In France.. it's just considered "acceptable",Sounds like you need to get married by the end
Italy.. Probably not
What's made you not grumpy but not smile either today?
- Thread starter dave
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What's made you not grumpy but not smile either today?
Italy.. Probably not
Today's question.. what does a Stellantis Alfa Romeo and DS dealer that used to be a Spoticar used car centre and was a Citroën dealer before that have as courtesy cars?
Place bets now! They did have C3s prior to getting the Alfa DS franchises but somehow I feel like a Tonale owner might be slightly put out by one of those
Oh and it's MOT day...I'm not nervous you're nervous.
Place bets now! They did have C3s prior to getting the Alfa DS franchises but somehow I feel like a Tonale owner might be slightly put out by one of those
Oh and it's MOT day...I'm not nervous you're nervous.
A while ago, there was a short discussion about inconsistency of fastener type.
Liberating my heater matrix on the Panda 169. Under the gear lever, first we meet two pozidrive screws. Then two hex screws (allen). Moving to the bottom of the centre console, we find torx.
Liberating my heater matrix on the Panda 169. Under the gear lever, first we meet two pozidrive screws. Then two hex screws (allen). Moving to the bottom of the centre console, we find torx.
Life was so much more simple as an apprentice in the late 60s, a selection of AF sockets, combination spanners, a few straight screwdrivers and maybe one or two Philips/crosshead, a set of Imperial feeler gauges, plus of course a decent ball pein hammer.
With that you could service and repair 99% of all vehicles that entered the workshop.
Without selling your soul to a Snap On Rep for the rest of your life!
If I had an Alfa I'd be furious
Oddly it's the nicest one of these I've had...either that or because all I've done with it is drive across town then to work I've actually used it for what it's meant for and it's not been over 50.
Usually take one straight home on to the national limit hills and realise 75% of the throttle travel does nothing.
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I'd love to spend a day in the 60s if it were possible, to experience life back then. The music, style, architecture and culture was so infinitely better than the mish-mash of todays pop culture.
The problem tends to be owners are F*****g Berks unfortunately as are many of the garages that work on them...up to and including main agents (who have been known to put incompatible oil in them..oh and some certain large car chains have been known to attempt to get independent specialists to just switch the oil light off so they can sell the car!!).
98% of the issues seen are on cars that have had skipped maintenance the other 2% are unlucky but some cars break as we all know.
The problem being the 2% tend to get lumped in with the 98%. I've said previously but friends with the bloke who looks after puretech things for UK Citroën owners club and you do get people who have done everything right and the thing has gone wrong. They tend to be massively outnumbered by people who battered the car into the ground then did a quick Google search when they realise that ignoring the oil light for a week is going to cost them a new engine and then go online and blame the car..even though the car was 3 years over belt change interval and hadn't been serviced for 4 years. People literally message him ask if they should change the belt on 2014 car, he says yes it's well overdue and you'll have the MK1 belt that comes to bits and blocks the oil pump and they'll say "nah maybe next year".
Given they have a reputation for being made of glass it's quite incredible the things people get away with...for example someone drove one to a garage for a timing belt change...with a timing belt missing teeth (11 year old car so only 5 years over the change interval) and got away with a new belt and oil pickup clear out.
Basically PSA designed an engine to kick the majority of their customer base who think an MOT and service are the same thing in the balls...Epic. Then to compound that they put them in Vauxhalls...which are also known for the scrupulous maintenance habits of the owners.
However would I buy my car second hand with unknown history?....No. I trust ours because it's been done and done right and also I've got all the documents to claim under the 10 year warranty if I need to. I'd not trust a random one on a used lot because you just don't know and maintenance is very important.
