Be Excellent To Each Other

55 quid for 4 fucking litres of oil! What's in it, gin?

Thought it seemed cheaper than buying 1 litre for 16 quid (considering it seems like I will need a litre for every 5-6000 miles).

What the fuck sort of oil is that?
£20 per gallon makes me blink. Fifty fucking five?

It's the correct one for a VW TDi on a longlife service regime apparently. I can go cheaper but only at the next oil change and I'd have to change the car to regular service intervals (with longlife the car will decide when it wants servicing based on various measurements).

Snake oil.

Tesco Value oil, 47p/l.

Or the stuff from Carrefour in Frogland.

Be fine.

Don't put Magnatec in your bike.

The oil I put in my car is £10 per litre, although they frequently knock it down to about £7.25 per litre in a special offer. Oil changes every 3,000 miles soon add up...

It's generally "whatever shit happens to be in whichever garage I'm in". I'm always careful to not use the old oil, though. That gets used for other things.

Good stuff. But Magnatec on a wet clutch = not good.

That's the last time I have a plate of chips at your house.

I usually end up grabbing Shell Helix Ultra from a petrol station, because it's always Sunday at about 5 when I start panicking about needing some. I R IDIOT>

The idea is to prolong the gap between services, not shorten it.

Car has been on the dyno and is pushing out 301.9bhp. I'm happy with that

I've decanted a litre of the 4 litre bottle into the old 1 litre bottle of oil (same brand etc), and have stashed it in the special cubby hole VW provide. It's as if they expect the engines to be thirsty!

I bought a new car today, Mitsubishi Lancer 1.8 GS4 Sportback to replace my 56 plate Honda Civic 2.2 CTDI. The Civic has been fantastic, it's versatile, fuel efficient, relatively quick for an oil burner and it has started every time. I did 40k miles in it. However, I've hated the bastard pretty much the entire 2 and a half years I've owned it but I genuinely couldn't tell you why.

I also think that its fucked, boot it in 5th or 6th and it'll climb through the revs and then suddenly lose a couple of hundred rpms, (think of the feeling of an automatic box changing gear) and then the revs catch up. I'm guessing slipping clutch or knackered turbo,but it only happens in those gears every other gear is fine. Obviously I haven't told the dealer that, he offered me pretty much what I was expecting for it on a trade in, considering I cosmetically modified it using a timber post and one eye.

So yeah, new car - go me! I'd never have thought of buying a brand new car, let alone a Mitsubishi, but I was offered a pretty good discount (as my dad works for the dealer) so it was worth considering. After lots of pontificating I decided I'd buy a new car rather than spending the same money on a used car(ie BMW 320d 57 plate poverty spec), I've never owned a new car so fuck it. Going to pay for it tomorrow so fingers crossed next weekend to collect it. Appreciate it's not the greatest car, but it's something different, something new and has all of the toys I wanted. Besides, if Mrs The Egg doesn't pay too much attention I could quietly swap it for the Rallisport version and then an Evo FQ without her ever knowing!

Heard about this: Fanny Stupid said you had 'the best Lancer' so I immediately thought GO EGG, he's got a fucking Evo!

Only mild disappointment that it isn't, still an excellent car and looks the part too! Just keep them chavs off it!

The Mundano decided it didn't like its cigarette lighter sockets yesterday, so dropped the fuse for them. After much digging around (fuck you, Ford), I changed the fuse and it blew again.
I had no idea how much I relied on the car for power for the SatNav and my phone and shit.
Still, the brakes worked well enough to avoid a crash on Sunday (which woke Mr Dave up) and it still handles well enough to avoid "debris" in the fast lane of the M6 (which certainly woke the person in the middle lane up).

Hi5!

I hope one day soon more cars will start to come with USB sockets for power. It could make life quite a lot easier, for charging phones and shit.

I got one of these the other week to replace the cigarette lighter:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.34040

Heh, it looks like a butt plug.

You charge your phone with your arse?

I've had one of those a couple of times as a courtesy car when getting HC's CR-V serviced. Like the design, like the dash, like the grunt. However, I don't like the brittle ride which was stupid and unnecessarily firm and Honda don't seem to understand the concept of NVH as the car always felt really noisy to me. I didn't like it.

Mine does, for power and audio. It's an excellent feature.

Renewable energy innit.

An ammonium sulfide powered phone. You'd definitely want hands free with that!

Hippy!

Have decided I'll be taking my car back to the dealer in BRUMMIEHAM this weekend to get the whining noise sorted, barring some major revelation from my friendly local mechanic.

Rather than what the media would like, Toyota sales still good and in fact increasing despite the recalls.

GM have had to recall 1.3m of their cars, reportedly due to parts supplied by a factory partially-owned by Toyota.

This all just smacks of trying to destroy Toyota's reputation in America, now.

Worth mentioning that the story on Wheels doesn't mention this, but the BBC has made sure to mention it.

I hate to agree but... Yeah. Did I read that they actually had the boss of Toyota up in front of the house of Congress for a grilling?

WTFF? We're talking about cars here, and a problem that's allegedly caused a few deaths at most.

