Shirley Knott

I've had a couple of HDD fail, but paradoxically never an SSD. Admittedly my experience of the latter is relatively short.

I saw the light re SSD's in March 2020 when during the first lockdown began. I bought a refurbished Windows 10 Dell business laptop for £80 on Ebay, despite only having a 120G drive and 4g ram it was waaaay faster than the higher spec machine it replaced. I liked it so much I bought my wife an identical one from the same seller- A year and a half on they're both still going and plenty fast enough for the basic browsing we use them for. Meanwhile, flushed with the success of the laptops, I swapped the 250g HDD in the desktop upstairs for a Crucial SSD (£25 at the time)of the same size. After a fresh install of Windows 10 the difference was profound, it boots in under 5 seconds. Crucial actually provide a free programme to check lifespan amongst other stuff, and after a year of solid use it's at 94% life left... Read into that what you will. TLDR- I tried an SSD and was so impressed with the difference it made, I switched every machine in the house to running them within a 6 month period.

I can attest to the J&R stuff being ok, I fitted a reluctor ring and boot from them to my P2 V70 and was suspicious of the low prices too- The ring was £2.50 IIRC. A year or so on though and no issues thus far. Thoroughly enjoying the Volvo centric approach here BTW, this thread makes for some cracking reading!

Bear in mind the guage on these doesn't report temperature accurately, they basically sit pegged at 90 if the temperature is anywhere between 75 and 110 IIRC, so as not to alarm modern drivers.... If it's climbing above 90 on the guage then it's actually a fair amount over. OBD2 is the only real way to know the true temperature. Heater matrix failure us pretty common on these, also PD head-lift is an issue, although I'd imagine this is an earlier VE variant on an X reg? Still worth considering. RE the waterpump, you can usually check if they're operating as they should by removing the expansion tank cap (On a cold engine) and having someone rev the car whilst you look at the small hose going into the top of the reservoir- If all's well you should see a steady stream of coolant flowing back into the reservoir- If not, then likely the plastic waterpump impeller has seperated from the shaft as others have mentioned.

Minor update here Basically everything seems to be going swimmingly. After much work initially on the V70 and Roffle Golf Gti, both seem to now be doing the do and covering 30 miles a day each without any issues, both are actual useable and fairly presentable cars now. The Golf SDi plods on as usual, completely rock steady too. The only excitement has been a new expansion tank for the SDi as the old one had become a bit grubby. At £14 delivered from Mr Meyle, it's a job worth doing. Old Vs New... Half way there.... And done. Much nicer... And finally, a 'mod' of types. @warninglight proved himself to be a shiter of wonderful colours by obliging a request on my part and using 3D printing wizardry to zap up some rear ashtray deletes, thus getting rid of the perennially broken parts (TADTS) at the arse end of both of our Golfs. Enough words. Before.... A lovely new part lovingly crafted by one of our own.... And better.... Anyone with a Mk4 should probably consider one of these (Unless they regularly have rear passengers that smoke, then probably not)

Honestly, my experience has been to the contrary. We advertised Mrs Knott's 2007 C1 with 100k for £895 five weeks ago and it was gone for full asking price within two hours. Last night my brother advertised his 2014 Corsa on 56k for £2800, he's just sold it at lunchtime today for £2650. I recon if the price is right, it'll sell, but that's admittedly from a sample of two. Maybe there's a North South divide at work, or things vary by region, who knows?

I'll PM you about this later on this morning.

Interesting, another one I know nothing about! I can't really expect to be able to drive MK4 Golfs indefinitely, at some stage replacements will be required so I'm soaking all of this in... EDIT- To say having had a quick scout around it seems the Mk8 Civics start from around £1500-2000 range for decent examples, so not really in the same price bracket as a MK2 Focus (Yet).

