May 2008
Hi all, The brake lights stopped working on my Audi A3 1.8, checked the fuse which appeared to be ok, but just to check i swapped it with another 10 amp fuse in the rack. Unbeknown to me i had just swapped it with the power supply for the onboard diagnosis/telephone. Now the damn thing wont start (the engine turns over but wont start). Have examined both fuses again and they both appear to be O.K. There appear to be no warning lights on the dash apart from the engine immobiliser light flashing once as it turns over. Any help would be greatly appreciated Read more
I've just been driving a borrowed new car at my more or less usual speed of posted limit plus 10% to allow for over-reading.
But do speedos still over-read or is that now an urban myth that's been carried over from a time when it really happened?
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My A3 is only 2mph high at 70 and 1mph high at 30, according to my sat nav.
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
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 !
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
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:)
Brake light switches are a common fault; oft-modified, the current one is only around £7 - but very easy to break while fitting.