Be Excellent To Each Other

Car's a bit poorly sick and in the garage today. It's not starting very well when the engine is warm e.g. after a short stop somewhere, it just cranks for ages and ages before eventually firing up. Plugged in the ODB thing and it actually showed me something, a faulty air inlet temperature sensor so perhaps it's behaving as though the engine is cold and putting extra fuel through or whatever else it might do differently to make the engine start when it's cold, I've really got no idea, just hope the garage do.

Also the radiator fan has begun vibrating when it goes to full speed, like it's off balance or something. This same garage fitted that not so long back. What's the deal with warranties on replacement parts like that? I think it was about £300 or thereabouts so I'm hoping for some kind of good will gesture or something if it needs replacing again.

Fucknuts! Just crashed my bastard car into a trolley park thingy at B&Q.

Bent the panel in front of the passenger door enough to stop me opening the door. 5 minutes with a pry bar and all is well, but there's some nice scratches and dents there now.

Such a stupid thing to do. I was parked right next to it and it was so low down that I couldn't see the fucker. Just pulled straight out of the parking space, turning left and CRUNCH.

Balls.

Ouch, unlucky!

I did that in an old company car. It was an horrific noise getting onto the barrier but it was even worse reversing off it.

YOu have my sympathies.

I beached my car on a driveway the other day, so don't feel so bad

You're right about the noise. My face must have been a right picture as I genuinely had no idea what had happened.

Beached?

Drove it over a bump that was bigger than the ground clearance and got it stuck. Serves him right for having a silly racing car.

Myp's ride, yesterday.

It was more idiotic than that. It was the kerb that separates my private car park from the house next door's driveway. I was being careless and reversed up onto it, then my wheel dropped down the other side where there's a gap and then gravel. Had to get the AA to assist by building up a ramp so I could reverse back off again.

Sorry to hear that DavPaz. Will you get it repaired? I know you've said your car is only a few hundred pounds (I think), so what do you do in these circumstances?

These kids and their flashy antigravity cars.

It's the right way up for me

Nah. As long as it's functional, I'm not spending unnecessary money on it. The damage isn't too bad...

https://goo.gl/photos/YzcTzswgVPAduPrJ9

Tis but a scratch.

You can barely see it. It's like a little flourish. Gives your car character. A bit wonky, like an actual Picasso.

"Little douche coupe"

Now chop the wing mirror off!

Ouch DavPaz, horrible sound bodywork against concrete.

Covered it in seagull shit and used condoms.

If I were less lazy, I'd take a screens hot, rotate it 180 degrees and post it.

However,lazy.

When I got my first car, within the first week I impaled the side on a sticky out hinge on the gate post as I turned into the drive.

I got out the car and asked a more experienced neighbour to get it off the post for me as I was worried I'd just make it worse.

Baby you're much too fast
Little douche coupe
You need a love that's gonna last

You don't know what I goooot

I'm sure you'll all be relived to hear that my car is now all fixed, seems the temperature sensor was the culprit for both the starting issue and the noisy fan. I could swear it also seems to actually run a lot better now that it's brain knows what temperature it's at.

Phew!

Glad it's sorted. Did they do the fan too?

It was the same problem, the wonky temperature reading meant the fan was spinning up faster than it ever should do under normal circumstances.

So, the door was still sticking. I took off the inside door trim, hammered out the dent from the inside, then bent the wing back into shape with a pry bar. The door now closes properly. Not pretty though. The first 3 clips on the plastic trim piece are awol, so it flaps a bit.

Still need to get a new side indicator bulb and cover, too.

Tickets for this year's Vauxhall VXR Track days go on sale today at 12 noon.
It's £35 for a one hour session driving fast Vauxhalls flat out around either Outlon Park or Thruxton accompanied by an instructor.
https://www.vxrpowerevents.co.uk/

They are fantastic value for money and great fun, even including lunch.
Please resist the temptation to pop it on hot uk deals as they'll sell out in minutes if you do.

EXCITING ROVER NEWS

The last known state of the steteo was it worked but killed the battery. Because of my training g in The Science of Creation Itself the best approach to take is to try another combination of wires that result in the stereo working and then see if the battery drains. So I plugged and unplugged wires until the stereo worked and then left it overnight and lo I had thought for the day thus morning as I drove to work.

Who needs indicators anyway?

This looks superb.

It's outstanding. I've done it twice and am aiming to get tickets for Oulton on the Tuesday morning this time..

Top notch Formula 3 crash here:

https://youtu.be/jP8cwcT7Xq8?t=38s

Ugh. Hope everyone was ok - that was pretty nasty.

From the comments:

'All 3 are alive. the one that flew through the air is the one most hurt. he has multiple whirls in his spine broken and his feet is injured. the guy in the first car is completly fine but the third bruised his knee...'

Merc is back at the dealer again today for the three millionth attempt at getting the Parktronic system fixed.

