Richard

When changing drop links I usually use an open ended spanner to dislocate the ball and then grip the ball with mole grips. Have I been doing it wrong?

The only diesel I've seen that doesn't do that was my 850 when I used the Pela pump on it. The oil would stay clean for ages and never reached the usual diesel levels of mankiness.

The seller's attitude would be a red flag for me. Buying cars from wankers rarely goes well.

It is the ashtray. The HVAC system is the two slots either side of the ashtray, rubbish by 70s standards but quite effective by modern standards. The posher models got fresh air vents.

The Dacia Access models aren't that basic really. Fuel injection, 16 valves, rev counter, four doors, electric front windows, remote central locking, rear wiper, fabric seats, pre-wired for stereo, five speed box etc would have been top spec not so long ago.

The Astra E didn't even have a hatchback as I recall. That one has a toughened windscreen too.

IIRC there wasn't really room for a servo on the Mk1/2 Escort, I don't think any of the Kent engined models got one. The RS2000 had one on a massive bracket and people who built go-faster Escorts tended to use a remote servo. I don't remember them having a reputation for shit brakes and they weren't the only ones not fitting servos. The VW Polo didn't get a servo as standard (and possibly not at all) until the big headlight facelift in 1990. SAM_6684 by pjlcsmith2, on Flickr ford escort mk2 october 1979 by xr282, on Flickr The Cortina and Capri pages of that brochure do mention the servo, so they would have mentioned it on the Escort if there was one. Incidentally that brochure page is for the 1979 range, earlier models were less posh.

I know, but even with discs you didn't get a servo.

You had to go pretty posh to get a servo in a RWD Escort.

The later 850 GLT models had that. Half leather heated seats, remote central locking, electric sunroof, cruise control on the diesels, trip computer, air conditioning, 8 speaker stereo, even T5 alloy wheels, but keep-fit windows in the back. The model below had four electric windows and the model above lost quite a few of the toys the GLT had.

The Irwin ones certainly don't grip something that's completely round. These things do though https://www.halfords.com/tools/hand-tools/all-hand-tools/laser-impact-stud-extractor-1%2F2in-drive-121932.html Other makes and sources are available of course.

I would think the previous buyer has reported it and it's still up. Are eBay bothered about fraud?

I can accept that the electric handbrake frees up space (and is cheaper and easier to put together on the production line), I can even accept that it somehow meets the C&U regulations. What I'm not seeing is how haveing absolutely no control over when the parking brake releases makes hill starts even possible, let alone a doddle. ... My nomination is Ford's decision to do away with fuel caps. It might work on cars that have the filler neck high up, Transit vans have the filler level with the tank and they drop fuel on every roundabout. Not much, but there are a lot of them doing it. It's easy to prove that the double flap system doesn't work simply by looking at the tide mark and swollen passenger door seal on any Transit more than a couple of months old. Quite why nobody is in jail for this is a mystery* to me. *Not really

You could well be right, we'll never know for sure. The complete lack of any kind of reaction, futile or otherwise, from him suggests to me that he wasn't paying attention though. I'm not suggesting that he was in any way responsible for the situation arising, I just feel that he could have dealt with it better. He certainly couldn't have dealt with it any worse.

I am not defending the woman in any way, I don't know how you could think that I was, although you seem to think that she hit his door when he clearly hit her car, so maybe you aren't very good at understanding what you see. What I saw was BMW pootling along the road at 20ish mph, possibly on cruise. He also appears to be going up the middle of the road, but that might just be the camera angle. A driver approaches a Give Way from the right at some speed. The camera doesn't see it until the last moment because it is in a fixed position, but the driver's eyes and head can move so he would have seen it coming if he had bothered to look. After hitting the VW without losing any speed at all he continues, still at the same speed until he careers into a parked car. Was he planning to just keep going until his battery ran out? A competent driver would think "oh, that car looks as if it's not going to stop, I'd better brake or at least prepare to brake." He didn't do this, in fact it looks as if his cruise control was still engaged when he blundered into an entirely innocent party's car that wasn't even in the same street. There wasn't even any kind of exclamation, which is why I suspect he wasn't even awake. The BMW driver seems to be a motorcyclist too, but he won't be for long if that 's the standard of his observation and reaction.