Graham Butcher

Hmm, I've always found the Superb to be a quiet car, but it will make a massive difference between the top L&K and the base models which have far less sound deadening material in them.

I suppose the logic is that if the fluid in the reservoir is showing water then it is a safe bet that the fluid else where also has water in it and needs to be replaced. Also of course, fluid being fluid it will never stay in one place, it will work its way throughout the system, especially if the fluid in calipers does get close to boiling point then that will create bubbles which will migrate upwards to the reservoir and these bubbles will be steam which when condensing will become water droplets again. Dark fluid that you will often see when bleeding at the calipers would be heavier metallic and dirt particles suspended in the brake fluid which perhaps don't tend to migrate, being heavier than air/steam bubbles?

Here is a test of one of those and it appears to be good.

Oh thats nasty then, I never realised that your insurance would be liable under those circumstances. I thought the insurance would only be valid, if the car was driverless, i.e. the handbrake fails and it rolls into another car etc. Under the conditions of it being stolen had never crossed my mind. What about if you had declared the car as being off road and being used, therefore no need to insure the car, so what if its gets stolen then and is involved in an accident? As to the owner not being there in the Halford's event and his insurer paid out 2 claims, surely there must be a mechanism in the system whereby those claims could be removed and transferred to Halford's insurer, in this case Aviva so the owner is not penalised for having his car serviced and the mechanics crashing it?

I've just ordered a brake fluid tester from Amazon which will be here tomorrow. I'll have a look at the size of the flap in the tyre and then decide on what to do.

Well, that is what I thought at first, that the tester was somewhat new and being ultra cautious, then I thought about it and just wondered if the superglue might in some react with the tyre and make things worse, being as it's on a sidewall where there will a lot of flexing happening. Also of course as I don't do that many miles, the same tyre is likely to still be on the car at the next MOT, and it might appear like I was trying to cover something up to the tester?

Yes, it would seem that the car has been involved in an accident at the front at some point in its life, as my garage has found some evidence of this and told me about it. They did say however that it was only a minor accident. I did a few car checks on it with the likes of Car Vertical before agreeing to buy the car, and they all came up clean in every respect so the accident was never recorded. With regard to the slight warping, all discs were new when I purchased the car, as were the pads and calipers. The car had failed it previous MOT in Sept 2022 on all 4 tyres below legal limit, offside front and rear pads had less than 1.5mm of material left and the offside front shock absorber had a serious fluid leak. The garage selling the car gave it another MOT on 15th April 2023 and it passed with zero problems. The nearside front shock absorber had slight oil misting as an advisory on its MOT in Oct 2021, not any mention of it in 2022 or 2023 test, so I expect that has not been changed and the last 2 testers decided it was not worthy of a mention?

Exactly, especially as it appears that he was totally unaware of the claims having been made, you'd have expected the insurance company to made contact with him and got his version of events?

I was wondering myself if the brake fluid had been replaced or not when the brakes were replaced last May, but I guess it may not have been. The brake hoses might have been clamped shut while the callipers replaced and just had the level topped up after the bleeding had been done. I think it would make sense to get this done as well, in case it has absorbed moisture.

Just had my car go in for its MOT and it's passed but has a list of advisories as follows_ Monitor and repair if necessary (advisories): Offside Front Service brake fluctuating, but not excessively (1.2.1 (e)) Offside headlamp slightly dim - compared to nearside Offside Front Macpherson strut mounting modified but not seriously weakened not fully seated in hub (5.3.3 (c) (i)) Oil leak, but not excessive (8.4.1 (a) (i)) Front Lower Suspension arm pin or bush worn but not resulting in excessive movement both offside & nearside - rear main mounting bushes starting to separate (5.3.4 (a) (i)) Nearside Front Shock absorbers has light misting of oil (5.3.2 (b)) Nearside Rear Tyre has a cut but not deep enough to reach the ply or cords outer sidewall (5.2.3 (d) (i)) The second item, is not an issue, the N/S headlight is brand new one and has a slightly colder colour temperature compared to the O/S. daylight like compared to warm white and this is also reflected in the colour of the DRL's and the N/S even has a year of manufacture sticker on it stating 2024, so I thought it was odd that the tester listed that for attention? The first and third item, I was wondering if there could be any correlation between the two? There is zero evidence in there being anything wrong in the suspension, steering or the braking or in the cars handling. The car had all new discs and pads fitted along with new calipers when I purchased the car last May and the brakes feel perfectly smooth when applied, no judder or vibration or jerkiness when driven. Shock absorbers are the DCC type and I understand that these do suffer from oil misting, but they say it is only light and should be fine for a while, and see what happens next MOT. Suspension bushes, may be OK next time around as well, but are they expensive to have replaced? As to the tyre having a cut on the sidewall, what do you think to applying a dab of superglue to keep this together? There used to be TV advert years ago where superglue was used to mend a fan belt which had been cut in half, good idea or not? The car has to be booked in to replace the drivers door lock as the KESSY fails at times and the door has to be locked manually from the remote and some mornings I have noticed lately the door unlocked. VCDS also shows the door switch to be faulty. So when the part is delivered, I have asked the garage to reseat the O/S/F shock absorber at the same time (probably need to get the tracking checked as well).

