January 2012
Hi, just a quick question. Can anyone confirm whether or not the seats in the mk4 Mondeo Ghia and the Titanium are the same?
We test drove an '08 Ghia today and my girlfriend didn't like the seats nor the interior. I know the Titanium interior is a bit different but I'm not so sure about the seats. Read more
First car for my 17 year old son - should I buy:
1. 2008 Nissan Micra 1.2 Activa, air con, one owner (local vicar!). FSH (main dealer who supplied the car), local, 2 year warranty, 3 yrs RAC £3,995 or... Read more
My own experience of a previous generation Micra, and a previous generation Ford Ka, is that these small cars are built to last 8 - 10 years before they start getting serious issues such as rust. Both of mine were too expensive to maintain after 10 years. You do see old ones around but I assume they have been owned by pensioners etc who do not do long trips on salted roads etc. The Micra may be high mileage but if that is motorways, then there would be little wear on the clutch, and undercarriage. Ask the owner what it did if possible. Lots of driving on country lanes can mess up the undercarriage, as I have found out. A local vicar suggests lots of short journeys, which is not so good. Or he might have some mistresses in distant towns.
I guess there are checks you can do. I was told to take off the radiator cap and run the engine, and if lots of steam came out, run away. I did once, and it did, so I did! Also get down and look underneath for signs of rust, bad repairs etc. One Micra I saw had very bad painting on an under side panel, presumably a shoddy crash repair....
Looking round motoring forums nowadays, it seems that all new (ish) diesels are guaranteed to have an expensive failure at some point.
So is it time to all buy petrol engines again??... Read more
From my research, the '3' variant comes with the 126bhp engine if I remember correctly...
Is your 3 the 115 because it is slighly older?...
I read HJ’s colomn in the Telegraph today and was especially interested in the winter tyres topic.
Years ago it was the accepted wisdom to fit ‘ordinary’ tyres on the front and ’town & country’ tyres at the back. Bear in mind that most cars were rear wheel drive then. It seemed to work, but the design of cars and tyres has moved on apace since then. I can imagine the high jinks if such a mismatch of tyres were to be relied on in bad weather now.... Read more
" Here in the middle of N. Ireland this winter we've had a total of three mornings where there was frost on the windscreen, and only one of those there was frost on the ground".
The weather forecast for the next couple of days is dire. Perhaps a report would be in order....
hi
water on floor in front only which we've been told is the heater matrix as water tank was empty. so we have filled up and will drive with heater on for some distance and then check if water tank has gone down at all. but, question....surely if the heater matrix was empty or broke, the heater wouldn't work? ours does. also, water sloshing round in driver's side door pocket. this couldn't be related could it? must be something else?
thanks in advance.
amanda Read more
Have got no dash lights or rear lights on my old civic. Was fine the other day and am selling it so need to get it sorted. Does it sound like a fuse perhaps? I can't find my handbook and have looked online for a diagram of the under dash fuses but what I've found doesn't seem to match.
Could anyone offer any help please?
Thanks. Read more
Hi, Yes, sorted and changed. All fine now,
Thanks.
Hello,
the colder the engine of my wife's beetle, the more difficult it is to start. When warm it is ok but it is very reluctant to get going especially on cold mornings. Once started it runs perfectly well. The tick over speed once just started is a lot slower than it used to be.... Read more
My sat nav has lost its way, shows the wrong location. seems to think it's 10 to 20 miles from actual position. Very odd, it's worked fine for the last three years.
Any ideas??... Read more
Hi I removed my RD4 radio and noticed that there was a cable pluged in to the CD Multi changersocket and I was wondering where the other end of this cable is liklely to be located.
thanks Read more
The IAM is apparently advising drivers to start off in second gear to minimise wheel slip in slippery conditions.
In my mind, This just looks like a band aid to poor throttle/clutch control. It also seems to be unnecessarily hard on the clutch/DMF assrmbly-particularly in diesels. I would have thought that advanced motorists would have little difficulty in modulating tractive effort with the throttle... Read more
Guys, there's a lot of hissing about the IAM on this forum and it's a little disappointing considering the type of motorist that we expect here. Is anyone here actually a member?
I am and I love driving fast and enjoying my car. I don't hold my hands at 10 to 2 and I was never told to. I start driving using the clutch alone in the snow that's currently outside and I have no problems. I don't use 2nd gear because I haven't got stuck doing what I'm doing. The advice I was given by the IAM was simply that 2nd gear is a useful rescue tip if you do slip.
The IAM taught me how to read the road and the traffic with the intention of driving in a way that was sympathetic to my car and that would get me from A to B safely and, it now appears, faster than the general stream of traffic.
I'm nothing special and I don't consider my driving to be either but the IAM is a good thing. I get massively reduced insurance premiums - don't forget that only 12 months ago, the majority of the insurance industry was penalising drivers who were risk averse enough to fit cold weather tyres,like much of Europe and North America, when it was cold! So just because Sheila's Wheels and Admiral don't give someone a reduction, you can't extrapolate.
Almoat without exception, the IAM advice pages that are posted on HJ are excruciatingly simple and slightly embarrassing for all of us who read these pages, but it does reflect the standard of driving out there. It's white and icy outside but I still see others driving without lights on, before sunrise, peering through little peep-holes in their windscreen.
So please let's have less of the denegrating talk about the IAM. They do a good job but the majority of motorists know nothing about what they actually stand for and I agree that the advice post recently on this site doesn't really help that.
Browse
Titanium X is basically the old ST model, so I'd say the seats would be different to the "Grandpa" spec Ghia. The brochures seem to say the Titanium X has Sport Seats and the Ghia had no mention of sport seats.