anon

My 125 Ecoboost had Goodyear Eagle from new on 17" wheels. The ride and handling were atrocious. It now sits on 16" wheels shod with Yokohamas which are wearing well, riding well and gripping well.

The poor Fiesta has been laden to the bump stops several times lately on long continental trips to move lathes and milling machines over to France. There is a minor and occasilonal clonk when changing gear and the occasional twitch of the steering wheel when pulling away or braking. I suspect the upper gearbox mounting. The engine is not sitting level in the engine bay being noticeably lower at the gearbox end which seems to confirm my suspicions but before I remove the battery and carrier, I would like a second opinion. Does your ecoboost sit level or does it have a noticeable tilt to the right? If you have time, please take a look and let me know.

My driving profile has changed markedly since buying my second Mk8 this year. It is now four years old and on the original battery. The car spends three weeks of the month largely dormant doing no more than 100 miles and the fourth doing about 1,000 miles in four stints of about 250 miles a day. At the start of the week, the car will not keylessly unlock from the passenger's side but by the time I have arrived in Carelles 300 miles away, it will and the stop start is active within half a mile, remaining so for the rest of the week. Regular long trips are the key to good battery health. Using the performance tops the battery up faster. A good thrash from Poole to Chichester is enough to enable the stop start as a rule.

Um, you can change the radio stations and media tracks etc. That is what the steering wheel buttons are for and that screen in front of you.

it is, of course possible to switch the display off using the marked button for that purpose.

Of course it does. You get another ten years out of it.

People who buy a car knowing the servicing requirements and then complain when they need to be met. The cost of having the belts done at a hundred thousand miles is in the same ballpark as the cost of a dual mass flywheel and clutch job or a full exhaust system with catalysts and filters. It isn't a lot of money. See what a ten year old car is worth.

So at ten years old, the car needs about six per cent of its purchase price spent on a major part replacement that was scheduled from the word go. And you are complaining about it? One and a half pence per mile and you get an engine that is good for another 100,000 miles in a car that is clearly capable of lasting for another 100,000 miles. I cannot understand the mentality that makes people try to avoid the scheduled servicing requirements or costs of running a car. It is completely imbecilic and wasteful. Light aircraft have stringent maintainance requirements. Plenty of them are more than forty years old. They are much less sophisticated than motor cars but the service costs are much greater. People don't scrap them because a big bill is coming up so why is it so with cars? I shall buy the tools and do the job myself. Don't tell me it isn't an option. It may not be one of the options available to you but I'll do it, sell on the tools afterwards and expect to be driving mine in 2039 if I last that long.

At fifteen years old, the pump will be a bit slow and all the tolerances, tappet bores for instance will be worn so it will be noisier than a new car. Note I wrote worn, not worn out.

The correct one is the one you took off to fit the loud one. Unless you are an acoustics engineer specialising in exhausts and with a couple of supercomputers in your research lab, you will be wasting your time and even more of your money.

Just the cold rattling its bones. It takes longer to warm up and close the tolerances between parts. On a cold morning, one of my other cars sounds like a diesel and shakes as though it is about to disintegrate, spreading parts all over town. Fifteen minutes later, it is silken smooth all the way to the 7,250RPM redline. Your mechanic is quite right.

Why haven't you called up the people who did the work first?

There are millions of these engines giving good service. Your neighbours forgot to tell you that. The Ecoboost is a modern engine which is powerful, economical, tiny and intolerant of monkey servicing. Treated properly it is fine.

Any tyre company adding something to make their tyres cheaper will claim huge benefits but making tyres from stone means that they don't grip and they do crack, like the Michelin's on my last mk8. I will regard the rest of the delusional and bigoted rantings with contempt and continue to be afflicted with my German made Fiesta, almost universally acclaimed as having the most refined chassis of any small car currently available.

I don't think that there is anything in your post that I can agree with. Goodyears I find to be below average and Continentals are not designed for idiots. As for German cars being unrefined, I would say that You are talking nonsense but I shall hold my tongue because I cannot drive at 12/10ths or even 11 on Michelins. Silica is sand. It doesn't add grip, just life. Budget tyres have to meet stringent safety standards and most people using them don't drive like morons which is why so few of them get killed doing so.