Aerosol brake cleaner

Molgrips, get someone with a clue to do your discs and pads. Corrosion is only a big deal on things that stand so long that the braking surface pits, and no anti corrosion coating is going to last very long once the brakes are on the car and in use.

If there’s a big lip on the outside of the disc, it’s going to need replacing because it’s below the minimum thickness anyway. If you do things properly and actually check the disc thickness, generally you’ll be changing both discs and pads at the same time.

Anyway. Pagid and Brembo make a load of OE brake parts. Mintex are sound too. Pads are much much more important than discs. That said, all pads need to perform within 15% of OE to get an e mark.

I give it 3 months before we have a “how do I replace my ABS pump” thread…

EE, Orange and T – mobile are all on the same network…

I dont think they would have made a massive loss. I think they would have made a small profit.

:lol:

I don’t think most people are that pee’d off, I’m not, but if someone is giving away £40, are you saying you’d refuse it?

I think in this case, it’s a very obvious mistake, like the odd times when things get priced up at 29.99 instead of 299.99. Nobody got into work on Friday morning and said “I’m going to set our website up to give out free stuff”. It’s an honest mistake – if you used a cash machine after someone and they’d not collected their money would you consider that giving away free money?

It’s not our fault their system is rubbish, and the charity would have got some money from me, and from others from here.

Blimey. Someone passed you a voucher code you weren’t entitled to use and you’re bitter that they aren’t going to sit there and take a massive loss to keep a load of chancers happy?

Clearly their systems aren’t that rubbish, as someone’s clocked that order volumes have suddenly gone through the roof and put the brakes on :D

I don’t know how hot it is with a sewn in groundsheet, as I’ve never had a tent that has one. If you’ve got plenty of vents you can open and leave the doors open of an evening, you should be able to get it to cool down before you’re trying to kip.

Either way, sewn in groundsheet or not, if it’s sunny in France and you’re in a tent, it gets too warm to stay in bed after about 8am.

That must be a mistake on Decathlon’s part?

Finding campsites in France isn’t difficult. As a rule, we just put the tent in the car and decide where we want to go on any given day. I’d head for Brittany, it’s about a 4 hour drive from Paris to the Brittany coast. You can download POI files for your sat nav with all the campsites in France on it. And if you get really stuck, you stop at McDo and use their free wifi :D

My advice re: tents is to get down Decathlon. They’re good, because they do tents that have a good 3-4 inch gap around the bottom of the flysheet. English people seem to have an obsession with sewn in groundsheets. Which sort of makes sense if you insist in camping when it’s hammering down with rain. It’s hot in France during the summer, and the last thing you want to do is to be trying to sleep in a hermetically sealed nylon tent… Try and get a tent that has a door you can prop open to make a canopy, or take a tarp and two poles so you can get some shade. You will also need to take some rock / hard ground pegs pegs, which are basically masonry nails. And you need to get the best coolbox you can, because stuff gets warm fast!

This site is below is probably the best we’ve ever stayed in, they have a really nice little bar / restaurant, pool, water slide and the like for kids. The pool / bar is about as close to being at a hotel as I’ve had when we’re camping. And it’s right next to the beach. It’s also part of a chain, so I assume you can get more of the same from their other sites.
http://www.le-cabellou-plage.com/en/
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We also camped at St Lunaire, on a site called camping longchamps which is about 150m from the beach. It’s got an indoor pool and a decent bar that does food on site.

Saint Briac sur mer is a nice little town, slightly further down the coast. You can cycle there quite easily from St Lunaire, and I should imagine there are a lot of decent sites around there.

There are also loads of campsites in Carnac, where you can you go and see the standing stones.

I’ve got a Jabra Cruiser 2. Works for music, and works as a handsfree phone kit too. Transmits via FM to the radio. You can occasionally get interference, normally from someone else’s handsfree kit, but it’s pretty well sorted.

Ring them up.

Pretty much all retailers moderate reviews, because you’ll get one person who gets really narked off, and leaves a bad review for everything on the site.

Some will moderate more than others, but everyone does it.

Baseball cap = chav, middle aged through to grandad. If it’s a pensioner, he’ll be wearing shorts, big white socks and trainers. If it’s a middle aged fella, he’ll be driving like a tosser and possibly wearing oakleys. If it’s someone under 30, it’s probably a chav.

A lot of mid range tyres are alright. The likes of Uniroyal etc. make decent tyres.

Some of the proper budget tyres are horrendous. I remember having a dirt cheap tyre stuck on years ago when I was stuck after a puncture, and within a month I’d had it changed for the usual brand. If you’re getting 4, then four horrendous tyres is a bit of a risk.

That said, these days the EU tyre labelling scheme makes buying cheap tyres much less of a risk – you can at least tell if they’re going to stop you and go around corners.

If money is an issue, probably not something Japanese. The parts are silly expensive.

Of that lot, I’d go for the focus, but if it were picking from scratch it would be a SEAT Leon or Skoda Octavia.

