Ford Ka 53 reg 1.3 duratec engine. Its running rough at idle, and juddery at take off, but ok once driving . Today I tried to remove the idle control valve for cleaning and refitting. I took off the air filter assembly and the throttle assembly... still could not get at it.. do I need to remove the inlet manifold to get at it.. this looks like its a big job for me.. surely it must be easier than that.. cheers... Sebs. Read more

What do br'ers like or dislike about car interior design. I've been looking at new cars lately and I often find myself disappointed by interiors. It would be nice to be inspired. So many interiors are just so average. Seems that a bit of creativity is lacking. Some observations;

1. Black interiors. Why do so many cars have black dashboard / interiors / seats? What is it about black? Do car designers think that everyone is happy to live in a black interior? Or is it that they just cant be bothered. Wasn't it Henry Ford that said "you can have any colour you like as long as its black". Henry must be alive and well. You would never paint your sitting room at home matt black. I'm not suggesting that fluorescent yellow would be any better. Is it just cheaper to make black plastic ? More expensive cars sometimes have light / tan / beige interiors and these seem far more pleasant imho. Its been suggested to me that black is easier to keep clean, but I don't buy that given some of the black interiors that I've seen. Or that light colours reflect in the windscreen which I don't buy either.

2. Enormous dashboards, bigger than they have to be. On some cars the dashboards are an enormous hunk of plastic (usually black too, which absorbs loads of sun and fries you or makes your air con work harder / longer / more often). Takes up space too. Current VW beetle for example. Its seems to be about a foot and a half from the windscreen to the front lip of the dash. Read more

hi, i think this is one those problems left over from the bad weather at the beginning of the year. basically im getting a rumble/roar on acceleration and a chaffing noise on deceleration. both noises are amplified by having the windows closed. the noise nearly disappears if both front windows are open during the day. when you can hear it the noise sounds bad, very bad

the rumbling roar on acceleration only happens in gear (all gears and all speeds), rolling down a steep hill in neutral doesnt recreate the noise. the sound is like what i'd imagine a totally broken bearing to sound like, with balls, outer and inner races crunching togather. the rumble is gone with clutch dipped and in neutral

the other noise is a chaffing and only notice-able in deceleration. sounds like chaf, chaf, chaf, like a brake disc may when distorted at one part of its revolution. this noise is not always notice-able and becomes very faint when not in gear but you can still hear it very faintly.

during the bad weather, i had the misfortune of being stuck facing uphill on an iced street a few times. i must have had one wheel spinning for at least 5 mins in total during that particular week. also at another location i couldnt get on to a pavement (parking space is a tarmaced extention of the pavement) . a couple of times the vehicle just couldnt mount the kerb and would just slide on ice along the kerb after the initial bump. to top it off people had cleared the pavement and dumped the snow onto the parking spaces , so car could have driven over these mounds of snow once it did get on. im not 100% sure whether these incidents caused the fault but after leaving the car parked for three days during rest of the bad weather, i instantly noticed the appearance of these noises. it has been getting slowly worse since.

do you think its the diff? is there any tests i can do to pin point whether its ring and pinion or bearings?

thanks
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A short time ago went to leave cottage in France and car would not start, seemed like flat battery,tried to jump it with portable battery pack but no joy. Eventually had to call out breakdown service. They put new battery in car and it started, but, as the car is less than two years old we got a tow to a Citroen garage. There they told us that the battery was dead and we needed a new one, we said that it's under warranty but they said no. Eventually we had to buy a new one for 156e. But, we took the old one with us to UK. Trouble is can't get refund from Citroen. Had to take battery to UK Citroen dealer for testing, where after charging it was found to be ok. As we had been sold a battery under false pretences: ie; it was not faulty, and as we were told it was faulty it should be under warranty. Phoned Citroen UK again , no joy 'talk to citroen France' we were told.We tried but nobody spoke English. Anyhow, what I want to know is if anyone else has had this sort of problem and any solutions Thanks. Read more

Point made - that's why its locked now.

People can't seem to grasp simple concepts as to what happened - from the way I read it it was fuel being delivered on people's credit card (paying at pump) so cash payers weren't affected - chunks of this thread will be removed shortly and the thread re-instated.

Thanks jbif for your unofficial moderation but we can manage - honest. Read more