Your fleet running reports

[simon_g]

A clean MOT pass for the nearly 20 year old Stepwagon. And the front suspension advisories from the last two have gone away with no action from me The best kind of MOT day.

And thought I may as well save myself a delivery fee on some solar panels:

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[Delphi]

928 passed its final MOT with flying colours. Not a single advisory.

[PaulJ]

Well done that car/man!

[Sundayjumper]

Not mine; BiL's wife's MINI. 2017 Cooper 1.5 petrol, just under 70k miles. Rough idling. Dealer says VANOS fault and it'll be £2,670.40 to strip it down and confirm

Googling backs up the filter bolt being likely, and other possibilities too, including needing new camshafts

They can afford it fortunately, and like the peace of mind having the main dealer do it. But still. MINI's aren't cheap to run are they ??

[Mito Man]

I don’t know if it’s just because they’re popular so there’s millions of them about but they do seem to have a lot expensive issues.

[Alex88]

Same Mini as ours, and we also had a rough idle problem. Was a surprisingly cheap fix - PCV diaphragm/PCV hose for about £20/£30 or so. I think I also replaced the purge valve. That solved the bad idle.

It was everything else I had done that was expensive!

[Gavster]

I've been enjoying the mechanics 'rate the car brand' series on Instagram and BMW/Mini don't score very well.

[KiwiDave]

86 went in for service last week. Nothing to report other than low rear brake pads and looking at needing two rear tires soon. Will probably swap all four for Michelin PS5 as even though they're not worn down, the tires are getting on in age.

It also had the aircon looked at, which turns out was completely empty. The UV dye that had put in it before was nowhere to be seen (either because the gas had long gone, or because the dye only shows up for so long) so they've re-gassed it and I'll take it to them for the WOF (Warrant of Fitness, our MOT) in November and see if they can spot where the leak is.

Car also behaved suitably irresponsibly the weekend prior on some repeated runs up and down a long gravel driveway to a farmhouse. Pseudo hillclimb basically - was there helping a mate get his 86 track car dialed in a bit. I really would love to do a season of rallying...

[Delphi]

Changed the diff oil in the 928 yesterday. I'd been getting a slight moan at anything over 50mph and rear wheel bearings are absolutely solid plus, directional changes made no difference to the noise. Looking at the oil I drained out, it could well have been the oil it left the factory with. There were no shavings or filings on the magnets, so I'm guessing there's nothing seriously wrong. It doesn't help that Porsche don't have an official schedule for changing diff oil. I'll keep an eye (and an ear) on it over the next few weeks.