Car Talk

[scaniaman]

Good recall Vet, I remember the nookie vehicle I had.A MINI ! It had those pimply rubber mats,played havoc with my knees.Still brings tears to my eyes 

Paul

[grendel]

ah the good old ford escort gearchange - first, second thir..... oh sh1t put the gearstick back in the hole and try and locate the two faces back into their slot, screw the plastic bit back in ....rd, fourth

[HEM]

8 hours ago, JanetAnne said:

The dashboard from the Corsair behind. Anyone reckon they can still drive column change?

My father owned a Ford Corsair - bought in 1966 - we took it with us when we lived in Munich for a year.
He sold it just before I got my license.

It had automatic transmission (also on the steering column) but that wasn't so much of a problem.

[Seagypsy]

14 minutes ago, HEM said:

My father owned a Ford Corsair - bought in 1966 - we took it with us when we lived in Munich for a year.
He sold it just before I got my license.

It had automatic transmission (also on the steering column) but that wasn't so much of a problem.

I had a 1968 Corsair V4 white with red leather upholstery, stuck a black vinyl roof on it, looked smart

[Ray]

1 hour ago, Seagypsy said:

I had a 1968 Corsair V4 white with red leather upholstery, stuck a black vinyl roof on it, looked smart

Dark blue Corsair, 1964, stuck a black vinyl roof on it too! Also looked v. smart 

[ChrisB]

I have followed this thread with interest. I do my motoring in a different way. I pay as much as everyone does but my expense is via depreciation.

I buy a new car every four years and always make sure it has extended warranty to cover five even if I pay for it. Since I was widowed I only travel about 8000 per annum.

Normally I manage to get to change time without the need to replace anything except oil filters etc. I have done this for the last 25 years since it became better for me to take the money instead of the company car.

With the exception of one new car that was an absolute "dog" which I got rid of at 36 months all the others across 3 VAG marques, Ford, Nissan and Peugeot have been faultless. But most importantly I have had no heartache and agravation.

[ChrisB]

5 hours ago, Seagypsy said:

I had a 1968 Corsair V4 white with red leather upholstery, stuck a black vinyl roof on it, looked smart

 

3 hours ago, Ray said:

Dark blue Corsair, 1964, stuck a black vinyl roof on it too! Also looked v. smart 

A very easy car to roll when pushed a bit too hard. I know of three including myself in a 2000E auto.

[VetChugger]

Totally by accident I "stumbled" across an auction house whilst browsing. They were advertising sales of seized vehicles, ex company car/main dealer auction and also police seized assets and lost and found property! I had a bit of a browse and there were some wierd articles and vehicles on offer but also, according to pre sale estimates, some bargains to be had! Passed a few minutes!

[CambridgeCabby]

Robin , 

Mercedes 350slk is a fantastic car , Katie used to have one and loved it .

Word of caution , the car battery is housed inside a plastic box in the engine compartment , the drain hole is very prone to getting clogged up and if it does the box fills up and causes a flood into the heating matrix inside the car causing components to fail  , Mercedes wanted £1800 to fix this as it isn’t covered by warranty as is due to a maintenance issue , fortunately my mechanic was able to source a pre-owned matrix and display which meant the repair was only (haha) £600.

To prevent a repeat not only did he fit a filter to the drainage hole (using a pubs top hat beer line filter) but also drilled a couple of holes half way up the plastic box as an additional overflow safeguard 

 

[scaniaman]

 Just a thought!  A good source of secondhand and pattern parts for your Merc is Dronsfields, probably the largest independent parts supplier in the UK for merc stuff. Worth a look if your on a budget.Don`t forget Shiela`s on your case

Paul

[KaptinKev]

On ‎18‎/‎03‎/‎2019 at 12:11, grendel said:

RRS - Robins Recovery Service

I do like the bloke, but boat or car. the poor man is cursed. I think he should go with a push bike.

[grendel]

I seem to recall he tried that too.

[KaptinKev]

On ‎18‎/‎03‎/‎2019 at 20:09, HEM said:

I never treated cars as a status symbol to try to impress people with - they are just a convienient way to get from A to B in reasonable comfort.

