Your fleet running reports

[16vCento]

So the Smart couldn't be fixed on the Saturday morning meaning I left it at Brooklands and dejectedly made the c.2hr train and cab ride home

We will see what they can do with it but if they suggest the head unit / screen is borked and requires replacement at £xxxx and we cannot get to the conclusion that they will pay for most / all of it, then it will be getting flatbedded back home whilst I work out what the next steps are.

End of year running report - costs for the (not so) Smart:

£50 MOT
£350 Service
£450 VVT solenoid and plugs
£1250 O2 sensor and replacement gauge cluster

So £2100 and comfortably in excess of 25% of its value

You're taking an £8k car on a 2 hour journey to a main dealer? Just find a specialist - they’re cheaper and chances are WAY nearer!

They are few and far between in this neck of the woods unfortunately. I normally take it to a Mercedes independent specialist near us who as the Merc diagnostics and access to their service system and can update the online service records but the initial problem with it was the failure of the instrument cluster and they didn't want to touch it as effectively half the parts are Renault shared or bespoke to the car and required coding that they couldn't do.

As it turns out Merc called me 5 minutes ago... apparently the screen has a crack in it. I couldn't see that when I was trying to get it to work on Saturday but apparently they had to remove the head unit during the process of replacing the gauge cluster. Why they would have to do that isn't clear but anyway they have held their hands up and said we'll replace the unit.

All very puzzling - either the tech knew they'd fucked up and broken the screen and didn't tell anyone and maybe, you know, hoped I wouldn't notice! Or, alternatively, its a difficult problem for them and the guy has intentionally done it this morning so they can just order another part of their insurance presumably covers it as a accidental damage replacement which is easier than spending hours continuing to diagnose it and then a big argument with me.

Very puzzling but at least they are fixing it.

They certainly won't have any insurance to cover tech's fvcking jobs up

Will be one the dealer just have to pay for themselves if it's been broken by them.

[GG.]

They certainly won't have any insurance to cover tech's fvcking jobs up

Will be one the dealer just have to pay for themselves if it's been broken by them.

Ouch then in that case. I saw somewhere online that it was a four figure cost to replace.

[nuttinnew]

Kappa baseball cap and phoenix gold amp and it’ll be golden.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/it ... =undefined

[V8Granite]

A middle aged couple turning up at a drive through would be a lot of fun, albeit very tragic

Dave!

[Sundayjumper]

I've just been reading up on how to do these manifolds. Oh dear. This video from someone who seems to know what he's doing, it took him three days to do one side, maybe leisurely, and he quotes book time for both sides to be 16 hours.




And a random thread somewhere, a dealer charged £4k for the the job.

There's nothing actually difficult about it, it's just very fiddly with lots of stuff in the way that has to be removed and replaced.

[V8Granite]

In no way, at all, will anything be nudged tweaked or disturbed in a way which creates another fault

Dave!

[Sundayjumper]

I’m mostly worried about plastic clips etc snapping. Cold weather obviously not going to help with that.

[V8Granite]

After 50 miles in the Clio I have noted the following.

The drivers seat is as high as the road tests made out, there are options to lower it a bit so I’ll look into that.
Lumpy idle and hand brake I knew about and factored into the price, I’m 99% sure I know what the idle problem is so will pop some new injectors in at some point before it goes into regular duty.
The stereo isn’t great but will do the job, it came with 2 aftermarket head units but I quite like the late 90s feel of the standard CD player.
Brakes are good but not as good as the TT.
The gear change can’t be rushed.
The steering wheel leans back a bit but oddly I quite like it, it’s like a really responsive bus

The engine is a peach, get it to 5000rpm and it has a note change and then spins round to 6500, a nice little character change which is good fun. The Scorpion exhaust helps and my eldest enjoyed a bit of window down back road Twattery.
Damping is awesome, now this one has cup dampers and h+r springs and it just deals with bumps instantly, no shimmy or taking a moment to settle it just hunkers down and deals with it. Really confidence inspiring. Tightens the line quickly and you really can feel the inside rear not doing very much, you feel like a bit of a yob.

A great drive back, a few odds and sods to sort which I’m looking forward to so if it’s not a keeper for the wife then I can’t see it leaving. It’s the most fun I’ve had driving in quite a while, baseball cap in the post.

Dave!

[jamcg]

After 50 miles in the Clio I have noted the following.

The drivers seat is as high as the road tests made out, there are options to lower it a bit so I’ll look into that.
Lumpy idle and hand brake I knew about and factored into the price, I’m 99% sure I know what the idle problem is so will pop some new injectors in at some point before it goes into regular duty.
The stereo isn’t great but will do the job, it came with 2 aftermarket head units but I quite like the late 90s feel of the standard CD player.
Brakes are good but not as good as the TT.
The gear change can’t be rushed.
The steering wheel leans back a bit but oddly I quite like it, it’s like a really responsive bus

The engine is a peach, get it to 5000rpm and it has a note change and then spins round to 6500, a nice little character change which is good fun. The Scorpion exhaust helps and my eldest enjoyed a bit of window down back road Twattery.
Damping is awesome, now this one has cup dampers and h+r springs and it just deals with bumps instantly, no shimmy or taking a moment to settle it just hunkers down and deals with it. Really confidence inspiring. Tightens the line quickly and you really can feel the inside rear not doing very much, you feel like a bit of a yob.

