Be Excellent To Each Other

She was caught out by the driver in front braking early, got her rear wheels ripped off in contact with him, and was a passenger from then on.

17 and driving in F3! Nice.

Well, not so much right now.

Thank you.

Fun while it lasted.

Probably wasn’t much fun immediately before it stopped.

Cam sensors replaced... .. and she is running sweet as a nut! Early days, but I had no lumpiness or hesitation at all on the way home.

Ended up only doing the camshaft sensors in the end, as the chinese special solenoids I picked up on the cheap were cheap for a reason, 2mm too big to fit. I'll send them back with a strongly worded email. £60 they cost me! The man cleaned up the old ones and refitted them, but he said they looked in good condition and there was no gunk on the gauze, which is nice. The camshaft sensors were the originals from new, so there is a chance they had gone bad, but like I say, still too early to say really.
Also fitted the headlight position sensor that came with the car, so that's that sorted too, so currently she has no jobs outstanding as far as I can tell.

If the lumpy idle re-appears, the man told me to just remove the connector for the vanos if that happens, and it'll bypass the vanos, and "cure" the issue. I'll be a bit down on power (but I think a 4.4l V8 can handle that) and have the engine management warning light on, but he has people who run with it disconnected for years with no issue. Nice to have a backup plan in place at least.


The 5 series I just dumped back on ebay as spares or repair as no matter what I tried I couldn't get the fucker to start. £375 I got for it in the end, and it was picked up at 6:45am Saturday morning by three Romanians who didn't speak a word of english, so that was an experience.

Ah fuck, I was going to say that I'd have that if the other guy didn't take it. But I didn't.

You snooze you lose, and as we all know... losers can't be choosers!

£800 for broken coil springs and replacement handbrake parts

Dang! How much do working ones cost?

Uphill dogging wrecks cars.

My 520i buyer is complaining to me on ebay. Apparently the V5 shows more than 1 previous owner. I said in the advert that I recently bought the car and it was a 1 previous owner car. That makes 2, no? According to dude it should have 1 on the V5.
Also, replacing the air flow meter hasn't fixed the non-starting issue. <shrug> I sold it as non running and said it was possibly the air flow meter.

Luckily he paid via bank transfer, not paypal!

A car should still start and run without a MAF sensor even fitted, it will just run like dog poo. Usually when a modern car won't start it's the TPS, fuel pump or injectors. Unless it's not getting spark, which is usually the coil pack.

Either way you sold it as non running, so he should take that into account.

Just reply with:

"£375. 520i. Spares and repair."

This thread is kinda related to driving games, right?

While I was playing Forza Horizon 4 last weekend, it occurred to me that one element of it fucking sucks, and it's something common to a lot of racing/driving games - but particularly annoying in FH4.

Cars with automatic transmission will always shift up at the redline.

"It's a racing game, surely that's the point?" I hear you cry?

Well, yes, I suppose. And I totally get that. But, increasingly we're seeing driving games that are placed in incredibly realistic worlds that deserve to be explored and scrutinised. FH4 and GTA5 in particular - and it's kinda difficult to really take in the scenery when you're barrelling down the road at 200mph.

"So, drive slower."

Yes, I could - and do. But because the auto boxes always shift up at the redline, you just end up driving along at 30 mph checking out the serenity of the world around you while your engine screams blue murder because you're near the redline.

"Use manual transmission!"

This is an option, but necessitates additional buttonpresses that force me to think about what I'm doing with the car rather than just checking out the world around me.

"So what do you want?"

A realistic autobox that goes up/down through the gears as a normal car would, but with some sort of "racing" mode that triggers when you're accelerating hard and not just cruising, or when you're actually in a race rather than just the open-world part of it.

I don't think that's too much to ask, but I don't know of any games that do it.

That's an incredibly niche complaint I'd say.

Just use manual gears, you soon stop even thinking about it.

Turn the sound down and put some music on so you don't hear the sound of the virtual engine revving its virtual nuts off?

Get a PC and mod the games into a 'walking round a race track' simulator.

Actually, using VR, a 'walk/move/float round exploring places' could be a nice relaxing pastime.

Google Earth VR exists and is awesome

Can you control it with a steering wheel and pedals though?

(it does sound cool though)

Look at this bad boy! RHD Chevy Suburban!

https://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C1061110

Want me to drop you off when you collect it?

I used to drive a Suburban. It belonged to my father in law. Big old 7l V8 that did about 7 miles to the gallon.

God it was beautiful though. Was like sinking into an arm chair and wafting along in sheer comfort. I actually used it to move with, twice. Only took two runs to move my entire flat (with all ex wife's crap).

Then in later years it was retired to taking the rubbish to the dump. We had no garbage collection and the 5.7l F150 died.

I'm in the area of this dealer on Thursday morning so am going to pop over and take a look at this.

It's the top-spec Portfolio model including the Bowers and Wilkins audio which is supposed to be one of the most amazeballs audio systems ever, so my trance would sound extra fantastic.

Unfortunately it's not the 'S' so has 240bhp instead of 275bhp.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the ST whatsoever and I really like it, but looking doesn't hurt.

I shall look forward to seeing you driving that in a week or so.

Bold day to pick up a new car

If they're a second hand dealer then literally nothing they do is bespoke.

You know it's a diesel, right?

You can pretend to be Theresa May.

It's the fuel of the future! (Ed, please check.)

Looking at Autotrader it does seem to be a bit on the pricey side, even taking into account the low miles.

It is the facelift though and seems to be very nicely equipped (although the Portfolio pretty much comes with everything anyway).

I'm a bit narked it's not the 'S' though.

Looking costs nothing!

Buying costs everything.

Statistically, for you, this is devastatingly untrue.

Needs an XJ for that...

Looking costs 50p

It's got to be a higher than 50% purchase rate, hasn't it?

You've not seen the rest of his get up, it's close enough.

Reading around and watching a few reviews, it seems to be a pretty well regarded car, albeit with a handful of gremlins to keep an eye out for. Recommendations are to take it out for a good test drive and check that every single gadget and gizmo is working as it should.

By all accounts it was pretty well sorted by the facelift year (2011), and this is a 2012 model.

If anything I'm slightly concerned by the very low miles, it's six and a half years old and has only done 24,000 miles, so I'd be wanting to see service history showing an annual service and not 'every 10,000 miles' or some crap like that.

The guy at the dealer I'm seeing is actually the brother of a friend and colleague, so I'm hoping he wouldn't sell me a lemon. Plus the company themselves have been around for yonks on the IOM and have a pretty good reputation (which really is make or break in a small place like this).

The price is on the high side though, so I'll be wanting a chunk off the sticker price or a generous trade-in for the ST. If I go for it of course which could definitely not happen. I think Zoidberg is correct that my hit rate is about 50% for cars I actually take the time to go and see and take out for a drive.

Why do you worry about a service. It is not as if you own a car for 12 months any way.

Are they the ones that are basically a Mondeo in a dress?

That was the X Type wasn't it?

Ah, yes.

Though this appears to share a platform with some other larger Fords

Fuck that diesel bullshit, you want an XF-R. It’s an amazing car.

It's an X-it she wants though

The fuel economy would depress me too much, plus you can't get one of them of that year with similar mileage for anything like £16K.

Also, I'm getting quite old now, my hooligan days are rather behind me now, I think.

I do occasionally give the ST a proper blast but a lot of the time I just turn my music up and cruise.

You keep saying this then get bored of a boring car and buy a silly one again.

Oh Hearthly...