Diesel engines (Q1) "Designed to be driven hard"

Petrol stations selling fan belts? That must have been a few years ago. ;-)

Tim

You were lucky: a) to find that they sold the correct belt for your car, and b) that you could fit it yourself with minimal/no tools.

When mine on my Peugeot 306 failed, it took my local garage two days to get hold of a new one and then fit it. And they failed to notice that one of the pulley flanges was bent - which is probably why the belt wore and then snapped in the first place.

I'd done about 5000 miles when the replacement belt snapped as I was about to set off back home on a Sunday night after staying the weekend at my girlfriend's house. So I had to return to her house and then arrange for the RAC to collect the car and take it to a genuine Peugeot garage to get it repaired *properly*. The garage replaced the bent pulley as well and gave me a report implicating it and blaming my village garage for not noticing. The response of that garage was "tough

- nothing to do with us, mate". So I stopped using them and stopped recommending them to anyone else.

About 40 years ago. And I was impressed that they had one the right size for my car which was 14 years old at the time.

It wouldn't happen nowadays.

I had tools. The car was 14 years old at the time. I carried a cantilever tool box containing all the tools I might possibly need in the boot at all times, plus a torch and a tyre pump.

My first car was an old Mk3 Cortina. It was a necessity to carry a full toolbox in the boot :)

didn't need to do that with my Mk IV - and I kept it for 13 years.