Be Excellent To Each Other

Shock of shocks, Helen's chopping her 10 year old Micra in. Quite inexplicably, Ford have offered her...

Actually, back up a second - the shock of shocks is that Helen's 10 year old Micra passed its MOT without any advisories a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway; almost-shock-of-shocks, Helen's chopping her 10 year old Micra in. Quite inexplicably, Ford have offered her £500 for it, £1500 "benefit" against £1100 cost of credit and about £1500 off the list price of a brand-spanker Focus ST-2.

It's alright, definitely more a car for her than the Twingo - bigger, comfier, quieter, faster, more forgiving, all that kind of thing. I've almost been jealous a couple of times but I just remind myself of the all-very-nice-and-everything-but-nowhere-near-as-involving gearchange, brakes, steering, chassis feedback... and yeah it's faster, but not as much as I expected from 250PS - and it numbs you to some of that anyway.

More torque-steer than you'll can shake its back end at and (not-too-bad) turbo lag too.

Over the weekend I had a friend of my gf's replace the timing belt and tensioners, water pump, the auxiliary belt and tensioners and the boost pipe (he spotted a split in it when replacing the EGR valve for me last time) in my Alfa, all for £450. Seemed a fairly reasonable price and it's utterly transformed the car. Runs much smoother and faster, no black shit pouring out the back whenever I put my foot down - also seems much more economical too. Obviously it's replacing the boost pipe alone that's done that, and he showed me how the old pipe had been spraying oil around the engine bay.

Only thing was, he noticed I was down to the cords on the inner edge of one of my tyres, so it's now in a tyre place having that tyre replaced, the wheel alignment done and, since the weather should hopefully improve at some point, the air con regassed (since it has no cooling effect whatsoever right now). So that's going to be another £150.

Turning out to be expensive, this car. Though I paid £2300 for a car that's apparently worth closer to £3500, so I'm still fairly happy.

Had some fun today with my car. Seems to be engine seems to jump around a little (i.e. extra pull then no pull) and occasionally stalls when warm, possibly the EGR value again... however this would be my forth if so. Anyway what has alarmed me more is that the oil temperature seems to drop quickly. After a good drive today it managed to get to around 80C then the next minute (I did put my foot down) it dropped way down so it looks like the car was cold. Normally my car is rock steady at 90C nothing normally budges it, so I'm not sure what's happening. It's cold outside but I've never seen it do that before even when it's been down to -10 outside. Any ideas? I have it booked in at the garage for a look over but it seems strange and I can't help think it's a waste of time unless I can demonstrate it to them which I probably can't.

hmm that all sounds like electrical stuff really, could be a bad earth point. I cant see the oil actually changing temp. like that so its more likely to be the gauge lying. one thing you can easily check is the engine earth, usually a wire or strap bolted into the engine bay somewhere. take it off, clean it and stick it back on. these can get a bit rusty and cause odd problems like that. check your oil level also.

Insurance renewal time, managed £220 fully comp for the C6 for the year, which isn't too bad for Insurance Group 45. (I'm surprised the C6 is as high as that, TBH.)

Maximum excess and all that stuff, no protection on NCB, no breakdown car etc etc.

Given that it's returning 32mpg long term and the tax is sensible, it may turn out to be a surprisingly reasonable car to run, costs wise.

UNTIL IT BLOWS UP BECAUSE IT'S A BIG FRENCH CAR, that is.

Turned out to be the cables in the parking brake that were causing the fault in the BMW.

However, that wasn't the full story. They replaced the parking brake cables (two of 'em at £65 each) and replaced the gears in the actuator with the new ones I'd bought (although mine weren't broken, I figured I may as well go ahead and replace them to save future hassle)

The actuator itself was also buggered though, so they couldn't get it back together anyway. BMW wanted £700 for a new one, but I found a used one in the US for £100, so got that and it all fits fine. Parking brake is now back to normal.

Had to replace the rear discs and pads too. Their parts supplier quoted £95 each for the rear discs, but found some on eBay that were £33 for a pair. OK, they may not be the same quality, but the rears hardly do any work anyway.

