to be open circuit. It turned out that the thermal fuse in electrical series and in physical contact with the coil had blown. I replaced the fuse and the aircon now works but I'm afraid to run it for more than 10 minutes in case it blows again because I suspect that whatever cycles the compressor off and on isn't doing it's job thus overheating the coil. My questions are:- is it the type of compressor that cycles or is it O.K. if it runs continuously (implying that the original problem was just caused by a defective thermal fuse). If it is meant to cycle what components can I check? The defroster switch in contact with the evaporator radiator reads 9.6k ohms at ambient and 12.76k after running the air for 10 mins.
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Thanks much for your help
Hi
I have a 10 year old Saxo without power steering.
To me the steering seems extra heavy, the tyres are at the correct pressure but manoeuvering it you need arms like Arnie!
I know I'm used to power steering, as is the misses, but she can't even turn the wheel.
Is there anything I can do/check? Re-grease the rack perhaps? Would this be an option, or even pump some oil in?
Any ideas? Read more
Was outside the Post Office just dropped wife off to post letter and engine was obviously idling when she got back in i went to pull off and the steering had locked up like was really hard to move almost impossible i suppose if i was moving it would of been easier but i know what the geezer says when you need to be Arnie...Yes it must of been the PAS cutting out for some reason brought on by the engine being really low revs i think, its never happened again....but i do think ofit happening again and the force it took to turn and could i crash if PAS turned off???? Worrying
***** This thread is now closed, please CLICK HERE to go to Volume 235 *****
In this thread you may ask any question for which you need help, advice, suggestions or whatever.
It does not need to be motoring related. In fact, in this thread it should not be.
No Questions About PCs. Please use the current "computer Related Questions" thread instead.
No politics
No Speeding, speed cameras, traffic calming
No arguments or slanging matches
Nothing which we think is not following the spirit of the thread
Nothing that risks the future of this site (please see the small print for details -
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However, as has been said a couple of times, there is a wealth of knowledge in here, much of which is not motoring related, but most of which is useful.
This is Volume 234. Previous Volumes will not be deleted,
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Read more
:)
Our Focus II is just over 3 years old with 29K and through its 1st MOT. Being sad and doing a full spring clean inside and out I thought I'd whip the front alloys off and clean the insides.
Wheel nuts off and oh dear wheels stuck well on. No amount of banging with a lump hammer and block of wood would shift them.
Nuts back on loose and driven backwards and forwards did the trick.
Now my beef is - should not the wheels be taken off during one of its 3 main dealer services for brake component inspection?? They clearly haven't been off since the car was manufactured!
It seems as though if the brakes are working then thats a service item pass.
And whilst I'm on a roll. Wheel nut torque settings. I have the Focus and a Sorento. Neither has the wheel nut torque settings in the owners handbook. Full of fictitious fuel consumption figures, lubricant specs etc, but no wheel nut torque settings. Surely this figure is a basic setting an owner should have. Why is it not there?
Anyway, set them to 70ft lb which I think is about right for an alloy.
This post is more of a cathartic release than a question!
PS - Anyone know the alloy wheel torque setting for a Focus II 1.6 Climate in metallic blue with charcoal interior?
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Fullchat, always rotate the tyres on a 4x4, as you do, cos they don't like significantly different diameters betwen front and back, it wears out the 4x4 transmission.
as for 2wd, well I rotate so that have to visit tyre fitter less often and have not noticed handling problems when front and rear tyres are more or less similarly worn.
My old Cavalier has a slow leak on one tyre, possibly caused by flaking "paint" on the wheel, causing an imperfect seal where the bead seats. Is there a dirt-cheap remedy for this? Will a tyre fitter scrape off the flaky paint and re-fit the tyre? I can get it off myself, and do this - possibly treating the wheel to some "Smoothrite" - what do you recommend? I don't want to spend money on this, but I don't want to have to keep pumping it up every time I want to use the car! Read more
The first thing I would do is dunk the wheel (complete with inflated tyre) in the bath and see whether I could find the leak.
As some for you may remember (earlier post), I was having a problem with my mondeo puffing out black smoke constantly, I was told I needed a new intercooler, after posting on the forum and getting some sound advice I consulted another garage and it did turn out to be the EGR valve, a new EGR solenoid valve was fitted (we were struggling to find a second hand EGR valve, new one cost £251+VAT, that's half the value of the car) and a diesel treatment put in to try and clear it, no joy. the day before the car was due to go in and have the new valve fitted and MOT the spring coil on front offside wheel snapped, the car has now been sold as spares (we had it for a year and every month it was in the garage having something done, hence we had had enough).
we've now got a ford escort 1.6 1999, 85000 on the clock with very little tax and only a week remaining on the MOT for £300, MOT'd it today and it passed with flying colours and with no advisory notices either. We bought it off a local man who just wanted rid of it as he didn't have the space for it anymore. We are WELL PLEASED and I think it's safe to say a REAL BARGAIN.
Thank you to those who offered advice, you were spot on.
CHEERS GUYS
Joined up with the original post - nice bit of closure !