Auntie_chrissie

That is a quote with a Skoda part, I made sure of that. Just wondering how likely it is that the dealership will agree to do it at that price? I did want to use them as my servicing garage and they have had good press on here.

Garage I used for my old car quoted £290 with proper parts, all in. Is it worth asking the dealership that currently has it if they can/will match that?

Thanks George, I will call my old garage and see what they say!

It's a petrol, less than 5000 miles which makes this all the more frustrating! That's what the RAC guy said - means there's more to take out so they charge you extra labour. :-/

I've been quoted just under £420, all in at a dealership. Apparently it's a top loading one so more labour is required? Unfortunately I am not in a position to learn to do it all myself (nor would I trust that I could on such a fiddly part). I am mostly worried that this will be a recurring issue, knowing my luck. :-/

Thanks - not what I wanted to hear but still helpful! :-) I did have a look & couldn't find much else about stone hits either. I'm just concerned that this could be something that happens again & again, rather than "that was unlucky but I've had the same rad for years now" you know?

I bought a Monte Carlo at the end of July & on Sunday, driving on the motorway, it seems that something hit the radiator & has created a nice little hole that means the whole thing needs to be replaced. I just wanted to ask if this is something that one would expect to happen on a brand new radiator (would you not expect some kind of durability?) or if I am just EXTREMELY unlucky? I drove my old car all over the place, different road surfaces etc & haven't heard of this really happening before. Maybe I'm naive? Any advice/reassurance would be much appreciated as this is obviously not the cheapest of repairs!

Thank you TP. :-)

What I meant by appearance was that I don't care what other people think about my car as much as I do: I'm not going to buy something so that it gives a certain impression, of me, to others. If I were to get one of the flasher versions, which I don't need, that would be what I was doing. And you know that! :-P

As this is about me, I thought I'd weigh in. :-) No kids, no food shopping trips (gets done at lunchtimes) and a short commute to work. Truth be told I do one or two 50 miles+ trips on motorways a week; maybe more with the new wheels. I think, not including my short commute, I probably do another 50 to 75 miles on average to the various places I choose to go. Some weeks I do more, rarely I do less as my friends mostly live far away and the countryside has few cinemas etc. On many of these journeys I have passengers in the back seat, not to mention I'm one of those odd drivers who likes open windows but not necessarily the ones across my face, hence the rear electrics making more and more sense to me. I'm pretty good on tyre pressures, keeping my screenbottle full, making sure my headlights are of use etc - do I really need a monitor/wipers for that if I already do it myself? The RLine is a bit too flash for me. As far as I can tell it's a bit like a GTI and the benefitd would be wasted on me. Appearance isn't the biggest care I have and speedy/sporty type cars are probably a waste of my money, although I do think the Monte Carlo looks badass in black. Red is good but there are sooo many red cars now: it'd be boring or like a Mini and the norm for the model. The rear window in a Polo is wide but a bit shallow which I could live with but the Skoda had better all round visibility, for me at least.