Be Excellent To Each Other

There's some contact numbers there, use them.

1st one looks more legit to me.

Go for the cheaper one. 80,000 is high miles for a 2005 but as long as it's been regularly serviced and maintained, the engines are bulletproof. The extra toys will be invaluable during hot weather, the leather adds resale value, the wheels are nice too. And it's a good colour. The only downer is that it's not the 190hp one.

Why don't you buy my Yaris, you fuck and save me the massive ballache of dealing with the garage?

Ooo.. I'm quite tempted by a Yaris.

Tenner?

Final offer.

Hmm. Well it's a better offer than at trade, but somehow I'll not get the same experience of being dicked around by salesmen.

I was only able to talk him into giving me an extra £100 on the initial valuation. Either my haggling skills don't yet approach Omid Djalili's or the salesman didn't realise we're no longer in recession.

Why not just sell it privately?

My best offer has been a tenner.

Final offer.

The drivers side headlight in Mrs Chinnys X reg 206 has gone. I've replaced the offside light before, but this looks impossible as Peugeot have put the washer fluid bottle and other gubbins right in the way of the headlight.

How can I replace it? She's lost the manual which isn't helpful.

I think they are H4's, can anyone confirm?

Take it to Halfords as they say they will fit stuff for free?

I just looked on a 106, there's just enough clearance for the round cover to come off. It's just a bit tricky to do since you can't get your hand directly behind it.

[edit] If it's on tight, get a big screwdriver or something and push down hard on the rib on the right hand side of the cover.

Yes, it's an H4 bulb on this at least.

Bought!

Guy gave me a good price (£2300) for my car; yes it doesn't have digital climate control (it does have air conditioning, however), leather (meh) or 17 inch wheels (oh well). But it's also far and away the best kept one I've seen, with no big scratches, marks or flaws anywhere. Indeed, the only issues were the fan as going tick tick as if a leaf or something was stuck in it (being fixed) and the cigarette lighter doesn't stay clicked in (being fixed). Anything else is covered by the three month warranty, and it gets a new MOT, service and tax disc. The low mileage thing is also very nice. Hooray!

Might get Mrs Chinny to drop by there on Monday. Looking online there are many tales of it taking an hour or more!

Fucking ace!

That looks nice.

Well done. Now, you have to drive me around Silverstone in it as them's the "I bought a Celica" rules on BeeX I'm free most weekends.

What? Won't you be there on the ER-5? We could submit the results to MCN and fuel a huge argument of cheap sports car vs cheap bike.

Seven Grand! You could have bought an old 911 for that ;-)

Still think you'd have been better off with a pink civic sport, mate
very nice

Could've bought my childhood dream (Porsche 944) for much less but couldn't afford to run it and would fear for its safety outside.

6 quid for Halfords to fit a bulb. But that's easier than me having to poke around inside the bonnet of a hateful French car swearing alot.

Good stuff, Meaty. Are you sure it's the fans ticking and not the engine? Make sure you have a bloody good listen for it when you go back to pick it up.

Hurrah! Shiny 05 plate, too!

[edit]Availible now!

Meaty, you are aware that link gives us your postcode and your car reg?

Just thought I'd mention it, like.

Edit: Maybe you don't live on a farm though...

Took my car to my trusted mechanic up in Blackburn yesterday, to fix all of the problems that the pillock in Wolverhampton caused when fitting my gauges.

He's fixed the boost gauge - turns out the pillock in Wolverhampton had clamped the grommet cover down on to the boost hose so the air was getting trapped. He'd also forgotten to plug in the air intake sensor again, but that wouldn't have caused the gauge to malfunction. More seriously, the dump valve was broken which was causing a massive boost leak and preventing it from getting vacuum. I can't prove this guy caused this and to be honest it's probably been like it for a while, but the car is obviously more powerful than I thought it was, it's running at about 0.5bar at the moment according to the boost gauge, when it should be at 1.0/1.1 by now. I'll have to get an aftermarket blow-off valve fitted and that'll fix the leak, hopefully.

He fixed the oil leak - the pillock in Wolves hadn't sealed all the threads properly on the temperature sensors and T-pieces. He'd tried to use PTFE tape and had failed miserably, so the Blackburn guy put in some proper sealant and that's sorted it.

Also, he happened to have some rather nice Recaro seats and rails there that he'd just stripped out of a breaker, so they're now sitting pretty in the front of my car. Lovely jubbly.

Want.

