RoverFolkUs

Give Bridgend recycling a shout, I'm sure I've had a few bits off them before and they seem to keep everything you could possibly want for a BMW Bridgend Recycling (BMW Spares) 01233 713447 https://g.co/kgs/uq1DsTA

That's rather cheap so it's probably worth just doing the pair in that case. I have dealt with that seller before a couple of years ago, it wasn't the best experience to be honest, the item arrived late, and was of shockingly poor quality, and was missing parts. It took them just over a week to just send out a missing union that should have been in the kit.. It was a power steering pipe set and pump for my old Focus. It was about £100 for a brand new set from them, bearing in mind it would have cost about £200 for a pump and £150 for the pipes from a more established seller, so there was a hefty saving involved. The pipes were not usable in the condition they were sent in, I managed to modify them to make them work but most people would understandably have not buggered about with them because at the end of the day they weren't fit for purpose. The power steering pump was extremely noisy. It all just about worked, but no idea how long for as I sold the car a few months after that. So the parts were of poor quality, but they worked! You could say I got what I paid for I'd never want to fit parts from them to someone else's car because I'd want to be confident they were going to last, but I just wanted to share my experience to help you make your own mind up 🙂

Regarding the steering, it's quite likely to be a stiff joint in the intermediate shaft It's not often disastrous but it could get gradually worse to the point you'll want to sort it. The only way you can really diagnose it is by disconnecting it from the car and exercising the UJs in as many directions as possible, I've known them to seemingly operate freely but bind up at very certain angles. In normal operation this may not be noticeable but could cause an irritating, intermittent tight spot On cars designed with the rack at the front of the engine, the intermediate shaft is typically routed perfectly* across the hot engine to connect the end of the column from the bulkhead to the pinion shaft on the rack in front of the engine.. which naturally overheats the joints and causes uneven thermal expansion to a certain extent which over the course of thousands of miles knackers the joint and causes it to bind up. It's happened to me on a 15 plate Audi, previous week it was in for MOT and the steering was absolutely fine, next week it's back because it's almost undriveable, sure enough one of the UJs on the intermediate shaft had bound up. So it had gone from nothing to undriveable in the space of a week. In other cases it will be a "TADTS" and may never get any worse! F series BMWs have an adjustable preload bush on the rack, it's common for the bush to wear out and cause a rattle, but the cap doesn't have a stop so it is possible to tighten the cap above the spring slightly too much which will give an odd steering sensation and tight spots. I'm not sure if the E series has a similar setup, I've only ever heard of and experienced that issue on the F series but if these have a similar setup then it could be worth checking I'm sure you can visualise what's going on in that above picture, the piston shaped "thing" slots over the rack, then a spring is placed on top, then the screw cap goes on top. This is totally adjustable with plenty of room for error!

If the other caliper is a bit tight to push back then it's probably worth replacing the pair but if you just try pushing it back and the piston easily retracts with minimal effort then I would say save your money and just do the one

This bloke must be at least known to someone on here!?

Cheap modern LCD TVs (they're all LCD regardless of whether they're branded as LED or QLED or ULED) are all shite. Toshiba is made by a company called Vestel who manufacture Bush, Hitachi, JVC, even entry level sets from Panasonic which should be a good name! Among many others. It's all bottom of the barrel shite using poor quality screens and components that might last a year or two Going from an old Plasma TV to a modern entry level set is roughly equivalent to transitioning between a proper W123 Mercedes to a modern A-Class with the 1.5 Renault engine... I'm being deadly serious I agree it was a kind gesture from Maxxo's in laws (?) , most ordinary folk who treat a television as an appliance would struggle to see what's wrong, but anyone who could tell a quality TV apart from a bad one in a batch of 100 would be miffed if they thought they'd be upgrading from their 15 year old telly when they would realistically be worse off

Something about that strikes me as odd, I've seen it countless times before posted under the guise of different police forces/traffic squads etc

How long until the status changes back to "easy fix m11 just run out of time" 🤣 ?

The colour looks absolutely fine to be honest, great job!

You can also use your phone's microphone to do this by recording a video, placing the microphone to each sensor for a few seconds and then reviewing the footage back!

