ok rather a long story here that i would like some unbiased opinions on. my sisters boyfriend agreed to buy a modified rx7 off a mate for 5k, he was due to go to afghanistan so a deal was struck whereby he paid 2.5k deposit the v5 was signed and would pay the the remaining when he returned 7 weeks later. he went of on tour but it was cut short and returned after 3 weeks, this left him short on money as he was going to fund the payment from his extra tour pay, he spoke to the owner who said not a problem pay it when you have it. he collected it everything seemed ok, i saw him about an hour later and he said the coolant alarm was going off and something wasn't right. i had a quick look at it for him and a water pipe hasn't been jubilee clipped on and has blown due to pressure. we refilled the coolant system but the buzzer still stayed on, strange but we put it down to the coolant sensor sticking (ive seen this before) he took it out for a short run and it behave fine, stopped to check everything over and there was water coming from the turbo and the car refused to start. recovered it home and after a good look over i was starting to have a real bad feeling of a major issue (mostly set of by the bodges of easy jobs on the car such as chocolate blocked wiring and poor ran pipes.) anyway after some work we concluded the water seals had gone (it's a rotary engine).

now the car was sold as having had a full 3k rebuild from rxmotors so he's not amused, we pulled the engine out and stripped it last week, the whole of it is scrap, there are heavy rotor marks in the plates, there are two cracks in the water galleries on one of the housings which has caused the new water seal to fail the rotors are heavily corroded so have obviously been sat in water for quite a while. the rotor tips have metal retainers which mark on one side due to a spring under them, the ones in this engine have spring marks both sides so have been taken out and put back in the wrong way round. the longer rotar seals have also been removed and put back in upside down as there are witness marks both sides. there are heavy gouges in one housing.

now the seller has claimed he knows nothing about it but it has since come to light with photo evidence that he dropped a nut down the turbo manifold into the housings and took the engine apart to retrieve it and has rebuilt it badly causing these issues, the gouges ion one housing are where he's trapped the nut turning the rotor with a ratchet. even with this evidence he's denying all responsibility for the problems and threatening to sue for the remaining money.

where does my sisters boyfriend stand? technically the v5 has been signed money accepted and there is nothing except his word that another 2.5k is due. the car has been sold as fully rebuilt yet can be proved otherwise this is surely deception? is my sisters boyfriend liable to have to pay the remaining amount then have to swallow the 2.5k repair bill?

any advice gratefully accepted
chris Read more

Please please can someone help :0(
Firstly sorry for the mess concerning grammar just about to come from this post i am posting on behalf of my husband and am so upset and stressed out.

We have an 2003 toyota avensis verso which we have had since birth my hubby is a vet so we need the car for him to do his job. Previously we have always had company cars so never been responsible for probs with cars but were convinced due to tax reasons into buying and using our own. Anyway some 100,000 miles later the car has been great but has steadily been having things go wrong with it namely recently the knocking and my husband and his friend who is very experinced with cars ( BUT NOT A MECHANIC ) decided it needed the cv joints replaced and ball thingys.
The car was working fine but as its MOT was due end of June they decided 2 weekends ago they would replace the above things anyway after working all day sat and sunday they could not seperate the cv joints from the drive shaft on one side so the car had to be left some 50 miles away on jacks and we had to borrow a friends car.
After much searching motor factors thinking to simply replace the driveshaft for a new or reconditioned one with cv joints already attached we drew a blank nowhere has any available and we were told the only option was to send our driveshaft away to be reconditioned. I phoned today to see if it was back and the motor factor informed us the company who do this had to send it back that they could not recondition it as they could not get the joint off the drive shaft.
The plan had been to take the reconditioned driveshaft up to our friends get it fitted and get the car back home obviously this is not going to be the case.

Although this might not be a big deal to others its absoutely traumatising me i'm in floods of tears stressed out as to what to do now we have been told in order to get a brand new drive shaft you can only get them from toyota and it'll be £600 not including any labour.
I just wish he had gotten rid of this car last year when things had started to go wrong and now its sitting in miles away off the road with no clear way of sorting this nightmare out..
Any advise would be much appreciated. Read more

Anyone able to tell me the models of car and van used in the beer ad that was shown in the half-time break during the England-Andorra game? The participants "changed" vehicles each time they drove through a tunnel. I think the car was an Alfa from the 60s, seemed similar to a model used in The Day of the Jackal.

Moved from IHAQ as it is Motoring related ! - oh and a free bump Read more

Hi I just bought this car about three weeks ago and noticed that the parcelshelf speakers were not working so i pluged them in and all my dash lights went out . So pulled the plug and lights came back on except speedo revs temp and fuel display . changed the lights and still no joy.Checked the fuses fine and also headlight height adjuster is not working. can anyone help.Andy Read more

I have ALWAYS found this survey to mirror my own experience or near enough not to want to discuss it.

That is until the latest issue of what car dropped on the door step.

The survey covers cars registered from jan 2006 to dec 2007.

Now i would of thought that that period covered most of the old x trail, the new one was available from spring 2007.

Having owned the old model, and now the new, i think i know the down falls of both, although i only have 3k on my latest.

On the old car i had a new intercooler fitted due to an oil leak, also the sump plug leaked after a service. And that's it! My son now runs the old x trail, again no problems.
But i appreciate that many did have problems, so the xtrail was never in the top 5.
Prior to that with my two primeras, i never saw a oil leak!

Now the new x trail has a renault engine, and to be honest i would prefer nothing French, having said that the 171bhp dci i have is a peach, constantly getting over 40mpg.
Further i have had absolutely no problems, no recalls, the car has performed brilliantly, my wife loves it more than the old one!
Honest john reports no common problems.

Then we get the jd survey. Comments such as "owners slammed the styling"
now excuse me, but who buys a car that they find ugly?
Must be some strange people about?

It goes on air-con, audio, nav systems, i have had no problems, the air con is weak, but i read some were that some systems have smaller compressors to better economy?

You should always back up the sat nav DVD disc, i always run the copy, and keep the original at home. Other than that both sat navs are great, down side no post code, but i knew that before i bought the car.

It goes on to say lots of aircon faults.

Then is goes on "visibility wasn't up to scratch" now things are getting silly, the last xtrail was absolutely brilliant for reverse parking.
The new one has restricted rear view,(which i know about before i bought it), but a reverse camera on my model makes up for it.
So i can only assume that the survey covered both models, so doesn't that make the results a nonsense?

Then it ends " to round off a fairly poor performance, customers weren't impressed with the driving dynamics, fuel economy or high servicing and repair costs either"

Don't these people test drive a car before they buy?
I found the xtrail good to drive for a suv, i moved from a A4 audi quattro avant.
To be honest the new one is no better than the old, in my opinion, although the wife things the cars a lot better.
But at any rate both a decent to drive.

Economy, i don't know how these owners drive, but 30mpg towing 1330kg, high 30's solo (max 42mpg old model) previously, and oddly with the heavier more powerful new xtrail i get more, the trip computer is showing just under 42mpg at the moment, best i had 44mpg!
That's good isn't it?

Servicing. The old xtrail was no dearer than my Audi and i didn't think that was dear!
Not had a service on the new one yet, but i expect it to be dearer, but that's due to the pdf filter, but wouldn't a new A4 have one?

So gentlemen, i am not sure which car JD is talking about, i am convinced is two different cars, but at any rate its been put at position 94 out of 101 !!
Read more