Trying to find a modern car without any gotchas is like trying to find a needle in a haystack with no needles in it. I was looking at VW 1.5s but I've restricted my search to 1.4s as the 1.5 has a longer list of common faults than the Puretech despite being on the market half as long. I could get a Toyota...but just no
Wehn I was in the trade the courtesy cars were ‘assigned’ based on how courteous the customer was. If you had an Alfa 164 driver that was an ass, they got a panda 750. If it was the other way round, they’d get a huge car, told it was the only one available, and watch as they struggled to weigh up what the insurance implications were (sign to say they’d pay a high excess), if they couldn’t/wouldn’t they’d get a trade in that still had some tax on it. Allegros and marinas were the favourites if there was any in!If I had an Alfa I'd be furious
Oddly it's the nicest one of these I've had...either that or because all I've done with it is drive across town then to work I've actually used it for what it's meant for and it's not been over 50.
Usually take one straight home on to the national limit hills and realise 75% of the throttle travel does nothing.
Well we have the the other C3 for a few days as although I had gone through pre-mot check of lights brakes etc..
I'd checked the drop links etc all attached...winning.
I failed to check if the anti roll bar was attached end to end..
*Sad trombone*
So currently the only original suspension components on the front of that car will be wishbones.
I feel a word about speed bump aggression strategy may be in order...
I'd checked the drop links etc all attached...winning.
I failed to check if the anti roll bar was attached end to end..
*Sad trombone*
So currently the only original suspension components on the front of that car will be wishbones.
I feel a word about speed bump aggression strategy may be in order...
Especially with 5 star petrol @ the equivalent of 22 pence per gallon(4.54 litres ) and beer around 10 pence per pint .
To rub it in a bag of chips yesterday cost me £3.20, back then I could buy the same for 4 pence old money (240 pence to the pound!). My first house mortgage was £9500 for a 2 up and 2 down farm labourers cottage, one of my daughters did an Air B&B in a similar size house for 5 days and the cost was the same as 10% I paid on the deposit for that first house.
Re the music I still love 50s, 60, and 70s.
That's the trouble with "old timers disease" , you can remember what you did 50 years ago, now where did I park my car.
The music was great, wages to prices were better than today. Muscle cars. Great movies. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, brought a lot of new tech to the world. Do not think I'd want to go back to dial phones, antenna tv, or need Radio Free Europe. It wasn't all puppies and Unicorn Farts, tho.
On my side of the pond were race riots, the Cuban missile crisis which scared the crap out of this 6 year old kid, Vietnam, the Democratic Convention riot in Chicago; actually a police riot, smog, Cuyahoga River burned, Ralph Nader, Richard Nixon, King and Kennedy assassinations, Charles Manson, Richard Speck, Apollo 1.
The 60s weren't all bad, but the 60s weren't all good, either.
On my side of the pond were race riots, the Cuban missile crisis which scared the crap out of this 6 year old kid, Vietnam, the Democratic Convention riot in Chicago; actually a police riot, smog, Cuyahoga River burned, Ralph Nader, Richard Nixon, King and Kennedy assassinations, Charles Manson, Richard Speck, Apollo 1.
The 60s weren't all bad, but the 60s weren't all good, either.
but what was your weekly wage? while things were cheap by comparison, wages were low as well.Especially with 5 star petrol @ the equivalent of 22 pence per gallon(4.54 litres ) and beer around 10 pence per pint .
To rub it in a bag of chips yesterday cost me £3.20, back then I could buy the same for 4 pence old money (240 pence to the pound!). My first house mortgage was £9500 for a 2 up and 2 down farm labourers cottage, one of my daughters did an Air B&B in a similar size house for 5 days and the cost was the same as 10% I paid on the deposit for that first house.
Re the music I still love 50s, 60, and 70s.
That's the trouble with "old timers disease" , you can remember what you did 50 years ago, now where did I park my car.
The population around the world has exploded since then and so demand for everything is so much higher.
I bought my first house (flat) in 2001, that was £48k. When buying this house last year, the deposit alone would have bought my entire first flat without a mortgage, and in 2001 everyone was saying houses were expensive, even with a very low mortgage by modern standards i still didn't have any money at the end of the month.
