J.R.

Are you claiming through your own fully comp insurance policy or from the Third Parties insurer as you have TPO or TPF&T cover? I would say it is 100% going to be judged an uneconomic repair. Sorry I did not see that you were from Belgium, not sure how an insurance claim works there but the judgement of an uneconomic repair will not chnage even if they work to different percentages.

Do you get subsiised postal rates from the UK to the Falkland Islands perhaps like the BFPO?

Doesn't anyone these days know what the silver foil in a fag packet is for? 😆 The silver foil that probably has been removed since I gave up smoking 42 years ago!

Sounds like a great plan, I did something similar with a scrap Nissan Prairie in New Zealand when travelling .

He gave you a diagram idetifying the function all the hoses from the filter housing which is exactly what you asked for, they can be removed using many different hand tools, a pair of pliers being the most likely to be owned by anybody. This is a forum for helping others, people using the search function usually find what they need without having to create a thread, with that in mind could you see your way to explaining why you believe that you needed specific (coupling) parts to pump fuel from an open ended pipe and what your different method was please?

Isn't it FWD and not 4WD?

Hard to see from the photos but the tread grrove depths do actually look even. You said you needed a larger family car, at 5.2m long your offspring are not Elephants are they? That would sure wear the tyres unevenly 😄

Mine too! made back in 1977 when I was an apprentice, the cables are doubled up on each one, crappy looking Croc clips though as back then you only had the choice of what you could buy locally or liberate from work. They have never failed to pass the current though so looks can be decieving, back then things were made to work and not just look like they will.

Do you know something we dont? Is 1982 going to play out again?

What changes are you hoping to make? VCDS has a "long coding helper" which deciphers which parts of the string relate to each bite, you can select them and it will tell you what the options are before making the change if you choose any of them. Even using that its always a worry that it may corrupt the code but you can easily revert back to the original settings, I would not be confident to edit the long coding using your reader using info gained from the net which may not be correct for your instrument controller.

Squirt oil down the bore before the compression test, if the compression comes back up close to the others you do indeed have piston/bore/ring wear problems and in that case an engine swop would probably be favorable. If compression still low then it will be a valve, cylinder head gasket or a cracked head, it will cost nothing but time to strip down to find which of the above, probably the exhaust valve, only you will know if you are confident and tooled up enough at this stage to do so. Sep and Pete make equally valid points for stripdown or replacing the engine, it will depend on your ability, confidence and available equipment, if you are intendin paying someone to do the job for you neither option is likely to be viable given the age and value of the vehicle.

If you mean that you dont have the kit to disconnect the hose from the filter now that they have all been identified for you then you should remove the fuel tank sender unit and siphon from there, its a bayonet fitting, no tools required.

You have indeed, maybe he wants you to do it for him, can you get down to Kent before Monday?

11.95 is fine given that the OP has simply opened the bonnet and measured it without going through the tedious routine of foooling the ECU that the car is still closed and locked after 20 minutes, the Can gateway and several controllers will still be active dropping the voltage to below 12v. The magnitude of the current can be judged by the massive spark you get when you first connect the battery terminals. The OP should be checking the battery terminals, earth lead and starter connections as it sounds like there is excessive volt drop to the ECU and Can controllers on start up.

Correct, it will open the door but set the alarm off and not start the vehicle, alarm can only be silenced by the correct immobiliser chipped key. For full security then a VAG garage, for the cheapest option an E-bay seller within driving distance from you.

Not really as its simply a clone of the remaining key, the missing key(s) if its in the wrong hands can still be used to start the vehicle, paying the full on VAG price, not much more than the Timpsons rip off will render the missing keys unable to start the vehicle. I paid £40 for a key cloned and cut to my existing one, guy on ebay.

Be aware that many of the thicker ones (always marked heavy duty like all batteries!) are simply very impressive looking clamps but with tiny sometimes not even copper conductors covered in far thicker insulation than is needed, the clamps will be moulded in such a way that you cannot see the conductor termination.

