Taking the car to show at the Herts Auto Show next weekend, if you are in the area drop in! http://www.hertsautoshow.co.uk

Helpfully, the warning light returned as Mrs Poprock delivered the car to the garage this morning. Excellent timing, those Italian electrics.

poprock wrote:

Also, made an excellent discovery yesterday. The people who own Tebay/Westmorland services have bought Cairn Lodge services up here and just opened their new building, farm shop and everything. Game changer, lads. Means I no longer need to take a 40 minute detour to get decent service area food when driving to England.

I stopped at Tebay southbound for the first time earlier on this year. Aside from some slightly random walking routes that head off into the trees from the parking areas before abruptly ending either in deep mud or 'turn back' signs and fencing, it seemed to be about as nice as you could hope a UK motorway service stop to be. Nice to see Tesla Superchargers too.

Aye you can get some reet bargains on there.

Brother in law, took his motor for a mot and service to a Formula1 garage (yeh i know they are crap). Anyhow, first they failed his car on the Xeon headlight not working right. Quoted him £2,000 to have it fixed. (We fixed it with a cable tie afterwards).

Then they said they'd serviced his car. He took his motor to a second garage for another opinion on the mot failure to be told that the car needed a service as well. He told the 2nd garage that it had just been serviced. The mechanic opened up the air filter which hadn't been changed and also showed him the state of the oil. The service hadn't been done, but he was charged for it.

Anyway he's raised a complaint to trading standards and trying to get his service money back. I said to him technically its fraud as well. Is trading standards the best route to go down?

I got jipped by a poxy little garage years back when I bought a used Clio from them. When it developed a fault my regular garage told me it was technically unsafe, it hadn't been serviced as the previous garage had claimed and the 'new' MOT wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

I contacted Trading Standards and as I'd paid with my credit card they said this was the best way about getting your money back for the repairs. Gave them all the details of the fraudulent garage but don't know if they investigated. I enquired about taking the MOT tester to task, but this was even trickier to enforce. I got my money back through the Halifax credit card, they didn't fuck about, and I like to think some skinny, bespectacled banker went round and kneecapped the dodgy garage owner.

Short version is; any doubts, pay with credit card, then you're protected.

I think you pay more the first year?

Dinostar77 wrote:

Brother in law, took his motor for a mot and service to a Formula1 garage (yeh i know they are crap). Anyhow, first they failed his car on the Xeon headlight not working right. Quoted him £2,000 to have it fixed. (We fixed it with a cable tie afterwards).

Then they said they'd serviced his car. He took his motor to a second garage for another opinion on the mot failure to be told that the car needed a service as well. He told the 2nd garage that it had just been serviced. The mechanic opened up the air filter which hadn't been changed and also showed him the state of the oil. The service hadn't been done, but he was charged for it.

Anyway he's raised a complaint to trading standards and trying to get his service money back. I said to him technically its fraud as well. Is trading standards the best route to go down?

Yes. But I'd ring the police too. And watchdog. And the local news/radio/papers.

I was looking at a new car but I do really like my Alfa MiTo. And for a 1.4 turbo petrol engine with 135 horsepower it somehow gets 45mpg, even though it's urban driving. I can probably thank the stop/start for that! 

I think the Multiair engine is genius and I would love a Fiat or Abarth 124, one day. I can only imagine how good this torquey but efficient engine would feel with that chassis and rear wheel drive.

Been meaning to ask about the guilietta, i quite fancy one myself. I didn't think the 1.6 diesel would have as much poke, been looking at the 1.4 turbo petrol instead.

Raiziel wrote:

I’ve got this in my workshop at the moment.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/djOuUxf.jpg[img]

Gt40?

An original, or one of those supersport ones from south Africa?

Aaahh righto. Still pretty cool, you doing the full rebuild? Love to see it when it's done.

HawBawJaws wrote:

Been meaning to ask about the guilietta, i quite fancy one myself. I didn't think the 1.6 diesel would have as much poke, been looking at the 1.4 turbo petrol instead.

The 1.4 petrol would be an awesome engine. Just make sure service history is up to date, as there is an actuator in multiair engines that is prone to fail, and will cost £1000 to fix! (It happened to mine, during the previous owner's... ownership)

the great thing about the multiair is the amount of torque you get. I had a V8 merc before this MiTo and honestly low down it feels just as torquey as that did! 

I dunno about not being a lot of horsepower, 0-60 in 7.2 seconds isn't too shabby! And you'll probably still get high 30s MPG (actually it's rated as 37.8 MPG on Realmpg). Probably even more if you opt for one with stop/start.




This is making me want to get one, now!  As poprock says, the interior of the Giulietta is beautiful, especially with the half leather seats.