I worked in electronics in the early 2000s and we had a lot of polish workers to do the manufacturing work, many of them came over and couldn't afford to live here unless they lived in shared houses, of 3 or 4 couples living in one house.
The problem with looking back in time is the tendency to only see things through rose coloured spectacles.
The Panda Nut
Nutty about Pandas Infected by Panda virus and OPD
Don't know, cant remember.Especially with 5 star petrol @ the equivalent of 22 pence per gallon(4.54 litres ) and beer around 10 pence per pint .
To rub it in a bag of chips yesterday cost me £3.20, back then I could buy the same for 4 pence old money (240 pence to the pound!). My first house mortgage was £9500 for a 2 up and 2 down farm labourers cottage, one of my daughters did an Air B&B in a similar size house for 5 days and the cost was the same as 10% I paid on the deposit for that first house.
Re the music I still love 50s, 60, and 70s.
That's the trouble with "old timers disease" , you can remember what you did 50 years ago, now where did I park my car.
The Panda Nut
Nutty about Pandas Infected by Panda virus and OPD
My first house bought 1979 cost £19750, Panda bought in 2019 was £12,400 it sor of says a lot.
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I was surprised to find out that Little Britain was pulled from streaming services in recent years!
We used to watch that as a family in the early 2000s - didn't turn any of us into monsters
I thought my generation was bad enough (late 20s currently) but the younger ones (the TikTok generation) have somehow managed to build on it...
The problem tends to be owners are F*****g Berks unfortunately as are many of the garages that work on them...up to and including main agents (who have been known to put incompatible oil in them..oh and some certain large car chains have been known to attempt to get independent specialists to just switch the oil light off so they can sell the car!!).
98% of the issues seen are on cars that have had skipped maintenance the other 2% are unlucky but some cars break as we all know.
The problem being the 2% tend to get lumped in with the 98%. I've said previously but friends with the bloke who looks after puretech things for UK Citroën owners club and you do get people who have done everything right and the thing has gone wrong. They tend to be massively outnumbered by people who battered the car into the ground then did a quick Google search when they realise that ignoring the oil light for a week is going to cost them a new engine and then go online and blame the car..even though the car was 3 years over belt change interval and hadn't been serviced for 4 years. People literally message him ask if they should change the belt on 2014 car, he says yes it's well overdue and you'll have the MK1 belt that comes to bits and blocks the oil pump and they'll say "nah maybe next year".
Given they have a reputation for being made of glass it's quite incredible the things people get away with...for example someone drove one to a garage for a timing belt change...with a timing belt missing teeth (11 year old car so only 5 years over the change interval) and got away with a new belt and oil pickup clear out.
Basically PSA designed an engine to kick the majority of their customer base who think an MOT and service are the same thing in the balls...Epic. Then to compound that they put them in Vauxhalls...which are also known for the scrupulous maintenance habits of the owners.
However would I buy my car second hand with unknown history?....No. I trust ours because it's been done and done right and also I've got all the documents to claim under the 10 year warranty if I need to. I'd not trust a random one on a used lot because you just don't know and maintenance is very important.
Trying to find a modern car without any gotchas is like trying to find a needle in a haystack with no needles in it. I was looking at VW 1.5s but I've restricted my search to 1.4s as the 1.5 has a longer list of common faults than the Puretech despite being on the market half as long. I could get a Toyota...but just no
It’s on Dave, that’s tv and another of the freeview channels alternatively all the time
I think the real reason stuff disappears is because they can make more money
Folk my age were petrified of Dr Who in
Folk my age were petrified of Dr Who in the 60’s & 70’s
Didn't know that! Makes me a bit happier to know that it's still on air though. Perhaps it being pulled from 'streaming services' is more to appease the generation that is more likely to be watching it there.. The same people who need the trigger warning on @vexorg 's post #5,315 above.
Don’t think appeasement is their mantra, money is…the offerings are also on sky/virgin/BT so, as well as freeview, you get to see everything anywhere
