J.R.

@Rooted An old posting but it caught my eye, I hope you dont mind answering a couple of questions. How many years was the lease and how much were your monthly payments? I ask because seeing the figures that you have already posted it looks like quite a profitable deal for them but it all depends on how much they were paid during the contract. Second question, and I don't mind if you dont answer this, were the payments within the amount of disability/mobility allowance that you recieve? Do you have to lease a vehicle with the allowance or can you be paid it to fund your own transport and are there conditions that must be met ? Knowing that you are a wheeler dealer I'm sure you would have taken that option were it to be profitable to you, but us mere mortals cannot buy new cars at that sort of discount.

In France it is the vehicle that is insured not the driver, many people keep their old vehicle for trips to the dump etc and as a family spare car when they buy a new one, the fixed costs, insurance, road tax (already paid when registered) and MOT are very cheap so it does not cost a lot but there is also another very big advantage, the Bonus (NCB). It is earned on each vehicle insured, you buy a newish Passat and get your maximum NCB earned on the old Fiesta which also retains it, if you have a fault accident in the Passat then the NCB will drop on that policy but not on the other, say you later want to buy something even more exotic with a higher insurance group, easy, sell the Fiesta and reinsure the new vehicle with your maximum NCB and keep the Passat as the spare. You could also sell or scrap the Passat, keep the Fiesta and use the relève d'informations (NCB statement) from that to insure the new vehicle with full NCB.

You have experienced a rumble noise from the front wheel when turning left caused by an unbalanced propshaft? Was it a garage that told you that by any chance?

Yeah right! That is cheating 😁 and you wont be honing your reflexes! But you can say hand on heart that your car has never forgotten to turn on the lights 👍

@varaderoguy Pray tell, how do you arrive at that conclusion to a rumble sound from a front wheel when turning left between 10 and 70 km/h?

I followed a vehicle in dark murky urban conditions last night, no rear lights or number plate lights but I could make out some illumination of the road in front of them, the car was too newish to likely have 3 blown bulbs (a frequent occurrence here) so the DRL's is the likely answer and why he was not flashed by oncoming traffic. Why do you consider these drivers you see have made a conscious decision to turn off their headlights because they believe DRL's are sufficient rather than that they have simply forgotten to turn on their headlights? Have you never forgotten to do so yourself? I doubt that, it happens when you are already in a well lit area when setting off, pre DRL's as soon as you got to a non lit area you became aware as you could not see, DRL's prevent you from realising that. Of course there are others, around here usually the drunks who dont realise, in those cases at night DRL's are a real safety measure, there is far more danger to oncoming traffic and pedestrians than vehicles following who have very little speed differential, all vehicles have reflectors.

I was told that there was a Tooth Fairy but I dont pass that on as authoritative on social media. Rubber compounds on pre 90's vehicles did perish gradually but when was the last time in 30 years that you have replaced all the radiator and heater hoses, door and window seals etc or even considered doing so as a preventative measure? However buy any re manufactured rubber component for a classic car and if it hasn't already self composted by the time you get around to fitting it it soon will. Thz factory fitted (not OE, nor OEM they are not necessarily the same thing) cambelt, tensioner, pulley bearings, water-pump etc are the best ones your vehicle will ever see and will likely have had a far longer life than anything you consider replacing them with. Regular inspection and common sense is the best approach.

I have actually been dazzled by the reflection from an LED light off the number plate, not only was it bright enough to cause discomfort but it was a white reflected light which is illegal, I thought initially that the shroud was missing but no, it was so stupidly bright that it was reflecting rearwards. Not quite as stupid as the muppet that had fitted it. Its high time the Vehicle C&U regulations were amended so that light output is stated in lumens and not watts, its pointless in this day and age to say that a rear number plate light must be no more than 5 watts or headlights 55 watts etc, all of them can be blinding with LED bulbs at a fraction of those currents.

That is sort of what I meant, the software for motorways might have the same settings as for continental autoroutes.

Could it be a LHD/RHD set up thing or maybe a software error? It does sound like it is set up for driving on the right.

The standard ones have a flat on the threaded portion if my memory serves me correctly. The fronts need a long allen key or preferably a long 3/8 drive hex adaptor, cant think of the proper name. It could be that the rears are like that and my memory has failed me. I bought a really good pair of vice grips designed for holding round shafts, they grip really well stopping any rotation without damaging the piston rod, worth having. They are the genuine American Vice Grips.

