Your fleet running reports

[mik]

Unimpressive when it cost over £400 to service.

Nearly choked on my coffee but THEN remembered you’ve got a big ride-on machine now.

[Jobbo]

Unimpressive when it cost over £400 to service.

Nearly choked on my coffee but THEN remembered you’ve got a big ride-on machine now.

To be fair, I nearly choked on mine because they quoted £195 or so. But that was without parts like oil filter, plugs, collection and delivery... still an utter rip-off. I stuck to the supplying dealer to maintain the warranty.

Anyway, they are picking it up tomorrow afternoon. I told them they'll need a winch to get it on the trailer because it won't drive, so let's see.

[Mito Man]

It'll get into 4 figures once you need some belts and new blades.

[Jobbo]

It'll get into 4 figures once you need some belts and new blades.

The parts aren't actually that expensive but I am seriously thinking I should have gone for the robot mower. No need to spend time mowing. I do use the mower to tow a trailer around quite a bit; maybe I need to fit a tow hitch to my eMTB.

[Mito Man]

There are near infinite possibilities. Motorised wheelbarrow, quad bike, UTV, Suzuki Carry, donkey

[V8Granite]

8 x 8 Argo is the sensible solution.

Robot mowers give you a lovely lawn too.

Dave!

[DeskJockey]

Galaxy back with a fresh MOT (two minor advisories, rear bushes and front brake discs nearing replacement), and a new battery.

Reset the start/stop, and thought I'd give the Bluetooth another go. I guess a battery disconnect helped as my phone connected to the car without issue. No need to replace the head unit after all.

[Mito Man]

Collected my mot advisory sway bar links from BMW which had arrived fresh from Germany. Whilst there I asked for a service kit for the 7 series (I get everything from BMW as I know all the service dept now) £300 for the service kit. I did discover BMW sell 20 litre bags of oil for £100. It’s Castrol long life oil which is significantly cheaper than what Castrol sell it for and it comes exactly like boxed French wine

“The engine oil for sheer driving was pleasure”

[IanF]

Brilliant! Make sure to take the bag out to ring those last drops of precious liquid..

[scotta]

Alpine update.

It's now back from the bodyshop and im happy with the results.

It went to Rentec yesterday for them to fit the new handle, Door loom and keyless entry button. In a bizarre set of events I dropped the car at Rentec. Then they fixed it...AAAND get this...Didnt break anything else. Mind utterly blown.

Next step is to get the PPF re-installed on the new paint. It's getting that done in a couple of weeks.

[scotta]

Mini - Due a service. Will need to get this done soon. Clutch is also slipping a bit but ive been putting that off until it gets worse. Its a bastard of a job and probably about £600 once you've done a few bushes.

[16vCento]

Golf in for it's second service last Tuesday, no issues other than needing a DSG oil change which was over and above it's service plan, only £200 so not messing about doing it at home for that.

Kuga in for it's second and final service on 16th, it's been a great car, but with unbelievably harsh suspension, I'd love another in most ways, it's been 100% reliable, has great seats, sound system, and is a great place to spend time, it's just the suspension on rural roads , it can be unbearable.

If they haven't sorted it on the facelift, I think I may end up with a Polestar 4, Mustang Mach E or whatever else is a similar size

[Jobbo]

Mower delivered back yesterday and running fine again. The dealership also fixed the puncture which I had caused by running over thorny clippings and didn't charge me. I'd always wondered about fixing mower punctures; turns out it's basically the same thing as tubeless bike tyres: stick some sealant in and pump them back up. I think I might need a bigger bottle of sealant than the bike one

I went through a pothole a week or two ago in the Audi which was sufficiently severe that my phone lit up thinking I'd had an accident. I couldn't find any dents in the rims or bulges in the tyres so I've been driving it since trying to ascertain what damage may have been caused. I think I've been pretty lucky; there's a very mild vibration at ~80mph (goes away above 90, but it is annoying because it was perfect before) which may be curable simply by balancing the wheels. But I'll know that something happened so I'm debating whether I might need buy a couple of new wheels, buy a full used set from Germany on eBay for about the same price as two new ones (including tyres) or leave it until I put the summer tyres on.

[Alex88]

I'm doubting the garage owner on this failed part.

Gemini says this the end of a vacuum pump and that seals aren't widely available - contrary to the garage's proposed solution, who say they're waiting on o-ring seals from BMW and that it's a VANOS solenoid.

The garage was right and the it was indeed the VANOS actuator. It developed a leak after the garage had the car in for PCV valve replacement.

I ordered a new actuator and fitted it myself this afternoon. No guides online on how to do it but looked fairly straightforward. Took about 30 mins, and the leaks appears to have resolved, thank god!