I was 57 when I took delivery of this - which turned a few heads at our local airfield, particularly when it gave me a significant improvement in cross-country flying:

This is the image that appears on our old TomTom when switching it on.

I see your landing hasn't improved, as you have buckled up the end of your wings AGAIN!   

[ChrisB]

Me at the end of The Great Ocean Road, VIC, Australia. I drove from Melbourne out to The Grampians, down to Warambool and Port Fairey. Along The Great Ocean Road to Torquay. Then ferry from Queenscliffe to Sorrento an on to Phillip Island to see the tiny Penguins. From Philip Island I went onto Wilsons Prom before returning to Melbourne.

Could not have had a better car for the trip, it drove beautifully. 

Downside, just one, nose in parking in small towns American style and general car parks. Doors are huge and very difficult to open wide if between two other cars, this makes getting in and out difficult.

[HEM]

11 hours ago, KaptinKev said:

I see your landing hasn't improved, as you have buckled up the end of your wings AGAIN!   

Nope - thats due to flying too fast...

[Paul]

1 hour ago, HEM said:

Nope - thats due to flying too fast...

I thought they were the bits that flapped when he pedals faster

[keifsmate]

For HEM,

The last one I flew solo. This is not the actual glider but I flew it in Germany (RAF Laarbruch) a bit more than a fortnight ago!

 

[oldgregg]

3 hours ago, ChrisB said:

Downside, just one, nose in parking in small towns American style and general car parks. Doors are huge and very difficult to open wide if between two other cars, this makes getting in and out difficult.

Yup. This is why manufacturers are ditching mid-size three door cars at the moment.

Shame, as stuff like the Focus RS and Megane R.S. look so much nicer as a three door.

[HEM]

1 hour ago, keifsmate said:

For HEM,

The last one I flew solo. This is not the actual glider but I flew it in Germany (RAF Laarbruch) a bit more than a fortnight ago!

Looks like a Grunau Baby but cannot be sure.

I had a circuit in a Grunau Baby once - I did not feel at all at home in it!

[keifsmate]

1 hour ago, HEM said:

Looks like a Grunau Baby but cannot be sure.

I had a circuit in a Grunau Baby once - I did not feel at all at home in it!

Indeed HEM it was a Grunau baby. At the time, the most exotic glider we had was a Ka6 and as Dad was paying for my brother and I to fly, we never progressed that far!

[LondonRascal]

Had a call today from STR in Norwich, but not with very nice news. Having taken most of the front end of the car apart they have found the cause of the shredded drive belt, but also a bunch of other damage. So the initial cause was the water pump suddenly seizing - this has sent bits of pump where bits of pump should never be in the engine, but the other side was the sudden stopping of the pump sent a tensioner off as the belt partly destroyed itself, this was flung into the cooling fan taking out some of the blades. The rest of the belt then got jammed in another area and so split into what effectively was two separate belts, as if you cut them down the middle.

When you add up the parts and the labour - of which accounts for more than £400.00 as the front of the car has had to be dismantled to get to all the parts, I am looking at £1,246.75 to sort it including VAT. I am hopeful some of this cost will be covered by my extended warranty but they only cover labour up to  £50.00 per hour and need the garage to contact them - which the garage thought was off, since usually the warranty company contacts the garage and provides the go ahead and me an authorisation number.

I have taken the gamble that the warranty company will pay out in the end, so parts are on order. Just to make me feel better I have been told it is very rare for one of these pumps to let go, while they had some issues in early models by the time mine was being manufactured these things should have been sorted.

Still no news on the SLK front, the garage there have begun the first steps of ignoring my calls. After all, they have my money so of course I am on the back foot now despite the fact they also have my car in their possession. I am trying to remain positive though...

[ChrisB]

A new car with extended warranty offers much peace of mind. Or a just registered with virtually zero mileage. Ford Direct are very good, my cousin saved thousands on a Mondeo Vignale estate.