Go to your local costco, explain that you’re eligible to be a member, and that you’d like a pass to have a look around. Then work out if you’ll save more than the cost of membership.

We had a look around as they’re cheap for Mobil 1 oil, and that’s what I need for my car. The Mobil 1 was cheap. A lot of other things weren’t particularly cheap. I’m not saying that there aren’t bargains, but there are a lot of huge pack sizes you never buy anywhere else, and rather than doing the sums, you can assume that it’s a good price. In the end, we worked out it was a fair bit cheaper to buy oil from Ebay. Nothing there particularly grabbed us.

If you’ve not got kids, do one. She sounds barking.

If you are buying from a dealer, should they not be offering a warranty with the car in the first place?

This. Sale of Goods Act basically forces dealers to to take some level of responsibility, so almost all provide a warranty on pricey second hand motors. Even at the the £2k end of the spectrum, you tend to see “if the gearbox or engine goes within x months, we’ll fix it”.

I looked at some of the warranty companies last time I bought a second hand car privately, and the exclusions list was daft – if I recall correctly, clutches (fair enough, given you can abuse them to death), flywheels, turbos and engine valves were all excluded, and they’re all the bits I was worried about on a petrol turbo, I didn’t bother.

Right, looks like it’s time to loosen a few cables! One thing I did notice was how much easier it was to brake on the hoods and how I wasn’t having to stretch my fingers half to death. Feeling a bit thick now :lol:

They cause owners to develop a condition known as “audi tourettes”, whereby whenever they’re asked what car they drive, they answer with the make and model, but then blurt out “ESSS LINE!”, baffling everyone present.

You want 8-12% moisture content before you actually go making it into anyting if you want to be sure it won’t warp once it gets in your nice dry centrally heated house.

How much? How little can I get away with? :D

Also, I know stuff all about road tyres, so let me know who makes them and which model I want to be looking at!

The Freelander 2 is very much like driving a van. They often have very few toys and the mpg is a bit ropey. I don’t mean “where’s my massage seat” re the toys, I mean no climate or cruise. Bizarre on a pricey modern car.

And it’s a Land Rover. Which if you’re a towny, means it’s a credible vehicle. If you’re from the country, it means you were too daft to buy a Shogun.

Phil Price rally school. It’s in Wales somewhere. It’s awesome. It’s 300 quid. You spend lots and lots of time driving 150bhp rwd converted imprezas, instructors riding with you and egging you on to give it some, then you go out in a dual control 4wd impreza with about 300 brake. Then you go out for a passenger run in a full on impreza, I think group n spec. The passenger ride is truly insane, linear acceleration like being fired out of a cannon, cornering in mid air etc. Absolutely flat out.

You actually spend so much time slithering around sideways that you get tired out towards the end of the day! It’s a proper day too, not an ‘experience’ where you get twenty minutes in the car.

That looks awesome. I’d personally go for the e39, because they’ve pretty much bottomed out value wise. That said, if you keep the e60 for a long long time, you’ll probably not lose much!

I used to work for an assessor’s firm, and so I’ve got a rough idea of how things work.

1) Cash in lieu of repair is better than keeping a write off. Because it doesn’t get recorded as a write off.

2) They will offer you something in the region of 75% of Glass’s guide, probably one of the poorer condition valuations or even a trade in value. They will forget to add options when valuing your car. So if they’ve offered £1600, your car is probably worth £2k

3) Get your own valuations – CAP is free for private people, and has a similar standing to Glass’ with insurers and the trade.

4) Find out what similar cars are actually selling for – ie, ebay and autotrader. Glass’ and CAP can be massively out, particularly on anything with low sales volume or for the fast edition of pedestrian cars.

4) Either be prepared to spend some time arguing with insurance companies, or employ a claims management company. Some of them are awful, some are fine. I used Europa consultants last year, and they were fine, no pushing for an expensive hire car, and pursued the other party for me, which saved a huge amount of legwork on my part. The claims management boys normally take it straight back off the third party insurer, which saves you losing your excess.

As someone who’s had a few cars fixed, anyone quoting you on that job needs to be pulling the door frame into line and probably putting a used door on. You’ll want that gash in the arch welded back up, not just fillered. And an MOT only tests for big holes near vital components and sharp edges – it doesn’t give you any idea of how well repairs were done, so find someone who’s willing to explain how the repair will be done, not just say “£600 guv”.

Croatia is awesome. So good that we’re going back for the third time this year, and we always said we’d never go to the same place twice. Porec and Dubrovnik are both nice, but you’ll struggle to find many sandy beaches.

Aldi have got one in at the moment. It’s 90 quid, and the flow rate and pressure figures stack up to nilfisk and karchers at almost double the money.

No. Keep the Hi fi, keep the cds and vinyl.

Turned out that the steering wheel does not in fact locate itself in the right position when you put it back on, and I’d put it back on at a crazy angle.

