Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i Car Mechanics

I recently returned from Mark Shipman’s garage (AES York Ltd) after a couple of days in the workshop taking the original 80,000-mile engine out of my 2012 Toyota Aygo and fitting a replacement 42k engine I bought on eBay. The engine came with the gearbox too and at £380 delivered, that wasn’t a bad price. The Aygo will start as a project car in a forthcoming issue, where we show how a car that came with a 5-year warranty when new is basically ready for the scrapyard at 12/13-years-old. My journey home is about 300 miles. A stopping point back is normally at Peterborough services on the A1. Sometimes I use the M1 to come back south, but most of the time it’s the A1. I don’t mind travelling late…

Very often, the simplest things are the most complex. Car electrics are a perfect example. The principles upon which your car carries electricity around itself are fairly simple. Electrical currents (amps) flow through a conductive wire, pushed along by an electrical pressure (volts) but is hampered by resistance (ohms). That is it. What could go wrong? Quite a lot, it would seem. In the name of progress… For early motorists, vehicle electrics were relatively simple. Yet, their focus tended to be directed solely on the ignition system, such was their priority to keep the temperamental contraption running. For them, the luxury was the fact that the vehicle could keep moving without needing a horse. Once four wheels started to usurp four legs properly, owner expectations grew. As the decades passed,…

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ORDER DIRECT via shop.kelsey.co.uk/single-issue/car-mechanics-magazine AUGUST 2025 40 Used Buys for under £15k (28-page supplement) • Timing Chains • Hit the Brakes: Peugeot 2008, Pt1 (front discs/pads) • Automechanika Birmingham Show Report • Summer Fun • Good Garage Guide • Electronic Diagnostics: Volkswagen Beetle 2.0: Part 3 • Our Cars: BMW 318Ti Compact & Volvo C70. JULY 2025 JLR Ingenium Engine • Project Mazda MX-5 2.0 NC, Pt4 • Project Ford Focus Mk3 1.0 EcoBoost, Pt6 • Mercedes-Benz Citan Modifications • Spotlight: NightSearcher VoltMax • Buying + Owning: Chevrolet Cruze (2009-2015) • Hit the Brakes: BMW 3-Series E90 • Electronic Diagnostics: VW Beetle 2.0: Part 2 • Our Cars: Ford Mondeo 2.0 TDCi & MINI One R50 1.6. JUNE 2025 Hydrogen Fuel Fuel Research • Project Mazda MX-5 2.0 NC, Pt3…

PEUGEOT 2008 PART 2: Rob Hawkins returns to AES to replace the rear brake components on a 2016 Peugeot 2008. In the last issue of CM, we followed the front discs and pads being replaced on a 2016 Peugeot 2008 at AES York Ltd, which in comparison to working on the rear brakes, was plain sailing. With a couple of dragging rear brakes (at times we couldn’t even push the vehicle on the smooth workshop floor), further investigation could have identified whether the brake pads or caliper pistons were sticking, for example, or maybe the rear brake flexi-hoses had broken down internally. However, fixing one problem can often lead to another one emerging, so we decided to replace both rear calipers – the discs needed replacing anyway, so that meant…

BMW X1 Fault code Q The EML is on my BMW X1. The only code relates to particulate matter sensor P24C6 - 2BA100. I’ve been under car – wiring is good, power and ground OK with battery voltage. Seems to me sensor is the problem. Any observations?  Clive Willacy A The code you have P24C6 - 2BA100 is indicating Diesel Particulate Sensor: Electrically faulty. The fault is detected when the evaluation electronics of the Diesel Particulate Sensor detect an implausible temperature. In more basic terms the ECU is detecting a temperature that cannot possibly be accurate due the temperature being outside the reasonable boundaries of what may be possible. The sensor monitoring is running continuously every 1000 milliseconds and the temperature range in the sensor before the DPF must fall…

A fool and his money are easily parted, so the time-honoured saying tells us, and I fear in automotive terms the phrase has never been more relevant. I once found myself wandering around the Coventry Transport Museum timeline (if you’ve never been you must go) almost weeping at the number of registered British motor manufacturers in the 1920’s and how few there are today. The slow decline of our once illustrious car industry is partly due to persistent government meddling as well as bloody-minded union leaders who completely failed to see the storm clouds on the horizon that came in the form of imports. Say what you want about long gone brands – take MG Rover for example, when they hit the skids in 2005 many folk yelled out loud…

