Bill's transit is probably bigger than some London 'studios'
Owain
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9 years ago
OT-ish DIY-friendly cars
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9 years ago
Though whether you can get a driver in afterwards...
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9 years ago
It's a similar thing to people moaning about how laptops or phones today are unrepairable - they are, you just need a hairdryer rather than a screwdriver.
Yes, but your car is only 10 years old. Maybe in the 1970s ten years old was a long life for a car, but it hasn't been for 30 years. When it gets nearer 20 or 30 then that'll be the interesting point - when all of that stuff has worn out and needs replacing. Maybe you'll just scrap it as 'too difficult', but that'll be the time to find out if the supply chain really works. For instance, can you get the CAN bus bits? If your ECU packs up do you need a Windows 98 app on floppy discs and a parallel cable to program it? Can people refurbish blown LED clusters? And so on.
The thing is you only find out how bad things are in 20 years by waiting 20 years. At the moment that's at the early and relatively simple pre-OBD II car electronics stage. There's still a stock of 90s cars in scrappers so supply isn't too bad, but when they dry up it'll be interesting to see how things go.
This is probably not what the OP meant though ;-)
Theo
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9 years ago
The problem with OBD2 information is that is frequently wrong.
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9 years ago
Probably!
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9 years ago
You can, it also takes 3M of kitchen worksurface.
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9 years ago
Her newish Corsa, is poor compared to her old one. The power steering is heavier, the headlamps are total crap and starting is poorer. To replace the battery requires removing the front scuttle, the rear seats don't remove easily and the ride is worse. It's her last Corsa.
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9 years ago
If only. The new 2015 Mazda 5 headlamps are a problem. The car also has a speedo which disappears in bright sunlight, dashboard indicators which are invisible, plus a few other stupidities which I can't remember.
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9 years ago
I find its fine if you stick a few on at a time so they don't flop about (and if you need to get thin sheets - buy a few spare lengths of 4x2" at the same time to go under and over them as a brace). Also invest in a couple of good long ratchet straps and you can secure full sheets quite easily.
When I bought 9 sheets of ply / MDF for the large bookcase I did [1], I slapped em all on the roof bars. The hardest bit was getting them on in the first place since it was blowing a gale at the time (although a wicks assistant did pop out and help without even being asked which was nice!)
[1]
formatting link
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9 years ago
What flavour is it?
And I don't count 10yo as an old car :-)
My new one is probably 15, similar mileage to yours. A diesel Xantia. It blew a pipe last year which is no longer made and prompted a specialist to say "scrap it, you'll never get a decent replacement". Fortunately it appears the internet knows more than the specialist, was able to supply a suitable replacement and I had the satisfaction of fitting it myself.
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9 years ago
None of mine ever has been.
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9 years ago
Don?t have anything like that with my Hyundai Getz or the current i30 either.
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9 years ago
Not in the original Mini Van. They wouldn't even take a 5 ft fluorescent along the load area.
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9 years ago
Quite. Connector and sensor faults are far more likely than ECU failure.
That's the usual ploy. In the same way as many think it's impossible to DIY fix injection faults. Garages often just use the shotgun approach (change everything in sight) if the diagnostics can't tell them how. No idea how to do methodical fault finding, as they don't understand how it works.
I'm surprised they have the equipment to do this.
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9 years ago
Nor does it give you all the information a maker's diagnostics do.
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9 years ago
Reliability can be unpredictable. I once had an ancient thing that did abou t 52mph tops. One time I changed route after struggling to get above 19mph on an uphill motorway stretch. And no, there was nothing wrong with it. It had Lucas electrics and no fusing anywhere, yet turned out to be a very rel iable vehicle.
NT
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9 years ago
So "reliability" wasn't "unpredictable". It was just very, very underpowered by design.
What was it?
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9 years ago
I was idly flicking through an old 2013 Which? suppliment the other day on cars. It had a Top 10 worst cars. One was the Vauxhall Vectra, eight were French and the other was.... The Land Rover Freeloader ;-)
Mind you, the best was the Renault Megane. The foldy roof got a bad write-up for leaks. As did the fixed roof....
I've often sometimes thought neither the French nor the English should be allowed to build cars :-)
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9 years ago
BMW 320d. Which tickles me as it was exactly this sort of car that the doom mongers used to point at as being unmendable.
I don't really either. I struggle to see it as as old as the first car I had (B-reg Nova) which was a bit of a wreck with 30k on the clock. And I still see cars that I regard as "new" on X-registrations and the like!!
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9 years ago
The stock of parts for my car in another 10 years will probably be rather thin. I don't know whether it was always thus, but IME scrappies are buying and stripping perfectly good cars as they're worth more as bits.
In some ways it doesn't matter. Economics dictates that my car is basically worthless and the market is awash with similarly worthless cars. If mine breaks I can have my pick of something else.