Hello,

Car:- Audi A4 Avant 1.9tdi 130SE.

In December, I noticed that the glowplug light on the dash was flashing. It only flashed for about a minute then the light went out. It has not flashed since, just illuminated when I am about to start the car, like it should. However, 1000 miles on, during my journey home today, it flashed again for a few minutes.
I've looked in the manual and it says there may be an engine management problem and to get the engine serviced A.S.A.P.

The car only had its long life service in September so I don't fancy shelling out another £300.

Any ideas what the problem may be ?

Cheers
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After some recent reliability scares, my wife and I decided to replace our Ford Galaxy (S REG Ghia X, fully loaded) with something newish.

Our budget was decided to be max £13K, and we wanted something 2years old or less with 20,000 miles on it or less.

Our family is 2 Adults and 4 children. The elder two teenages are obviously adult size, and the younger two are now passed the childseat phase, though do sit on small booster cushions.

So we regularly need to carry 6, and if we go away for a holiday, we need to be able to carry 6 plus luggage. To carry a extra 7th is a necessity as well, since we are regularly entertaining school friends etc at pick up time.

BUT, we wanted something where the rear seats fold down in to the floor, since even getting small bike in to the Galaxy is a nightmare, despite the large size of the car.

For the readers of this forum, I though it might be interesting to here what we arrived at and why.

Renault Espace: hard to find newish examples in our price bracket. Getting in to back row is tricky, children cannot tip the seat up themselves it requires two hands. Rear seats don?t fold in to floor leaving all the hassle that we have with the Galaxy seating arrangements still to live with.

Peugeot 806 / Citroen C8. My wife LOVED the sliding doors, but again the seating arrangements are no advance whatsoever on the Galaxy. E.g. like the Galaxy you cannot even tip up one of the rearmost seats unless it is slid backwards first, and seat in front is slid forwards. Meaning you forever have to move from back to side adjusting the seats before you can tip one up, exactly the kind of hassle we want to get away from.

Renault Grand Scenic. Darned fine car, but better suited to a family with younger/smaller kids, e.g. felt a bit cramped when fully loaded up, leg room in middle and back row not great. Terrible sales technique though, in front of my 6 year old, the salesman said ?be careful tipping the seat up before you climb in the back, lots of children hurt their fingers on the mechanism?? from that point on whenever we discussed the car, Antonia (age 6) piped up ?please don?t get that one, I don?t want to hurt my fingers?. It is essential for us that the children can get themselves in and out of the backrow. E.g. stopping to pick up an additional passenger, one child my quickly hop in the back to allow another in the middle row.

Ford Galaxy MkII. Our budget would only get us a used Zetec, unless we settled for something older. Much better interior trim quality than the Mk I, but no advance in seating arrangement. Zetec doesn?t even have elec windows in rear.

Ford S-MAX. Out of our budget obviously but we decided to look at it due to the rave reviews. I was thinking that if my wife fell in love with it, then maybe we could finance it differently. The demo car had the rearmost seats folded in to the floor when we first went to it. A couple of minutes fiddling around, and we could not find how to pull up the seat. Salesman came over, he couldn?t do it either, fiddled with this and that and got the seat up. Then a flappy bit of trim was hanging off the back of the seat, and needed clipping in to place, but the clip was broken. Since we will be very regularly putting these seats up and down, we walked away very disillusioned with the ?Car of The Year?. Not even interested.

Chrysler Voyager. What a waste of space (for us anyway). The seating arrangement is 2 + 2 + 3, meaning you cannot carrtymore than 4 people without using rear most seats. So six plus luggage is a real challenge whilst even all the 2+3+2 arranged vehicles you can remove or fold down (if possible) a seat accounting for half with width of the boot, so giving a 2+3+1+luggage arrangement. Or 5 +loads of luggage. The Voyager is therefore a complete non starter.

Vauxhall Zafira. Don?t like the middle bench seat arrangement which has to be slid forward before the rears can be dropped in to the floor. Never liked that, and was surprised they kept that when they went to Mk II. Too ?mumsy? you simply see too many of them at the school gates. We wanted something a bit more distinctive.

What else did we look at:

Honda FRV, only seats 6, not really capable of taking 4 adult sized and two smaller ones regularly, just too small. Same with Fiat Multpla. Citroen Picasso C4, too new, out of budget. Toyota Previa ? seating arrangements not suitable, plus too expensive for what you get.

So that leaves us with

Mitsubishi Grandis.

First thing to note was that there are plenty of Elegance models (top model) on dealers forecourts, all under 2 years old and in budget. Rear most seats feel comfortable for full sized adults, plus a) there is good luggage space behind them even when both are up, and b) they both fold in to floor regardless of position of middle row. Folding mechanism is a complete cinch, they are counterbalanced, and there are no flappy bits to secure in place (take note Mr Ford). Middle row is a 60/40 bench, but operating the mechanism to get in/out of the very back row is a doddle. Single lever, or foot switch from behind and the whole thing slides forward and tips to let you climb in to back. Good leg room in back and middle rows. Although not 3 individual seats across the middle row ? it still seats 3 comfortably across that row, permitting the 2+3+1+luggage mode we want occasionally. Diesel is out of our price bracket, but we are low mileage users and the petrol costs on our Galaxy never crippled us, Grandis should be a little more economical. My wife fell in love with the Warrior, leather stitched seats, flip down DVD player (to keep the kids happy), sports kit, etc. Dealer offered us a 21 month old car with 14,000 miles on it for £13,000, still with 15 months manufacturers warranty. Feels exclusive ? you don?t see many of them around, lovely to drive, a bit brisker than the 2.3 auto Galaxy, and a little more car like. Deal done, bought it, love it, and can?t help but think it is a very well kept secret and badly promoted by Mitsubishi.


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Hi all

My vectra has had this annoying knocking noise from the front suspension for a while now and it's time it was fixed!

It only happens mainly when going over sleeping policemen.

Any ideas guys (or gals)

Thanks in advance

GazKaz Read more

Hi- I couldn't help but notice that despite my nice new Leon FR having traction control, it still seemed quite easy to spin the front wheels when pulling away from standstill in wet conditions. I asked the dealer to look at the TC, which he did, but said there wasn't a problem. He told me that it only cuts in when it senses a difference in speed between the 2 wheels, so it probably won't when setting off in a straight line on a flat road.

Can anyone with knowledge and/or experience of VAG traction control systems verify this?

Cheers
John Read more

When my Fiesta 1.1 is cold there is little smoke, after about 6-7 miles the smoke gets quite bad, its not burning fuel and there is not a single bit of miss fire, but the smoke gets quite bad almost emberassingly so.

As with my previews threads my mechanic reckons its the camshaft which is damaged but is there any short term solution to reduce the smoke a bit?

The service has not mad any difference whats so ever :( Read more