Glad your sorted Gaz.

In other news:



Fuck.

Crikey. How's that happened?

Dunno. That's the piston that shoves the locking diff clutch gear (laying on top) into the gear at the top of the diff, forcing both wheels to turn at the same speed. Those shitty little plastic bits broke off, and it got stuck in 'locked', which mangled one of the rear half shafts.

Is it repairable?

Yeah, I'll just order a new piston.
I just need to find someone that sells one, though.

Calling Zardoz: I am currently investigating a distributor-replacement fuel system for my Tomcat, which will make it run better underwater and (far more importantly) allow me to tune it while it is running by plugging a laptop into it. HURRAH!
Anyway - it's called 'MegaSquirt'.

We're waiting...

Funnily enough I call DavSpazs Mum MegaSquirt.

I can adjust her underwater output on my laptop too.

*wipes keyboard*

She broke the shitty plastic off my piston too.

Nice. Very nice.

Regular viewers will know the Chinnymobile is up for a Cambelt change. The dealer phoned me up last week to remind me of this fact (which I already knew).

I phoned the dealer who usually repairs my cars (not who I got the car from). Was quoted £310. Then phoned the dealer who sold me the car, they want £429. I literally laughed down the phone at them.

And yes I am required by the terms of my warranty to have it done by a VW dealer.

No you're not (if it's a manufacturer warranty at least). Even if it says that. EU block exemption rules deny it, so long as the garage is VAT-registered and uses OEM parts.

Can I really be fucked ensuring they do it to the book? One washer out of place and you just know VW would scream blue murder and I'd have a fight on my hands.

I also want them to look at something under warranty when it is in anyway.

Ford only care that you use OEM parts, so you can do it yourself if you want.

Cambelts should be phased out, man. Fucking 1930 technology.

I agree with Grim...

It's better than pushrods though innit?

Having phoned around a few dealers, £310 isn't a bad price at all. And I need to get them to look at a potential alarm issue which would be covered by the warranty. So I'll kill two birds with one stone.

I tell you, I'm more than ready for IE engines (I predict your jokes, tedious geeks) to be phased out. We just need something better to come along.

I would think it's the fans because they didn't change in pitch, tone or speed when driving. In any event, the car has a three month warranty on it so if it goes wrong, they get to fix it. It's being serviced, MOT'd and everything before I picked it up anyway.



Heh. That's not a farm, that's AutoBarn! I changed the postcode to Worcester (and their postcode was conveniently to hand) to catch any possible results on the way back from Birmingham, just in case I lucked out.

Just had a very drawn-out phone call with More Than (sorry, MORE TH>N) with a woman who barely spoke English, to get my insurance changed. She was trying her best, at least, so I can't fault her for that, but dammit I hate Indian call centres.

Ha. Fuck. The garage, having dropped my gearbox, reckons the dual-mass flywheel* is going to need doing soon so I may as well do it now to save doubling up on the labour later. He can get a pattern part today for £270 or a BMW one, the exact price of which I didn't get because I started laughing after he said "five hun"

* Would a 13 year old manual M3 have a dual-mass flywheel?

Hmm, oil light came on this morning so I had to get some oil to top her up. Presumably all the cold weather has caused the engine to burn more oil.

Would have been cheaper to pour neat Scotch in!

Mrs Zs Almera had a chain instead of a belt. Shame I wrote it off.

A mate had an Almera, the chain needed replacing when it was only about 7 years old anyway.

I thought cambelts were a modern cost-saving exercise, and it was chains that were old hat?

M3 update: Internets inform me that the OEM flywheel is dual-mass, and the garage informs me that the BMW-only clutch slave cylinder feed hose thingy is fucked as well (when he says 'leaking' I assume he means split, rather than needing a new clip on the end). So that's another £100. That's half way to a half-decent Mk2 MX-5, that is.

The throttle response better be so sharp it rips my head off after this.

Oil pressure light? Oh dear. Normally when that light comes on it's already too late - you didn't carry on driving it after the light came on, did you?

Also, Meaty's new Celica is chain-driven. Cambelts are significantly cheaper to produce, but apart from that I reckon most manufacturers stick to belts because they need replacing and therefore people might bring them into the dealerships to have it done. Chains aren't as noisy as they used to be.

Oil level light when I first turned her on this morning. It went out again after I turned the engine off and on. Level was below dipstick but just half a litre was enough to top her up.

Sump capacity is 5 litres so hardly a problem.