Got a 1998 Ford Ka and it has been playing up lately.
When driving, I lift my foot off the juice pedal to change gear but the engine revs take a couple of seconds to reduce.
My first thoughts was that the cable was sticking or the spring was worn so it was not returning to tickover position, but neither of these are the case.
Parked up and testing the juice pedal with my hand, I can push it down to rev and then immediately pull it hard back up but the problem remains.
To make this more confusing, the problem is intermittant.
Throttle position sensor is favourite for this on Fords. Unplug it and see if the fault goes away. If it does, you'll need a new one. It needs to be calbrated to about 0.8v at idle though.
Well known problem, TPS probably needs replacing and Ford also have a small wiring loom part that gets replaced as well. 120ish quid from your local rip off Ford dealer.
Happened to us, along with a load of other shit, we've now got a Polo....
Which won't develop a death rattle, rust or fall apart in a few years time.
We nearly bought Katie a Polo 16v (1.4, ISTR) - sweet little motor in a very nicely specced small car. Pretty tidy handling, too. The next best thing to a Polo GTI and half the price.
If you're trying to say you drive like a girl, then yes.
I've had a multitude of Wop cars that have stood up to massive amounts of abuse. I've also known of Kas that have fallen apart under the same treatment.
I've been through this. I cruise. Girlies don't. Girlies vary throttle aplenty.
A lot, eh? I know of one. And I probably know a lot more Ka drivers than you, heh.
If Italian cars can take continious hard driving, why did you have the affair with the VW Passat and Nissan Primera? Did you not have the confidence in them?
The argument doesn't stack up. If a car falls apart through the driver pushing it too hard, then he or she either needs to screw the nut and drive less hard, or replace it with something that can take the knocks.
I broke an engine mount taking the Ka up and down the strip around sixty five times. I don't think you've taken anything to a drag strip... are you afraid of breaking something?
But there's the thing. They're no better than the competition to drive, in most cases they're inferior. The dealerships are often snooty and very expensive. Worse, you do _not_ get it back when you sell it.
Primula came about because I had clutch hydraulic failure on the 75 and needed a car on the road that weekend. We then flogged Katie's 33 and I gave her my 75, because the 33 needed a new heater matrix and I couldn't be arsed taking the dash out to fix it. Passat happened because I couldn't get a 156 for £2k.
You've taken the option of driving less hard, obviously.
Did a track day in the Cinq. Drag strips do nothing for me at all. Very tedious. Welsh Mountain roads are a different matter, though.
Maybe they're not at the bleeding edge of the class for sharpness, but they're very much towards the top of the pack, but the build quality of
*most* VAG products puts everyone else to shame. There's some iffy ones out there - MkIV Golfs seem to depend on factory (but that's no worse than Ford - UK Fords were s**te, German ones OK), but, on the whole, they put 99% of other makers to shame. (Although with the 156 Alfa have finally made it, IMHO).
I don't go to main dealers unless I have to for a part I can't buy else where - all franchise dealers are shit.
The only time you wouldn't see your money back on a VAG product is if you bought brand new.
Second hand ones have by far the best residuals in their respective classes (in general...... there are some exceptions like my unpopular colour Passat..... although, I note, it's still worth more than I paid for it).
I prefer something organised. If I screw up people will (probably) help me. Quarter mile drag strips are dull and uninteresting in some respects, but still good for a laugh when you get the drop on something much more powerful than you...
Some are and some are not. The mark five Golf, Focus and Astra knock spots off the rest of the competition. Nothing else comes close. Most magazines put the Focus at the top for driver appeal but almost all drivers will find any of these three more than adequate.
I was very, very impressed with the mark five Golf. More so because the mark four was an utter disappointment. Somehow VW took the worst bits of the mark three Golf, let them stew for a bit, and dropped them into the mark four.
The TDI bit was about the best.
The current Passat is long overdue a replacement. It was never anywhere near as sharp to drive as the Primera, Mondeo and 406. It says something that the VW Sharan and Seat Alhambra were based on the Mondeo.
The Lupo should be called the Understeer. The greasy salesman did wind me up by making the assumption that it would drive so much better than any Ford product, but my, how wrong he was. It's dire. The only model that's entertaining is the GTI, but you can take the GTI's handling, wrap it up in a curvy insurance-group 2 Ka, put a cherry on top and laugh.
Oh and the VW Toerag and Touran, heh.
I disagree on the build quality side of things. I've never been overly impressed with the Lupo, Polo, Golf or Passat. They're just as variable as any other make and certainly don't justify the prestige prices. The future mother-in-law's Bora TDI automatic had huge problems with rattling trip. Their Passat TDI 130 automatic has had transmission problems, then fuel consumption problems. It's fixed. Oh and they were lied to about there not being a new model inside twelve months (and they didn't listen to me nor read a What Car? magazine).
VWs are no more reliable than other makes. The Focus stuffed the Golf in the German reliability surey. Now it's either VW's quality has slipped or everybody else has caught up...
In this respect they're like a huge number of other cars out there, then?
I've never understood that, I like that green, but anyway...
VWs are still sold as a car with low depreciation. Oh and as a soid, reliable machine. The world is full of people who bought a new VW thinking it would be worth more than the equivalent Ford / Vauxhall / whatever. Yes it usually is, but not much more. The depreciation hit is greater. Meanwhile they've had to drive something that's not as good as the rest...
... it's all academic at the end of the day, though. We may have a "lucky" Ka. Tomorrow he reaches the 71,000 mile marker and we've had very few problems. A poor car will have problems no matter how it's driven, gentle or otherwise... perhaps a lucky Ka won't have issues at all. In a year we'll be at the 100,000 mile point...
No fun in that *at all*. Get that at the traffic lights if you want.
There's no skill or fun involved in trapping a road car down a straight bit of track.
It may not be as sharp, but as an overall package it's got the rest beaten hands down IMHO. 142k miles up and no issues - apart from the coolant level sensor playing up (15 quid for an new expansion tank will sort that).
Build quality is absolutely superb and the 1.8T engine is fantastic.
Still prefer the 156, though. But it's not as relaxing to drive over my commuting run.
Laugh at how slow it is, you mean?
I quite like those two. I must be getting old.
Our work fleet is almost exclusively VAG these days - and apart from people putting derv. in FSIs they suffer very few problems. I do remember a few years back someone blowing the turbo on an A4 TDI, but that was owner abuse to the extreme.
Not really - look how the MkIII Golf holds it's price - there's some cheap sheds out there, but tidy ones still command a premium over the competition.
Depreciation isn't greater on VAG products - quite the opposite, in fact. Just as an example, look at how much you have to pay for a last shape A6. I wanted one, but they're stupidly expensive.
We did 75k in the Cinq - only a rad, water pump and coil pack needed. Considering how I drove it, I'm well impressed with that.
Mind you - the 75 seems to be utterly unburstable. Shame about the rust creeping in underneath - but that's soon to be sorted.
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