May 2015
We've just spent a week in north west Sardinia and whilst there took to the road for a couple of days to see more than the four walls of an all inclusive hotel.
In short what a great place for a car based touring holiday. Roads were very quiet at this time of year. well surfaced and for Italy not badly signposted, although there are sign posts in very bad poaitions! We did about 300 miles over the couple of days, doing one day to the west coast town of Bosa and a second trip east to the mountains ascending to almost 5,000 ft.
The island has a decent network of dual carriageway auto strada with 80mph limit, but we found the surface on some sections to be so bad to be dangerous, large areas of top surface missing, large potholes and ruts, so doing 80 was for the brave! Outside if these there are good A roads with 90kmh limit. Whilst they are good at showing lower limits, 50kmh is common around junctions, the end of the lower limits tend to not be signposted so you need to make an educated guess! Direction signs can suddenly disappear so satnav, or a good sense of direction are recommended, we had the latter!
Police are hot on bad driving and speeding and we saw plenty of patrols, driving everything from the usual Fiats and Lancias to BMWs and even a couple of Subaru Foresters. Speaking to the hire company rep when I took the car back he said in August traffic police from mainland Italy are sent to Sardinia to increase patrols dramatically and pull Italian holiday makers who have no regard for any aspect of road safety. The varied Sardinian roads offer great opportunities to set free the boyracer, in many ways it reminded me of Scotland, varied roads with little traffic.
Diesel was about €1.50 a litre with petrol slightly higher. Lots of fuel stations are unmanned so you feed cash into what looks like a cash machine, select which pump you are parked at, select the fuel you want, then go and fill up. This involved me moving the car as the pump number wasn't obvious!
The car was an i30 diesel estate with 2500 km on the clock. Great when it was doing the longer A road and autostrada sections, but the severe lack of anything from the engine at less than 1800 rpm made for a very frustrating driving experience on the more involved sections of road. Lots of nothing, a huge limp of boost, change gear, but then revs drop to about 2,000 rpm, a slight drop in speed and you are back to 1700 rpm and needing the lower gear again to gain speed. On not too demanding mountain bends it needed 1st or it would just die, you then get to second to be at the next bend needing to drop into 1st to get round it. The gearchange indicator was also hopelesly optimitistic, suggesting 6th gear from 50 mph. Change at this and the engine would be labouring badly at about 1400 rpm and offering nothing, overtaking was also interesting. 4th always felt too high, but 3rd had it out of poke before completing the manouver. It appears a six speed box is one too many. A five speed would make for a much better drive.
Just like our i20 the biggest fault with the i30 were the seats which offered very little lumbar support,even though it was supposedly adjustable.
The car was indicating 6l per 100km for the whole hire period which is 47 mpg.
If you fancy a road trip the island is definately recommended, over 2-3 weeks you could have an excellent holiday, but try and do it in an Aston V12 and not an i30 diesel and outside of July and August when the Italians pay a visit!
Read more
There we were in lane 2 on the M25 clockwise this afternoon at about 60 something when an A30 went past us at 70+ mph in lane 4.
And noI hadn't been drinking! Read more
A30 - van - ahhh memories
Many, many, many years ago recovered an A30 van that had been stolen. That vehicle had the sweetest gearbox of any car I have driven. Like silk....
I'm looking for an Estate car to travel round europe in this winter/next year.
I am after a diesel and i have a budget of £3000.... Read more
Your spot on about seats. My old s40 had really comfy seats and I did get a week of backache when I swapped to Mondeo. Soon got used to it though (all good now)
Hi,I bought an oil/filter kit of ebay,from a well know parts supplier,the oil they had for my car is,PETRONAS SYNTIUM 5000XS,5W-30,fully synthetc,is this the correct oil for my car,as i cannot find any information on it,I do not want to use the wrong type of oil,incase it damages the engine,thank you. Read more
That sounds needlessly extravagant for a non-turbo relatively unstressed engine. If that's the 5v from the Audi A6, common or garden 5-30 at £18ish for 5l is what I used every 10 - 12,000m for mine, from 79,000 to 137,000. It used very little between changes even beyond 100K and ran as well when I sold it as when I bought it.
