suggest car for parents

I've never understood anything other than Fords or Jaguars, but perhaps that's my Rotherhithe street wise up bringing. Citroens, Renault's, Fiat's, Rovers after 1980 et al just look like hairdressers cars to my eye. If plod or The Sweeney didn't fancy them, then it wasn't for me. Bring back the Ford Consul, Granada or Sierra I say.

Mark

What , no seized rear height adjusters? & where does one get an electical diagram for a phase 2?

"Duncan Wood" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Not one.

Actually, thinking back, my mother's second Xant did have a hydraulic problem. A fairly major one, too. The f****it dealer filled the tank with brake fluid at the first service.

You were NEVER going to quieten those tappets.... :)

Rog gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

A tappy tappet is a happy tappet.

In message , Adrian writes

Better than a burnt exhaust valve?

I remember what i was doing now, wasnt a torque wrench i dropped onto the fuel pump, it was one of those gunson click adjuster tappet setting things,

i had one from when i had my mini, and it had the standard flat blade screwdriver in the middle for the actual adjuster, but the pug used a tiny 4 or 5mm flat for a spanner on their adjusters,

so rather than buy the adaptor from gunson, i got a hacksaw and cut slots in the adjusters so i could use the screwdriver bit in the click adjuster (i did wrap each tapped with rags to catch the filings)

i managed the get the tappets the quietest they'd ever been on that engine, and must have got them right, as the car is still in use today, albeit about

Ah, OK. Is there some definitive source of info online?

Chris

Strangely Not yet, no. IIUC If there are belts in the rear of a vehicle then the number of people that can go in the back is the maximum number of belted places. So my old camper van with no belts at all will still be ok to have as many people in the back as will fit, but if I fitted just one belt in the back (almost impossible to achieve with total safety and legality) then one would be the most I could carry in the back. Pre 64 vehicles do not have to have any belts at all and so will be exempt unless any belts have been fitted. I doubt whether the police will try and enforce it any more than they do at present.

Never! I've got one sat on the drive, and it's the biggest heap I have ever laid my eyes on. Pretty much all the fuel savings of Derv have been outweighed by massive repair bills (DMF, CANBUS going ape...) and huge waits for parts.

Simple stuff like a 306 is normally nice and cheap to run.

MK3 Golf estate or something Japanese. Unless they're doing big miles, I wouldn't worry much about going for a derv - the fuel's more expensive, the car's noisier and you often have the massive repair bill of a dual mass flywheel (think £300 in parts before labour!) to worry about etc.

A 1.6 petrol golf easily manages around 36 to the gallon, or about 350 miles to 40 quids worth of juice. My girlfriends old 1.9D ZX (similar weight, same power, slightly slower) would manage around 400 miles to 40 quid of juice (40-45mpg). There's no longer a huge economy to be made with diesel IMO.

Bigger cars: VW Passat Estate Anything Japanese... Avoid any of the later shape 406s - the electronics are hugely complicated and they go wrong more than you could ever imagine. And the dual mass flywheels go on the diesels.

Update your mental list of used car prices...

I recently went car shopping for my girlfriend. There appear to be very few cheap runarounds available these days. A nice car can be found for £1000 if you look very hard. I suspect people who have a reliable but scruffy car are hanging onto it rather than upgrading to a newer motor.

On the other hand, my 406, was worth around £2800 when I looked at flogging it before Christmas. In 4 months it's easily dropped a grand if not more. Mid range stuff seems to have gone through the floor.

And on any vaguely recent car there's a DMF which will go south somewhere after 100k miles and will cost you a bomb to replace. I'd much sooner live with a finding a few more quid a week on fuel than suddenly having to find £500.

"Doki" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

None of which is on anything but the very last, HDi, 406s.

Yeah on a car with 98 previous owners and 300k on the clock.

Nope. A car with history, 1 previous owner and 110k...