Boom, another years MOT passed with the same advisory as last year.

"Selespeed".

My Mondeo comes out from every service with the same advisory - rear subframe bushes. I guess they're just pissed that I polybushed it so they can't get away with screwing me for £300.

I remember when I bought it with 2 mot last January, SteveH crowing that it was a wreck then and would cost a fortune to get through the first one.

Two down, two clean. One cambelt service of £300 and fuel/tax/insurance have been the only costs. Does exactly what I need it to do, even if it is a big boring unless I rev it well.

I replaced the cat and middle section on my 306 at the weekend. Due to 2001-on cars needing a type approved cat, the none type-approved for mine was only £45 :) Another £38 for the middle section (looked fine until I'd removed the cat) and job done....

Actually I have a confession. My neighbour is 17 years old and a mechanic in training so I bunged him £40 to fit it.

Bargain of the century, I hate exhaust monkeying with a passion :)

Result - well done.

I really don't want to do this myself, but as I said, the cheapest garage wanted way more for the parts than I can get them for and that's part of their profit which they won't give up. The labour bit, I just can't see. To make it worse, the front section goes all the way from the downpipe to the back of the cat. I'm going out in the morning for another wrestle with the two remaining downpipe nuts. I suspect I'm going to need some bolt extractors. I also suspect that the calm of Mother's day will be shattered by my impact gun and compressor being fired up.

Does anyone have more info on this? Who checks the type approval? Will it be done at the roadside?

Is it something to worry about at MOT time, or will it only be uncovered if someone decides to take a very close look. Say, if you've been a naughty boy and they're looking for C&U excuses?

All I know is that when I was buying the bits, I had to give them the reg. no. If the car had been registered too late, they wouldn't have sold me the bits.

There are, of course, ways around this. Like giving them the reg no. of the earlier but identical car accross the street :-)

"Bob Sherunckle" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Then you'll moan when they don't fit, since they've used the reg no to look up the VIN to look up the correct part - no more, no less.

Yep, I would moan.

Had I actually done that :-)

However.

Seeing as this car was registered in May 2000, it's very safely in the pre type approved bracket. That being the case, I readily gave them the correct reg. number. With the car in question, as long as you get the engine code right, you're fine. I'm enough of an anorak to have checked out and cross referenced every available parts catalogue I could find and know that I've 100% definitely ordered the correct parts.

All I was saying, was that depending on the vehicle, as long as you are able to establish the stuff above, it would be possible to order the non approved bits.

On a cheerier note. Thanks to the combined wonders of compressed air, an impact driver, WD40, tea, spanners, sockets and a cutoff saw, the old exhaust saw sense and gave up the fight.

I trust the Citroen will never give me such problems... (Yeah, I know - that's hoping a bit too much.)

Ha! I've owned too many French cars (i.e. more than 1) to believe that you get the right parts by quoting registrations/chassis numbers to parts people.

Douglas Payne gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Peugeot rear brakes certainly are... special...

On Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:58:01 +0000, Adrian sang, in the style of Bill Bailey:

Dealer can't work out which pads are needed for my 306 off the reg or VIN...

Mike P gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

There really is only one way to tell. Look.

I swear there were two sets of boxes beside Jean-Claude on the line, and he just grabbed from one at random.

Wouldn't surprise me one bit if there were Pugs out there with mis- matched brakes from new.

My memory of 80s Cits is that there were three alternator manufacturers Bosch (if you were lucky), Ducellier and Paris-Rhone. The later two were absolute s**te. The P-R in particular corroded into piles of red and green dust over a period of two years. The fitment of those seemed entirely random. The diode block had even more variants than the alternators.

I had a Mk1 Golf GTi 1.6 many many moons ago. Built in March '79 it was. They fitted a different caliper in March '79. One they didn't fit at any other time. Which mine had. On which I snapped a bleed nipple. Took me forever to find another one.

Thinking about it, I should have just changed the pair, but hey ho.

I'll be buying a car for the missus this week, so I'm going to take the pads out the Pug and take them with me when I go for new ones..

Only two?

I'd be surprised if there were two identical Pugs or Citroens around going off my experience with the bloody things.

Not as bad as the 1986/87 C900 T16 I had mind you. That really was a parts bin special.

Mike P