You mzy hzve already done, in which case its me who should apologise, my vision has been very bad so I could have missed it, somewhat better now I'm pleased to say, almost normal typo service is resumed!

Like looking for a needle in a haystack I would have thought. You really have got to stop trotting out this nonsense.

As negotiations had stalled on their part I advised them that I was going to have the vehicle removed to a storage facility, it was always my vehicle, never theirs, that is the point I have been trying to make, the minute you submit a claim they act as if your vehicle is theirs they will remove it by forceable means and even dispose of it without your knowledge if you let them get their hands on it.

No, you do not "buy your car back" from them after they have paid out a settlement figure, only way you could do that is to bid for it at the Copart auction. You agree a reduced settlement figure for you retaining the salvage, this of course is done prior to accepting their payout. The OP still has not answered the question asked of him, has he accepted their payout figure and possibly the money?

I simply cut through a part of the dust cover that is not exposed through to the centre hole and then twist/distort it to get it on behind the hub and twist it back into shape, the fixing bolts hold it together without a gap. Its kind of the reverse of chewing off the old one but with a bit more care taken.

This is not a dig at you because that is the exact language they use, think about it for a second and realise just how ridiculous the words are. Its like a garage towing your car in after a breakdown, saying it will cost too much to repair it but you can buy it back from them 😆 They really do act as though it is now their vehicle hence my frequent bold & underlined quotes. I do agree though, a payout reduced by a "retention of salvage" figure could well be workable in this instance, the trouble being that now the disrupteur Copart and their salvage auctions have changed the game the salvage figures that the insurers get back are frequently much higher than the historic fixed rate agreements I quoted that they used to have with the salvage yards, the vehicles are being bought and frequently going to Eastern Europe to be repaired & resold over here or broken for parts or the identities used to ring vehicles. Pretty much every vehicle I have bought for the last 35 years has been a write off salvage, I repaired them all and used them which includes my current vehicle. Some of these were even sunbsequently written off again by Third Parties and I bought the salvage for a second time from my own insurers and did it all again, it was when I was knocked back from a genuine claim for loss of business when injured that I learned the hard way about going to A&E simply to protect myself, that was huge rear end shunt, I should really have been taken away by ambulance but I was not going to let my vehicle be taken away by the breakdown truck to anywhere but my own property and was prepared to remain behind the wheel if need be to make sure it happened, proof enough really that I was concussed!!!

What is probably happening but kept quiet about is the very frequent use of a "knock for knock" agreement between the insurers where they each pay their own insureds losses and have no administration or even legal costs getting the other side to accept the figure and pay in a timely manner. This happens all the time when the only claim is for damage to the vehicles and it falls within the parameters, broadly speaking most of these claims will be worth between £2-20K (my guess only) less the 40% they will get back on the salvage, small beer when compared to if there was corporal injury or damage to private/public property. I bet one of the first questions asked of you when you phoned your insures was do you or any passengers have any injuries? Had you answered yes gone to A&E within 24 hours & said "my neck is a bit sore" and been checked & discharged with a couple of aspirins I guarantee there would be no knock for knock and as the TP had admitted liability it would have been the TP's insurers that would have found a way of contacting you and be treating you like royalty, why? - to limit their potential exposure, let us organise a hire car for you, let us organise medical examinations for you (they are really forcefull on that one) let us expedite your repairs or payout ASAP and we wont be trying to knock you back on the value, we absolutely do not want you to become adversarial. Which is the absolute opposite of what your insurer is doing or what the TP's insurer would be doing to them had you admitted liability. You chose a good thread title!

I forgot to say, now they have posession of your vehicle they will use it against you, when you try to negotiate they will say that their offer is final and if you dont accept within X days you will have to pay daily storage fees for your vehicle, I have done the opposite and charged them when I kept hold of the vehicle, a revised settlement value was quick to appear. The answer to your question in the thread title is YES! and is why I only ever have the minimum cover required by law, if I crash my car then I pay for a new one, if its the fault of the 3rd Party then I claim from their insurers using a solicitor and always come out on top.