Toon Chris

Yep, Xmas the kitchen is mine, no-one allowed in. Out will come perfect roasties and a hunk of roast beef, cumberland chipolotas and yorkshire puds. Oh and some veg I suppose.

Hi Steve, PM for bits for me on the way too

You forgot, 'My MPG is <insert>', 'Does Super Unleaded make a difference', and 'Why is my MPG so cr@p'

Parked up for a few hours so possibly out for a stroll before the rain came Nice clean car I'm doing week, saw a HNS(?) or HCS)?) grey near Callbeck a few days ago and saw Viks pull up to some lights in Leeds last week and watch me walk over the road. I assume it was her as the numberplate was VIK

To do my 10 miles a day in London takes me about an hour and a half..!!! :scare: Yikes, walking would almost be faster! My 110 miles when I going in to the office only takes around 1h45

I had a mate who worked in the workshops for a Ford garage. Customers often wanted their cars picking up, servicing and returning. This is the flaw as they are only going to send out the monkeys to pick up cars, not the valuable mechanics. It was a few years back now and it was a 2.8i Capri, well known for being pigs to handle with poor brakes and a tail-happy style of cornering. Needless to say the lads fought over who would pick it up and it got a good half-hour of gearbox-crunching action on the back roads every time it went in. One day my mate did a 360 spin and missed a tree by about 1mm at very high speeds. The moral of this story and the original is do not trust any dealership to pick up and drop off your car - ever! Find a local performance garage who trusts all their staff and then you can in turn trust them.

I'm getting incresing numbers of fueling errors which I suspect come back to the timing control valve. I'd like to replce the unit and solenoid with a spare but now Alex has 'retired ( ) I don't know who to ask for my 2nd hand bits. Any recommendations?

No, you can have more that 2 keys, but if you tell them when they do the recoding they will remove the old keys from the ECU.

Simple answer, to avoid the details, go to the dealer and order two new keys and when they code the car to accept them it will automatically invalidate the other keys.

Yeah, it's bob-on

Sitting at a red light on a single carriage road quite happiliy the other day when a car pulled up next to me. Yes, makin a new lane out of the opposite side of the road. As I was at the front of a queue I beeped and signaled they should pull in in front of me. She cheerily misunderstood, waved, mouthed 'thank you' and pulled of straight through the red light and on her way, just missing the family crossing the road.

Don't you enter a roundabouit a 6 o'clock - so you mean they go round more that once ?

Can't beleive no-one asked Chris what the hell that spikey ball thing is on his sittimng room table. <edit> Yikes its a skull made of press studs!

Belts and pullys when cold?

showing your age

Welcome, might see you around town from time to time

Call that a ding My NSF ray has a chunk like a 10p missing out of the rim after a very near miss with a stone sticking out of a country wall. Since then its never lost pressure or had balancing problems, and its been through two tyre changes since. I think you can be confident you won't have a problem. And visually mine looks horrid compared to yours. Oh, hang on, that's not something to brag about is it

Just so you don't feel alone, that is an exact description of my thoughts on the seats. I'm 6'2 and the seats roll my shoulders forward and the side grips push my lower ribs in on long drives. I'm far to lazy to change them though. I tend to keep cars for many years and the most comfy so far have been Alfa 155 seats, so that's 2 votes for Alfas.

Don't discount high milers either,often these have been motorway cruisers (mine has) and this is a lot gentler on all of the mechanicals than stop-start driving. If you can get a high miler in your price range then it is worth considering. Good luck!

Hi, The light won't go out automatically if a fault has been registered. Don't clear the fault codes, you would be better to read them all first and then look them up. Google is great for explaining what they all mean. A cheap reader, sub £15, will do the trick and is a minor investment.

Not sure logic works with critters. Wasps sting because they are simply evil-minded little gits.

Must be CS's lucky day - I didn't get a PM

I've got a Japspeed y-pipe with worn flexis, otherwise fine. Weld in some new flexis (they cost peanuts to buy separately) and job done £20 plus postage

Taking a break between fitting two new Velux window panes.

I thought the VUS were a great improvement onthe Flakens for grip too. The falkens never gave me any confidence but the VUS keep me nice and flat in the corners. My suspension is definately a litlle stiffer but yes the VUS have a touch more roll,but as the Falkens were so much less confidence inspring I don't think its a bad thing - at least I can feel what the car is doing.