Had a Bad Day? Post Your Story Here

[Sponge]

oh, in that case, it might need a bit of work doing to it.

[GTAMADDOG]

It's too far to go anyway, even though it is everything I'd like from a MK3 Golf, minus being a VR6, but the insurance on those is mega.

 

Tried another insurance quote on a MK4 Golf GTI 1.8T yesterday and that came out at a similar price to the MK3 GTI 16v. I think my dad has a lot of persuading/work to do to get me buying the Skoda off him. The Skoda is quicker, but I'm a Golf person through-and-through at the end of the day, so if I can insure a GTI for similar money it'll be a very tough decision.

 

 

First day off work, wake up at 6AM. Damn you body clock, I need more sleep.

[GTAMADDOG]

Went to Wednesbury today to pick up another car for my dad. Half way up the motorway I knew it'd be a load of fun getting back as the motorway had been closed in the southbound direction due to a bad accident. So coming back, after my dad had already tried taking me down the M6 (following each other), we came to the junction where the motorway had been closed off. I turned off which took us into Halesowen, loads of traffic, hardly moving, I turn left at a roundabout as I know left is south and south is where I want to go. My dad follows until we get to the next roundabout, then he thinks he knows better and turns right, I can't follow because I'm in the left lane and there's still loads of traffic. So that was the last time I saw him until I got home (I beat him back). I carry on down a dual carriageway and notice signs for Worcester which I know is a lot closer to home than the way my dad went which was sign-posted Stourbridge.

 

I carry on following the signs for Worcester, I don't have a clue where I am at this point, just blindly following signs. After a while I end up on the outskirts of Worcester and join the M5 at junction six. From then on I knew exactly where I was. I leave the motorway at junction 11 and join the route I normally take home from work to be greeted by a stupid amount of traffic for lunch time on a Saturday, it was like rush hour on a weekday.

 

Absolutely knackered. Baking hot today, made worse by the fact that my air conditioning has never worked, if I have the windows down the wind is unbearable, the standard cold air output in the car is like being breathed on by an asthmatic.

 

Consolation is I beat my dad home by 5 minutes. First time I've been on the motorway (yes it's really taken me this long). I also saw a 5-door version of mine which almost shared the same number plate as mine, we both smiled and nodded and he shot off into the distance as I held back for my dad :p

 

Oh, and one of my rear shock absorbers is knackered, well not the actual shock absorber itself, but the bush. You can't just buy a bush, you have to buy a whole unit.

 

tl;dr: An accident on the motorway made me get lost somewhere in the west midlands.

[Ryzza5]

I asked if someone could upload something to MediaFire instead of five parts on RapidShare and received the following response :p

 

First World Problems

[GTAMADDOG]

This'll also be a long one..

 

Well, a few days after collecting the car, my dad is starting to fear the worst.

 

When he got back on Saturday he said he was worried the turbo may be on its way out because it sounded like a police siren and the EML would come on occasionally and the car would lose power (Actually had a similar thing with the Skoda). So before conceeding it's fate he decided to have a go at cleaning up a few bits of the car just incase soot was blocking up parts of the system. Yesterday he had a quick look at the pipes just to make sure they weren't split or loose, and he cleaned out the intercooler as well, it did have a bit of muck on it, but not much. Cleaned that, then took the car for a drive, the noise remained and a couple of miles from home we heard a pop, which after I'd been looking at videos on YouTube it sounded like the turbo going. Car still ran fine and you could still hear the turbo whistling away, but there wasn't as much power there as it should have, it was like this before checking the intercooler. A few miles later and the EML came on again and upon acceleration a bit of black smoke, which coming from the Skoda and even my car you occasionally expect on acceleration.

 

Forward to today and I get up to find my dad looking at the car again, this time he's taken all of the pipe-work off and the EGR valve, and he asked me to take the MAF sensor off. He was cleaning the EGR valve up and said one half of it was blocked with soot, so there was a glimmer of hope there. The MAF sensor was pretty clean. I also took the air-filter out and that didn't look too bad, but changed it anyway. Eventually put the car back together after double-checking the pipe-work and a final clean of the EGR valve. He starts the car and it sounds a little better, but not as it should. Then the big bit, he let the car idle and was about to walk away and the engine lost most of its revs like it was about to stall, but then came back to idle. Didn't think much of it, could be cleaning some crap out of itself. Then it did it again, and with that came a bit of black smoke out of the exhaust which wasn't too concerning seeing as we were hoping it'd clean itself up... then a knocking sound from the engine. My dad quickly looks around the engine bay, but can't see anything that could be making the noise, so he revs the engine a bit and the knocking speeds up. So now we're both fearing the worst because it sounds a lot like a big-end bearing has gone. He knows someone who is a French car specialist mechanic (changed the cam-belt on my car a year ago), apparently he's taken the car to him already and he's said everything looks fine and there are no fault codes, so he's going to get that guy to look at the car again, but it's really not sounding good.