I wanted to have a bet of 50p with one of my colleagues that it'd be sorted once they'd replaced the latest sensor identified as bad. Unfortunately no one would take the 'Yes it will be fixed' position, including me.

This is their final crack at it before admitting defeat and sending it off to the local franchised Mercedes dealer.

Shit-biscuits!

So now we're at 'the Bluetooth radio in the Dension is interfering with the Parktronic system'.

They replaced the sensor, did a load of testing on the system as a whole, ran their diagnostics on it and used a gizmo that tests the ranging on the sensors, and the conclusion from all of that is that the Parktronic system is behaving in strange random ways and detecting things that don't exist, flagging sensors as bad when they're not, and other such shenanigans - which is why it seems to behave so randomly.

In all fairness the guy had done a fair bit of good old Google research, and had also spoken to someone in the know at Mercedes, he also showed me several forum posts describing exactly the same behaviour with aftermarket Bluetooth systems. (And the timeline for my issues with the Parktronic system follows, it all started to go screwy after the Dension got fitted, but it was sort of masked at the time by the bigger issue of the valve body control unit.)

So it's a bit of a thorny one now, I could get the Dension ripped out but then I've spent over £500 on a box of tricks and useless wires, but I'll have a working Parktronic system. Or I could leave the Dension in, but the Parktronic will never work, which will make moving the car on much harder. (I don't really care about having the Parktronic working as such, but I do care about it working for when the time comes to trade on or sell.)

As I said to the guy at the dealers, I don't want to be left out of pocket on this as the Dension was fitted at the dealer's recommendation as for how to get USB/Bluetooth/iPod into the car.

He is going to speak to the selling dealer himself, and get back to me.....

My first preference would be to get the Dension ripped out and get a full refund on the cost of purchase and installation, but that's never going to happen - so I'll have to wait and see what actually happens.

Knowledge drop me.

It seems I can lease an Octavia from c £250 a month. What do I need to know?

Mate, if a £660 quid 12 year old Rover 25 is on the road more and suffering from fewer problems then get rid (and that includes having to open the bonnet once a day as the battery terminal clamp comes off). A Rover 25 is also quicker than a Civic Type R (although a type r produces 117 more bhp, it's acceleration and top speed is limited by the aerodynamics of the recovery truck it is on).

I guess you know why the previous owner had his taken out. Sucks dude sorry to hear that.

We had our Mini properly cleaned and valeted today. Looks like a new car.

I'd argue that if the Dension has broken the rest of the car it's not fit for purpose and you should be entitled to a refund on it.

Or, leave the dension in for the next two weeks as you will undoubtedly have bought that Audi by then.

Well, for starters it costs £250 a month, which is a lot more than a Rover 25. But 99% of the hassle of owning a car goes away.

I'll see what he comes back with and take it from there, I'm not even sure where I stand legally on any of this now. The car works, the Dension works, they just don't work with each other.....

Part of me is inclined to say fuck it, leave the Parktronic turned off so it doesn't randomly beep and flash banks of LEDs at me (there's a button to turn it off on the console), keep the Dension fully operational, and then keep the car long term rather than short-medium term (medium term for me being 'a bit longer than two years').

Thing is though, if I go down that route I'm knowingly screwing myself over on any future sale/trade, because the Parktronic will never work properly for as long as the Dension is in there, and removing the Dension is a big job. (I guess it'd be a quicker job to remove it than install it, but considering it took two blokes a day to install it, that's not saying much.)

So yes, I'll see what the dealer comes back with, and the course of that conversation will instruct my position going forward.

Park it in a shitty part of town with the keys in. Next day request the replacement one in an odd trim level so you know it'll take time to find so you can drive about in an unbugged car so you can set in motion the plans to take them down. And keep billing those hours.

Wait, it took two blokes a day to install it? Fuck, either Mercedes fibre-optic network system is beyond terrible, or the people who installed it for you haven't got a bloody clue.

For context, I installed the Dension 500S BT that I had in my 6-series in the space of 2.5 hours, including taking off all the trim.

And this is me - someone that usually has to get someone else to change a bulb for me because I can't bend my fingers round the right way.

Well I wasn't there for the installation but it was reported back to me that it'd taken a bloke most of the day and for a chunk of that he'd needed assistance.

As I understand it was far more involved than just removing some trim, and they had to get the dashboard out or something as they couldn't do it all through the centre console. Certainly there were handprints all over the place which suggested there'd been some fairly major moves going on, and a little bit of the trim at the end of the dashboard on the driver's side hasn't quite gone back in properly following its second visit to get the wiring changed - point being it suggests that the whole dash had been moved.

Is there anything I should avoid in the deal? This has come back in as the pushchair thing takes up 2/3rd boot volume when collapsed and s roof rack cannot be used as roofline is 5 foot 6 and MrsA is 5 foot 2. So this has brought it all forward and a solution is needed.