No, the car wash ripped out and mangled one of the gutter infill strips along the roof. On the old models there was one on each side running from the windscreen to the rear window.

No you have it wrong, Aviva are Halfords insurer and they paid the owner what they valued the car at. He needs to have a frank discussion with them and give them proof that the car was or is worth more than that, I had to do when my car was written off for me as the insurers failed to take into account the significance of the L&K model and just valued mine as a normal Superb. The other problem is that the other cars that the Alfa hit, their insurers filed a claim against the Alfa owners insurance as the only info that they had it seems was the Alfa registration number? Running that through the insurance database would reveal who the car was insured with and hence the claims were made against his insurer rather than Aviva. Once a claim has been filed, regardless of if it was paid out, it seems that it remains on your record for 5 years and will affect your premiums until that 5 years is up. I have the same issue with damage being done to my old car by a car wash machine going rogue. The owners of the machine paid up, but as my insurance were informed of a possible claim being made against them, entered it onto the database and now my insurance is costing me more even it was recorded as no actual claim being made. It seems that insurance is legal robbery after all and I did start a thread about on here a while ago.

No, I have never been asked to do that when having any of the cars I've had over the years, when taking them in for any servicing or repair work to be done.

It is time for some standards on these things. It will take a long time before the public learn such things, they have decades of going to a forecourt and sticking a nozzle in the filler neck, no need to think.

That is a good point, if they had done that then maybe the claims made by other owners would have been made direct to the dealer/garage rather than the car's real owner so those claims against him would not be there.

LMAO, you could well be right there, down this way many council car parks are being sold off to housing developers in order to try and plug some massive holes in their budgets, or there again, is it part of a grand scheme to separate us all slowly from our cars whatever their source of power is and get us into public transport, cycling or walking even?

Yes, I expect the very first cars were only minuscule city cars and so home chargers at 3kW were fine, so when the introduced 7kW, the called them Fast Chargers, at the time yes, they were, but the pace of development has eclipsed them. I bet they wished that the marketing depts hadn't been unleashed on them, but instead had just named them by their speed, 3, 7, 11, 25.... 250kW etc. Oh the benefits of hindsight eh?

Why did I buy a Porsche Taycan, that video was a good honest appraisal of his car, full marks to him for that, to once again be fair to the MacMaster, he would also echo that i think, as he openly admits, the car is great, and he loves the way car drives, its the charging infrastructure that lets the current experience down, something that both YTubers self confess to.

To be honest, I'm struggling to see what the fuss is with Taycan mans video, he did set the parameters for the video before he set off, it was following his old favourite route from Pudsey to the Lake District, missing on the motorways and the A roads as much as possible and using the scenic route on the B roads, which is precisely what tourists would do is it not? The charger was, according to Zapapp only 7kW as were all the chargers in the area, there were higher ratings in Lonsdale, further up the road, but that always assumes that you have enough reserve to get to them. He did also make reference to those other chargers towards the end of the video. He was highlighting IMO the problems with the infrastructure, it is like it or not, tourist area and tourism is one of the main industries in that part of the country and he would be doing his viewers a disservice if he made it out all plain sailing when it clearly is not. It was very obvious that at 56% SOC he did not need to charge, but he was showing the charging facilities for that area as it really is, not dressing it up.