I thank you for that, its a real problem for me, the central barrier does indeed stop the headlights of many oncoming vehicles from reacting. Does your vehicle know that you are on a motorway? I had someone travelling behind me on an otherwise empty French autoroute, they were quite a way back and when they got say 300m behind they were putting on their main beam which was blinding me in my mirror, I had not twigged that they had matrix lights, I did not even know at that time they existed. Each time I would put on my rear foglight and they would immediately dip their headlights, you can probably see where this is going, I did not realise it was the car automatically reacting to my rear lights and rear fog lights, I should have realised their reactions were just too quick. Anyway after several repetitions of what I thought was their game I slowed down and let them pass the drove behind them for miles on full beam, I felt remorse when I eventually worked out what had happened beyond a certain distance their sensor was not seeing and reacting to my rear lights but was when I put on the rear fog light.

You cant avoid it unless the TP pays you cash because he also wants to avoid making a claim, even if you dont tell them they will know from the shared information, your NCB will decrease because there is a "claim pending", you should get it reinstated once you or they have made full recovery but what they do in practice is just to ramp up your base premium anyway as many others have found. I have walked away from minor damage caused by others if they have also been so minded, it really is not worth the hit to the premium in future years, when you start thinking like that then its just not worth having fully comp insurance which I have not had now for over 15 years.

You mean contact between opposing sides of the void? Gab I am assuming was a typo for gap.

Sounds like the normal PD bucket of bolts engine noise to me. To be fair after listening to scores of mobile phone recordings of TDi engines posted over the years they all sound like a cacophony of rattles and whilst no doubt each one is making a new and disturbing to the owner noise it never stands out from the general din.

Many companies proactively contact (harass) TP claimants to use their own accident management services in order to reduce their costs, they will try to seduce you with offers of a courtesy car, quick turn around repairs etc, just remember they are acting in their interests not yours. Your own insurers if they know the TP has admitted liability will do the same and be encouraging you to consider medical injuries advising you to use their expert doctors for a check up "just in case", that should be fun considering both vehicles were unoccupied, once again they are acting in their interests and not yours. IF there is even the slightest possibility that your vehicle might be written off do not let anyone acting for either insurer take it away, the more they pressurise you to do so the more you must resist. I would sit back for a little while and see if the other insurer contacts you and what they propose before informing yours.

Rubber to metal bonded bushes absolutely do not ever require lubrication, that is their raison d'être. Now I know that the dealers slather them in grease rather than replace them when they create metal to metal contact and there is even a TPI for this but it does not make it anything other than a complete bodge to cover up incorrect suspension design that allows metal to metal contact under articulation and load in certain temperature conditions. Economically there is not much else they could have done but that does not make it correct. Poly bushes have some advantages on a track car but are not self lubricating no matter what the sellers claim and as vehicle suspension pivots have not had grease nipples for over 50 years now they are a retrograde step and inferior to anything produced in the last 100 years

I have only ever used Autodoc ones or from one of the other myriad companies under the same umbrella, I have never oaid more than €9 for them. As for durability, pattern part manufacturers do not have the resources to create special self composting steel alloys like the VAG group have so they will last far longer 😁

I can answer that in a purely functional sense, in terms of fullfilling their purpose rather than all the other guff (a bit like a smartphone really!). If you use LHD mirror glasses on a RHD vehicle then the enlarged area for the blind spot (there is a term for it, aspheric perhaps?) will not function for you unless you drive from the passengers seat! I drive a RHD car in France and being blind in one eye was very concerned with the big blind spot when I am joining an autoroute or dual carriageway, a whole articulated lorry can be hidden from view, so I bought an aspheric (if thats the word) mirror glass for the passenger door, they are not made so I had to buy a LHD drivers one but the enlarged zone is in completely the wrong place, it would not be if I were driving from the passenger seat!