Garage confirmed my repair was all good. They had the car in the air and cleaned the oil off and confirmed no more leaks.

Except it's still leaking. The car is absolutely dumping oil after every journey. To the point that I can't use it, again.

I'm getting really pissed off at this. I don't know what they've done but these leaks only came about following this PCV valve replacement. I think they've fucked it up and it isn't seated properly.

Will have to call them again Monday and make it clear they need to actually repair it and this was not happening until they 'fixed' it.

FFS.

[GG.]

Porsche is now in with the garage - turns out both bass drivers in the door had failed so it needs two new ones. Looking online it seems like its a thing the 991s do... Smart and 911 battling it out for status of most unreliable car but then the Smart drivers seatbelt buckle receiver stop working so I think its still in front

RR did another 3 hours service in stop start London traffic yesterday with no issues.

[GG.]

I went through a pothole a week or two ago in the Audi which was sufficiently severe that my phone lit up thinking I'd had an accident. I couldn't find any dents in the rims or bulges in the tyres so I've been driving it since trying to ascertain what damage may have been caused. I think I've been pretty lucky; there's a very mild vibration at ~80mph (goes away above 90, but it is annoying because it was perfect before) which may be curable simply by balancing the wheels. But I'll know that something happened so I'm debating whether I might need buy a couple of new wheels, buy a full used set from Germany on eBay for about the same price as two new ones (including tyres) or leave it until I put the summer tyres on.

That's very lucky - can't remember if I said on here (probably did) that I drove a fun road SW of home a couple of times last year without even noticing a particularly pronounced pothole - the first time it blew out a rear tyre and the second put an egg in the tyrewall that was an MOT fail so each of those Sunday drives cost me £350 in tyres alone

[Mito Man]

The rain stopped for long enough for me to crawl under the car and replace the sway bar links. The old ones were goosed


The bottom links were not torn but despite that they were as sloppy as a wet noodle but the new ones are the consistency of postcrete after 3 minutes. So I think I shall replace the rear ones too.

[integrale_evo]

But if a crappy couple of weeks for my cars.

Mito developed an exhaust rattle. Looked under it and the clamp where the rear box attaches to the mid section had rusted through and was just hanging loose. Quite an easy fix, but had to modify a clamp I had in stock as it was a couple of mm too big.

After the bonnet issues the X5 decided it would crack another propshaft centre bearing carrier. They do seem pretty weak, but it shouldn’t go through them at the rate it does. Welded up the crack, but this damages the rubber support.

While there I noticed the left side of the exhaust had been rubbing a heat shield. It’s all rigidly mounted to the engine so can only move if the engine twists, so decided to change the left engine mount.

Was a bit of a crap job, very little room, had to drop the subframe a bit and use my crane to lift the engine. The pin on the old one was very loose, flopping about by hand where you can’t move the new one.

Then on the way home on Friday the centre support cracked on the other side.

Swapped that this morning, handily you can get to everything and there’s just enough flex in the prop joints to separate it and change it without having to remove anything else. Really simple 10min job. There’s still some driveline vibration I can’t track down, also no factory marks on the prop so no may have been misaligned at some point in the past.

Merc, Mrs sent me a message on Monday saying it wouldn’t pull away. Suspected gearbox issues again, we had the speed sensors done probably 7 years ago. Scanned it, no codes. A load of historic ones elsewhere for low voltage issues, presumably for when the battery completely died a couple of years ago. Took it for a drive, fine.

Took it to work Weds, fine until the last mile or so. Throttle felt completely dead. Assumed gearbox again, you could get some movement by shifting manually.

It was still changing though, so decided it wasn’t a gearbox issue. Got to work and parked up, realised even in park / neutral it still wouldn’t rev. You could literally floor the throttle and it would take 3-4 seconds for the engine to pick up at all!

Started the journey home, this time I’d done about 5 miles fine before it went again. Should have stopped and reset but adapted my driving style and carried on . Now definitely giving a fault code for a pedal sensor. Did a bit of data logging and couldn’t get anything weird to happen.

Nowhere seems to have new pedals in stock, and they’re about £150. No idea how much they are from Merc, probably more. Not entirely convinced the pedal would fail, could be a wiring or throttle body issue or something making it look like the pedal. Ordered a secondhand one off eBay for £20. It arrived this morning, took 2 mins to fit, drives fine, no signs of any errors. Will have to see how it goes.

[integrale_evo]

Not completely related, but anyone else having issues with wooden structures and this horrendously damp winter?

Both the wooden door on our brick (former) outhouse and my wooden garage doors no longer fit properly. Never normally get an issue in winter, and don’t really want to make any adjustments!

[Beany]

My neighbour has a wooden front door, and I can really hear him struggling to open and shut it the last week, certainly.