The new news 24 thread

[louiepj]

I finally managed to get Renolink working. It looks like very powerful software, but it also looks like pressing a couple of buttons  could seriously upset your car.

Do I need Renolink in my life?
These are a very reliable* fleet!
*French reliability.

[stuboy]

This morning popped out to a car meet...

 

 

 

 

..

 

 

 

 

[bramz7]

Went to the French Day at Beaulieu and it was good fun. Went with some like minded friends and they really liked the 405, which got some compliments and even got some more info about it from the 405 man himself, Paul. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

Discs, pads and callipers on the fronts sorted, courtesy of Autodoc and a lot of effing and blinding. 30,000 miles on a 2013 van? Inner hub area of the old discs mega rusted such that getting them off the hub was a simple* job.

At least I managed to order the correct parts for a change 👍

[wuvvum]

Well the Merc is back together.

New alternator, tensioner and idler pulleys and new belt fitted.  The belt and three of the pulleys are INA, which are OEM suppliers to Merc, so they should last a while.  The tensioner pulley is aftermarket as INA would only sell the complete tensioner assembly which was £££.  I had a brief moment of panic when I thought I'd bought the wrong idler pulley as one of them looked like it was ribbed, but turned out the "ribs" were just rubber off the old belt!  

The engine is much quieter now, so that's good.  The turbo resonator had a bit more oil in it than I would have liked and I've noticed the air out of the dash vents smells a bit fumey when you first turn the fan on, so I'm going to replace the PCV valve as it's pretty much a service item on OM642s, and the one on there is a Merc part which means that either someone has been splashing out on original bits for a 17-year-old car (unlikely), or it's the original valve.

Also got a speaker fitted to the driver's door to replace the blown one.  The speaker I bought off eBay wasn't the same as the one that came out (I think it's a rear speaker), but the connector was the same and it fitted in the hole so it's in there for now, although I haven't been able to screw it in as the holes are in the wrong places.  I'll probably buy another speaker eventually as the rear speaker on that side is getting a bit buzzy as well.

On Friday I took the Innocenti down to Trigger's East Coast Retros car meet near Ipswich.  140 miles in total, the car buzzed along fine and I wound it up to 74mph on the A14 overtaking a line of lorries, which is the fastest I've ever been in it (and pretty much all it had to give), and even overtook a dawdling giffer in a Hyundai on the A140.  It's not the most comfortable car for long journeys though, my left knee was complaining a bit by the time I got home.

The show was brilliant as always, with a wonderfully eclectic range of vehicles.  It was also good to catch up with Trigger, Brodders and Spottedlaurel, and to have a quick blat in Brodders' rather nice Mk2 Mondeo V6 estate and a waft round the field in Spottedlaurel's fantastic LS400.

The Ampera is booked in for its MOT on Saturday so I refitted the standard halogen headlight bulbs, gave it a hoover out and went round it looking for any obvious issues.  The rear brake discs were rather rusty (not unexpectedly as they don't do much work in normal driving), so I took the car up the coast road and did a few emergency stops from 60mph - which has enabled me to ascertain that the nearside rear brake doesn't seem to be doing much at all, which is a pain.  So I'm going to have to take the wheel off after work tomorrow and have a poke around to see if I can find out what's happening - I seem to recall last year that one of the slider pins was seized so that might have happened again.  Calipers aren't a huge amount of money if it does need a new one but I've been spending far too much on car bits recently so I'd rather avoid having to splash out any more if I can help it.

[Lord Sterling]

The Jag is at a mechanics my Dad often uses, to check the problem with the air-conditioning and see where the leak is coming from. 

Bettings open now on it being a rare-as unicorn shite irreplaceable part.

I have been sent a link to a stop-leak type substance that is designed for car air-conditioning units.

[jonathan_dyane]

I bought a new car today

[SiC]

3 minutes ago, jonathan_dyane said:

I bought a new car today

Nice! I do miss my P4.

Is yours a 90?

[jonathan_dyane]

It's a 95. Picking it up tomorrow, can't wait!

[stuboy]

mot booked for the mondeo for tomorrow

[HMC]

28 minutes ago, jonathan_dyane said:

I bought a new car today

Epic! Got a lovely original reg too. 62/63 southport issue. Have you got much history with it?

[Schaefft]

6 hours ago, Lord Sterling said:

The Jag is at a mechanics my Dad often uses, to check the problem with the air-conditioning and see where the leak is coming from. 

Bettings open now on it being a rare-as unicorn shite irreplaceable part.

I have been sent a link to a stop-leak type substance that is designed for car air-conditioning units.

I still have my X300 XJ I'm breaking in case you need anything although the A/C components might be different on your V8.

[jonathan_dyane]

15 minutes ago, HMC said:

Epic! Got a lovely original reg too. 62/63 southport issue. Have you got much history with it?

Not exactly.

No MOT history, last taxed 1987, still registered PLG 

Story was a chap has had it for some years who supplied cars for television/film and the guy I'm buying from bought a job lot of several cars ex TV/film.

Condition seems pretty canny, I think I've done well 

[jonathan_dyane]

Let's see if it blows up tomorrow on the M6!

[lesapandre]

'Road Pricing' article in the Guardian. It is ostensibly in the title about electic cars but covers all vehicles. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/sep/03/uk-electric-car-drivers-per-mile-vehicle-taxes-campaign-for-better-transport

[JakeT]

The UK government can’t even make toast properly, bar implement such a scheme. I bet Fujitsu or Infosys are pleased at the thought. Just raise fuel duty and/or road tax across the board. 

