Your fleet running reports

[integrale_evo]

Check all the wheel bolts are still there

[nuttinnew]

uncovered a few issues that I'd not noticed.

[drcarlos]

After owning the Panda for three days under a year it has thrown its first fault at me, a nasty rattle on small bumps which I'm hoping is just a drop link. Further investigation required.

Update - driving to work this morning when the rattle turned into a clunk followed by the sound of something bouncing along the outside of the car floor then silence. Self healing car

The car was MOTd a couple of weeks ago so I’m wondering if the mechanic left a tool of some sort on the car.

Broken spring with the broken coil coming away and falling off is my bet. Would have happened on my boys Corsa (which broke a spring on me just before Christmas) if I'd have not fished it out and removed it.

[KevH18]

New car - Hyundai Kona Electric 150kw (204ps) Premium - due to arrive next Wednesday following confirmation earlier today. Same day as the charging point is being installed, handily.

Mazda insurance runs out on Monday as well and it'll either be collected by the buyer by then or I'll just let the insurance run out and share the other car for a couple of days.

[Carlos]

After owning the Panda for three days under a year it has thrown its first fault at me, a nasty rattle on small bumps which I'm hoping is just a drop link. Further investigation required.

Update - driving to work this morning when the rattle turned into a clunk followed by the sound of something bouncing along the outside of the car floor then silence. Self healing car

The car was MOTd a couple of weeks ago so I’m wondering if the mechanic left a tool of some sort on the car.

Broken spring with the broken coil coming away and falling off is my bet. Would have happened on my boys Corsa (which broke a spring on me just before Christmas) if I'd have not fished it out and removed it.

I'm going with the spring as well.

[John]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a spring as we've had two break in the last couple of years. Further investigation needed.

[mr_jon]

break?

[Sundayjumper]

I went and collected the 996 from storage today, where it has been since last April. It's due an MOT in a fortnight so I needed it back for that. I collected it on the trailer as I didn't want to launch it straight onto the motorway when it's been sat for so long.

Upon getting home and checking the old MOT and the current mileage, I noticed that it has done 2 miles since the last MOT. Two. Which is the distance from the MOT station back to my house

My wife tried to be a smartarse by asking how much it's cost me per mile over the last year. But I'm an ever bigger smartarse, so I told her how these have been appreciating and that actually it's probably made a profit. Touché

[Sundayjumper]

Another phone number request even though I’ve amended the listing to say it’s sold. I decided to be civil this time, just out of weird curiosity, and replied to say the car is sold. Their reply:

The car it still to your home
For haw machy you sold

Brilliant

[Marv]

I went and collected the 996 from storage today, where it has been since last April. It's due an MOT in a fortnight so I needed it back for that. I collected it on the trailer as I didn't want to launch it straight onto the motorway when it's been sat for so long.

Upon getting home and checking the old MOT and the current mileage, I noticed that it has done 2 miles since the last MOT. Two. Which is the distance from the MOT station back to my house

My wife tried to be a smartarse by asking how much it's cost me per mile over the last year. But I'm an ever bigger smartarse, so I told her how these have been appreciating and that actually it's probably made a profit. Touché

209 miles for my M3, between the MOTs in 2020 & 2021. It might be considered low mileage again, by the time I get it back!!

[IanF]

I went and collected the 996 from storage today, where it has been since last April. It's due an MOT in a fortnight so I needed it back for that. I collected it on the trailer as I didn't want to launch it straight onto the motorway when it's been sat for so long.

Upon getting home and checking the old MOT and the current mileage, I noticed that it has done 2 miles since the last MOT. Two. Which is the distance from the MOT station back to my house

My wife tried to be a smartarse by asking how much it's cost me per mile over the last year. But I'm an ever bigger smartarse, so I told her how these have been appreciating and that actually it's probably made a profit. Touché

How’s the sofa?

[Gwaredd]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a spring as we've had two break in the last couple of years. Further investigation needed.

Funnily enough, I had a rear spring go on the Alhambra last week. We all heard a clunk from the rear one morning on the School run, and sure enough, a coil had snapped and was stuck inside the spring rattling around. £66.00 and a lot of jumping on my lever bar later, both rear springs were replaced.

I also fixed my Webasto auxiliary heater while I was under there. Which was nice.

[16vCento]

Another phone number request even though I’ve amended the listing to say it’s sold. I decided to be civil this time, just out of weird curiosity, and replied to say the car is sold. Their reply:

The car it still to your home
For haw machy you sold

Brilliant

[KevH18]

EOTR - Mazda 6 2.2 sport

Following two years of unbridled joy... Nah I won't bother.

Was a decent car for the two years I had it. Unfortunately bought it about two months before the first lockdown so didn't really get the use I thought I'd get out of it. Only completed 3 journeys over 150miles each way in it and mostly used in town and it would occasionally tell me it wasn't happy with being used in such a way!

Going to a mate of my brother who'll be using it for longer journeys so will hopefully go on a while past its current 157,500 miles. Bought for £1420, sold for £1500 after reversing into a bollard this morning . Yes, it has parking sensors. No, I wasn't listening to them.

Quick review - fairly comfortable, solid, relatively quick cars.

Collected this morning by my brother's mate. Hopefully it'll give him a couple of years decent service at least.

Shamefully, it's the most powerful car I've owned at 180bhp. That will all change with the 204bhp monster ( ) being delivered on Wednesday!

[V8Granite]

Mini getting back into a 500e review.

Firstly a couple of things I’d forgotten about older cars. The HVAC systems have come a long way in modern cars, it works fine but is slightly noisier and compared to the ML which has a load of outlets for the air dotted around the Merc is a 1985 design and it shows.
Also the brakes, now it brakes well but again the ML would comfortably put brake it and also last longer too, it never feels underbraked as it were but I wouldn’t complain of a bit more.

The good bits, the chassis is tight as a drum, essentially it’s a new car and it feels great, no understeer at all, settled at speed and especially once set into a turn it feels very nice. Due to it being a steering box just off the straight ahead always feels slightly disconnected but once you have 5 degrees of lock on it weights up lovely with a good amount of feel.
Now with all new shifter linkages the gearbox is direct, it is never going to be as smooth in Drive as a modern one but it doesn’t really need to change gear a lot in day to day driving. So when you select 2nd or 3rd for a decent overtake it feels nice going in firm. I generally leave it to 3rd gear for most fun stuff as it pulls hard from 40 to 120.
It’s faster than I remember, it’s only 1725kg but now seems smaller on the road than before, rolling on half throttle 80 and up it surges ahead with a bit of anger about it which is nice. It uses the old fashioned way of dumping fuel in on a throttle hit and then cutting back the fuel as the lambdas give it some information. Very old fashioned. The throttle response is far more urgent than the 5.0M113 in the ML.

I really missed the intake noise after not having a fun engined car for a while.

First jobs to do, rocker cover gaskets and spark plug seals as it’s got a small leak, then get the headlining, front headlining and some tweaks done to the interior.
After that I’ll drive it for the summer and send it for its full respray in the winter as I don’t want to lose another summer of driving fun.

Old cars rock.

Dave!

[Jimexpl]

Due to it being a steering box just off the straight ahead always feels slightly disconnected but once you have 5 degrees of lock on it weights up lovely with a good amount of feel.

I always thought Mercs of that era got a bit of a skating compared to BMWs when it came to steering, but as you say, other than the first few degrees of turn I don’t think there’s anything in it.

[Barry]

New car - Hyundai Kona Electric 150kw (204ps) Premium - due to arrive next Wednesday following confirmation earlier today. Same day as the charging point is being installed, handily.

Good choice, I wanted a Kona but lease prices were silly so I've gone for e-Niro with the same set up. Had a call yesterday, mines due mid Feb

[Sundayjumper]

The 7 has gone The end of an era

I did an oil change on the Cayenne yesterday. The service indicator had pinged up a couple of weeks ago, pretty much exactly a year after I bought it, no big surprise there. I always like to look at the manufacturing dates on the old filters as they give a clue about when the last service was. The oil filter was too filthy to see but air filters & pollen filter were dated 2017 ! To be fair, the brand new ones from ECP yesterday were dated 2021 but still, that's about 4 years between them. I do not believe the filters all sat on a shelf for three years before being fitted. Today's job is to replace the coolant. God knows how long that's been in there.

My Foxwell code reader that has been great up 'til now refuses to reset the service indicator on the Cayenne though. Odd. So feeling a bit flush after selling a car I went and ordered an iCarsoft CR MAX. Android tablet-based, 7" touch screen, internal battery for reviewing data away from the car, it's all a step up from what I've had before. We all love getting new toys.

crmax05_12510.jpg (23.07 KiB) Viewed 998 times

[Jobbo]

I look forward to the ‘my icarsoft won’t reset the Cayenne service indicator’ post in a few days.

[Sundayjumper]

You're mean