I returned yesterday to the small village where I used to live until recently and was surprised to find two badly damaged cars parked in different roads. This is very unusual, especially as they were completely separate accidents, one must have occurred on the spot, as the car was patently undrivable, and the other one probably had been driven home from its incident a day or so previously.

In both cases the owners don?t have off-street parking and it made me wonder what the legalities are in a case like this. Can you leave a taxed, insured, MOT'd vehicle on the roadside even though the damage would preclude driving it (sharp bits, pedestrians, etc) until the insurance assessor comes or must it be moved to somewhere off the road

(This is a rhetorical question BTW, I have no wish to have a moan at the respective owners, they have my sympathies, especially as it is the second time the one who lives on the main road has had his car written off by someone driving into it in the early hours)

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snip Please don't link to the Sunday Times from here !! :-)


It is believed that sales fell as far as 25 per cent towards the latter part of the month but then picked up in the last couple of days. Some industry insiders believe that the pickup was down to carmakers buying some of their own stock and preregistering the vehicles to make their sales seem slightly more robust. Preregistering can only provide a short-term flattering effect, however, because the cars then have to be sold as nearly new at reduced prices. Read more

I've recently bought an old Hydrovane compressor for a song, and I'm beginning to do it up - the problem is that I've never worked on a Hydrovane before.

It's quite an old one, I think it's a 9pu - the one on the left in the picture at the top of this page;

www.hydrovane.co.uk/about/01History_of_Hydrovane.a...x

I don't have a manual, and there's a knob / valve / tap at the lower end of the compressor, and I don't know what it does. Does anybody know what it does, and how it should be adjusted?


Stand by for questions on Brook single phase induction motors!

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Hi, I'm just after some general advice. I bought a Vauxhall Tigra brand new from a dealer on the 1st Sept this year. I part exchanged my Toyota yaris and I got £3,500 for it which was £500 more than I owed on the finance. The garage cleared my finance with Toyota and the remaining £500 was kept on a 'retainer' and this was explained to me as a sum the garage keep until they have looked over the car I exchanged and made sure it didn't need anything doing to it. Any repairs would have to come out of this retaining fund.

I thought this was a bit strange but went along with it, I've had my car now for 5 weeks and I have heard nothing from the garage about this £500 whether I am due all of it or some of it back???

I just wondered if anyone else had, had to do this before and what you think I should do! I intend to get in touch with the garage to ask about it, just want to make sure that garages are allowed to do this and how long is a realistic time to wait for this retaining money to come back? i think the garage have conveniently forgotten!!!!!

dealer name removed - not relevant to the question ! Read more

Evening folks, I've got a '96 2.0 8v megane that has recently started running hot. out of 6 bars it always used to run at the 1st bar, rising to the second if stuck in traffic before returning to the first bar once progress is resumed. earlier in the week I noticed it was running at the third bar. after checking the fluid levels which are fine I removed the thermostat and after testing it's stuck closed. now even with the thermostat removed the car is still running hot and the fan doesn't appear to kick in. I've replaced the fan switch with a new one and also checked the fan works.

now the temperature is getting up to the fourth bar, when i first fitted the new fan switch the fan kicked in at about 4.5 bars fine, now it doesn't appear to kick in at all, ive bled the coolant system but can only find two bleed nipples, one on the thermostat housing and the other behind it on the heater hose, should there be one for the radiator? both the top and bottom radiator hose are equally hot (not red hot though i can comfortably touch them) so I presume the radiator isn't blocked, you also get a good flow of water round the system if it is filled via the top rad hose with a hosepipe.

i believe the water pump is working as there is a pipe from the top of the thermostat which goes up vertically and then 90 degrees and enters the coolant tank above the max line and when the engine is gently revved you can see the coolant pouring into the tank, are there any other ways I can test the water pump?

if the fan switch is bypassed to run all the time then the car heats up to just over 4 bars and stays there constantly, oddly if you turn the heater on the temperature gauge goes up slightly and the air isn't that warm, id expect the temperature to go down as your directing hot air away from the engine.

now im not sure what is wrong, I don't think it's head gasket failure as there are no other signs except the running hot, although i plan to do a compression test tomorrow which may give a bit more of an idea, if not then a sniffer test will have to be done. i also need to test the new fan switch with a multimeter to check it works.

would appreciate any other ideas on this though?

chris Read more