Ask a Shiter

[twosmoke300]

Cars with boot release buttons on the key fob are a favourite . You walk up to car , pop boot , drop shopping ( and keys) in boot . Shut boot and realise keys now locked in car . For some reason it's ford foci that seem prone to this . Another on is cars with passive arming ie you unlock with plip and if you don't open door within 30secs they relock . This is fine until the drivers courtesy light switch breaks so the locking system doesn't know you have opened the door and put your keys in the ign or on the seat .

Or it's a Renault with the key card ign which has a mind of it's own

[panhard65]

The other one to watch out for is when disconecting and reconnercting a battery. Sometimes the central locking will trigger and lock all the doors which is a bugger if you left the keys in the ignition.

[purplebargeken]

Smart cars. Auto lock a few seconds after the door being closed. This is especially fun* when you are about to leave a car show, the engine is running, you close the boot just as a brat comes past and pushes the door closed. It is even more fun as you lunge for the door handle a millisecond too late and it locks. With the engine happily running. Obviously.

[spike60]

2002 1.4 Fiesta LX, reg is EU52 AZX

 

Thanks!

Autodata times are 2.10h for the rack, 1.0h for the pump, 1.20h if has air con.

[fred]

This might be a blindingly obvious question, but how exactly do you lock your keys inside your car? I've grown up to expect this to be more of a problem and so far I know of no instances where this has happened to either me or one of the many people I know.

Chucked the keys of a BMW 735i into the boot whilst I took the shopping out,slammed boot.

remote unlocking didnt work, boot button on dash broken, locksmith said these feckers cant be sprung, RAC man gave up, in the end had to drill then saw the panel behind the rear arm rest and get a small child in to get the keys back 6 hours later. Fucking high end beemers and security !

[motormatt]

Chucked the keys of a BMW 735i into the boot whilst I took the shopping out,slammed boot.

remote unlocking didnt work, boot button on dash broken, locksmith said these feckers cant be sprung, RAC man gave up, in the end had to drill then saw the panel behind the rear arm rest and get a small child in to get the keys back 6 hours later. Fucking high end beemers and security !

 

I did admittedly loose my keys in the boot of a clio once. An hour was spent trying to get the bastard to start with the knackered immobiliser spare key that I kept in the glove box, and looking everywhere but the boot.

This was all at 2330hrs in the pissing rain, in full view of a group of charming people from the local doss house, who defintely did not defenestrate a bottle of suspiciously yellow looking white lightning in the general vicinity of my car.

It never rains but it pours!

[alf892]

Mrs Alf managed to lock the keys in her car a few months ago..........she was about 30 miles from home but about 45 from my work.

 

Rings me at work............WTF..........like I can unlock it by telepathy! Then she tells me our 6 month old granddaughter is also in car sleeping peacefully.......

 

A bystander calls the coppers......who also then become bystanders although to be fair they did offer to drive her home quickly. Only flaw in this plan was the spares were in the house and house key was on car key ring.......so I left work on a dash to meet the police at our house.............but after about 40 mins got a call to say mechanic from local Ford garage had got in.

 

Obviously Mrs Alf then drove off without offering payment............

 

I rung the Ford place and had to persuade them to take a bit of money!

 

TLDR............Can be too bloody easy to lock yourself out...........not sure how though!

[Lacquer Peel]

I'm insured through a company that's owned by Kwik Fit. If only I'd known before, they're a shower of shits.

 

Anyway, they've reduced my excess from £700 to £200 because my car is worth less than £700. I intentionally select a massive excess because it reduces my insurance premium, and I'm not likely to claim for damage because my car's worthless.

They are trying to make out that this is wrong, is it?

[HH-R]

You normally pay your excess if you've hit someone/something and it's your fault, AFAIK if the cost was less than £700 then you'd pay less than that (slight scrape to someone else's car in a car park) or the whole whack if you rear end a new Bentley or something.

 

Not sure why they're saying that, as if you hit the metaphorical Bentley the vaule of your car isn't really relevant other than hurting the insurance company more if it's worth a lot. If they're reducing it without increasing your premium then I'd take it. I try to keep voluntary excess as close to 0 as poss but I don't find it makes much of a difference having a big one (fnarr).

[Lacquer Peel]

They've reduced the excess and increased my premium by a not insignificant amount. I want to tell them to FRO but I'm sure they'll bum my bank account for that as well.

[Andrew353w]

This might be a blindingly obvious question, but how exactly do you lock your keys inside your car? I've grown up to expect this to be more of a problem and so far I know of no instances where this has happened to either me or one of the many people I know.

 

This used to be a problem onolder cars wher one could lock the door by pushing the lock button down & then closing the door while holding the door handle in the up position (Fords did this, amongst others) so you ended up locked OUTside your car with the keys on the INside!

