J.R.

Brake fluid is lighter than water. I had a Galaxy that I bought as a fire damage insurance write off and rebuilt with a new wiring loom, dashboard etc etc. The brakes would fade and once towing a racecar & trailer down Detling Hill i lost the pedal completely, fluid in reservoir tested OK but rusty water bled from the front calipers, I concluded incorrectly as it would turn out that the fire brigade had put their high pressure hose on the underbonnet fire and it had pushed water past the very loose fitting level switch built into the reservoir cap. The master cylinder was fecked as well and full of rust & watery fluid. Later on Ford did a recall replacing the master cylinder cap & master cylinder as water running down from the scuttle was entering the brake system, I tried to get them to pay me for the master cylinder that i had replaced, they took all my details but only to get enough info to revoke my claim the barstewards Then the concentric clutch cylinder failed, again through water contamination, it shared the same fluid, by this time I had made friends with the chief mechanic at Stormont Ford as was through the rebuild, he took the vehicle in and processsed a recall warranty claim, they replaced the master cylinder a second time and the clutch cylinder, when I refused to give them permission to fit a new clutch at my expense (the old 75% worn trick!!) he deemed it was collateral damage caused by fluid contamination and replaced that as well, so eventually Ford got their comeuppance.

The big flash is completely normal and due to all the capacitors in the various control modules charging at once, frightening to see but completely normal. It soons drops down to 800ma which is once again completely normal, if the doors are not opened, ignition not switched on etc then gradually all the systems will shut down, you might have 150ma after 30 minutes and more likely 30ma after an hour or whatever, the timings and currents vary on different platforms and according to what control modules are fitted. You will not however be able to see or measure these current draws unless you have fooled the vehicle that the doors and bonnet are closed, if either are open the canbus network will remain active with several modules switched on ready for action which is likely the 800ma that you are recording. Does your vehicle have a towbar with a universal relay for the 7 pin socket?

"The Fiesta is Britain’s best-selling car ever having shifted nearly five million units over its 46-year lifespan so far. " Working from my memories of when new cars were of interest to me the above sounded wrong, it turns out it was released in Europe in 1976 and the UK in 1977, I don't reckon there were many on the road until 1978 onwards. A great vehicle but like all series vehicles it has grown to become a lardy caricature of its former self losing most of its attributes along the way. I think back in those days the Nova was the real groundbreaker/gamechanger. The Micra also.

You might also be able to move it some way by using a 70mm ratchet strap over the top of the hinge plate with the other end attached somewhere in line with where the pulling force needs to be, with luck one of the rear seat belt mounting points. If it moves it wont go all the way as there will be springback, you will need to once again wedge the tailgate open and pull again to get the final tweak. I have a chain pullling ram for my Porta-power which would fix it. Editted, forget all of the above, its the tailgate that needs pulling down relative to the hinge, i am not thinking straight & pretty soon wont be able to use Covid for an excuse

If you remove both hinges and compare them i'm fairly certain that you will find the hinge has not distorted, they are a massive solid section, far more rigid than the sheet metal structure of the mountings. The roof line looks OK, I reckon the distortion is within the tailgate, in fact I think I can just about see it in the photo of the inside LH hinge mounting. I would remove the tailgate and lay it on a mattress, I would make up an 18" long steel plate of minimum 3mm thickness x hinge width, drill the fixig holes & bolt it on, then holding the free end with a thick padded glove give the hinge end the good news with a club hammer whilst praying that the tailgate glass does not crack.