I came across this article today about a Halfords service centre writing a customers car off. They claim that their driver was only doing 25mph at the time of the crash and now the owner is £2000 out of pocket and has his insurance costs increased as a result, even though he was not driving the car at the time. Halfords stood by its employee’s claim that the Alfa Romeo was being professionally driven at 25mph. Photograph: Ian Tubbs© Photograph: Ian Tubbs ABirmingham man who took his beloved Alfa Romeo to Halfords Autocentre for a routine service has described his despair after it was written off on a test drive by a staff member, leaving him more than £2,000 out of pocket. Ian Tubbs contacted Guardian Money when, rather than helping a customer whose car was “completely destroyed” in its care, Halfords refused to accept liability for the collision and the financial losses he suffered as a result. Halfords initially stood by its employee’s claim that the car was being professionally driven at 25 mph, and that the damage to the vehicle was caused by a third-party vehicle hitting the customer’s car. Pictures of the car show the front driver’s side is completely smashed in and two wheels are missing. “The whole thing has been a nightmare,” Tubbs says of the saga that began just before Christmas when he asked the Shirley Halfords Autocentre to service his cherished Alfa, which had cost him £23,000. But rather than getting a call that evening to say his car was ready, the centre manager said his car had been in an accident, making it, he says, sound “as though it was no big deal”. However, on his way home from work, he came across the remains of his car, which he says had “clearly” been involved in a very serious crash. He has since learned that the car clipped two other vehicles, and had travelled a further 50 yards after colliding with a tow truck. Only some railings that were damaged by the impact stopped the car from careering on to a busy roundabout. The police on the scene told him that the driver, who was with another member of staff at the time of the crash, claimed he had been driving at 25 mph. Tubbs says Halfords was unhelpful from the start. The collision happened on a Friday and it said the earliest it could supply a replacement car was Monday afternoon, forcing him to hire one to get to work. An initial police report seen by the Guardian and shared with Halfords says witnesses describe seeing the car swerving in and out of traffic before hitting the kerb and then the railings. The driver and passenger then started arguing with the driver of a low loader who has blamed the Halfords driver for the collision. Tubbs’s plight has only worsened. Halfords’ insurer, Aviva, offered him £19,000 for his car, upped to £19,500 after he complained – but still £300 short of what he believed to be its full value. His hire car had a puncture, resulting in a £600 excess payment. The final indignity came when Tubbs questioned why his car insurance had risen £300 for the car he bought to replace the Alfa. It turned out that his insurer had paid out two claims made by the owners of cars his Alfa Romeo had collided with before the ultimate crash. These claims were wrongly on his record and will push up his premium for several years. “To this day I have had no meaningful apology, and no offer to compensate me for what happened,” Tubbs says. “I have had to overpay for my insurance, pay to take taxis to get around. I’ve lost £600 to the car hire firm, and spent time looking for another car. I have been really shocked by way Halfords has behaved,” he says. However, after Guardian Money’s intervention Halfords has entered talks and is seeking to settle the matter amicably. A Halfords spokesperson says: “We recognise the distress caused by the recent incident of a collision during a routine road test by our technicians. We followed the necessary procedures by notifying our insurance company. We’ve apologised to Mr Tubbs for the inconvenience caused and we’re working to resolve this matter directly with him.” Halfords’ insurer, Aviva, stood by the value of the payout and said it would cover any expenses he incurred as a result of the collision. It is too soon to have established liability as it is awaiting the final police report, it said. It is also arranging that the claims paid out by his insurer be moved across to its books, meaning it will no longer be on his record.

All of these delays in getting things fixed is not really on, we buy cars to be able to use them, not for them to be sitting around in the repair shops awaiting parts or software bugs to be resolved.🥵

Yep, anything that they can't see make things harder for them to fix and potentially very expensive to fix as they go about swapping old parts with new parts only to discover that the part they thought would fix it, only to discover it doesn't and move onto the next. I'm still having issues getting all the parts on my car resolved, and doesn't have a fraction of the electronics that an EV has. So while an EV drivetrain might well be far simpler and thus more reliable than an ICE, I predict that EV's when they go wrong will off the road a longer time while they try and get their head around the electronics side of things. Perhaps that's part of the problem with the current situation with Jaguars?

@Rooted Was that 97% downloaded or 97% installed?

Firstly, I don't quite understand why you say that the Liverpool was not likely to have Lithium Ion batteries involved, they had been in use in Hybrid cars since at least 2015 and the fire was 31st Dec 2017, meaning that there was roughly 3 years of Hybrid cars registrations and my chart showed over 44,000 in 2015 alone and each year there are more being added. I would be extremely surprised if there were no hybrid cars in the car park at the time. Granted there were far more caught up in the Luton fire and they were the cause of the collapse of parts of the structure, whereas the Liverpool fire didn't suffer the structural collapse, but did suffer the cooking of the concrete floors leaving the rebars exposed. The above chart that you posted tells me nothing as there is no key as to what colour represents which type of car. Did you do chemistry at school and play about with Bunsen burners at all? The yellow flames are the coolest flames and also the dirtiest hence the thick black smoke, when the fuel and air are mixed correctly, before being burnt, then the flame is blue and is very noisy, it kind of roars and it is that flame that is hot enough to melt metals etc.

Matt Watson has just purchased a 2nd hand Leaf, seems to be a pretty good bargain for the shopping run / school run if local. It does seem to have a few niggles though, what do you Leaf owners think about this, typical or what?