 

Strangely (and I know this to be true, 'coz I owned one!) the Wartburg Knight was the only car I ever owned where it was possible to lock yourself INside the car with the keys on the OUTside (as the car was built in East Germany this might have been a genuine design feature...) but the owners club did have pictures of owners climbing out of wound down windows to retrieve their keys!

[Bucketeer]

Re - keys.

Also be wary of ex-Royal Mail vans with 'slam' locks.

[dave21478]

90s Fords can be cheeky and lock you out when you mess with the battery.

 

Wont start? you get out, open the bonnet and start messing with jump leads or a charger but as soon as you give it 13v the central locking locks. Typically in this situation you have closed the door and left the keys in the ignition.

[mercrocker]

Locked myself out of two cars in my time....Firstly Renner 4 Van (in a car wash at the time....).

 

How I did that - Van was locked and parked. Twunt in Avenger (this was long time ago) parked so close to driver door I could not get in. I unlocked rear door with key but stupidly locked it again before getting in (in case I forgot later - there was stuff in van didn't want nicked). So, in I get slam back door behind me, put key in and drive off. Go to car wash, get out of van, get token, press button, just before get wet jump back in van. Can't! All doors locked key in ignition! In R4 its possible to use interior handle regardless of locked door. Breaking back into van after car wash cycle ahead of grumpy queue has been erased from memory....

 

Second time was last month. Parked Minor too close to wall, jumped out passenger side but through force of habit locked the door behind me. Keys in ignition once again! Used wifes set to get in through boot (wobbly lock luckily) and fold down back seat and wriggle in like fat caterpillar.

 

CARZ WOT SAVE MONEY ON DOORLOCK ARRANGEMENTS R SHIT

[stephen01]

You can leave the keys and a toddler who likes to push buttons in the car.

 

This has happened to us* with both our boys at that age, both times I had to break the window to get them out.   I'm waiting until they are a bit older before they begin working off the debt.

 

*the wife

 

the leaf wont let you lock the keys inside, as its all 'keyless' ie push button to lock, start just need the key on me, well I left the keys inside the car and was trying to lock the car and it kept beeping at me, que me 'all modern cars are shit' then I looked in the car and the keys were inside. 'whos a cleaver car, you are' Question, how did the car 'know' the keys were inside and not just in my pocket.

[Skizzer]

My hate-inspiring modern has the keyless thing too.  The key fob is a big angular lumpy thing that digs in to you if it's in your pocket (because concrete seats), so it just ends up rattling annoyingly around the oddments tray in the centre console.  

 

If only there was a handy slot in the dashboard where you could insert the key while you were driving.  

[motormatt]

My hate-inspiring modern has the keyless thing too. The key fob is a big angular lumpy thing that digs in to you if it's in your pocket (because concrete seats), so it just ends up rattling annoyingly around the oddments tray in the centre console.

 

If only there was a handy slot in the dashboard where you could insert the key while you were driving.

My sister has that exact problem on a 15 plate cooper. The earlier ones had a slot in the dash for the key fob thingy to fit in. Mind you its a flying machine for a 1.5 3cyl turbo.

[catsinthewelder]

The only vehicle I've locked myself out of was an M reg Daihatsu HiJet pickup but I did it all the time.  The key opened the door at 7:30am then stayed in the ignition till 10pm each day.  The problem was that as we always left the key in the ignition when we got out it was easy to forget to take it out at the end of the day.  Fortunately it was really easy to break into and after the third time it never took me more than 5 minutes of pissing about with parcel tape to pop up the door pin.

[robinmasters]

What are the PHACTS about OMGHGF on MGFs? (lower case letters are available)

 

Is it just a case of maintaining the coming system properly (and changing the front-to-rear pipes?), regular coolant changes, making sure the thermostat works etc, or is failure an unavoidable 'charming quirk'?

[stripped fred]

A relative of mine has a kia magentis. It's the 2.5 model with auto gearbox. He's not into cars at all. He asked my advice today so we went for a drive. I was impressed, pulls well and very smooth. Anyway, the issue is sometimes when you brake there is a slight clunk from the front. Like something moves slightly. It doesn't always do it and only under braking. He's had a garage change the brake pads but it's still there. I don't think it's a suspension bush and my guess was that it could be abs related. Obviously it's difficult to diagnose without experiencing it yourselves but any ideas what it could be?

[HH-R]

What are the PHACTS about OMGHGF on MGFs? (lower case letters are available)

 

Is it just a case of maintaining the coming system properly (and changing the front-to-rear pipes?), regular coolant changes, making sure the thermostat works etc, or is failure an unavoidable 'charming quirk'?

If you asked 20 different people, you'd probably get 20 different answers.

 

Early Ks didn't tend to suffer from it as much, but when the engine was embiggened to 1.6/1.8 litre and changed to a wet liner design in the mid 90s, it seemed to be a dead cert at about 70k or earlier.