[dozeydustman]

Really?

[worldofceri]

Bad form to park on the pavement.

Bad form to post pictures of people (esp. kids) on the internet without (presumably) their permission.

Otherwise, nothing to see here.

[reb]

I think even if it is a bit tacky, it's nice to see someone view their car as more than just an appliance. Pavement parking notwithstanding. 

[lesapandre]

Meanwhile back at Jaguar. Seems a legitimate news report on Jaguar's woes not sure this has got reported in Europe too. Finger is pointing at the battery maker it seems.

Not doing Jaguar's reputation much good in it's important export market.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/jaguar-tells-owners-older-pace-electric-suvs-park-113241604

[Yoss]

Our local Volkswagen dealer now also seems to be selling Omodas. I guess that's quite a good way to get your foot in the door. You're more likely to buy one if you know the dealer isn't going to disappear overnight. Still looks odd though. 

[richardmorris]

35 minutes ago, Yoss said:

Our local Volkswagen dealer now also seems to be selling Omodas. I guess that's quite a good way to get your foot in the door. You're more likely to buy one if you know the dealer isn't going to disappear overnight. Still looks odd though. 

VW Immodium?

[Lord Sterling]

Oh dear! Now I know where I get my occasional bad luck from! 😅

Today myself and Father_Sterling went into to Brussels to fit a lock to a garage that my Dad parks at when at work. 

It's basically a garage within a very old and well-built building with a private multi-story carpark attached. The thing I love about this garage is whilst it looks dark and dingey, it's very secure with entry via a key fob on both driving and foot exits/entrances, you get your own 'box' garage with a door that you can shut as per a private domestic garage, it's covered even outside and the box garages are massive, it can swallow up even modern Range Rover with space to spare;

I do have some odd enthusiasm about garages/under cover parking garages etc... mainly because I don't have one where I can stick my own cars into, I've always had a thing about having my cars under cover.

ANYway, myself and Father_Sterling were fitting the lock and rear locking bars to the garage door because some randomer had decided to park in the space (the doors are generally kept shut on the box garages) and as a result, my uncle, who owns a space, decided the door should be shut and locked tomorevent this happening again, but the lock was old and didn't work.

We fitted the bars and lock only to find the bars were just too short to effectively lock the garage, this was because the locking mechanism that the bar is bolted too was just a bit too short.

Fair enough, we decided we'd pop to the hardware shop to purchase a couple more bars, except Fatha_Sterling's Passat wouldn't start, why? (I'd like to because VW but...) because we'd left the lights on to work on the garage door, great.

OK, so now we have a car that won't start and needed a jump-start, the only place we could get one was the garage (where I'd got my air-con topped up) which was over the otherside of Brussels. What we did have though was the use of my uncle's car, he'd arrived to work, so Father_Sterling explained the situation and took uncle's car, a Toyota Mirai, to the garage to borrow up a battery booster pack.

Broken down Passat. 

Toyota Mirai.

Now this car is Hydrogen and electric powered. I must admit, in my sad little existence, I've never driven or even been in a car that is powered by anything other than an internal combustion engine. I have driven hybrids, lots of them, but not a fully electric/hydrogen powered vehicles.

It was nice, silent, fast and ultra modern, but that was about it. The Mirai is usually a US-only vehicle but this was imported by a German businessman who sold it to my uncle. However, since then, the Mirai has become available for retail sale in Europe. The UK was the first outside Japan to get this car.

Anyway. We picked up the battery charger, got the Passat started, bought some new bars from a hardware shop which were prepared for fitting tomorrow.

[wuvvum]

That's a different shape of Mirai to the one I've seen here.  Less fugly.

[Volksy]

I saw one of those Hydrogen Mirais in Berlin the other week. 

The chap had only just bought it, and managed to kerb both nearside alloys trying (really badly) to parallel park it in front of the bar we were sat outside of. I'd have thought that these would have come with some sort of self park shenanigans given how 'Advanced' they appear to be. 

[grogee]

Papped our local taxi driver's Allegro, seems like he's got it out for a run. I've not seen it much this summer. Sadly it'll have got wet as it was raining this morning. 

Bloody love this car

[anonymous user]

20 minutes ago, grogee said:

Papped our local taxi driver's Allegro, seems like he's got it out for a run. I've not seen it much this summer. Sadly it'll have got wet as it was raining this morning. 

Bloody love this car

Princess Anne, sorry, Douglas Bader had one of those

[lesapandre]

25 minutes ago, grogee said:

Papped our local taxi driver's Allegro, seems like he's got it out for a run. I've not seen it much this summer. Sadly it'll have got wet as it was raining this morning. 

Bloody love this car

700,000+ of all models made - so not the catastrophe so much prognosticated elsewhere. Decent wheels and blacked-out sills and detailing it does not look half bad. Up to this point a lot of BL's offering had been dressed up for 'Terry and June' type buyers - a bit more jazz suited the car.

Ironically- and I've not checked the figures - I belive the Allegros outsold the Maestro car which followed...

[grogee]

Allegro: 642,350

Maestro: ~605,000

So yeah, both of them definitely* set the showrooms alight. 

The fella with this Equipe also has a black Maestro Turbo. Told me it's been tweaked to 200+bhp, which may or may not be true. However I haven't seen it running this year around town. Here it is seen last year next to my white one. 

[stuboy]

21 hours ago, stuboy said:

mot booked for the mondeo for tomorrow

Failed... boo...

 

Booked in for Monday they doing repairs and retesting it.