i bought a 2004 renault laguna diamonique it was 2 months old so basically it was a new car and i have still got it ,, it has done 46000 miles and of course had tyres and services,, at 30 000 miles it had a set of track rod ends , done by a mechanic,, i replaced the track rod ends again a couple of months ago ,, now the engine was terribly noisy after some investigation the dephaser pulley was at fault,, i rang around various garages and no one wanted to touch it ,,,,i decided to do it my self ,, after buying the special tools required to do the job i had it done in around 4 hrs ,, the pulley wheel itself was £145 and various tools required like the setting pin and camshaft holding tool was around £50 ,,, if you are going to attempt this job yourself make sure you read the haynes manual although its fairly straight forward , i didnt see the item where the crankshaft bolt must not exceed 49.1 mm as the origonal bolt was nearly 55mm in length the laguna was sweet as a nut for around a week ,, you can guess wat is coming,, it stopped and wudnt start i got it towed home and discovererd the bolt on the crankshaft had come loose there is no woodruff key holding the crankshaft sprocket in place now this bolt came loose because it was too long ,,, and the crank slipped bending all 16 valves which cost me alot of money to repair the laguna lives again but this is just a small warning to anyone wanting to attempt such a repair themselves,,,whether renault has designed the v,v t engine to slip the crank on purpose forcing you to take it to a renault dealer to repair costing £86 per hour (which i didnt) who knows ,, but to me it seems ridiculous that a simple bolt can cause massive engine damage ,,,,,i do love my laguna and like i said early it was near new when i purchased it and now it is running smooth again i intend to keep it for a lot longer Read more

I know there are one million queries online about this, but mine is a simpler question!

i have a 50k mile clio,.. THe idling is very poor at the start but then seems to settle and is ok,,... Read more

I posted this in Technical but have had no replies so thought I'd try here.

I can't find my car key and having torn the house apart I can only conclude it fell out of my pocket whilst I was out and about sometime yesterday or the day before.

I know I need to contact the dealer if I want a replacement but what happens if someone finds it and wanders round the streets looking for the car? Can you 'cancel' a lost key? ... Read more

Oil Service of the Nissan Almera N16 should be carried out every 9k and a good quality semi or fully sythentic oil. Personally I use only a high grade fully synthetic oil such as Mobile One or a quality 5w30. There are many makes of oil on the market so check the API / SG rating on the container. Always changed the oil filter together with the sump oil. A tip for you: when you change the oil filter: prime the oil filter with a lick of oil inside the filter to moisten the filter before fitting. As the filter mounts at 90 degrees you can't prime / fill the filter, but the pre-lubrication will assist fast initial start-up. In the workshop we always change the sump washer: the torque is: 25 nm

Failure to change the oil will drastically shorten the life of this well built strong motor and lead to a degree of sludging which in modern close-tolerence designed engines is a bad thing. Get into the habit of checking the rear exhaust of your car to see how it's running: in a well maintained petrol engine it will be fairly clean with very little oil deposits: if the exhaust is very black with alot of oil, it perhaps shows signs of internal engine wear: such as the big end bearings or valve stem seals worn or oil control rings on the pistons. Check this with a trained mechanic or Nissan dealership.... Read more

Hi,

Friends Vauxhall Zafira 1.9cdti manual has just broken down. F symbol on dash and wont crank over. Instruments flash rapidly but nothing.

any help much appreciated Read more