Cheers. Will take a look when the light is good and I'm not snowed in. Not a happy bunny about possibly of the EGR valve going again but I guess it due to not using the car very much. Think it's done less than 15K since the last one.

"KITT, Turbo Boost!"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-21916129

Where have I been this weekend, I hear you ask?

For the twitter and facebook challenged among us, I have been here, doing this.

http://mx5trackcar.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... -trackday/

ORLY?

REALLY

Meanwhile, on Ling's twitter, I've been downgraded from "fuckwit" to "asshole" now, as she directs her army of followers back to my website.

In BEEX terms, does that place you above or below Noel Fielding?

Not 100% sure, but I'm definitely above Hitler.

And she's now name-dropping me in correspondence to the ASA. I assume it's occurred to her that someone else may have complained, but I guess I'm just an easy target

Dear Gazchap

I was going to give you a £5,000 contract but now I won't because you've been described as an idiot on the internet.

Make of that what you will

Bugger.

Fuck me, this is cheap.

http://www.lingscars.com/Vauxhall/Corsa ... _T_(189bhp)_Hatchback_3dr_1598cc.html#models

£177 a month for a Corsa VXR...

I don't pretend to know what he's done to this car, but fuck me it's angry:

YOUR LINK NO WORK. YOU MAKE LING ANGRY. DONKEY-BREATHED TIME WASTER.

(Even a straight copy and paste of the link doesn't work, the brackets break the link in your post.)

http://www.lingscars.com/Vauxhall/Corsa ... _T_(189bhp)_Hatchback_3dr_1598cc-personal.html#models

Working fine here

[LINK]http://www.lingscars.com/Vauxhall/Corsa_VXR/1819424-1.6_T_(189bhp)_Hatchback_3dr_1598cc-personal.html#models[LINK]

Can't remember the correct syntax. Didn't work for me either but I figured it out. :-) :-)

Ahhh yes that works, cheers

That's mental cheap for what is a great little car.

I pay more than that for the loan on the C6, and when that's paid off if it'll probably be worth about three and sixpence, if it hasn't just blown up completely.

Sure, it isn't quite as good to drive as a Mini JCW or Cliosport, but it is less than half the price.
If I was looking for a new car, i'd find it hard not to order one. I'm finding it hard not to order one as it is and I don't need one

Does anyone make a footpump that doesn't fucking disintegrate if you as much as look at it?



That pump is a year old, has only had light use and was a replacement for a pump that fell apart on first use in exactly the same way on first use!

Pumps used to last, but I've now had a couple of Drapers which started leaking air through their pressure gauges, and that's now the 3rd AA pump that has gone west.

What the fuck is wrong?

I suspect it's something along the lines of GRIM... NOT KNOW OWN STRENGTH.

It appears my problems are EGR related. I'm going to be brave and attempt to fix it myself. How ever I'm going to cap the fucker instead of replacing the value. Anyone know how bad doing this is? Only read good things so far.

On VAG's at least, you need to ensure it's patched out of the ECU or you'll have problems with errors.

My cars from 2001. I think I can cap it and let the valve still think its working. I just can't find any real downsides to doing it other than slightly higher emissions.

Hey donkey breathed time-wasters! You can now buy a electric Delorean:

http://www.firebox.com/product/4907/Electric-DeLorean-DMCEV?via=related

If I had the money, that would be a no brainer. I'd be all over that! It looks glorious!

6 to 12 month waiting list.

Are you suggesting I could save that much in 6-12 months? Yeah, you're probably right.. I'll get one and it'll be a nice surprise for the wife when it turns up!

Serious question though. Can electric cars charge off a mains plug or do they need a special adapter or charging station?

I'm pretty sure that most can just charge from the mains.

Very very slowly.

It's pretty crappy tech for the price though, which I know isn't the point but it is still disappointing.

http://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/models

The Tesla Model S is the first electric car that actually starts to be a viable alternative in my mind. 300 mile range and luxurious.

