November 2008
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, is to scrap the extension.
Consultation produced 28,000 reponses. 67% of residents and 86% of businesses wanted it scrapped, so scrap it he will do! Read more
My patience has been tried sorely these past few weeks.
Wife's car was parked o/s our house, in the street, 3 weeks ago and was clonked hard by a local council minibus, meaning the car will need a new wing. Fortunately for us, as the minibus drove off without stopping, my local newsagent directly across a main road (we're at the head of a T junction, in a side road) witnessed it and recorded the make, model and registration number.... so i got him to sign and date it and kept his note for evidence.
Whilst crossing back over the road from the newsagent i noticed that type of minibus parked much further up the road...so took a look and bingo, same vehicle, with a big blue paint mark down it's rear nearside wing....so took some pictures with a digital camera of our damage with white paint and white paint dust, their damage with recent dirt smudges and blue paint....then contacted the relevant council depot, who rang the driver. He returned to the vehicle, we exchanged names and addresses and he apologised, admitting liability stating he'd had to pull in tight to our car suddenly, due to another driver and hadn't realised he'd hit it when turning right, but with the paint on his wagon and recent damage/paint on ours, it was obvious he'd caused it
so far so good.....but then comes the insurance calim fiasco
a well known budget insurer....(yes i know, you get what you pay for, pay cheap pay twice etc...but with two Jags parked on London streets...that's my excuse)... hear my tale of woe and advise we have a good chance of recovering all our costs etc from the 3rd party, so may they pass us over to an accident handling company, who will provide me with a courtesy car, handle the claim and I won't need to pay our excess (which is steep to keep the premium down)...so despite HJ recently advising against this, i thought, why not?
what a useless pile of cretins they have turned out to be. I've now learnt that these sorts of companies provide two services; 1, credit hire i.e. courtesy car, which they'll lend out if they think they'll get their money back..and 2, repair and credit hire, which they'll only do when the 3rd party admits liability and agrees to pay
who in their right mind thinks a council is going to get their act together quickly and admit liability immediately without waiting for a driver's report and then perusing it at their leisure for some weeks...so in the meantime we're waiting like a couple of numpties. On day 3 we drove the vehicle on a long journey believing the damage to be just visual and found the tyre was connecting with the damaged wing at m/way speeds, so with local speed humps everywhere as well, decided it wasn't wise to keep using the car and parked it up.
When i finally lost patience with the accident handling co. after 2 weeks, because they faffed about trying to get the council to admit liability.. and went back to the insurer, the insurer advised me the accident handling co. would nevertheless let me have a courtesy car even if they didn't handle the claim, as that risk was considerably less to them as they own their courtesy cars anyway..so i thought great, with a 10 month old baby and two dogs we need an estate car, so we will no longer be 'familial housebound'...but no, the accident handling co. declined to provide a car...because... we'd managed without it for 2 weeks and their assessment of being able to claim this off the 3rd party dictated this was a negative...despite me having a genuine provable need for an estate type car. The irritating thing was, if i'd asked for the damn thing within the first 2 weeks they'd have let me have it as long as they weren't expected to settle the claim as well, but of course i was still expecting them to do the whole lot and at that time hadn't told them to go and whistle at that stage.
For 3 weeks solid I have been ringing people every other day, i have been passed from pillar to post. All persons have been 'nice', but i don't want nice, i want effective. How i've kept my patience i really don't know.
End result is vehicle is now authorised to go to garage of our choice (which slowed things down more, but i wanted decent parts fitted and Jaguar paint warranty to be still valid) and i've declined the garage's Nissan Micra as they way things have gone there'd have been a problem with that too.
HJ advised avoiding these accident handling companies....wish i'd listened, it set me back 2 weeks in the system and gave me untold frustration/stress.
p.s. my newsagent needs a great big Christmas present as he's probably saved me many hundreds of pounds, if not nearer the thousand mark, when you consider what higher premiums for two cars would be over the next few years. Any ideas on what to give a married, 35ish Sri Lankan man who's got 3 kids, mild practising Hindu? (Not booze, already thought of that and his wife said the doctor has told him to stop!)
Read more
Sorry tale WP. Hope it all ends satisfactorily.
Family man? How about some vouchers for your local multiplex cinema? If he has a corner shop I'm sure he can get a good deal on popcorn so they should have a fun and cheap night out !
I had something similar a few years ago. Hit up the harris while stationary. ( never can remember whether that's paper or standing still )
Anyway, my insurance co. were excellent and organised a suitable replacement hire car, coincidentally a large estate, within 3 hours of the accident. I had the free hire car for 5 weeks while the insurance companies did their thing and eventually got my car back good as new. No effect on my ncb or anything and in due course I forgot all about it.
Two years later I get a strange phone call from a firm of solicitors asking me to recount the detail of these events. Seems they were acting on behalf of the car hire company who had been unable to recover their costs as the company which owned the pick-up truck which parked in my boot had gone bust and disappeared.
Fortunately I was able to confirm events as I had previously reported them and they went away but there was a short while when it was clear that they were looking for an angle on me.
I would be fairly cautious in future if offered this service.
Folks,
I've just bought an 07 plated 307 1600HDI S, well 8th October to be exact!, and have noticed that under hard acceleration i get quite a bit of smoke out the exhaust.
Any ideas what this could be?
Also i've checked the service log and the warranty certificate hasnt been stamped by the priginal owner. Does this mean i'm screwed over the warranty?
Cheers in advance,
Marc Read more
Marc
The warranty certificate hasn't been stamped by the supplying dealer?
Is this a forged service book to cover a mileage haircut?