[grendel]

well I just had 2 new front tyres ready for my MOT next month, after the tyres I had the tracking checked (the old ones were down to 2mm but scrubbed clean on the very inside edges) it turned out i had to have front and back tracking done (£30 per end) so £190 with tyres (Mid range GT Champiro FE1's B rated for wet grip and C for economy (rated for extra load)), wasnt too bad, about what I was expecting£65 per tyre,

cheapest option was £47 budget tyre (with the same rain grip and economy rating)

most expensive was a pirelli at £ 169 premium tyre, (with A rated rain grip and the worst (F) rated economy, plus noisier with it)

while most of the premium tyres had the better rain grip (3m better stopping distance from 70mph), their economy figures didnt match the cheaper tyres, and one premium (bridgestone) had the worst economy category possible (G).

michelin were the only premium tyre that bettered the GT in both rain grip and economy, and that didnt have the extra load rating that a volvo estate running with a full boot really requires.

[LondonRascal]

I got Michelin's when I replaced the tyres on the BMW. My Dad was a great keeper of records and over the years kept everything - needed or not. Replace a battery in a clock and a not would be made of brand, battery expiry date and day it was replaced. When it went flat this was recorded, same for light bulbs - and for tyres.

In his experiences the worst tyres for wear were Dunlop, then Bridgestone. Goodyear were okay but tended to be noisy, Pirelli and Continental were his long term choice for ages until he got some Michelin's. These just seemed to go on and on but as I am finding have a very interesting characteristic whereby initially they do not seem to be that quite or smooth all of a sudden about 1,500 miles after fitting you suddenly notice how quiet and smooth they have become, towards the end of their tread life they tend to get less smooth and 'roary' at higher speeds. I will see if the same goes for those I have fitted.

I think there is a lot to be said about the labels we now have with tyres to help choose them as before it really was just pot luck, recommendations or personal experience leading you to one brand or another. The labels help guide you to a degree, and likely will go after we leave the EU as they are a EU rule to have across Europe to aid consumers.

Update to the Mercedes:

Had a call from the guys in London to say they could not fix the fault so had to take the car to a local independent specialist. A bunch has been replaced on the car - all new coil packs, new spark plugs, new mass air flow sensor and some other part known to go which I forget the name of but which I was reading about on an SLK Forum. This leaves me to have the lipped front discs replaced and new pads put on - Norwich job that - so all being well this weekend will be one car up.

A word on insurance. I thought it might be a good idea to get temporary cover for the car - so I did. But wow I have been stung, I covered the car for 7 days and paid £318.00 I have just got a quote online for 12 months cover with breakdown cover included with the RAC for £789.60 - goes to show that doing things by the week can cost, a bit like Bright House etc who sell a TV for a weekly price and then you work it out to find you could have bought 3 after you paid them back over the payment period.

[oldgregg]

I think it's a mad state of affairs where people don't trust cars older than three to five years.

It's all down to emissions regulations, and car manufacturers trying to work around them - Hence lots of over-stressed three-cylinder engines with high compression ratios and lots of forced induction.

They give less tractable power and obviously are much more highly-stressed hence the high rate of failures. Look at the 1.0 EcoBoost in Ford cars, which is reaching almost epidemic levels of failures.

Why are they doing it? Because EU law means that the average CO2 output for a manufacturer has to be 130 grams per kilometre or lower otherwise they are fined huge sums of money. That figure drops to 95 grams per kilometre in a couple of years so they are excreting breeze blocks at the moment.

You can bet the manufacturer isn't going to want to pay that fine any more, so they have found ways of meeting the test requirements on the day of the test. If it explodes in five years, why would they care? The salesman can flog you another 'quality product' and say how unlucky you must have been while maybe not mentioning their latest car which reportedly does 5493mpg in a lab somewhere is also probably as well engineered as a box of Kellogg's cornflakes.

But the marketing guys gloss over it all and make the new models more and more desirable so we must have the latest and the vast majority of the public buy all of their nonsense.

Some manufacturers are still spending the money under the bonnet though, rather than on the journalists favourite 'high-quality plastics' and other guff that adds weight and lowers the engineering budget.

It's really simple. If the manufacturer doesn't trust their product enough to put a long warranty on it, walk away. VW give just a two year warranty, yet Toyota do 5 with an option for a sixth, Kia do 7 years and their parent Hyundai offers 5. What does that tell you?




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