Morning all. My newly aquired Vectra Ls 1.8 petrol has just had a new thermostat, and now when it reaches normal operating temp the cooling fan kicks in as normal, but then it never shuts off. If I turn the car off and leave it for 30 min's and then re-start the car the fan is off, but as soon as the temp gauge reaches 85 degrees the fan kicks in and stays on until I switch the car off. I've checked all the relays and none appear to be sticking, next thing would be the switch in the rad, unless I'm missing something else? Any help is greatly appreciated. Read more

Two days ago I was caught on my mobile while driving. I have to pay a fine and hand in my MOT, Insurance and licence to the police station. However when I found my MOT certificate this morning I saw that it was out of date by 10 days. In addition to this I have an Irish Drivers licence.

Am I looking at a major penalty and is there anything I can do to avoid that?

I am grateful for any help you can give. Read more

Driving home yesterday morning after nightshift I encounter the worst example I have ever seen of a trucker performing what I call a rolling roadblock.

Travelling on a 2 lane motorway (I know it's the last part of the M73 North before it connects with the A80) I notice ahead a stream of red brake lights on. These were mainly in lane 1 with lane 2 affected to a lesser degree. I know (and so does everybody else using that road regularly) that 2 miles ahead the 2 lanes become only one whilst it connects onto the A80.

Keen to make progress I move into lane 2 and keep moving (approx 40mph) with lane 1 crawling at approx (20mph). I manage to progress another 200yards before I too am crawling 10-15 mph and now matching lane one for progress. In front of me are two cars and a cattle trucker.

Initially the curve of the road ahead prevented me from seeing what was in front of the trucker. After about half a mile of crawling, car number one behind truck gives up and pulls into lane one. At this point in time no official sign to indicate lane closure. After another half mile car number 2 also gives up and pulls into lane one. Still no signs for a lane closure ahead. So now there is me and the road turns such that I can see in front of the truck and what can I see.......

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !!!!!

This guy is holding up a huge queue of not only cars behind me in lane 2 but has also resulted in excacerbating the queue in lane 1 as cars pull over too early. My attempts to flash my lights were in vain as I feared because this trucker was going nowhere!!

I manage another half mile behind this moron and then took an opportunity to pull into lane one. He progresses right up to the point where the cones force you to move over as another trucker who he was in cahoots with throughout this maneouvre allows him to pull over.

Aaarghhh!!!!

And then to top it all whilst moving through the roadworks which have a 40mph limit he speeds through it (approx 50mph-55mph)!!

I'm seeing this rolling roadblock move more often these days from truckers who think they can nominate themselves as traffic management experts when they should just mind their own business and do their job.

Normally I have the utmost respect for truck drivers (HGV) for whom driving is a professional business and skill and this moronic driving I witnessed just makes me question even more the antics I witness on the open road everyday.

Night shift rant over !!!

Your thoughts please........



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I feel sick. Just got back from a couple of pints with my mates and were talking about cars my mate reckons my car is always in the garage I thought it was reliable so I have added it all up.

I've done 2200 miles in my car since I got it in March but most of it is city miles so heavy wear and tear.

Pretty much order of jobs I have done:-
1) Oil change, new plugs, new air filter, sump tightened, clutch cable adjusted, car greesed. £90
2) Two new rear springs £50 (Ted very kindly did this for me, I just bought the springs)
3) Two new rear tyres (old ones were perfectly legal but side walls had small cracks so replaced them to be sure) £60 for a pair of Barums
4) Two new front brake pads £45 inc labour
5) New front wiper blades £15 inc fitting
6) Two new front springs £156 got ripped off but it was an emergency
7) New catback exhaust £100
8) New MAF sensor (did this myself) £86 for a genuine Bosch
9) Resprayed wheel trims (cosmetic) £6 for the primer and finsih
10) Resprayed wiper arms (cosmetic) £1 paint from £1 land
11) New coolant and brake fluid £25 inc labour
12) New front tyre £45 (emegency)
13) New rear shock absorbers
14) New ball joint
15) New CV boot £156 fir 13, 14 and 15.
16) Some body work treatment done by me just treated a tiny rust spot etc. Free had all the bits in and the Arden blue touch up came with my car.

Jobs to do soon:-
1) Get tracking done
2) Replace another front tryre

Jobs I will do if the car lasts a bit longer
1) See if camshaft bolts need tightening (tip from Bellboy)
2) Fix rear washer
3) Replace coil pack (its original and on 82850 miles)
4) Change gearbox oil

Of course more things will go wrong I kind of wish I had bought a merc 190! but I cannot fault the performance of the 1.2 16v its perfect for the city and I get between 36 and 50mpg depending on the kind of driving I do. Its all dirt cheap to insure (for me) and I get all the luxeries apart from aircon.

Earlier this year before I bought it it had a new bearing and new hand brake cables for the MOT.

I paid £1150 for the car, a V reg 1.2 16V club with most the options, CD player, electric windows and mirrors, rear head rests etc etc its more like a C in terms of spec. I have spent about £600 in repairs for all the above but most of that includes labour.

So thats a total of £829 for repairs. Excuse me I am just going to be sick.

I am now just waiting for the gearbox to fail and a camshaft to snap and that will complete my luck with cars.

I admit some of the above may not have been essential the front springs had snapped but only partial if I left it I doubt it would have caused any problems but I would rather not found out. The tyres all needed replacing. I could have probably got away with a cheaper MAF but my Bosh one did the job first time so no stress.

Moral of the story never buy a supermini with 80k something miles unless it comes with a million receipts.

On the plus side I here of tails of people spending £300 on tyres etc and I now have a pretty much brand new suspension, new tyres and everything works apart from the rare washer.

Could somebody please tell me I have had too much to drink (only 3 pints) and that I have added it all up wrong? I feel a bit sick. Read more

Hello
I would be most grateful if someone could help me with the following, I have problems with an 80K miles 1.9DTI when starting up. It just does not want to start. When it eventually fires it will run OK, but on long journeys I have noted an intermittent loss of power and the heater plug light comes on for a couple of seconds, it then goes out and all is well for a number of miles.
The error codes I have are P100D and P1028. We replaced the crankcase sensor today, thinking this was the problem but the codes still show and the car is still difficult to start......Doh!

Thanks in anticipation. Read more