That wont happen because unlike my Sony Betamax VCR I have not bought an EV 😁 It was worth the humiliation though, it was the first and only time that I had a bank loan to purchase something, a loan I was still paying back when the VCR was ditched. I must at some time have been abducted by aliens and a different person returned to earth in my body, I cannot identify at all with a muppet so desperate to have the latest must have in his rented housing association bedsit that he took out a bank loan. That caused my contractors liability insurance premium to skyrocket and with exclusions meaning that I could not even use a gas powered pencil soldering irom without employing someone to stand beside me with a fire extinguisher. Another experience worth having though, from that day on the only insurances I have ever had have been those I am legally obliged to, my house is not even insured, it has cellular clay block walls, concrete ceilings and virtually nothing flammable inside, no curtains like Windsor Castle, a fire starting from a birds nest in the right place in the eaves in the right conditions might, just might burn the roof timbers but even the A frames are concrete block. I still would not allow an electric Trottinette inside though 😃, I evicted my final renter because he was too attached to his derestricted 70kph Chinese fire waiting to happen to park it outside in the secure storage shed with charging facilities that I had created especially for him and repeatedly brought it into his apartment. I had insurance and had gone completely over the top with fire prevention measures unlike any other similar establishment but I was not going to compromise the safety of other occupants.

Should the OP still be driving their vehicle with this fault? I certainly would not with any question regarding the oil pressure, maybe if I had checked the live readings with VCDS and been satisfied but I would not be happy until I had resolved the warning light activation.

When I saw that you had ordered I tried to make an acronym from your username like "are U out of your F'ing mind" 🤣 It may come, larger articles do take a long time and you will probably get shafted for customs duty and VAT. @@Lee I used Temu quite a lot recently but from the computer, I did not want to load the app, they didn't offer me a billionaires lifetyle but then they wont have been able to track any of my preferences from social media. I was very happy with them as an alternative to Ali-Express, their website was light years better than Ali which is still crap for me (example I have to reduce zoom to 67% to use the menus and find things like "my orders") and also all products included delivery which was always in less than 10 days, they are an E-commerce platform like Ali and not drop shippers although I'm sure the drop shipping parasites on social media use them to fulfill their orders from the mug punters. I'm pretty sure that the Temu algorithm makes everything much cheaper for the first couple of orders, I filled my boots but recently use Ali just as much as they have responded with quicker deliveries and more transparent pricing with most being free delivery (I know nothing really is free!) What was your bad experience with Temu so that myself and others can be wise before the event?

"We" being the region Picardie where I lived and is still my residence principale, the then Député was a champion of bio-carburants and pushed it very much in the assemblée nationale, he has since fallen into obscurity (became a sénateur) and I dont see it being pushed like it was back then, the fields around are still full of betteraves as they have always been. I think the state support for sugar was deemed illegal on the word market and was being/has been removed and the producers knew they would lose their global market hence the push for bio-carburants. I dont know what the sensing is on a dual fuel vehicle, it could be as crude as the engine knock sensor, I take your point about it being illegal to modify the ECU software, I have heard of cases where people with remapped vehicles like mine have put their cars in for service and had them returned with a standard map and been billed for the priveledge! I think that is why they are so cagey with their words, you know exactly how things work in France. In your shoes I would not convert as without the engine being converted to a higher compression ratio you will not see the benefits of bio-ethanol and will percieve it to be running badly, I think the dual fuel vehicles probably have a compression ratio which is the best compromise between petrol and ethanol, probably biased towards the latter as that will be the fuel of choice for most drivers.

Interesting video, the owner of the vehicle that the Haldex came from got shafted for a complete new unit, $3500 plus fitting when there was absolutely nothing wrong with the old one, possibly the motor or pump but that is all, the clutch pack was fine, small embedded particles like that are completely normal.

Most of your questions are answered in the "Questions/Réponses" at the bottom of the web page, as I thought they are reprogramming the vehicles ECU to adapt to the E85 Bioethanol and must be using the same method of sensing the fuel mix that the flex fuel cars like the Ford Puma, Focus and Kuga do. I dont know how they can in consecutive sentences state quite correctly that E85 has 30% less calorific value than petrol and then conclude that by using it you will get an increase in power and torque, the only way that can be done is by raising the compression ratio to take advantage of the higher octane and using a lot more fuel. A pal had an old Renault Laguna converted to E85 with an aftermarket tuning box, the fuel consumption was much worse but back then boi-ethanol was very cheap in that area as we were a big producer.