Aspman

Not even 3 months.

So got JCW coupe, old but good nick and cme with full approved used mini warranty. Got battery charger coz battery was showing charge issues and it'snot driven a great deal. Charged battery and battery still showing issues. Phone mini (local), "ok but battery isn't covered under warranty". [Clicky click] https://discover.mini.co.uk/used/approved-used-mini-warranty "We want you to have total confidence in your car which is why the warranty is backed by MINI, not third-party insurers, and even covers the battery and exhaust." "Ah yes it depends...." Also cover missing from back of lights. "ah that's also not under warranty you'd need to tke that up with the dealer that sold it to you"

Instruction for the Coupe are to use the battery terminals. It doesn't have a seperate negative mounting point. Which is odd since the Countryman clearly does. Battery appears to be knackered anyway. Getting discharge warning 15min after taking it off the charger. Not a shock (fnar fnar) really it being a 10yr old battery. Should be covered under warranty, or it is according to the Mini site. But also a bulb went, going to replace found that the trim int he wheelarch was loose and there was no cover over the access to the lights. Hopefully the buld has gone and water hasn't buggered the electrics in there. Will be pushing to have that fixed too.

It does sound like you have a well established contract with them. But that doesn't actually stop them breaking the contract. If they break the contract you would need to take action to recover 'damages'. Damages only being available to get you back to where you would have been otherwise. since you haven't been without a car or incurred additional costs you probably don't have much of a claim for damages. I would suggest being pragmatic when you try to move this forward. You only real lever against the company is probably adverse publicity.

Speaking with the dealer when I got the Jimny he was expecting the market for 'heavy gear' (his words) to tank over this winter but that the market for small economical cars would be quite boyant. I can see 'heavy gear' starting to be offloaded now, lot of private sales for high power high depreciation motors coming onto autotrader. Marketed prices are still high but I'll be keeping an eye out to see if they metal is staying on the forecourt or still shifting.

Have ordered CTEK CS One. It's a dear one but since it does everything for you including sorting out the polarity I can't make a mistake and the Mrs will be much more confortable with it. Thanks all.

So this might sound stupid but I can't see clearly if either the Ring or CTEK maintainers can be used whilst the care battery is still connected. I really don't want to have to take it out and have the hassle of recovering the car's settings. Do they work in-situe? It's implied but only implied.

Ring and CTEK look worth investigating. I really wanted something that lets me leave the battery in the car and these do

Well tbh yes for the Mini right now, but the Jimny will probably need something come the spring.

Just looking for some advice on an optimate type device but for a car not a bike. We've one car that will probably not be driven over winter and need to keep the battery topped up and conditioned. I've looked up optimate but everything is for bikes.

80s Vauxhalls were pretty easy to open and start with a screwdriver. A sharp knock on the lock facing would knock it into the car anyway, you could pop the lock with your finger through the hole. the whole lock was held on with a pretty insubstantial C clip

Anything will be a classic if you wait long enough. But for some more common cars you might have to wait a very long time before it becomes an investment. Better to buy something you will love to run as your classic, if it increases in value then that is a bonus. We've a car (JCW Mini coupe) which we've bought with a view to it being a future classic, but that is secondary to it being something the Mrs has always wanted to own (again).

wee beastie

Apparently there is a market mechanism which keeps the electricity prices linked to the gas price. So there is some talk about decoupling electric from gas to break that link. I’m on a 100% renewable tariff soo clearly I’d like to be paying less for making that choice. unless the politicians take the leap to fix prices we’re basically all fooked. Practically every business will close. Unfortunately i think the tories are ideologically against anything like that so we’ll see no help till they are bites out in 2yr which will be far too late.

There is nothing wrong in what you say is just a bit of a perfect picture. The market IS broken now which is making for crippling bills

It’s a lot of money to put in batteries and solar on a big enough scale to make a difference, it’s also probably too late to do it for this winter. Lots of people are doing this. I would too but I’m not sure I’ll be in this property long enough to get the roi. And you won’t get much Solar gain in winter when its using the most electricity

