Friend was "caught without insurance" driving his 2006 car. This car is insured in his name under it's original reg number. A wee while after the policy was started, he transferred a private plate (a 2001 Y-plate with his initials) onto the car from his old one but forgot to advise his insurers (genuine lapse!).

Basically the outcome is that the car was impounded after he was stopped as it wasn't on MID with the new plate, he had to pay £170 to release it, and he has been given a fixed penalty of £200 and 6 points.

He's got 28 days to decide whether or not to take the points + FP.

Question: is there any point taking this one to court or is he going to have to take the fall? Anyone have experience of similar, and if so, do the courts take a sympathetic view or otherwise?

Seems very harsh as otherwise the car is unmodified, but his insurer aren't being helpful and have actually sent him a letter saying after this year's policy lapses they no longer want his business.

Anyhoo - thanks for any advice.
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I might be buying a car but I don't want to get into that yet, there has been enough said and enough advice given so far on other threads of mine, I just have a very specific question according to HJ this engine is a chain cam can somebody confirm this? Its never had a cambelt change and I think HJ has the answer to why.

Its the 1.2 16V unit found in the Corsa. I always knew the 1.0 was a chain cam but I assumed the 1.2 was the same as the 1.4 16v. Read more

Hi, I wonder if anyone can offer any advice on this:

I test drove a used (2001) Ford Focus (Automatic) earlier this week, which was for sale at a local independent garage - it was advertised as having "remote central locking" on AutoTrader...

When I test drove the car, the keyfob was missing a battery so the remote part of the central locking didn't work. It appeared to work fine when locking/opening the doors with the key though, so I presumed buying a new battery for the fob would suffice.
After the test drive, I negotiated a price with the dealer and agreed to buy - without warranty. I collected the car today, and paid via MasterCard credit card.

Now having had the chance to spend some time with the vehicle, I've noticed that 1) The "airbag warning light" is permanently on, 2) The handbrake doesn't prevent the car from moving quite freely and 3) the remote central locking does not work (other than making a clunking noise without actually locking any doors). Rather frustratingly, one of the rear doors doesn't lock at all via the remote or via turning the key. The key seems to open/lock all doors except this one - which I have to lock from the inside manually.

I realise these are things I should have picked up on during the test drive, but I'm not that savvy when it comes to buying a car!

I'm prepared to sort the airbag light and the handbrake out myself, but should I expect the dealer to fix the central locking issue for me? (bearing in mind I didn't negotiate any warranty as part of the deal). I personally think he should, considering it was advertised with remote central locking, and I've only had it for a few hours(!) but not sure where I stand legally?

Any help greatly appreciated! Read more

Hello all,

I'm new to this forum and came across it whilst searching the net to try to discover what's happened to my car.

I've got a Ford Fiesta 1.4 TDCi 53 plate and recently, when driving and also idle in traffic, the speedometer decides to start flickering from 0-140mph in a matter of seconds, rectifies itself then might not happen for a few days later. I could be doing 70mph down the motorway, it'll flick up to 100mph, down to 60mph then recify itself to the actual speed I'm going. It's starting to do my head in. Also aswell, under the speedometer is the reading for my mileage and sometimes, but hardly ever, when the speedometer starts playing up, my mileage will just display dots. Then all of sudden, again by magic rectify itself.

Anyone got any ideas or put my mind at rest that my car isn't going to blow up lol.

I do alot of motorway miles, maybe about 70 miles per day. It's been an excellent car so far, it's go just over 97000 on the clock.

Thanks. Read more

My 2003 XC90 T6 started behaving strangely about 6 months ago (shortly after converting it to use LPG), and I received a Transmission Service Urgent warning message a few times. The car drove perfectly well with no further errors until about 2 months ago - when I noticed the transmission felt like it was slipping (no increase in road speed when the engine speed was increasing, and then finally the transmission engaging and the car would shoot off).

At this point, I received transmission service urgent warnings about once a week. The codes referred simply to "incorrect gear ratio". I had the car seen by Volvo who recommended a new gearbox (no surprise there 7-) and I contacted Volvo UK to see if they would help pay for the gearbox as they have done in the UK & throughout the world as my car had only done 61K miles. Their final offer was to give me a discount of about £1K on the £5K bill.

Since then, I've had the gearbox reconditioned at an independent transmission specialist for a total cost of £1600. They said that the gearbox had a sticky solenoid and that one of the clutch plates was worn down almost to nothing.

The car now drives well and the gear changes are smooth etc.

The only problem I now have is that the car doesn't seem to behave properly in certain instances as follows:

When driving at low speeds (<40mph) and I take my foot off the gas pedal, the engine revs drop down to about 600rpm, when I then press on the gas pedal again, the revs shoot up to say 1500rpm and the car accelerates properly and feels quite normal. If I press harder on the gas pedal, it kicks down as per normal.

When driving at slightly higher speeds (45-70), and I take my foot off the gas pedal, the engine revs stay the same or drop quite slowly. If I press on the gas pedal, then sometimes the car will immediately kick-down a gear and accelerate normally. Other times the engine revs will go up and the car accelerates normally.

Finally, sometimes the rev counter will go up say 200revs and immediately go back down again to where it was (like a spike/blip) and the car won't kick down or speed up. If I press harder on the gas pedal, then the car will begin to pick up speed or kick down and then accelerate. Whilst I'm pressing harder on the gas pedal, I can feel a slight vibration in the car. To get the car to kick down or feel as though it's accelerating, I sometimes have to press the gas pedal down quite far (if it was driving perfectly normally I'd be going at say 90mph by the time it kicks down or speeds up).

I've spoken to the transmission specialists about it and demonstrated it to them. Their response was that the gearbox and gas pedal were working correctly and that kick-downs were happening at the right revs etc. They said that my car just drove like that and there wasn't anything they could do about it.

Does anyone know what might be causing this?

I'm no mechanic - but it seems to me that either the kick-down is not happening correctly or that the gearbox/engine is not responding to the gas pedal position.

In either case, shouldn't the transmission specialist have noticed this (they test drove it for 100 miles before giving it back to me), and should they have fixed this as part of the gearbox reconditioning?

The transmission specialist has suggested that I drive the car for a few weeks and then get back to them if I'm still concerned. They've said that this problem won't damage or adversely affect the gearbox - but I'm not so sure.

Any info/help etc appreciated.
Thanks,
Jatinder Read more