Get a sense of perspective, USA.

Seems like they're trying to destroy the reputation of Japanese manufacturers as part of their 'assistance' program to the domestic manufacturers.

Indeed.

Pinto, much? American SUV rollovers? Some people have short memories.

Recalls happen all the time, to all manufacturers.



Dick.

There was a piece somewhere (possibly the BBC) saying this was just like the Audi thing in the US back in the 80s... people were convinced that their accelerators became stuck and propelled them into danger.

EDIT: found it! link



I wonder why there was never a recall of the Peugeot 206 for 'pedal confusion', eh?

Is there a 4x4 equivalent to pistonheads? i.e. somewhere with decent classifieds? I guess this is aimed at Grim.... I mean other than ebay, too.

I'm intrigued to see how available these "£500 Jimnys" are.

Yeah, there was even one case of someone travelling a hundred miles or so along a freeway that they closed specially and had a police escort at speeds of 100+, turned out the guy was a bit of an attention seeker or was trying to get away with a speeding ticket or something.

There is definitely a case to answer with the Toyota thing though, having looked into it a bit. I can sort of understand why they put it all down to dumb-ass drivers to start with though.

Hmm, a few.
There is a fucking awesome deal on a £800 Discovery on one of them: http://www.devon4x4.com/forum/for-sale- ... o-m-plate/

I don't really hang around on Suzuki forums, though. Normally you only see the higher-end stuff anyway. eBay is your friend, TBH.

Oh yeah, Toyota have fucked up badly here but they don't deserve the utter roasting they're getting in the media - and I don't even speak as a Toyota fanboi.

Just a cursory check of the VOSA website shows that pretty much every manufacturer has had to issue a recall in the last two years, some for more serious problems than others, but nevertheless. One of them (Mercedes Sprinters I think) had problems with the things spontaneously catching fire. CATCHING FIRE. I'd say that's a damn sight more dangerous than a stuck accelerator pedal when at least with the latter you can just shut the engine off.

Well, one point with the Toyotas is that no, you can't very easily switch the engine off (or at least people didn't know how to).

But agreed, it's definitely been overblown and I think the suspicion of the US carmakers/administration doing this deliberately is probably on the money.

If you've watched the "who killed the electric car" film you'll find a parallel with the propaganda by GM against one of its own cars...

£135 for the rocker cover gaskets, which were apparently silicon-sealed instead of replaced at some point. Lovely.

£450 quote for a diff recondition; the specialist they consult said he absolutely wouldn't do just the seals if they've been left a while in case play in the shafts causes a seizure after the new seals are tightened on. 3 day turn-around next week.

During which time the garage is going to have a damn good look around the rear suspension and chassis to find out why it's never quite gone straight since I pranged it, and replace any worn bushes. And also at the front, since it's been vibrating since I quite forcefully knocked the front offside wheel (at under 1mph) while parking at New Year.

Then if they can't find anything "simple" that cures the straightness, getting it measured on a jig. May as well!

(Then the bodywork and getting it as close to watertight as is reasonable on a 13 year old drop-top. And the electrics)

/winces

Doesn't seem that much compared to £930 for the clutch, flywheel and hose. Or one from a breaker that'd need looking over anyway; hardly a commonplace part. Does it seem a lot to you? I would've expected just doing the seals to be approaching a couple of hundred so, you know. Year warranty on seals versus the entire diff?

Anything I rack up before April is going on my 0% (well, 3% fee) Amazon card, so it's not all at once, at least.

And Charl's keeping the Octy in exchange for taking on the entire furniture bill (I owed just over a grand) and giving me £2k - about fair since it's worth about £3k now it's stolen/recovered. So that's going to go... um, not that far towards it, really.

Despite me staunchly defending the engineering of cheap French cars for a while now, after being unused over the weekend, my 106 yesterday:

Heater stopped working
Power steering developed a leak (I think it's just a loose pipe end, but still)
Passenger door opener surround fell off onto the floor without anyone touching it
A hellish squeaking has developed in the driver's door seals

FFS!

Ooh, and then! It'll be a service in a few months, which are never cheap, but I'm going to get the sump dropped to check for Bits, the oil pickups and the state of the conrod bearing shell things, number 5 of which is apparently 'common' to go on this engine.

Was manufacture of your BMW sub-contracted out to the French, Bik?

It's what comes of owning a 13 year old high performance convertible unfortunately. One that's been crashed (at least) once and under-maintained for 3 years.

Aren't large parts of the M series handbuilt? Making routine maintenance fucking essential I would have thought. However, I suspect even if you had religiously maintained the car it wouldn't work out any cheaper.

I doubt it - they're just so much rarer and generally over-specced they cost a bloody packet. Well, that and they've got 'BMW' and 'M' logos on them.

Fuck yes, but only because I can get a reconned gearbox for a Land Rover for that much.
God bless simple bits, I guess

Reconditioned gearboxes for M3s go for over a grand, I believe*. Logos and several orders of magnitude fewer in existence and demand, presumably.

* My's notchy and doesn't like third when cold. Oh dear.