I gave absolutely zero desire to own or buy a Ford Focus but still found this to be a great read. Props to @sierraman for taking the time here, a lovely clean write up that basically covers everything. Is there any way we could make this a 'sticky' so as to avoid it disappearing down the page? If we could get enough of these written up for different vehicles, it might even warrant a sub section within the forum for buyer's guides?

Aye, the radiator wasn't fun. A long drawn out process, but at least logical and fairly straight forward. Meanwhile, I've assemble a list for my own records really of the parts the Roffle Golf has so far required to get to a stage that it's useable and a safe prospect... The list so far Timing belt and waterpump - Gates kit- No history of a change (£190- Job farmed out) Thermostat- Not reaching correct operating temperature (£10 Calorstat part) Coolant sensor- Coolant temp gauge inoperative (£12 Intermotor part) Discs and pads all round- Advised for all on last MOT, rusty/old (£72 Comline parts) Brake pedal sensor- No brake lights/EPS dash warning (£12 Intermotor part) Fresh coolant- Obvious reasons (£15 ECP) Radiator- Leaking badly (£19 Nissens part) Crank position sensor- Occasional reluctance to start (£23 Bosch part) Replacement 'sport' style seat- Torn bolster (£40 breakers yard) Replacement armrest- Broken (£10 Ebay part) Replacement airbox- Broken (£10 breakers yard) Air filter- Service (£8 Bosch part) Oil change - Service (£14) Total- £435 So not cheap, but lots of money saved by doing everything bar the timing belt in house. All pretty much standard old car stuff and not unexpected after a long time sitting around doing nothing as this one had!

Since my roffle Golf win landed a month or so back, it's been clear the radiator was leaking. Today I grasped the antifreeze soaked nettle and got stuck in. The old rad, once removed was clearly leaking quite badly from both sides as can be seen by the pink coolant stains... Old vs new as fans/sensors etc are swapped across... The level of dissasembly required to replace the radiator on these is not for the feint hearted.... It's all back together now and running properly, free from leaks, thank God. The Nissens branded radiator only cost £19 delivered, so a cheap job, but the emotional cost was high. The last time I changed a rad on a Mk4 was nearly ten years ago, that car didn't have AC and was far less taxing! I'm firmly listing VAG radiator changes under 'Pay someone else to do it' in future!

Reading back through this lot, it's clear you've had some misserable times of late car wise, I can relate, although my troubles pale in comparison. Seeing you battling on here spurs me on somewhat, sometimes old cars are proper bastards! It's not hard to see how people end up getting fed up and scrapping them eh?

I can't believe you're moving this on so soon, needs must and all that but you must be gutted! I'd imagine it's pretty hard to find as an actual useable diesel 405 for sensible money these days, I genuinely haven't seen one on the roads up here for what must be years now.

A busy morning filled with Germanic fettling at the Knott Mk4 Golf emporium I appreciate from the pics, it looks like I'm working on one car, rather than two very different, and yet outwardly identical looking Mk4Golfs. Weird eh? First up, a full engine service was metered out to the trusty Golf SDi involving new oil, oil filter, air filter and fuel filter.... In full swing... And then attention was turned to the Rollfle Golf Gti which was bestowed with new discs and pads on the rear (All brakes were advised for being rusty on the last MOT) Not a minute to soon by the looks of things, ugh... Things happening! Comline braking equipment used as always... Maybe a bit to much copper slip here, but I hate noisy brakes (Never too much, never too much etc as Lionel used to say)... And my fetish for new braking equipment visible through alloy wheels has been satisfied... I actually love working on Mk4's, everything is user friendly and logical, I'm used to them and nothing really takes that long. Also, parts are CHEAP! The entire parts cost for the diesel Golf's service and the rear discs and pads for the GTi came to less than £70 combined, can't argue with that.

Honestly, I'm questioning my position re not having one MX5 due to practicality concerns meanwhile you've basically got three (Ok, one's an Exocet) You're going to have to stop chain buying them or there'll be none left for anyone else!