CARS - a rant

[Shirley]

I'm so fed up - we've got two cars... David has a landie which is used as a work horse and car to get him back and forth to work 15 miles away.

I've got an old mondeo which we inherited from David's dad when he moved to Cyprus.

As many of the ishers that have been around for a while know, we've had nothing but trouble with cars for the last 3 years (and beyond!) but last night I had a call from David to say that he'd managed to limp the landie to the garage and could I pick him up. Apparently the landie has a collapsed wheel bearing and can't be driven - part should arrive Mon/Tuesday and then we need to wait until the garage can fit it. Hopefully he'll make it a priority as David teaches and can't get to work otherwise. He'll have to cycle on Monday.

After picking him up, I pulled onto the drive at the front of the house... only to hear an almighty bang. Something to do with the left front wheel - and David reckons that it too could be a wheel bearing. Not sure though. Took the wheel off this morning and it's not the brakes so not sure what it is. Car clunks when moving forwards/backwards and the steering wheel is turned.

Oh... I forgot to say that my car had only just come back from the garage and J was enjoying a rare few days at nursery - first time this year was on Thursday the week before. He's now totally fed up because we won't be able to go to nursery this week.

Funny thing... last year I noticed some willow trees that were looking particularly beautiful - I intended to go and photograph them at the weekend but my car broke and I couldn't go. This year.... yesterday I noticed that the willow trees were looking particularly beautiful.. and.... well.. yeah... I'd intended to go and photograph them this weekend.

We're also pretty much out of chicken feed and were going to go get some today but that's not possible now. Will need to talk nicely to the nice people at Norvite and see when they can deliver.

[Thurston Garden]

Sounds like a real bugger of a couple of days! Never rains but it pours! What age is the Landy? I did have a 1988 90 but went backwards in time to a 1976 88" which is far simpler to work on. Granted there are things I do get the garage to do but I am keen to learn and have done wheel bearings 4 times now and would be very confident about doing them again if required. I did 2 diff replacements last year in addition to various wiring repairs, propshaft replacements, brake adjustments/steering adjustment. An old Landy is pretty basic and the more I have to work on it, the more I get to understand about how to fix it.

Good friends who have a 1973 Landy have become increasingly frustrated at how garages push older vehicles to the bottom of the work queue. Like us, their Landy is the only more of transport and living rurally, it can be a fair pain when it's off the road. We do have a good local bus service, but it's not much good for fetching half a dozen bags of hen food on! We are both about to try another, although marginally less local Landy garage as our MOT's are due this month. Fingers crossed.

The other good thing about old Landies is the price of the parts. If I remember correctly, the wheel bearings were less than a tenner each.... Dearer for a Defender though I suspect

Hope you get back on the road before the Willow's Weep!

[mrsflibble]

the clunking when turning, is it a clicky clunking or a thuddy clunking? if it's clicky it's probably a CV joint, if it's thuddy it's more likely to be the ball joint at the bottom of the CV. both of which i would not recommend trying to change unless you've got a car maintenance pit lol! they're a right bugger to get off and even harder to get back on again.
Or, being a ford it could even be the steering shafts- but that depends on whether you have power steering or rack and pillion.
I have been with a car nerd for the last 6 years, it's amazing what you pink up.


but always remember the old addage about fords: Fix Or Repair Daily, or Found On the Road, Dead. you ahve probably had so many problems becuase they are made out of little more than spit and tissue paper lol!

[Shirley]

It's a defender 110 I think it's 1996 or thereabouts. R reg.

At least it's not an expensive job - that's a saving grace

[Shirley]

the clunking when turning, is it a clicky clunking or a thuddy clunking? if it's clicky it's probably a CV joint, if it's thuddy it's more likely to be the ball joint at the bottom of the CV. both of which i would not recommend trying to change unless you've got a car maintenance pit lol! they're a right bugger to get off and even harder to get back on again.
Or, being a ford it could even be the steering shafts- but that depends on whether you have power steering or rack and pillion.
I have been with a car nerd for the last 6 years, it's amazing what you pink up.


but always remember the old addage about fords: Fix Or Repair Daily, or Found On the Road, Dead. you ahve probably had so many problems becuase they are made out of little more than spit and tissue paper lol!

David reckons it's more a thuddy clunk - I think we'll get it up to the garage anyway... although part of me thinks that I'd be better scouring the local paper for a cheapo replacement. Yes, you are right, it's been in and out of the garage for the last year. I've been off the road more often than on it.

I only really use it to take J to nursery and to go to camera club. J will start school properly in August and then I won't really "NEED" a car at all as he'll qualify for transport.

[mrsflibble]

it can be an expensive job, the last time we neded one done on the rover it was £165 for part supply and fit, or £80 to fit a joint which we got cheap (£45 i think) from euro carparts in rayleigh. plus vat. those were the cheapest quotes we could get. We paid to have one fitted becuase the last time jim tried to change a cv on a rover 827 (we like those cars, we are on our second now) it took him 6 hours to get the old joint off.
you need to weigh up the cost of repairs against the value of the car. the TRUE value, (look on autotrader and ebay for an average) not the parker's guide value 'cos they're a load of hairy whatnots.
our car is worth only what a scrap man will give us. repairs would total over £300 to get it working properly again, and £450 or so to get it "nice".
bye bye to our rover lol!

[Shirley]

I'll let you know what he says - thanks for your input.

Car is worthless for sure - I've got two more useless ones sitting out front. Mazdas this time... at least our neighbour is going to benefit by lifting the engine out of one of them to use in his car.

[mrsflibble]

most early / mid nineties mazdas used parts developed by ford if that helps you make sense of it lol!

[red]

ugh *sympathy*

i hate car trouble...