Two interesting cases on the back of the July Which? magazine today:

* BMW owner faced with warranty company's refusal to meet more than 20% of a claim for £5000 to repair extensive engine failure caused either by a failed water pump or a blown head gasket, or both; the refusal was based on blaming only the water pump and having no responsibility for other damage. Warranty company backed down only when Which? threatened to refer the case to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

* VW Passat owner suffered premature timing-belt tensioner failure in four-year-old car (failed at 64k, but was said to be good for 80k). Original suppliers of car tried to evade responsibility for supplying car of unsatisfactory quality. Threat of court proceedings by Which? eventually resulted in the supplier's insurance company meeting the cost -- £1885 -- in full, in spite of the supplier having changed its trading name and no longer being a VW franchisee.

Note the size of those bills. Read more

Will be checking out second hand Jazz this weekend. 03 plate (April) 1.4S model with 24,000 on the clock in silver type of colour for £6999. This is not a Honda dealer, but still a major one. Is this a good price? I reckon to start haggling from £6400 up, but not sure where to draw the line. Any thoughts? Read more

Got a small oil leak from the turbo on my 270CDI which is visable from where where it joins the plastic air intake housing.
My local dealership (who are really helpful) advise me that the gasket has gone. They are happy to replace it under warranty (which is good) but have said that it will only go again, 'whithin a couple of months',(which is bad).

It would appear that this is an on going problem and, once out of warranty, not worth shelling out for (3 hrs labour)on a regular basis.

I imagine that there are quite a few CDI's out there with leaky turbo's. Is it likely that a turbo could suffer a sudden failure if left with a small leak or, as the amount of oil lost is quite small, is this not a long term problem? Read more

Hi, just bought r32 replicas with 235/40/18 tyres to put on my tdi 130. Does anyone know what tyre pressures i should have.

Cheers

Lazza
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There is a knocking/tapping noise seemingly coming from the top left hand side of the engine accompanied by a fair bit of grey smoke,thinking this was a broken valve spring or a sticky valve i took the head off for inspection and cleaned everything and reseated valves while i was there,put it back together and the noise/smoke was still there,i changed an injector but still no joy,i noticed that the top of pistons 1-3+4 seemed to be normal(dry and usual discolouration) but the top of 3 seemed to be wet as if the fuel had not burnt properly,there is engine management on the car but it does not show there is a problem and the car starts a treat and the turbo seems to be ok,do these symptoms signal a fault in the fuel system and would this cause the knocking i describe??
i had the car for about 2 weeks doing about 500 trouble free miles before the problem came about,it had not really been serviced properly by the last owner----any ideas would be most gratefully recieved as the missus is gettinga bit miffed at having to use her bike to do the weekly shop and has just got over having half a focus engine lying around the kitchen--i dont want to go any further like piston area til ive picked everyones brains----come on you diesel experts out there save me!!!!...thanks. Read more