I know of a Focus 1.8 TDCI where the DMF is so bad you can't see clearly out of the door mirrors.. I'm being deadly serious. It's been going on like it for years. It'll probably go on for ages, they quite often do. If you don't want it done immediately then my advice is usually just run it until it gives you clutch troubles. If it fails catastrophically and causes crankshaft and gearbox damage then scrap it and consider it no great loss. If you would consider it a great loss then get it done. My man maths would be as follows: How much does it owe me? How much will it scrap for? If I spend £1500, will I see any of it back? Or am I already at a loss? If a fresh DMF would put a bit more value into it then maybe put some cash aside to do it, if let's say you bought it for 2 grand and you've already spent a grand on it, and it's only ever going to be worth 2 grand, then run it into the ground. Might still have years left in it. But do not sink another £1500 into it, you'd be better putting it towards something else. I wouldn't put a SMF in an x-trail or any sort of vehicle like that. A golf, focus or astra maybe, but not a 4x4 What year and what engine actually is it? If it's one of the liability ones then "just fucking scrap it m8"

That is (was? - sold now!) absolutely lovely. Ideal spec for me, wonder if a 400 steering wheel would fit, I imagine so ... Would look the part

CHF does discolour to a sort of yellow/brown, or it could be that someone has run it on/mixed with prestone in the past. A flush wouldn't be a bad idea. Up to you but you could get a lot more of the manky fluid out at once if you wanted to by removing the return line and quickly capping the reservoir off, directing the return line into a waste bucket and then keep pouring it in while someone steers it from lock to lock (front jacked up, engine off) Once you've got enough fresh through the system, then quickly reconnect the return to the reservoir, top up to level, start engine and then bleed as you normally would

It's quite frustrating when that happens, I always make a point of putting ticks on the failure sheet next to everything that has been rectified before sending anything back for retest to ensure that doesn't happen. I'm not aware of anything that can be done aside from carrying out another complete test. They're certainly not going to want to own up to their own mistake by pleading to the DVSA to remove an advisory. The rules of a retest are that everything needs to be retested along with surrounding components that could have been affected during repairs, but that doesn't seem to always happen. I know one tester who would just take the failure out of my hands and come back a few minutes later with a pass. I'm sure he didn't always even check to see if I'd arrived in the same car 🤣 Unless by shit luck it's come a bit loose and seeped a bit of grease out on the way back to retest? I must say I'm not a tester myself but as above is as far as I understand it.

Oof, beautiful. Shame it's got the wrong gearbox. Those steering wheels feel so good in your hands....

Looks like ULEZ has given that poor fella a 40-a-day habit!

Mis Esposas? 😅 ["My wives" in Spanish for those who don't know ]

You know what would scare me off is the god awful indicator tell-tale sound used by the MK3 Mondy and MK1 Focus. I'd hate to have driven one for a living. Is it just me that gets so irritated by it!?

Beware - unsolicited ford ramble .. In my opinion the MK3 Mondeo got left behind, it seems very similar to the MK1 Focus (which doesn't come as much of a surprise...) and they didn't make much in the way of improvements or modernisation to the Mondeo as they brought out the MK2 Focus. They kept an elderly design that was intended to coincide the MK1 Focus for way too long (2007!?) and abandoned it and moved onto the MK4. Had they done a MK3.5 Mondeo to modernise it a bit (they did a great job with the MK2.5 Focus, revamping it for a couple of years before launching the MK3 Focus) I think the MK2 Mondeo was probably too capable to justify throwing away so a lot of taxi firms kept them going until the MK4 came along. I know that a couple of my local ones did, I remember them running a few P11 Primeras and MK2 Mondeos into the early 2010s. Presumably they phased them out as they died and sequentially replaced them all with MK4's

I thought that had already been revamped into a cliché American sweet shop which lasted all of about 5 minutes in 2021 or something.. I must be thinking of somewhere else if that was 10 months ago as per streetview

In Bolney, Sussex.

This must be an award winning open and shut example? I remember it being functional until very recently. It spent a fair amount of time defunct, but has now since been revamped and lost all of its original character. Can see why it made business sense to remove the monstrosity though!

Still plenty here in Sussex, all roughly within a 10-15 mile radius of each other!

If it ends up being a MK4 Golf or anything with a frigging PD engine after all this hype.......