A great drive back, a few odds and sods to sort which I’m looking forward to so if it’s not a keeper for the wife then I can’t see it leaving. It’s the most fun I’ve had driving in quite a while, baseball cap in the post.

Dave!

There’s a few common bits to these, as the twingo front end is essentially the same as the Clio, from my experience with the twingo:

If the gearshift goes a bit funny then cables are quite often the reason, more specifically the clips at the gearstick end, made of chocolate and snap

Handbrake sticks in winter, don’t use it if it’s due to freeze- water gets in the cables and locks it in place- any problems with handbrake it’s worth checking cables first as they rust in the jacket

Not sure if the 182 air box is the same as the twingo, but the twingo had a bung you could pull out for asbo levels of induction roar

[V8Granite]

I got new rear discs a calliper and handbrake cables with the car as that will need doing.

I’ll need to put a trickle charger connection on it along with lots of tinkering. I’m already going to make some small changes, dogbone bushes feel a little slack when you drive like a tit, I’ll do a bit of cleaning up where I can too.

The wife likes driving it so that’s the main thing and all 4 of us can fit in quite comfortably.

Dave!

[Sundayjumper]

Another broken engine thread on the FB group and this is the advice. Is this true ? If your car is on finance you have a full warranty for the duration ?? I’ve never heard that one before.

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[Gavin]

MOT & service for the Mini last week. Needed front tyres but fitted all 4 as they were horrific ditch finders. 4 different locking nuts, only 1 adaptor so another £150 in labour to chsiel of the collared nuts.

Everything esle was fine, so expensive but mostly tyres and labour, the MOT and service probably only cost £175 ish.

My wife had the Skoda down to Oxfordshire so I had a few runs out in the Mini, it is noisier, the stereo is awful but it is so much more fun to drive and will make the Superb ever more whale like.

[Carlos]

Another broken engine thread on the FB group and this is the advice. Is this true ? If your car is on finance you have a full warranty for the duration ?? I’ve never heard that one before.

That's bollocks. A dealer would only have a liability to fix or buy back if the fault could be proved to exist from the point of sale or developed in the first 6 months.

The issue is the finance companies don't want people defaulting on agreements with the car is broken as repossessing or handing back is likely to result in a loss for the finance company and trying to recover that loss from a skint punter is likely to be futile.

They've now taken to trying to prove the fault was pre-existing with expert reports to force the dealer to repair or buy back. They lawyer up and small dealers rarely want to go to court. Although there are plenty of examples when they do, the dealer wins but at what cost!

Big finance bully boys.

ETA -the warranty may be for longer but 6 months is I believe the statutory minimum.

[Matty]

Off to the Lake District for a few days, checking over the car along with an attempt to adjust the headlights as I keep getting flashed by truckers and bus drivers - assuming it's my lights and not my good looks. For some reason it needs a 6mm ball hex (because why not Alfa) which I had to borrow...and used a very technical measurement of "one quarter turn should be fine" because that's how I roll.

It also reminded me to mention that the QV has a seperate rear handbrake caliper. This is your interesting fact for the day, as it seems like a strange setup for a regular car. I always thought this was done on supercars to avoid brake binding, but appears it's on here due brake-by-wire (because why not overcomplicate things)

[integrale_evo]

Lots of cars have entirely separate brake and handbrake systems. Every bmw with rear disks since the 70s has had a drum brake handbrake inside the disk.

Looks like the Alfa disks have quite small hubs and floating rotors, presumably to improve cooling. A separate calliper means you can keep the nice light small belled disks, can use nice soft pads for the handbrake with decent bite, and use standard off the shelf main rear callipers without having to modify them with a handbrake mechanism.

[mik]

Looks like the Alfa disks have quite small hubs and floating rotors

I don't think they are fully floating - the casting is "spoked" rather than solid towards the hub. I like the visual.



Today I helped eldest miklet fit a lambda sensor spacer to his Civic to (hopefully) stop a repeating (although infrequent) error code appearing. It's a bodge but they appear to be quite popular, so we'll see how it goes. Job made massively easier now I've bought a proper lambda sensor remover socket.

[Matty]

Update - 38MPG while fully laden with people and luggage, primarily motorway based. Not bad. The other car in convoy (2022 Octavia VRS) only did 43mpg.

Lots of cars have entirely separate brake and handbrake systems. Every bmw with rear disks since the 70s has had a drum brake handbrake inside the disk.

I'd heard of the separate drum brake, but hadn't seen dual calipers.

[Sundayjumper]

My Aston & Ferrari both have separate calipers.

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[integrale_evo]

Probably similar power, maybe less even than the Alfa!

I think some of the faster new BMWs have dual rear callipers now too.

Those handbrake callipers look identical too.

[GG.]

Probably similar power, maybe less even than the Alfa!

Times have moved on - both Aston and the Ferrari are giving away over 100bhp to the Alfa Quattroformaggio.

I seem to also remember that one production model road car had a double caliper set up for brakes (not handbrake) but I can't for the life of me remember which one now.