As soon as I got the VRS I fully serviced it myself and as I like to do my cars yearly I changed it to 'fixed' on the dash/maxidot. Next month will be 2 years in my ownership,just over 10,000 miles and it's 3rd service in that time. ECP sent an email today with it's up to 50% off Easter sale so thought I'll have some of that. Got a Hengst oil filter,Hengst fuel filter,Hengst carbon pollen filter,'premium quality' air filter (which last year turned out to be a Bosch item) and 5L of Mobil one 'ESP' 5w30. Plus I went to adjust the handbrake today (getting a little higher than I like it to be) and saw that the adjuster bar wasn't pulling level when the handbrake is applied so guessing one of the cables is stretching more than the other side so threw in a set of Pagid handbrake cables to the order. All came to a very reasonable price of £98 with the various discounts on each item.   Nothing actually qualified for 50% off though. Got a week off end of April into May so MOT on the Monday and then tinker on through that lot. 

how easy or hard are the handbrake cables to change?

 

Do you always service your car yourself?

 

I changed my fuel filter yesterday (used Hengst - UFI type), had a ballache with it, lid didnt seat properly (thought it had) then when didi the screws up it must have bent the lid slightly. Started leaking diesel out of the top of the filter. Was worried about getting diesel everywhere, literally a couple of drips went on the alternator belt, dont think that be a problem, i got cloth and cleaned everything down so no diesel anywhere and then had to take the lid off and bend it back into shape.

Headache. Its a fairly fiddly job and pretty hard to not get a bit of diesel dripped somewhere. I was trying to be careful. Makes me wonder how much they slop about in engine bays in garages when its not there own car and they on a time limit for each job.

I did one of the handbrake cables the other week. I was going to both but the first one was a complete pain. Getting the cable out of the guide was a nightmare. I ended up cutting the cable off and drilling the end out of the guide tube.

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I'll let you know how hard the cables are when I do them (believe me it wont be any worse than the rear disc caliper carrier bolts on the vrs or an alternator change or rear manifold change on a v6 Vectra B  ). According to Haynes manual it's only a 2 spanner difficulty job for both adjusting the cables and changing them. Already I can see it's a more involved job having the jumbo box as the manual says just remove the back tray part of the console to get at the adjuster nut. Obviously that car they did it on didn't have the jumbo box. It looks that will have to come off. Try to do as much self servicing as I can. Cambelt side of things is about the only no go area for me.

It was getting the cable out of the guide tube that was the problem. The guide tube isn't fixed in position so if you simply try and pull the cable out of it then the tube moves.

Even with two pairs of molegrips I couldn't separate them.

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MOT passed with flying colours this morning no advisories either. Opacity reading of 0.03 so not exactly a dirty derv. Had the aircon looked at as well while in there,

it gets cold but on a hot day not as much as you'd expect it to. Had lost/used 100g over it's 7 years.