Your fleet running reports

[Mito Man]

MG5
MG2
MG6
MG7
MGZS
MGZF
MGZV
MGEV
MGZR

[jamcg]

MG5
MG2
MG6
MG7
MGZS
MGZF
MGZV
MGEV
MGZR

That’s cheating!!!

[nuttinnew]

KEVH18 - nope.

jamcg - maybe, but - somehow - it's still a nope

[jamcg]

KEVH18 - nope.

jamcg - maybe, but - somehow - it's still a nope

We’ll it’s changed pages so I think convention dictates it’s time to spill

[nuttinnew]

Yep, so it's a ... MG HS Exclusive, like this one;



An interesting take on the like-for-like concept (!).

[Jobbo]

I’ve seen quite a few of those MGs on my commute. Generally driven badly. Be interested to know what it’s like.

[IanF]

Yep, so it's a ... MG HS Exclusive, like this one;

An interesting take on the like-for-like concept (!).

Never even heard of that one! Must be getting old!..

[tim]

I finished off the brakes job on the Mondeo last night, at the 3rd attempt. With the right tools - air ratchets, caliper wind-back tool, and a new set of caliper carrier bolts to replace the churned up rounded off ones, it was all over in an hour and a half for both sides.

Nearside was super simple as it had all been apart twice already, but I wanted to put the new carrier bolts in so it all had to come apart again. With a new super handy piston wind back tool, with plates for all kinds of piston arrangement, it was a simple job to put the new pads in as well, which was what defeated me last time.

Offside was as much as a pain to get undone as the nearside was originally, but not having to care about the bolt heads I whacked on one of the sockets from the bolt remover set and just about managed to get the breaker bar on it, and with a big crack it came loose. The air ratchets did the rest. I ran my tap and die set through the carriers and cleaned all sorts of crap out of the threads. Hopefully should I need to replace the rear brakes again it'll be a lot easier!

[Sundayjumper]

26th March (a Sunday) - I ordered a set of mats from www.carmats4u.com

27th March, before 9am - I received an email with the tracking number. Splendid.

31st March - no sign of the mats and the tracking still said "expected" so I emailed them and got a fairly quick reply saying they allow eight working days for delivery. No apology or explanation though.

5th April (WD8, mid morning) - still not been posted. Emailed them again. No immediate reply.

5th April (in the evening) - Facebook had been spamming me with adverts for car mats, including this place. So I replied to one of their posts

6th April 10:05 - Email received with an apology and a refund of the postage cost.

6th April 11:52 - the mats were posted.


Quite the coincidence eh ? That it got sorted almost immediately after posting on their Facebook page.

[jamcg]

Boil my piss companies like that. Why do you have to publicly embarrass or threaten some people to get them to do the very thing you’re willing to pay them to do?

[integrale_evo]

Compact has a slight rumble from the rear end which I suspect might be a wheel bearing. Will investigate over the weekend.

I imagine you've done these before but the one time I did BMW rear wheel bearings (E36 Touring) it was a f**king awful job that I swore to never tackle again.

I haven’t done a compact one, but the one on my full size e36 ranks as one of the worst jobs I’ve done on a car.

Not so much for the bearing, but getting the driveshaft out of the hub to be able to get the bearing out.

Someone local has a whole compact rear end for sensible money so tempted to pick that up and either refurb that, or run that and refurb mine. I want to do the brake pipes / hoses and tidy everything up at some point anyway…

[Jobbo]

Audi serviced today (booked 6 weeks ago, so before I knew I was trading it in. And it was already paid for by a service pack).

All fine except that within a couple of minutes after leaving Halesowen Audi I noticed something wrong with the centre console storage cover. Some ham-fisted oaf has broken the handle off. It was perfectly intact when I dropped it off; I know because I use it every journey to put something in or get a sweet out of.

Have contacted them via their general enquiries system which I suspect won’t produce a response, so I’ll escalate to Facebook or wherever after the weekend. Really annoying.

[Sundayjumper]

6th April 11:52 - the mats were posted.

7th April 11:23 - the mats arrived ! Amazing how quickly things can happen.

And they seem OK. Not a perfect colour match because the car is slightly faded but for £55 I’ll cope. The pukka top end genuine ones are more than 20x that

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[mik]

They look appropriately regal (m’lud)

[Sundayjumper]

Is this regal ? Knackered drop link & CV boot. On the other side the drop link has been done already but the CV boot is right on its last legs. The wishbones all *look* OK but doing the CV boots means messing with them so I may as well add them to the “while I’m there” list.

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[mik]

Is this regal ?

No m’lud. Irregal?

[DaveE]

I had a nerve-wracking few hours taking my new car apart in order to install a new PCB that promised to give me wired & wireless Android Auto and Apple Car Play

It was a bit fiddly, and at one point, everything worked, but I had no sound, and only AM radio

(turns out cars with the upgraded Bose or Burmester hifi, as mine does, had a couple of little green wires that need to be moved from the original quad-lock connector, into the new)

The hardest part (by a long way) was trying to cram all the new wires back behind the headunit

Trial and error, and some force seemed to do the trick - I'm not entirely happy, so may pull it all out and try again

Anyway, it seems to be working thus far

£160 from AliExpress

They seem to sell online here for £350 (for exactly the same kit from what I can see)

And Huets quoted me £750-850 a less modern kit that needs an extra box hiding away behind the dashboard

I'm traumatised now though, and need a little lie down...

[Sundayjumper]

£160 from AliExpress
...
And Huets quoted me £750-850 a less modern kit...

This is why I'm ALWAYS in favour of DIYing stuff You also have the peace of mind that it's not been bodged (or, you know it has been bodged, but it's totally your own fault, and at least you didn't pay someone else to bodge it).

Returning to the Bentley, and the CV boot, I have just found an awesome parts hack on these. It shares a lot of stuff with the Phaeton & A8. I knew this already and was trying to figure out the part numbers. The Bentley part number is 3W0498201 and they're over £100 each:

https://www.flyingspares.com/joint-prot ... 98201.html

Simply switch the "3W" prefix to to "4E" and it becomes a VAG part number, under £50:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264873825784

VAG are ubiquitous so there's plenty of aftermarket suppliers. I like Febi having bought a lot of BMW & MINI stuff in the past. Here, £12.08 each, plus a discount for buying two, plus a 10% promo means I have a pair on the way for £20.65

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234885197062

I am pretty chuffed with this.

[nuttinnew]

A quick word of caution - likely in the "Sucking eggs: a how to" category; xxx 498 201 is for sure a boot, but not all boots are equal so check the sizes to make sure they're the same.
Also, in the unlikely event you're not already aware, 3D is the Phaeton model type.


DaveE; nice. I like that updates like that exist to add the functions you want without having to change everything

[mik]

@Sundayjumper yeah that’s very satisfying