:lol:

I think the way most modifiers spend improbable amounts of money is by doing things two or three times.

Start out with a £150 stereo and colour coding a few rubbing strips, end up sticking a lowering kit on, then go through the whole thing again with a body kit, coilovers, bigger wheels because the old ones look small etc.

A lot of the cars mentioned on this thread are already on the up. 10 years ago I had 2 Mk2 Golf GTI, one bought for £600, the other for £150. You can’t really find many at that money now.

I think the SAAB c900 boat has sailed too. The one to have is the full fat T16 aero.

And tidy RS Turbos aren’t at all cheap to pick up.

I’d suggest the Fiat coupe turbo and the Barchetta as cars where the value will start rising soon.

The way to do it is to buy cars that were desirable new, and buy the one that people promised themselves. The turbo, the GTI etc. Don’t buy any cooking models.

Read an IPCC report on climate change and that might start you thinking, rather than sticking your head in the sand and moaning about the crap coverage out there.

The current pollution problems are mainly centred around particulates and NOx. Particulates and NOx come from diesel cars in much bigger volumes than they do from petrol cars. But diesels have been promoted through company car tax for the last god knows how many years, as an anti carbon emissions programme.

I find it amazing that we’ve prioritised something that will happen in the distant future, and that we can’t particularly affect over something that causes a genuine health threat in the present.

If there’s any roughness, rub it down, if not just re-oil.

Given the context of the story – snobs complaining that it’s “attracting the wrong sorts” (and exactly what’s referred to in the BBC article), no Tory MP could ever disagree with it without getting ripped to shreds by the papers.

And from a standard Tory free market perspective, there would be no mileage in arguing against a business doing what it wants to attract customers.

Work or fun? Where will you need to be? And how cheap?

Check out my post history. I used to work in the industry and I’ve posted info on this lots of times before. Standard starting offer from insurance companies is around 70% of glasses value. If it’s a no fault, just offload it to a claims management firm.
Stick any questions on this thread and I’ll get back to you in the morning.

The first major problem is that it’s not an Aero.

If you’re after a soft ride, I’ve got an Aero and it’s firmer than an Alfa 147. In fact, it’s firmer than most things. As others have said, the acceleration is deceptive. Torque is limited in 1st and 2nd, so 3rd is as fast as second, which is surreal.

The rust under the tonneau cover is fairly common – muck accumulates under the rubber seal and stays there. Some got fixed under warranty. I’d say £150-£200 a side to fix it, depending on the colour. I know that as I’ve just had mine done…

TBH there’s not a massive list of things to look out for on these – the key thing is that the roof goes up and down properly.

The right NGK spark plugs should always be fitted, or they can run poorly as the plugs are used as part of the knock detection system.

2003 cars had an SAI pump which pushed air into the exhaust. This can act up and be expensive to fix.

There have been some reports of intake valves failing, mainly on 07 B207R (Aero) cars, which leads to poor cold starting / running. These issues seem to be centred more around american cars.

Get one with the top of the line audio system. The audio system on the pre-facelift cars can’t be replaced with an aftermarket unit easily, and the basic one sounds nasty. The better audio systems sound OK.

Oil should be 0W40 Mobil 1 or 5W30 full synthetic. Mobil 1 is the better of the two. Around £50 worth of Mobil 1 oil for a service if you buy it at the right price.

All the turbo engines (1.8t, 2.0t) are more or less the same – 2 litre turbo B207s with various maps. You can have these mapped to near Aero performance. Only the B207R in the Aero is much different, with a bigger turbo, different cam profiles etc. and will map up to around 250 brake. There is a 1.8i which is some GM engine and not particularly popular.

The diesels are the same as used in various Fiats and GM vehicles, and there a few problems documented I think. I know very little about them as I’m not interested in them.

The 6 speed manual box is also a GM unit, and like the 6 speed in the Vectra, it can be a bit crunch if you rush first to second. Apparently a gearbox oil change and adjustment of the linkage can improve things.

Oh, and the hood is around £800 to replace. You can reproof and recolour hoods, but if it’s actually damaged, don’t take any flannel about how you can get it replaced for cheap.

All in though, they’re quick and very cheap – to get similar performance you’d be looking at a 328 or 330 e46, and a) they’re a lot dearer, a grand or two dearer, b) the larger engined E46s tear their boot floors to pieces, which is a massive repair and c) older BMs tend to have 6 suspect previous owners…

Something like Gravitex for the underside. That’s a brand name for one of the many rubbery underseal products around.

Waxes (ie waxoyl, dinitrol 3125) are for cavities – ie, injected during production or by drilling holes and spraying in after, and should never really set. If you wax the underside of a car, particularly something like a landy, it’ll get abraded away pretty quickly.

Work out what you’d be saving. Even doing something like 350-400 miles a week, and upping MPG from 30 to 40mpg on petrol would only save 20-25 quid a week. You could wipe that out easily by paying more for a car that’s cheaper to run.