unclerichy

I last used Rainworth (when they were named Bickertons) at Hillsborough about 7 years ago when I had a service plan and wouldn't bother with them again. I use an independent at the back of Meadowhall named Auto Tecnic and they have looked after three of my cars for about 16 years now. I wouldn't go anywhere else.

I saw the same one parked at a spot on Sheffield canal last year. They have a page on Facebook but couldn't tell you what it's called mind...

I had a CR170 DSG for 3 years before I got my 280 and towed the same caravan with both. The 280 definitely has more get up and go 😃 In day to day driving I think part of the perception is down to the dumbass decision to make the accelerator pedal non-linear and for the DSG to change up too early (all for 'eco' reasons I presume) so it can feel like you're in granny mode as it's never quite in the sweet spot for power. Sport mode sorts that out but then it's a bit too vicious for day to day driving.

Thank you. I found the exact location that the original was taken (thanks to Google street view). I'd post it here but fear that my sheer animal magnetism would disrupt some Briskodian marriages 🤓

I've just got back from an 800 mile round trip to Scotland to recreate a photo from 30 years ago that my late wife took. Sadly I had nobody to take it for me this time so there was a bit of leaping into place after starting the self timer. I used ACC in anger for the first time and it worked a treat on the way up on Sunday and most of the way back - I disabled it on the busy bits of the M1. Apart from when it mis-detected something as another vehicle and braked hard at 70mph. Which was nice 🫨 37mpg up. 40mpg back.

The only indicator on my 2016 model is the high beam/auto high beam symbol which I seem to recall is blue. The dial you refer to isn't much use as it doesn't light up the appropriate symbol when the lights are on - it just lights up the whole thing as I noticed when I manually changed it from auto to main beam the other day. It was foggy and I wanted to make sure that I had headlights and not just sidelights.

Mine's a 10 year old car and I started on Tesco 99 until I switched to Costco 97 RON when my daughter got a CostCo card a few years ago (and my local Tesco often ran out of 99 for some reason). There's the occasional top up with regular if I'm in the middle of nowhere (usually Liverpool...) and I want to top up for the trip home.

No problems on my Superb but my daughter's previous car (a Ford Ka+) was drinking screenwash like no tomorrow. It turned out to be a split hose between the reservoir and the pump. If you've not already done so then look under the car for obvious signs - on hers it trickled down between the bumper and the wheel arch liner.

In for a minor service and MOT this morning which it passed with the usual advisories about corrosion on the rear springs. It's 10 years old now and is a gnat's under 45000 miles. With the wheel refurb and road tax I've dropped just shy of a grand on it this month 😬

I think it depends on the company as one I initially considered using had loaner wheels but with the one I used I dropped the car off on Wednesday morning and picked it up on Thursday afternoon.

My car's a 2016 model and I still have the brochure - they were Phoenix when I specified them. TBH I ordered it a long time ago 😄 Yup, I'm very pleased. They've come out really well with no signs of any of the corrosion where the lacquer had been breached. The one wheel I'd kerbed (avoiding someone on the wrong side of the road) is impossible to identify.

Picked up the car after getting all four wheels refurbished. After 10 years the phoenix anthracite alloys were showing the usual diamond cut issues, particularly around the hubs so I had them powder coated in silver instead. Ignore the wheel caps - I'm swapping those for new ones tomorrow.

I washed mine this morning - the first wash since the hosepipe ban in Yorkshire and mainly to get rid of any road salt. The diamond cut surface on my alloys is worse than I thought with one wheel having no lacquer at all around the hub so that'll be a job to get sorted in spring. The car is 10 years old now so I think I'll just get them powder coated in a bright silver for a change (and for better durability).

It's car insurance renewal time next month and quotes from the comparison sites were coming out at around £285 this year. Imagine my surprise when my current insurer sent my renewal notice through and they'd dropped it from £330 last year to only £216 this year and that included both my daughters as named drivers this time too! When accepting the renewal I changed my marital status from married to widowed and that added on another few quid to bring it to £230. Not sure why being wife-less would make a difference but at £100 less than last year I bit their hand off.

I let my daughter drive it after adding her and her sister on the insurance ahead of an upcoming holiday. This doesn't sound very exciting apart from the fact that the last time she drove a car of mine was on her first driving lesson over 25 years ago where she panicked and crashed my Peugeot into a wall

If it's the same as the 2016 model then the glovebox is held by two rubber stoppers that bump against the glove box surround - you can see them if you open the glovebox as far as possible then look towards the back of it. Squashing them out of the way one at a time will let the glovebox drop forwards - the soft close arm just slips out of it's mechanism automatically.

New rear discs and pads for me this morning - just over 9 years old and a smidge under 42,000 miles. It had two front lower suspension arms done in March for the MOT but apart from that maintenance costs have been minimal since I bought it.

Forgiven 😄

My local independent (Sheffield) has access to Skoda's system through some sort of web interface (he was showing me when I was in for a service) and they update the service record each time I have work done. They then print me out the page for my own records so I'm sure that others will have access to.

On my run to the coast a couple of weeks ago (80miles each way with a 50:50 single lane A road/motorway split) I got a reported 40mpg on the run out. On the way home I switched into eco mode, used coasting and drove like a granny as much as possible. 40mpg again. What a waste of time 🫤

Today I have been mostly spending £1,400+ on this year's MOT, service (including Haldex and brake fluid), road tax and some shiny new front wishbones. It had it's first 'real' MOT fail in 9 years due to the rubber bushings in the wishbones having completely disintegrated and unbonded from the metal. I say 'real' as I think I had one that failed due to a headlight alignment issue which was then corrected immediately. I'll also be getting new discs and pads in a couple of months. All that for driving around 4,000 miles a year. I must be mad 🤡 Oh, and tonight I'll be off to CostCo to fill up with petrol as I'm down to my last 40 miles.

I took advantage of the slightly cloudy weather this morning to wash, clay, polish and wax it. My cheapo Halfords polisher decided to almost smash itself to pieces just as I'd started polishing the bonnet so I had to do the rest of the polishing plus the wax by hand. Of course, my 'fancy' NXT wax had separated so I had to throw that away and dig out a very old bottle of Turtle Wax. It did the job but I forgot how hard it was to buff off. It now feels like someone is trying to twist my right shoulder off 😧

I finally got around to trying my 200GB MicroSD card in my Columbus as I've more music than fits on the 64GB card I've been using (about 70GB when I last looked). There are almost 10,200 tracks on it and after a few seconds the car popped up a message about being able to 'synchronise' that many files and I've lost the Yazoo folder off the end 😄 The folder shows up but it says that there are no playable files in it. (Insert pun about shouting 'Don't Go!'...) Surprisingly the database view (that I never use) also seems happy to let me search via album, genre etc.

On the bright side they can't steal the air from your tyres if they can't get the tyre caps off 😉