Yeah the basic maths means that ASHP will never be cheaper than gas. The efficiencies are statistical snake oil but being very simplistic heat pumps are UP TO 3x (300%)as efficient at heating water within the system than a gas boiler. So (physicists trick of a perfect model) imagine it uses 300 units of energy to heat a tank of hot water using gas. A heat pump at perfect efficiency should manage to heat the same tank of water using 100 units of energy. So super efficient and much cheapness yeah? No. The heat pump is using electricity not gas so each unit of energy costs (at least) 4x as much. Using the upcoming price cap for figures 52p for electric and 15p for gas) 300 units of gas will cost - £45.00 100 units of electricity will cost £52.00 so you’ve spent £20k on a new system which is super efficient and green etc and despite it using 1/3 the energy of gas you pay £7 more or 15% if the temperature is 0 efficiency drops to about 2x so the difference becomes £59.00 or a 133% increase over gas. But it’s actually worse than that. At low temperature to prevent icing the ashp will reverse flow and run defrost cycles on itself which is electricity you’re not using to heat your house. Heat pumps work on gradually warming your house as well so need to be on 24/7 unless the hot water is on. So you can’t take advantage of cheap rate electric. Weather changeable? Well you’re Screwed with heat pumps again. The slab takes about two days to warm through like a massive storage heater so you need to plot your heating to that schedule.

I've punted the RaRo after 2yr and 11k miles. Some big bills were coming up despite it being completely reliable over that 24 months and if I'm honest it was a lot of money to be locked up in a car that I appreciated but didn't really love. It's been swapped for... a 2016 Suzuki Jimny. Really. Dealer made a decent offer for the Raro which involves giving me a wodge of cash back, buyer already lined up. Jimny will just be for the winter weather and shooting days, cash back will go towards soemthing interesting, probably fast and german but maybe a bit more left field. Wee 4x4 was low mileage and mint condition. Being sold as approved used despite the age. Getting new disks and pads then it'll be swapped on this week. Get some knobblies on it soon.

Need some spikes on the wheels for Blair 😉 Neighbour had a good experience with Cazoo but not sure if they operate with cars that sort of price. In general I'd suggest avoiding anything French, it's not a joke they just don't last that well. I had a 2004 Renault and it basically disintegrated over the 4yr I had it, and that was from new. Anything that age will break and need repaired so aim for something that is easy to get parts for and plenty people know how to fix. VAG group is always a good bet there. Toyota can last well into old age and high miles but repairs are a little more expensive.

Couldn't tell you much about installation really, ours was part of the build spec. But really an ASHP needs to be the core of a building design, you decide that for a heating system THEN you build the house around that. Houses need to be ultra insulated and very draft proof which contradicts directly with clean air regulations from planning. So we have lovely thick double gazing with bloody great holes in them for air. ASHP needs to be coupled with a mechanical heat recovery system to allow the air to circulate without loosing energy. I'm currently trying to figure out how to storm proof bathroom extractors for winter. We had the pump serviced recently which might help efficiency, the engineer spotted that the flow rates on the manifold did not match specification. He's corrected that. Also spotted that the system doesn't have enough antifreeze in it. Brilliently these systems use a non-toxic antifreeze which is about 4x the price of glycol and they need about 170l of it. We'll need to put in another 40-70l to get it up to spec (£300). Ther service itself was £200 +£100 for the tuning work. In teh summer it's actually been cheap to run with the heatig off, it produces hot water very efficiently, We get a tank (150l) for about £1.50. But genuinely when my fix deal goes our winter bills will be terrifying, we could easily see £1000 a month. I'll be buying more wood for the log burner soon. What will really help is decoupling the electricity price from gas. We are a renewable only customer but see no benefit from that. ASHP will always seem stupid until the price of electricity starts to match gas, the the efficiencies in the sysem might actually start to make sense for people.

Covid not only shut down factories making computer chips it drove up the the demand for equipment especially mobile kit like laptops. There is still a massive demand and shortage there. It takes months to bring a chip factory back up to running speed and years to comission a new one so when there are shortages they tend not to get resolved quickly. As the global economy starts to tank over the next 18 months demand will start to drop again and chips will become available for cars that no one can afford to buy.

RaRo will need fed soon, not looking forward to that. I've alos droped mileage, lucky if I'm doing 3k a year now.

TBH I've stopped worrying about it, the difference is probably tiny and not worh fretting about. Nevre had nor have I ever heard of any problems with stater motors etc by this. I turn it off when I'm in busy moving traffic since I don't want the hesistation of the engine having to restart if I'm trying to dart out.

Used to be a 60 as well

My old 335d. Not very special I guess but it was the best car I've ever owned. Brutally fast, felt a bit murderous in the corners and pretty tame to run. For my SWMBO she loved, loved the first car she bought herself. It was a Mini Coupe JCW, her brothers car from new. She was gutted when it had to go because we needed a back seat. She loved it so much that now we have the space we've just bought another near identical coupe to keep as a summer future classic.