just did the MOT Test yesterday and got the Emissions test failure for my Car
The below readings of the emission test:... Read more
On another note though too many lambda sensors are replaced in response to a scantool showing a fault code that relates to it, and more often than not it does not cure the fault since there was nothing wrong with the sensor in the first place. Wear which occurs over time and use conspires against the ECM which is trying to run the engine and maintain emissions. Information reported to the ECM may not be what the ECM wants to hear but is nevertheless accurate, but yet it always seems to be the sensor that takes the blame. Far too many garages and technicians these days have neither the time nor the knowledge to successfully diagnose faults. A suitable scantool is essential on a modern car, and so is a good understanding of how to use it.
My fiesta has an annoying problem whereas it appears to misfire after lifting your foot of the accelerator. It starts fine, pulls great etc but when driving and you lift your foot off the accelerator there are two jolts in quick succession. It does it all the time, always two, but the intensity varies Depending on how cold the weather is. Colder it is the worse they are.
Another issue which might be connected, the engine temp never gets above 82 oC mostly sits under 80. I have had the car since just before Xmas so I have not really experienced any warm weather yet but I would have thought it would have got above 90. This might the normal temp but the car doesn't have a temp gauge so difficult to assess. The heater blow hot after about 4 miles which I think is par for the course for a diesel so seems to warm up ok but the engine just doesn't get as hot as I would have thought. Oh one final thing when the car is warming up and say after a few mins driving and I stop at the lights the revs drop slightly and immediately recover.
The car has a full service history, no fault codes, good mpg, drives great except for the annoying problem. The garage said the computer says no faults found and all normal.
Any pointers would be fantastic
If you need anything else please let me know
1.6 econetic fiesta, 35000 miles,
Cheers Read more
Low engine temperature can cause problems but I wouldn't descibe 82C as being very low.
You really need to take it to a diesel specialist as most dealers know little or nothing about them but a good specialist will have had the problem before and know what it is....
My wife recently had her 14 plate Mercedes stolen together with both sets of keys. Police have recovered the car which is locked,and we have been told the only way we can get another key is to return the car to MB who will order some but it will take 10 days, except that the car cannot be driven without keys ......
In there perhaps a car locksmith who could help us,or any other suggestion welcome as to how to get out of this seemingly impossible situation.
Thanks
John
Ware
Hertfordshire Read more
Presumably the MB dealer is able to permanently lock out the missing keys when they program the new ones in?
Ime not 100% if the clutch on 206 pug is slipping or worn I've put sum thick rubber Gators on where cable meets fork and did take slack up for a while but heasr there's is a adjuster i can get that will. Take slack. If i go easy up steep. Hill she gets there but screams at time is engine revin n not getting no where fast any help much appreciated thanks jon Read more
Ensure you have some free movement on the clutch release arm. If you have and it still slips then you need a new clutch. If you have no free movement then adjust it so that you do.
Does anyone know whether the Peugeot 2008 is about to be made available with the new EAT6 automatic gearbox? HJ is saying it is available on the 18 May 2015 update to the 2008 car review, but I can't find any reference to it on the Peugeot website for the 2008, nor anywhere else. Read more
Hi all I need your help/advice,
... Read more
Ignorance is no definence under the law, so it's important that you took 'reasonable steps'. I aways do a HPI check for example and if the car is of MOT'able age review the service history with the last 3/4 mileages shown on the MOT certificate.
If the paperwork handed over shows 166K, I would suggest the OP has a problem and is liable unless he can demostrate otherwise.
.jpg)
I drove a new renault scenic with the 1.5 dci engine, similar characteristics, nothing below 2000 rpm. I found it smooth and fairly economical but terrible at rounabouts and junctions. I couldn't live with one and couldn't wait to get my petrol engine back.
Are all small diesels as bad?