 

It could be that the extra capacity did it no good, though the wet linered 1.4s love to blow a gasket too. The K was only ever meant to be a small engine, a replacement for the A series really, and things like the water pump weren't uprated. The poor engine was then chucked in behemoths like the 75 and Freelander.

 

There's a few things like the design of the thermostat is poor, letting cold coolant hit a hot engine and causing thermal shock. Replacements are available that open more slowly called PRT.

 

I've heard that the original elastomer gasket was poor quality and broke down easily, and that the change from the metal locating dowels to plastic caused further problems.

 

Sometimes it's things like the inlet manifold gasket starts leaking, owner doesn't notice, coolant is all gone and head blows. They take to the garage, get it fixed and the garage says "aye, bloody Rover shite, they all do that" and don't find the actual cause - so it blows again! Owner is then sick of their life and frags it. The original K used to have a nice alloy inlet manifiold, later changed to a cheaper plastic one.

 

With the F/TF there's the added downside of the engine already known for overheating being shoehorned in with little air flow and pipework running back to front with extra chances of leaks.

 

Even with a replacement gasket, there's a few options, original, Payen, Land Rover, Multi Layer Steel, etc and people swear by different ones.

[twosmoke300]

The Kia might still be the pads moving . Possibly a missing spring or shim . I've had some cars where the back of the brake pads need to be siliconed to the caliper

[Andrew353w]

A relative of mine has a kia magentis. It's the 2.5 model with auto gearbox. He's not into cars at all. He asked my advice today so we went for a drive. I was impressed, pulls well and very smooth. Anyway, the issue is sometimes when you brake there is a slight clunk from the front. Like something moves slightly. It doesn't always do it and only under braking. He's had a garage change the brake pads but it's still there. I don't think it's a suspension bush and my guess was that it could be abs related. Obviously it's difficult to diagnose without experiencing it yourselves but any ideas what it could be?

The ball joints might be excessively worn, or a bush could be allowing the metal part of the bush to move within the bush. This can make a "clunking" noise. I'm refitting my Citroën's lower suspension arms tomorrow, as I've been suffering from the same problem with it! The arms also carry new bushes all round, so I'm hoping for an (even!) smoother ride after the job's done! 

[Dave_Q]

I'm insured through a company that's owned by Kwik Fit. If only I'd known before, they're a shower of shits.

 

Anyway, they've reduced my excess from £700 to £200 because my car is worth less than £700. I intentionally select a massive excess because it reduces my insurance premium, and I'm not likely to claim for damage because my car's worthless.

They are trying to make out that this is wrong, is it?

LP, for future reference I would recommend valuing your car higher.

Insurance companies think low value = owner doesn't give a shit, higher risk etc.

I tend to put £1500 as a valuation for all my sheds, even if they have an ACTUAL resale value in the region of 1500p.

[burraston2006]

Question for Sir David Attenborough. Why do snails congregate on my concrete path at 20.00 every night? Last night there were 17 of the bastards. Don't know what they were doing but every morning they are gone again. What are they doing ( no sexy shenanigans as far as I can tell ) and where do they go when they've finished? 

Perhaps it's a boy snail racer meet or an AS meet in miniature/? 

Awaiting the wisdom...................

[DeeJay]

^^^Worlds smallest 2cv meet. (Probably not the slowest)^^^

[Asimo]

What are the PHACTS about OMGHGF on MGFs? (lower case letters are available)

 

Is it just a case of maintaining the coming system properly (and changing the front-to-rear pipes?), regular coolant changes, making sure the thermostat works etc, or is failure an unavoidable 'charming quirk'?

 

There is a good K series article here        http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/facts-and-figures/essays/essay-k-series-–-what-makes-it-tick/    Well worth reading:    

 

"The system does not function well in cooling circuits with a radiator a long way from the engine in the cooling path, or for engines constantly seeing high engine speeds ............ ........This can cause enormous thermal gradients across the engine, causing both distortion of the head and block and also gasket failure. "

[meshking]

I think I have the very definition of a stupid question: what are the chances of me finding a citroen h van for about £1500 that I can repair over the winter with a reasonable investment in parts?

Or, what is a good alternative for something that can be turned into a day van / camper? I quite like the Peugeot j vans. Not scared of a trip to France.

 

Sent from my SGP621 using Tapatalk

[willswitchengage]

Can anyone recommend a decent inline non return valve? I have another petrol Citroen that likes draining itself overnight, qualz fuel pump

[panhard65]

I think I have the very definition of a stupid question: what are the chances of me finding a citroen h van for about £1500 that I can repair over the winter with a reasonable investment in parts?

Or, what is a good alternative for something that can be turned into a day van / camper? I quite like the Peugeot j vans. Not scared of a trip to France.

 

Sent from my SGP621 using Tapatalk

H vans are getting a bit dear and too common now. Estafettes are bloody horrid to drive how about the J9 ?. They are cheap and unmistakenly French.

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