 

So, seeing as that car is a Renault, mine's a Peugeot (both French, both got something wrong) and the Skoda is partly German (but also has a problem). It turns out the car you would think to be the least reliable (Italian) is actually the most reliable, because the Alfa Romeo is absolutely fine and has never had a problem. Or, is that a testament to diesels being too complicated these days as mine, the Renault and Skoda are all diesels and the Alfa is a petrol.

[Fear Deer]

wow i feel sorry for you mate, you spent a lot of money on your car, would be bad if it crapped out.

About the alfa..nope, it just proves that to all rules there is an exception ^^, therefore, so it would be expected for someone to have 1 working italian car xP

[Milli]

Fiats are very reliable over here. It is not for nothing that they are winner of sales since almost 10 years.

[CarMadMike]

Fiats are very reliable over here. It is not for nothing that they are winner of sales since almost 10 years.

 

I think I read somewhere (not 100% on this though) that the cars coming out of the south american factories tend to have better build quality.

 

Some family friends had a lot of bad experiences with a brand new alfa GT a few years ago, but boy did it look good. Our Fiat's absolutely fine.

 

I think buying an Italian car is a risk worth taking sometimes, they tend to have so much more charisma/style than other cars.

[The Compensator]

Ouch, sorry to hear that, dude. The 1.9 TDI, what I know, is not reliable. I'm not much into VAG, but the Fabia RS got one of the worst 1.9 TDI-PD engines. There was a big article about issues that those engines had. They need a lot of care and if you are familiar with those problems, you can keep your TDI alive for a very long time. (As I said, I practically know nothing about TDI engines. :gmc: )

 

We also have issues with our bimmer. The adaptive headlights don't work properly. When you steer to left, the left bulb goes to right and the right bulb does nothing. What happened to the German quality...

[Milli]

I think I read somewhere (not 100% on this though) that the cars coming out of the south american factories tend to have better build quality.

 

Some family friends had a lot of bad experiences with a brand new alfa GT a few years ago, but boy did it look good. Our Fiat's absolutely fine.

 

I think buying an Italian car is a risk worth taking sometimes, they tend to have so much more charisma/style than other cars.

 

Well, i know lots of people who own Fiats, and they never complain. Our Punto so far is doing very well... also, Uno's, even old ones are trully strong, that thing never stops working. :lol:

[Fear Deer]

Fiats, alfa's, ferrari's..Beautifull charismatic cars..full of style..

Build quality and reliability: BIG ROUND 0 xD, at least here, i see broken fiats everyday, even new ones, i hear about them, everybody hates them, they just suck here.

And about 1.9 TDi engine..well we once had an A4 1.9 TDi, and we also have a Caddy 1.9 TDi now, the engine has always been good to us, powerfull for its size, torqueish, unfortunately noisy..very noisy, but never ever gave us problems, the A4 had 170.000km when we sold it, the caddy has 38.000km atm. i cant really complain bout any TDi engine except for the 2005-2009 2.0 TDi's, which had injection problems, which was fixed by returning to pump injection If my memory doesnt fail me!

[The Compensator]

And about 1.9 TDi engine..well we once had an A4 1.9 TDi, and we also have a Caddy 1.9 TDi now, the engine has always been good to us, powerfull for its size, torqueish, unfortunately noisy..very noisy, but never ever gave us problems, the A4 had 170.000km when we sold it, the caddy has 38.000km atm. i cant really complain bout any TDi engine except for the 2005-2009 2.0 TDi's, which had injection problems, which was fixed by returning to pump injection If my memory doesnt fail me!

 

Yeah, 2.0 TDIs were bad, even more with DPF. Turbos, DPF and so on...

[Minime891]

Yeah, 2.0 TDIs were bad, even more with DPF. Turbos, DPF and so on...

 

So i take it you have owned cars with these engines in?

We have had almost all the diesel engines the VW group have made and never had one problem.

Always went to a main dealer for servicing etc.

