I had never driven a car with one of these pushbutton electric handbrakes before this afternoon. A friend turned up in a courtesy car (VW Passat CC) diesel with manual gearbox. He had parked it in a car park, nose in facing down to a shrubbery. He needed to reverse out up the hill.

So, thats when the fun started. In a manual car with standard handbrake lever, you get the clutch to biting point and slowly release the handbrake, whilst giving a bit of power on the acclerator. What do you do in a car which requires you to have your left foot on the clutch, right foot on the footbrake (which it needs to be before you can release the brake by pressing the button on the dash) and also need a third leg for the accelerator.

The answer in this case is use the torque of a diesel to help and use fancy foot work, but my friend who is a reasonable driver of many years experience was stumped and it took me more than a few seconds to work out what to do and get the car out of the parking bay. I did a little bit of damage to the shrubbery as well!

Clearly a very dangerous design, especially in a car with a petrol engine without the reserves of torque that were very handy. Whose stupid idea is this? Read more

Now that the cold weather is starting to take a grip around the country, our attention is drawn to carrying scrapers, windscreen de-frost, etc.

Is there any easy way to prevent the build up of frost and ice on the inside of the windscreen? I was wondering whether placing card or old carpet on the outside of the windscreen would help to keep one side of the windscreen slightly warmer and thus warm enough to ensure that any condensation etc remains as such on the inside rather than forming frost/ice. Would the use of a de-humidifier such as you can buy from camping shops for the use in caravans/boats be of any use?

It's quite frustrating to spend an extra 5 minutes or so scraping the inside of the windscreen each time I want to use my car during a particularly cold spell. Read more

Hiya, hoping someone can help with fault on the clio.

I'm suffering from the airbag and SERV light that alot of other people are.

Took the car into the local garage and its says Fault code 180, Front side sensor circuit passenger short circuit.

I had a look under the seat at the wires and gave the connections a clean up before i took it in but light stayed on.

The mechanic said he traced the wires under the seats and disconnected at all connections and they came up with differant fault codes so its prob not those.

If it helps i just cured the leaking sunroof problem a few days before. Could it have anything to do with that maybe. Next step is an auto electrician and however many hours labour they want to charge for.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers
Steven

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Hi. I am the owner of a VW Bora 1.9 tdi 130 SE, 6 speed on a 52 reg.

Recently, whilst driving, the car loses power/limp mode. Once I turn the ignition off and re-start the car. It is OK. However, it does it again.

I had someone look at the car. There were error codes showing the turbo is overboosting resulting it to go into limp mode. I had the 3 sensors at the back of the engine changed. (The ones which has the turbo pipes going in and out of it). However, the problem is re-curring.

More recently, whilst driving once I get to about 2 -3 revs the car starts shuddering and the ABS light comes on. The RAC had a look at the car and told me the car is running beautifully and I might have gone over some oil on the road. Shortly after, this problem and the power loss kept recurring.

Out of frustration I went to the VW dealers, who told me for a fixed fee of £100 they will diagnose it for me. They charged me £100 and told me there were lots of faults showing and having cleared them there were 2 faults still showing, fuel pump relay and something to do with the radiator sensor. They told me they wanted me to have these repaired first before they diagnose it any further, at a huges cost. (Found it cheeky of them to do this).

I changed the fuel pump relay. However, the problem is still recurring. Matters are getting ahead now as I can't find anyone who can simply tell me what the problem is and what I need to do to fix it. I have been told it may probably be the turbo as in it is not giving the correct amount of turbo becasue it may need to be claned up from inside, leaving the turbo sensor to think it is over boosting resulting it to go into limp mode and also with the turbo not giving the correct amount of turbo, the right amount of power is not getting to the wheels, hence the ABS kicking in.

One thing I haven't changed is the airflow sensor. I want to resolve this problem as it is causing me daily inconvenience ie shopping, school runs etc.

Can anyone tell me what the problem is. Your help will be very much appreciated.

Kind regards.

{Header changed - no need to SHOUT!} Read more

I had some trouble with this about six months ago as the car was using/loosing coolant, it went to dealers no problem found, all topped up and was fine. Since then the car has been fine on all the trips even long runs down the motorway. Now the other day we went out and drove about 7 miles stopped and I noticed the cooling fan had come on, had a look and the expansion tank is empty. I took off the cap and some water came back into the tank but only about 1/4 litre so I put a litre of water in and carried on doing another 30 or so miles till we get home, checked again with no serious loss and put about a litre in to bring up to the max mark. The car has only done 11500 miles and I have had a quick look around and can see no obvious pipes loose or signs of a leak so it is a bit of a mystery, is there a simple solution as I dread the 60 mile round trip/wait/faff to the dealers, I will monitor it again but it may have to go back. Read more