For some reason, my stereo, indicators and heated rear window all suddenly died. Any ideas why this could be? Surely they shouldn't all be connected? Read more
hey guys,
I have the same fault... i was trying to fix the blower on my saxo, i found that there was no power getting to the switch itself and all fuses were ok! so i routed the power from the cigarette lighter just to get me going for the time being, but now my indicators, stereo and alternator seem to be playing up, all fuses seem ok, the hazzards work and i've tried replacing the relay for the hazzards, but i've got the same problem. The alternator is showing a dimly lit battery light indicating it's not charging, but this only comes on when a relay under the fuse board energises after starting the engine and slightly increasing the revs, on idle it's fine. intermittantly the hazzard relay chatters when the indicators come on, but it seems to be linked to the relay under the fuse board... i've undone what I did to the blower switch incase, but no joy :( any help would be amazing guys :)
cheers
Steve
Hi,
After my car stopped for no reason I took it to my local garage, who said it required a new main diesel pump, approx cost £700, as i could not afford to pay I sold the car on e-bay as a none runner, the mechanic who bought the car rang me 2 days later to say that there was nothing wrong with the pump the fault was the E.G.R. valve.
Has anyone heard of this happening as the fault was highlighted on a diagnostic machine
and the garage were certain it was the pump.
{Y reg, so that'll be 2001 then?} Read more
Not being a mechanic and having used this garage for several years I had no reason to doubt what they said about the pump being faulty, so I did not ask for a printout of the diagnostic test, although I must admit it has know crossed my mind to ask for the printout and get a second opinion.
The mechanic who bought the car actually lives 80 miles away so would have no reason to put my local garage down, apart from to warn me to be aware,
But he did say he checked the car changed the EGR valve and the car was fine
brought xantia was told cambelt gone have checked i think ok but not sure any easy way of checking.also have changed glow plugs and checked voltage across them that's ok so a little bit stuck now hope some1 has ideas.thanks Read more
fixed my r reg citroen now after using my t reg citroen as a donor car again , don`t think i`ll ever get this car started. never mind !i might use it to find out where stop solenoid is as still can`t locate it . anyway thinks for your help in solving my problems .
This estate has the diesel TDCi engine. It has been owned from new, done 26,000 miles and has the engine oil changed every six months. Regretably it does a large number of short journeys. The car runs brilliantly. The oil was last changed at the end of June. The oil is dipped weekly and until a fortnight ago was at the corrrect level every time. A fortnight ago it was 'high', above the bulb and showing on the wire. I assumed that it was an anomaly, but it was the same last Friday and again today. I assume that it is diesel that is getting in but I can see no sign of contamination.
I will be changing the oil within the next month, I will have a close look at what comes out.
What is going on please? How can it be prevented? Read more
I checked the sump when I did the oil change - like new, partly because beneath it s fitted a substantial mill board and felt undertray (which I have to remove and refit for each oil change). The nine pints I used is registering just about at the maximum. Whereas I always used to put 10 pints is each time. I do final dipping after standing over night. I continue to monitor.
halilley
I was in a main dealer the other day picking up a brochure for my wife and the salesman there used to work for a different main dealer where we bought my wife's last car from. I was just chatting about our buying experience at the other dealer, which was really bad, and he said that they now charge £30 for a test drive.
Now I can't make up my mind whether this is sour grapes, a sales technique or fact. Has anyone else ever heard of a charge for test driving prior to purchase of a brand new car? Read more
Many thanks. I hope your dealership continues to flourish.
Hi there
Looking for some help. My grandad bought a 607 about a month ago he already has 1 and the new 1 hasnt got the power of his old car. The turbo seems to come in at around 3000 rpm where as the other is progresive from a lower range. We have had the car on diognostics and it came up turbo preasure sensor so we changed it out. Still no joy. We then stripped the car down and adusted the waste gate on the turbo ( the car had a new turbo fitted by pug in france and the gate was at it lowest point so we adusted it by about 10 mm to the line on the threads where we could see it had been previously) We ran the car and the inter cooler pipe preasurised so we thought we had cured it. However the next day same problem. We have changed all the vacume sensors on the back wall of the engine bay. Checked the fuel filter. And the pipe still isnt preasurising at a lower range. The turbo is working you just have to drive the car at high revs to feel it coming in. When we first disconected the lower inter cooler pipe (black plastic pipe) there was oil in it. Any help would be good as we are completely lost as what to do next. The car has had a lot of work done in france if it helps i can get a list of the work done.
Thanks for reading
Andy Read more
Sorry for late reply, I`m still having the problem with my 607, change Solnoid valve, EGR valve, Air Flow Meter.But still losing pressure on motorway and as soon as I go up the hill...... Had enough. thinking to put this car into the bin. Unless any one knows what to do to pix the problem? Tnx
Yesterday my Legacy went in for its 12,000 mile "service" - oil and filter change and inspection at a main dealer. They rang saying they'd drained the oil and didn't realise that the diesel used a different oil filter and they didn't have one in stock. A double whammy! I couldn't leave the car with them for another day so they refitted the old filter. They've offered to have the car back and fit a new filter saying that would be ok. I think I'd prefer another fill of new oil as some of the old oil in the old filter will have mixed with the new oil. Is that fair enough or am I being over fussy? Appreciate any views. Thanks. Read more
The car is going great and I carried out a little mod myself the other weekend and trimmed the driver side rubber overmat, which provided another 4mm of accelerator pedal travel and unleashed a few more bhp!
You're driving the thing flat-out then?! Surely not the best way to maximise diesel type power characteristics surely!
Browse
There was an initial reduction that has now been eradicated inside the zone, however traffic and congestion is far worse just outside it.