 

I have to agree with Milli we had a Uno years ago and that thing was great. :D

[The Compensator]

So i take it you have owned cars with these engines in?

 

Nope. This is what I've read in articles related to them. :)

[GTAMADDOG]

This new car isn't mine, my dad bought it so he had a car with a bit more space to move people about in. His girlfriend likes going places with her kids and they don't all fit into the same car if they all go, but if a few of them go then my dads cars usually end up covered in dirt and food because of the kids. It's a nice enough car on the face of it, a few scuffs and in need of a good clean, but it's alright apart from that. Has twin sunroofs, climate control, CD changer, six airbags and full leather interior. It would just be better if the engine worked as it should. It was bought from a used car dealership, so you'd expect the mechanicals to atleast last six months or so otherwise they shouldn't have sold it implying it was in full working order. My dad could take the car back, but it's a long way to go, whether it would get back there and what the dealership would say are another thing. I personally didn't like the look of the guy or place one bit, I seem to have a knack for sensing these things lately, but I just get ignored when I say something isn't quite right. Sisters boyfriend bought an Audi A3 from a town in the Welsh valleys a couple of years ago and I could just tell it'd be bad news, but he bought the car anyway and ended up losing a lot of money on that.

 

The 1.9 TDI is reliable enough, but as with any diesel engine it needs a good thrashing every so often to clear the soot out of it. So if you spend a lot of time trundling around a town or city rarely going over 2000RPM, then you'll more than likely end up with a sooted up EGR valve or even turbo at some point. Clutches are a weak point, and if you don't let the car warm up before booting it or let the car run off boost for a minute or so before turning it off you run a much higher risk of losing your turbo because the soot settles and builds up while it's still warm and forms a blockage.

 

All the fun comes to an end now though, as I anticipated, in the blink of an eye my ten days off work are over and I'm back at work tomorrow. Only felt like yesterday I wrote my post in the "Had a Good Day?" thread saying that I now had 10 days off and wasn't going to do anything. Turns out I had lots to do every day and I never got to catch up on some well needed rest. Don't want to go back to work, I mean really don't, I've been looking for another job on the internet today, but there isn't much out there. I'll see what happens, because my contract is up again at the end of April, maybe they'll get rid of me before it gets too busy and I completely lose my sanity.

[Fear Deer]

Minime nope never owned a 2.0 TDi...know people who do xD

Our 3.0 TDi never EVER gave us problems either!

[Milli]

Neither my father's Corsa 1.0 MPFi. :lol:

 

It is more how the car was treat then which engine it has, specially if you buy an used car, is more likely to get a bad treatned engine... most people just doesn't care, if it still running, it is fine.

[Fear Deer]

Hey! Fiat engineers are like: Hmm Car burns when ingnition? Check! Good enough :D sell it!

[CarMadMike]

 

 

Patch doesn't like Fiat.

 

[Milli]

His first car will be a Fiat Panda 94!

 

To keep on topic.

 

Since last friday i have been sick, coughing and all... and i did what i always do about it, i wait it pass. :lol:

 

But thing is, it has only become worse and worse... untill last night, that i was with such a high temperature fever, coughing a lot, my nose was totally blocked, headache, throat hurting and also body was hurting on some parts... today i asked my friend to drive me to the hospital, and she did.

There i got a needle on my boot... :lol: and then i got one on my arm for almost one hour with serum right on my vein.

 

Luckly i am feeling bit better, not perfect, but better... can't drink anything cold for now too.

 

Edit: Was not this time that you guys have seen yourselves free of me! Hahahaha you people still have to endure me a lot more! :lol:

[Fear Deer]

LOL CARMADMIKE You got me laughing for more than 5 minutes xDD Dude seriously, +rep ;D thx everyone, you make me feel at home ;) you're good people! Milli, as i already told you, i hope you get better girl ;)

[Ryzza5]

Needle on your boot :confused:

 

Does she mean 'butt'? :oook:

 

My illness for the most part has passed. I guess not destroying my WBCs with alcohol and adhering to normal sleeping habits helps a bit. :)

[Milli]

Needle on your boot :confused:

 

Does she mean 'butt'? :oook:

 

My illness for the most part has passed. I guess not destroying my WBCs with alcohol and adhering to normal sleeping habits helps a bit. :)

No, i meant boot, like cars... lol

[ScoobSTi]

USB drivers aren't working properly. :(

 

iPod and phone won't connect.

[Milli]

^ Your solution:

 

:lol: