Your fleet running reports

[Broccers]

The C4S is gone.

Oh no well at least you had it for a bit.

[Broccers]

I liked the half suicide door more than I expected to given that it was on the "wrong side" for RHD.

I’m really looking forward to it, it totally makes sense having it on the drivers side, it makes it easier to chuck stuff on the back seat before you get in.

The usual criticism of back seat passengers wanting to get out on the pavement side when you parallel park on the street ? Not something that will affect me.

Really are practical cars.

[integrale_evo]

Had an issue with the mercs wipers working randomly / intermittently.

Order new stalk. Fitting pretty simple and logical, once I’d got the F-ing tight steering wheel bolt off. Really nice modular layout to all the stalks.

Unfortunately the new one didn’t fit. Turns out there are two versions and without taking it apart to look you’ll never know which you need as they’re externally identical.

So, unlikely to be able to send it back and get a replacement for ages given the double bank holiday next week I decided to make a hybrid out of the old and new, which was easier said than done as the internal mechanism for the indicator latching and cancelling is completely different. With some careful dremeling it’s all in and working properly but was a major pain in the balls. Lots of fiddly latches and springs and totally not meant to be taken apart

All three wires on the old stalk which control the wiper functions were bare where they come out of the base of the stalk. One broke completely when touched. Unfortunately zero slack to be able to splice a section in.

[Explosive Newt]

The C4S is gone. Just the wrong car at the wrong time for me. Utterly fantastic car, always an event to drive, but the realities of a 20 year old car started to bite and I know in a couple of years time I'll have a ramp & pit which will let me do more things myself on a car which does needs bits and pieces done to it all the time. I got a few nice longer trips in it and I'll always have the oil spots on the driveway to remember it by.

No idea when the M3 Touring is going to be available although I think its launching officially at Goodwood next month. In the meantime I've picked up an M2 Competition in primer grey colour. Its an absolute hooligan of a car.

And now I need to find something for my boy to start learning to drive in....

That's a shame. It's an interesting cautionary tale for the less mechanically minded (stroke free time having) folk like me who sometimes eye these older beasts up. What needed doing on it?

[Jobbo]

Nope & nope. It's a MINI Clubman, diesel


s-l1600.jpg


I sadly have to start working in an office again. I've not not so much as set foot in an office since March 2020 and all (?) my sensible cars have gone. This should be super-frugal to run - £20 VED and an official fuel consumption of 78.5mpg. Even wifey is on board with this one, she loves her convertible, is looking forward to using this for larger shopping trips.

Blimey, how far is your new commute? I know fuel prices have gone up a bit but I don’t think I’d choose a Mini over your 50mpg 530d or 730d.

[integrale_evo]

He’d probably take one over a 5er he couldn’t ever get comfortable in though.

[mik]

The C4S is gone. Just the wrong car at the wrong time for me.

Damn!

[Sundayjumper]

He’d probably take one over a 5er he couldn’t ever get comfortable in though.

Correctly remembered Harry !

Blimey, how far is your new commute?

40 miles each way. Almost entirely DC / motorway but guaranteed to get stuck in some traffic around Camberley in the evening.

...I don’t think I’d choose a Mini over your 50mpg 530d or 730d.

Neither of them averaged 50mpg. The 530d averaged ~45mpg on exactly this journey and the 740d on a different-but-still-all-motorway journey was 40mpg. That was calculated by brimming the tank on my way home every Friday and doing the calc myself for a whole week's driving, rather than using the OBC and cherry-picking a one-way trip with no traffic and a howling tailwind and calling that the average For comparison my E46 320td on this journey never went below 55mpg for the week and sometimes would do over 60mpg. I'm hoping for a reliable 60+ from the MINI.

But crucially, I don't own a 530d or a 740d any more ! So I'd have to buy one. The 530d, as Harry mentioned, was never entirely comfortable for me. It was a perfectly good car otherwise. If I were to buy another 5, and I won't rule it out, it would need to be a 535d Touring with comfort seats and they're not all that common. My 740d (which had nappa comfort seats) was very nice and I'd have another one in that spec for sure. However, either of those cars will be c. £10k to buy and right now that would mean selling one of my other cars to balance the books. I'm not ready for that. The MINI was £2k. And my wife likes it. So it's an easy sell and I get to keep the rest of my fleet.

Over a year, on this journey, the difference between 40mpg & 65mpg is almost £1500 if diesel stays at £1.80/litre. Plus over £200 saving on the VED, insurance is tbc but should be way cheaper than the 7 was, and other occasional consumables will be cheaper too, that's £2k/year saved and the MINI has paid for itself. So compared to the 5/7 the MINI is actually free. I think. Whatever. I'll run with it.

Anyway, it's done now. It's arriving on Tuesday. I'll do a boring mpg-related update later in the week.

[Sundayjumper]

More of a concern is that I now have to wear clothes all day, but that’s a topic for a separate thread. Threads. Geddit ?

