My wife is 5ft tall with disproportionately short legs. Suggestions please for a vehicle which will combine good visibility with easy reach to pedals, and also be comfortable for me (6ft) to drive.

Looking for models which have been around for at least a couple of years... Read more

I have a 1997 Mark 3 Golf GTi with 71000miles on the clock. Approx every 300-400 miles the engine will cut out completely with no warning. Whether, just started or warmed up, speed, seems to make no difference. Once cut out the engine will spin freely on the starter but will not fire. After waiting 2-3 minutes the engine will then start with no problem. Sometimes it will cut out 3-4 times in a few minutes/miles then does not happen again for several hundred miles.
An independant garage has check the self diagnostics and the only information from the fault code is "Engine shut down without drivers instruction". I have had the relay for the fuel pump replaced as I was told these can "stick" but this has made no difference. Any thoughts would be appreciated to save me replacing all the engine management sensors one by one then finding it is still not fixed. Read more

I'm not sure if there is much experience of the VW/AUDI 2.5 V6 TDI (150bhp) engine amongst members, but can anyone give me some suggestions for the following cold starting issue:

I have a 1998 Audi A6 Avant 2.5 TDI with nearly 170,000 miles. Since buying the car with 137,000 miles, it has never been particularly good at starting from cold. Now its winter, it takes about 4 seconds of cranking to start firing. In the last second or so of cranking, I can hear that several of of the cylinders are firing, but it takes a bit more cranking to get the engine to start (which is sometimes followed by a cloud of white smoke from the exhaust). The engine also sounds a little bit lumpy until warm (after which it runs fine), so I am not convinced it runs properly on all cylinders during the warming up phase.

I recently replaced all 6 of the glow-plugs as a first stab at fixing it, but it only made a marginal difference to the car's starting performance. I nearly always use Shell branded Diesel and have also tried one of the 3rd party (Redex) fuel additives for cleaning the injectors.

Does anyone have an constructive suggestions as to what other things might be causing this problem? Read more

I recently hit a deep pothole which caused the tyre to deflate (very slowly, rather like a slow puncture after a few hours standing). Assuming the tyre to be damaged, and it was rather worn anyway, I had it replaced.

The alloy wheel itself seemed undamaged, but the new tyre is also deflating at the same slow rate. Balancing showed no problem (work carried out at Micheldever).

Does this mean the wheel has a hairline crack? How does one check this short of x-raying it? unfortunately the car only has a space-saver wheel, so I'm keeping the alloy on the car at the moment, but am concerned about it failing.

Any advice welcome. Read more

While paying for my petrol yesterday, the lady at the till asked me to help someone who was having trouble with the air pump (the attendant was alone at the time and could not leave the till). I walked around to the air pump to find an exasperated woman struggling with the machine: she had managed to deflate both front tires while trying to inflate them. In twenty years of driving, she said, she had never added air to a tire and had no idea how to do so. Who knows what possessed her to give it a go yesterday, but it made me think about the very basic things one should know about a car before getting a license. I know there has been some plan to add a basic maintenance component to the driving test and I seem to recall some discusison about it on this forum. Let me propose something. As part of the driving test, applicants will be taken into a garage with a row of test vehicles, all of which are low in various fluids and have under or over inflated tires. Applicants will be handed latex gloves and a hair covering of some sort. They must then figure out how to open the bonnet, check and top up fluid levels, check air and inflate/deflate tires as necessary. Feel free to add to this list, since my point is simply that the practical licensing test is not practical enough. Am I being grossly unfair or unreasonably demanding? I guess I could have told the lady to phone the AA, rather than ponder with disbelief that a driver of twenty years standing can't inflate a tire. Read more