It is not a flimsy sheet of mild steel, from memory it is between 10g and 8g, almost plate, just think about what you are asking, when the 3 or 4mm section is within the knuckle and with the bolt through the H8 clearance hole what would they be hitting with a hammer or crowbar and how could it move a hole within the material by a distance that you believe it to have moved? If you are unhappy with what you see then remove both struts from both steering knuckles and compare them, wo knows you might find for some unimaginable reason that when the odd strut was fitted all those years ago it was the wrong one and they had to drill or elongate a hole to get it to fit, my money is that it is simply different to the OE one as shown by the previous photographs. You could also take some measurements from the strut top mounting shoulder to the knuckle fixing hole on both struts. In any case, at the risk of repeating myself whether one strut has the vehicle 1cm (for the sake of exaggeration) higher or lower from one side to the other is not going to put out your steering geometry by any measurable amount and will not create a steering pull, your suspension would oscillate more than that amount side to side even if you were driving over a frozen lake. I hope your independant mechanic gets to the bottom of the problem(s) without relieving your wallet too much further.

That is exactly what I said if you read it, I also dont agree with your conclusion regarding the heights, I have done this job many times, a strut could only be replaced higher or lower than its previous position by the clearance between the bolt and the hole in the locating bracket, a couple of mms at most. One strut is not the same as the other, you will probably find the original VAG sticker on the original one. No, its the plate welded to the strut with the hole for the pinch bolt, its job is to ensure the strut can only go into the steering knuckle in the correct alignment and to the correct depth of engagement, if it were buckled it would need straigtening before it could slide in. Far from it, in fact its close to a miracle that a VAG car of your vintage has never suffered a coil spring failure before now, every one I have had has broken a front coil at some time and the ones I replaced them with will in their turn break, its a very common known fault and someone recently posted a technical article about it explaining the true origin of the stress cracking. Did you ask? I always am under the ramp with the tester on my CT inspections, you would not get an advisory of an impending spring failure, they are either intact or they break, very suddenly and very violently often when the car is at rest, I have never heard or been aware of any of my spring failures other than noticing the changed stance of the vehicle. Then get it attended to, by an independant mechanic if you no longer have faith in the garage. I understand that you are upset after having used a garage for the first time but it sounds like you already know all the reasons why not to, don't allow your imagination to create implausible events like ball joints, bushes and bearings running out, just get the steering pull attended to, my advice would be to have someone establish both front and rear axle alignments relative to the vehicle thrust line, don't use someone for 4 wheel alignment unless they really know what they are doing, it's easy to do yourself with a laser spirit level, some bungee cords and a paper template sticking out from the B post with the door closed. It is always a mistake having a car MOT'd by a garage that does repairs or that you use for repairs, several local authorities run MOT centres that don't do repairs, my friend in the UK has run an MOT centre for decades and never ever done any repairs, thats his USP. In France you can be a CT testing centre or a garage but not both.

It won't be fair and factual if you do not report the faults to them and see what action they are willing to take and what comments they have to offer. I say again you will not find a bigger critic of the motor trade in general than myself but I do feel its important to point out that many of your conclusions are a figment of your imagination.

80km/h would do 30000 kms in 375 hours not 3000, that is why I chose city traffic. Regardless we agree that engine running hours is a lot more sensible, I have a very old Kubota micro-tractor which were it a vehicle looks like it has done several million miles without any maintenance, the engine hour counter only shows 3486 hours, its quite clever though as any cold start using the glowplugs increases the count in front of your eyes, the longer you engage the glowplugs the higher it counts.

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Nobody has posted anything to suggest that, you are being overdramatic, that is not going to help you resolve the problem through the garage.

I do not believe your strut is fitted too high, to me it looks to be a different type of strut, probably aftermarket, maybe the vehicle had warranty or accident repairs, in any case unless someone drilled a new locating hole or cut off part of the locating tab it is impossible to fit the strut in anything other than its correct position, even were they to have done so it would not affect your tracking in any measurable way, your vehicle would sit a few mms higher on that corner not that any road is as flat as a billiard table, it would certainly have sat a lot lower with a broken coil spring end. I am one of the biggest critics of garages but you do seem to be taking this a little out of proportion and finding faults the "idiot mechanic" has made that are not there and which are distracting you from the important task of finding why your vehicle is pulling to one side.