[Jobbo]

I know what you mean about cherry-picked single journey mpg vs reality. I get about 42-43mpg average from my Audi but have a 51mpg single journey which I took a photo of

I also know that doing a lot of miles, £120 a month is neither here nor there compared to driving what you really want.

[Sundayjumper]

I also know that doing a lot of miles, £120 a month is neither here nor there compared to driving what you really want.

£120 of fuel. I assume you're using the timculator for all the other costs ?

We're all going to have a different view of what value of £<x> is neither here nor there, and what "what we really want" is. For example I'd love a brand new Tesla S for this journey. It'd be perfect. But it's not <just the electricity cost> per month.

And more generally I think the whole thing bothers me less that you think it does. I mean, I could use the Aston every day, it would only be an extra £5k/year on fuel. But for a motorway schlep like this as long as the car is comfortable and I can hear the radio, the rest is largely window dressing. The Aston wouldn't add anything to the commuting experience. I've already tried it. Much like a petrol V8 won't add anything to the 7-Series experience

And to be clear - I'm not saying that I'll never ever buy another car ! I'll give it six months and see how it goes. If I buy a Tesla in January, I'll buy you a pint

[Jobbo]

Every time I’ve considered an electric car, the Model S fits the bill best but trying to buy a car with head not heart always leads to it not happening.

£120 of fuel, yes - you were comparing the difference between 40mpg and 65mpg rather than specific cars weren’t you? I could have gone for a 2.0TDI and got a proportion of that benefit but I didn’t think it was worth having a 4-cyl diesel for the saving.

[JonMad]

[Much like a petrol V8 won't add anything to the 7-Series experience

Interesting when I think back to my A8 that I bought to waft up and down the M3 for a year… at 23mpg average. I’ve never driven the diesel equivalent so don’t know what it would have been like. I did enjoy doing it in the V8 though.

Anyway, pointless comparison aside, congrats on both the new car and the new employment. I either never realised or completely forgot that door arrangement existed.

[Ascender]

Here's me talking about wishing I had more space and facilities to work on a car and I've just bought wipers for the M2 and can't get them fitted. Its weird, looks like its got a non-standard fitting, but that can't be right can it? FFS...

[mik]

Replaced a rear wheel speed sensor on my eldest’s car yesterday. Bastard nut holding it in rounded off and we couldn’t get enough purchase with the bolt extractor socket (space constraints) so the hub had to come off. So calliper, calliper carrier, disc, inner hub, then hub itself.

As soon as we got it off and in the vice the extractor socket worked fine. Sensors itself was corroded in place though - had to drill the bastard out, so that probably would have been a hub-off job anyway.

Dash no longer full of ABS and ESP fault messages. Boy happy.

[Broccers]

Here's me talking about wishing I had more space and facilities to work on a car and I've just bought wipers for the M2 and can't get them fitted. Its weird, looks like its got a non-standard fitting, but that can't be right can it? FFS...

If they were like mine you had to slide the fittings up and turn em around - check the internets

[Ascender]

Here's me talking about wishing I had more space and facilities to work on a car and I've just bought wipers for the M2 and can't get them fitted. Its weird, looks like its got a non-standard fitting, but that can't be right can it? FFS...

If they were like mine you had to slide the fittings up and turn em around - check the internets

I'm ashamed to say I gave up googling yesterday as everywhere says they should just work. I'll try faffing around with them later. Bloody BMW....

[tim]

So I got 620-odd miles into my return journey yesterday, and just 16 miles from home when this happened...



Thankfully I managed to coast into a BP forecourt and called BMW emergency service, but it still took two hours to get recovered the 20mins home. FFS! Endless faffing about trying to sort a replacement today.

No idea what I ran over, but suspect might have been small child holding a sword.

[Delphi]

Replaced a rear wheel speed sensor on my eldest’s car yesterday. Bastard nut holding it in rounded off and we couldn’t get enough purchase with the bolt extractor socket (space constraints) so the hub had to come off. So calliper, calliper carrier, disc, inner hub, then hub itself.

As soon as we got it off and in the vice the extractor socket worked fine. Sensors itself was corroded in place though - had to drill the bastard out, so that probably would have been a hub-off job anyway.

Dash no longer full of ABS and ESP fault messages. Boy happy.

I had a similar issue with the ABS sensor on the 928. The sensor goes into the hub and is held in by a single hex bolt. Got the bolt out after a 10 minute soak in WD-40. Would the sensor come out of the hub? Would it fuck - totally welded in place. Ended up doing what you did and drilling the fucker out, which meant buying a new sensor - I only wanted to take it out to give it a clean.

The mysterious random non-start issue on the 928 hasn't reared its ugly head recently, but the fuel pump seems a bit noisy. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Think I might replace the in tank fuel strainer and the pump anyway.

Ordered a replacement stereo yesterday - Blaupunkt Bremen SQR 46. DAB, Bluetooth streaming, hands-free and SD card support all whilst looking very period correct. It was going to be one of the last jobs I did, but as I've been using it a bit more recently, not being able to make/receive phone calls whilst driving has been a bit of a pain.

[JonMad]

Buy a Silky and save your money

ooh yeah.

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