Ben celebrates 120 years of supporting automotive people Automotive industry charity, Ben, is proudly celebrating 120 years of support for automotive people and their families, as well as marking a new chapter in its future strategic direction. The charity’s three main goals over the next five years are: ▶ To treble charitable impact – helping even more people. ▶ To increase awareness about Ben from 1:6 to 1:3 for those working in the industry. ▶ To double income through fundraising. At the heart of Ben’s evolution is its new vision statement: An automotive family that thinks well, feels well, lives well, and works well. As part of Ben’s renewed direction is a mission to: ▶ Provide health & wellbeing support for life for automotive people and their family dependents. ▶…

You don’t have to tow to discover the benefits of a towbar even though that’s their prime objective. They can also be essential fitment for certain types of bike carriers; provide a useful selling point and you’d surprised the number of times that you wish you had one fitted in times of emergencies. Like the vehicles they’re fitted to, towbar designs have come a long way over the decades where it wasn’t unknown for motorists to fabricate their own contraptions or have a local blacksmith cobble something up. Now, due to design, legal and insurance reasons, it’s definitely changed from, “and here’s one I made up earlier” to “don’t try this at home”. There again, thanks to healthy competition that includes social media, actual towbar ironware isn’t that expensive, starting…

Last month, I talked about the rear-end MOT repairs needed to get my Volvo C70 MOT’d and ended with a mention that the nearside bottom joint also needed changing. But as noted in my August 2025 ‘column’, that job didn’t exactly go to plan. There were two aspects that caused problems. The first was basically down to me trying to save a bit of cash. I don’t like waste. I’m also a bit old-school when it comes to wanting to repair things rather than renew. Accordingly, I always try, when repairing a car, to renew only what actually needs doing, and to rebuild/repair rather than renew. So, given that only the front bottom joint on my Volvo C70 needed changing, my original plan was to renew just the joint rather…

I’m writing this on the day after returning from the Simpson annual holiday. With Katie now being 18 and off to university this September, and Jim just a year younger, it’s likely this will be our final family holiday, so we decided to make it a bit of a special one. Accordingly, we’ve spent the past week in Pompeii, which is about 20 miles south of Naples. Sarah and I both had seeing the famous Roman ruins here on our lifetime ‘bucket list’ along with the Colosseum in Rome, and with Katie having studied the classics for A-level, it seemed appropriate. We also, of course, experienced Italian roads, and Italian driving, first-hand for the first time. And I can tell you that at first, driving in Italy really is as…

VOLKSWAGEN GOLF Big-end trouble It is not too common now to see an engine in such a poor condition as this 2016 Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TSI, and certainly with just 45,000 miles on the clock. I suspect that the motor was driven poorly and maintained with a lot less care than it should have been. The only information the owner gave was that they had topped up the oil when needed, but the banging noise was still there. There was no doubt about the source of the noise from this VW and I advised that the engine would need to be removed and stripped down. The owner had little choice but to agree. Draining down the oil from the sump, the glittery signs of metal in the oil was easily…

A surprising decision? As this issue went to press – in fact, I persuaded Martyn the Editor to allow an extra-late deadline in order to get this story – the supreme court announced its decision on the car finance selling appeal – and in two of the three separate cases the supreme court overturned the court of appeal’s decision. The court of appeal had ruled that nearly all commission arrangements – unless fully disclosed and issued under full consent of the consumer – were unlawful. Two lenders – Close Brothers and South African-owned FirstRand, appealed this decision to the supreme court. The supreme court, as the name implies, is the highest court in the land, and its decisions are final. The court of appeal sided with the finance companies on…

GENERAL ULEZ compliance Q Some time ago you were kind enough to advise on my Transit injectors which kept loosening. I purchased some Loctite 270 and booked the van in with the best garage I know. They were reluctant to use the Loctite without a thorough investigation. Their diagnosis was that after previous seat cutting, the bolts were tightening on the bottom of the hole more than the injector – anyway, whatever they did to rectify has been OK so far. I opened the email to communicate on a completely different topic and upon seeing the injector topic thought it worth an update. What baffled me into this communication – a 1949 5.7-litre is ULEZ compliant, and a recent advert I saw for a 2003 Jaguar XJ8, which said it…

Looking forward to getting my VW Lupo GTI back on the road after a long driveway hibernation, I was keen on replacing the old fuel left in the tank. Usually, I don’t mind using slightly old fuel (6-12 months) as long as I’ve previously used fuel stabiliser and it doesn’t smell off, but with an MOT due and having a race engine I felt compelled to change it in this case! Having no patience to drop the tank from below and with siphoning a tricky and potentially messy affair, I built a gizmo to utilise the existing in-tank fuel pump to do the heavy lifting for me. Having found an old fuel pump electrical plug I worked out which pins did what. With there being only four on this VW…