3000 hours of engine running time he has equated to 30000kms for a vehicle that would not be equipped with an engine hour meter, not an unreasonable proposition for a modern vehicle in city traffic. Given the ECU records how many hours the engine has run for it would be far better to schedule timing belt changes on that than miles/kms.

That is normal I had to conclude after spending hours trying to clip mine onto the new suspension struts. I think they are just intended to cover the strut against dust etc during the normal range of suspension travel and to lift off when the vehicle is jacked up and suspension on full droop. Would they for any reason have dropped or loosened the crossmember? I cant think why but if that is replaced misaligned from the correct position (there is a huge clearance around the bolts) your vehicle will steer and behave in exactly the manner you describe. When I refitted mine after a clutch change I thought I had realigned the clamping washers with the road dirt marks but got it slightly wrong, the steering wheel was correctly aligned at standstill and central to the rack travel, wheels parallel & facing forward but actually not parallel to the rear axle and at 90° to the thrust line of the vehicle, I had to drive with constant anti clockwise pressure on the steering wheel with it at an angle to prevent it driving into the ditch (driving on right in France). I used a laser spirit level to align both front & rear axles as they were both out but the majority was the front after my removing the crossmember.

For me 2003/4 was the zenith, all downhill since then. I really wanted another MK1 Octavia but it was proving impossible to find one good enough with moderate mileage that would see me through another 325K miles, the 2006 MK2 I bought was a bargain but not a patch on the MK1, a completely disconnected drive and full of temperemental electronics, I had to do some major catch up, like 15 years worth! The only fault the MK1 had was being too reliable and hence me no longer keeping my hand and eye in. The Yeti is just more of the same. I remain through familiarity and loyalty, they are still quite good vehicles but I still yearn for an older simpler one, a Roomster is an itch that wont go away. If I change manufacturer it will be to Japanese or Korean but would then rue the price and availability of parts, that is something firmly in Skodas favour, the benefit of a shared VAG platform.

If the nearside strut was dropped relative to the steering knuckle till the hole in the plate lined up with the pinch bolt it would be sticking way out the bottom and hitting the CV joint. Unless there is another hole which we cannot see, it really needs both photos to be taken from the same angle, the better of the two is the second one. Most expedient is to follow Sepulchraves advice. The 6mm height difference would not explain the steering wheel angular position nor the pull to one side. I wonder if they could not break the track rod end ball joint or it was spinning with the nyloc so they unscrewed the track rod from it? The one in the photo does not look like its been touched.

Makes sense.

Darn right, think how successfull and profitable they would be today if they were still making the old rear engine models, not to mention having jokes written about them. They sure have not been the same since VAG took over.

That is the main inertial one, there are seperate side impact ones I believe, I would be looking at the B post around the seat belt mounting. That said what is the "side airbag"? If it means the ones in the A pillars they are deployed on a roll over and I think that is triggered by an angle sensor in the main controller.

He said wheels rusted on and not wheel bolts rusted in place. The former is very likely with the hub location flange rusting within the alloy wheel, the latter is highly unlikely. The way to deal with the former is to slacken the wheel bolts and roll the car forward half a revolution, it usually brakes the bond between wheel & hub.

The fuel sender will be, two of them if you have a 4x4 or version with a saddle tank, I have a feeling that the lift pump might be integral with one of them but may have imagined it.

The insides of you alloy wheels what little of them can be seen in the photos look just fine. Take a look at everyone elses brake discs, yours are no different. Body dismorphia.

It will help lighten your wallet.

Bienvenue au Forum Eric!

Regarding the carbon swarf those of us old enough to recall regularly decoking (I used to do several a week) or rebuilding engines will know from the formation of carbon on the piston crowns that flakes of carbon are constantly detaching and passing through the exhaust as the thickness builds up, you can see them ejected glowing red hot from a straight through exhaust system on dyno runs. Even aluminium swarf that evades removal when helicoiling spark plug threads does not do any noticeable damage.