It's a moot point as I neither have the cash to buy one, nor a place to plug it in overnight...

I'm planning to ask for one as a company car. 100% tax writeoff apparently

Mine charges at about 10 miles per hour from a 13A plug. So it's always fully charged in the morning, like a phone.
There is a "fast charge network" of sorts appearing at filling stations, these can recharge the Japanese made cars in 20 minutes.

The standard public charging stations supply 32A 3-phase which is almost as good as the above fast charger, but uses the built in charger of the car, which currently is either 16 or 32A single phase - 32 is still pretty useful and will refill it in a couple of hours.

A Tesla Model S? Blimey

You must need a long extension for that!

Put the C6 through THE BEST CAR WASH EVER today. It was absolutely fucking filthy thanks to all the snow and ice and thus salt on the road and what have you.

I hate washing cars by hand and I basically refuse to do it, the thing I resented most about the Scooby was that I had to hand wash it because the various spoilers meant it couldn't go through a car wash. (Shamefully, I ended up paying a dude at work who loves cars £20 per time to wash it for me.)

Anyway, this car wash, for the top programme, costs, wait for it - NINE FUCKING POUNDS. I'd decided to give it a go 'cause the one I usually use (a) is a scarily tight fit for the C6, since the C6 is over two metres wide and (b) doesn't seem to do as good a job washing cars as it used to, I think it needs an overhaul or replacing.

Since I'd just spent £106 on a tank of fucking diesel (!?!?!?!?), spending another £9 on a car wash didn't seem too extravagant.

It takes a remarkable length of time, just short of 12 minutes for the full programme, there's a soapy pre wash, then a jet wash, then the brushes, then a sort of gloss thing, the alloys get done, there's an under-car wash, then the brushes again, it does a dry cycle, then it does a wax, then another dry - I think that's about all of it.

Whatever the case, the C6 came out looking like it'd just had a very good hand wash, (far better than I've ever seen a car come out of an automatic car wash before), I also noticed the brushes themselves seemed to be using some sort of very modern super-soft material, not like car washes normally have.

The whole thing was very modern and exciting, it even had swizzy concentric blue LED circles to indicate which bit of the cycle it was on.

Not cheap at £9, but I'll probably use it once every two tanks of diesel (a tank lasts about two weeks normally, so it'll get done once per month).

Really? The 7-series is just under 2m wide, I'd be amazed if your C6 is wider than that!

Took my Bravo for it's fourth service & second MOT today.

It passed with advisories for the brake pads being low after only 58000 miles
Those I'll do myself for £52 instead of the £320 the dealers wanted.

Also the front tyres have worn badly on the inside, so it looks like the garage that fitted them and did the alignment didn't do a very good job of it. Only 18000 miles from the fronts which is far less than I'm used to.

Still not too bad for a 4 year old Italian car to only need scheduled maintenance and consumables.

Blimey, I had no idea they still made the Bravo!

58K for brake pads seems pretty good to me - I'd love to have a car that didn't eat brakes

After the original Bravo they ditched the name for the Stilo, then brought it back again in about 2008 for the Mk2. It's still technically on sale today, but I doubt they have many buyers.
I bought one because A) it looked ok and B) was cheap. £12.5k for a top spec one, and it's averaged 54mpg since new and only costs £30 a year to tax.

I don't do as many motorway miles as I used to, so I'm still happy with the pad life. My last Octavia was traded in at 78k and still had all the original brake components.

2.08m with the wing mirrors out according to the handbook.

Probably just under with them folded back I would imagine.

car failed the m o t.it needs to front tires,headlamp bulb, windscreen wipers,suspension bushing so not too bad. do we have a favorites tyre supplier?

I use etyres, mainly because they come to me and I'm lazy.

I usually end up using black circles, after shopping around etc.

Black Circles. They'll send the tyres to a local garage. You just order online and turn up at the right time. They are much cheaper than anywhere else.

Also check your tyre choice on:

http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/