The head gasket has gone on my car I have been advised to fit an Xpark gasket system can someone explain this to me please Read more

Ciao from Italy. Im over here now as is my father, who has the latest model Renault Espace. It is nearly 5 years old and has xenon HID headlights. One of them blew on monday, so he went to local official Renault garage who diagnosed a blown bulb. Price of a new BULB only was e385. In the UK they are GBP 140. Anyone any idea why the price difference is so great?? (That was the part price only, fitting cost 40e here).

He got the new one fitted as had no choice really, as he is heading back to blighty tomorrow. Read more

looks like BMW have a buyer then

www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/78655

WP - sorry this got moved into another area by accident earlier Read more

I am considering buying a Land Rover or other 4X4, and wondered if anyone had any thoughts on my particular requirements.

Before the deluge of posts accusing me of hypocrisy, let me point out that I have always defended their use for the specialist purposes for which they were designed. The intended use in this case is agricultural: I am negotiating to buy an abandoned farm in the West of Ireland, and if successful I intend to run some of it as a smallholding and to plant a significant chunk of forest on much of the rest. I may not succeed in buying it, but I am trying to do some of my research in advance, to get an idea of costs.

One of the many issues I'm checking is vehicles. My current car is a 5yo Nissan Almera automatic, which is a great car for my current suburban existence but ill-suited to agricultural use -- because it's lousy at towing any sort of weight, and has little load capacity.

I reckon that my on-farm needs can be best managed with a 4WD utility quad bike and small trailer. 4WD and soft tyres is ideal for getting over the damp land in question, and a quad is much lighter than a tractor. Since part of the land is already wooded, the smaller size of the quad will also be more useable than a tractor.

However, I have a few other requirements for vehicles:

* something to tow trailers. I will need to carry fence poles, building materials (to renovate the old house), and all sorts of equipment, both on public roads and on my own land muddy. Some of the towing may be of things collected from other bad land, so a 4WD towing vehicle would be v useful
* something that can be used as a van. For lugging stuff around when there isn't enough to justify a trailer
* A passenger car. I'll mostly only need two seats, but sometimes I'll need four, so a van won't do.

A 5-door 4X4 would of course do the lot. But there are two problems with that idea:

First, it's incredibly wasteful to lug a heavy 4X4 around when I'm only carrying people (wasteful as in both environmentally damaging and carrying excessive maintenance costs), and that sort of vehicle is a menace in towns.

Secondly, road tax in Ireland is punitive on 4X4s. For pre-2008 vehicles a 2.8litre engine costs ?1,248 pa, and a 3.0 litre engine costs ?1,293 p.a. Ouch!

However, for commercial vehicles the tax is only ?288 p.a. -- defined as a vehicles with no seats of side windows behind the driver's seat.

So I see a few possibilities:

1) Keep the Almera, and get a commercialised 4X4 for agricultural and towing use -- something like a Mitsubishi Pajero/Shogun SWB, which I can import from Japan for about £4,000. Rip out the rear seats, blank out the windows, and I've got a low-cost towcar/van.

2) Keep the Almera, and get an old Land Rover for agricultural and towing use. A friend's son recommends a LR 90 200TDI, on the grounds that their lack of an ECU makes them simpler to maintain.

3) Sod the road tax, and get a LWB Pajero/Shogun or a Toyota Hilux Surf and get rid of the car

4) Compromise on a soft-roader like a Suzuki Grand Vitara (2.0 diesel is a more manageable ?614 road tax), and get rid of the car

All of these options look problematic. 1 and 2 mean I'll be running two vehicles, which means two insurance premiums and two sets of annual servicing, but that partly balances out the higher road tax on a passenger 4X4.

Options 3 and 4 mean that I will be using a rather more expensive vehicle for agricultural purposes. Those vehicles look fine for people pulling horseboxes, but a bit too posh for agricultural use. Jumping into a fancy carpeted interior whilst wearing muddy boots and overalls seems crazy.

Option 2 (the Land Rover) looks great on paper: a go anywhere vehicle, with a hose-down interior, no unnecessary gadgetry, designed to last and do one job well rather than trying to do everything. But ... while Land Rovers are supposed to be easy to maintain, they seem to need a lot of that easy maintenance. Great if you are a bloke who likes getting oily while using a spanner under a car, but that's not my idea of fun, so I'm afraid that I'd be very reliant on finding a good local mechanic.

Any thoughts?

(BTW, there's a clampdown underway on using comercial vehivcles for non-commecial purposes. People driving commercialised LandCruisers to the golf club are being stopped by the Gardai ... so the option of using a commercial for non-agricultural purposes doesn't look viable) Read more

Please can someone help. this morning my jeep would not start. I turned on the ignition, and whilst all the dash lights and gauges are ok, there is no response from the starter. It is as if it is immobilised. I have tried disconnecting the battery, and re-connecting. I dont think it is immobilser, as the fuel pump kicks in to build up fuel pressure.

Please can someone help

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