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Yep, shitty little engines. Four pot diesel is the one to go for.

Is this the 1.2 three cylinder engine with the dreaded wet cam belt? There was a recall on them a while back due to premature cam belt failure. They require meticulously maintaining the oil changes schedule (specific oil as well) but still no guarantee that they won’t go bang.

The belt running in oil degrades the belt prematurely, with belt dust getting in all sorts of places, the oil pick up, the turbo and vac lines to name a few. The belts either snap, or strip teeth when the starter swings over. There have been enough cases of belt failure now to prove it’s a shite design but still manufacturers insist on going down this route.
The joke is that they tell people to have the belt inspected regularly. How the bloody hell are garages  supposed to inspect a belt when it’s fitted internally. By the time they’ve stripped down the covers and gaskets etc., they may as well just fit a new belt.

Had to feel sorry for our maintenance bloke. He just turned up at work to borrow the company Dacia Duster because his Grandland packed up on him yesterday as he was on his way to spend the day with his Daughter and Grandchild.
He sat at the side of the A12 for five hours until he got recovered home.
He says the recovery bloke diagnosed the cambelt has jumped teeth, which was why the engine died.
Its four years old and he bought it 15 months ago. Its only covered 55 thousand miles and  he says the interval is supposed to be 100 thousand.
Hes thinking about spending a couple of grand or so having a recon engine fitted.
Dont suppose anyone knows much about these little contraptions ?
Safe engine ? Worth fitting another belt and timing it up to see if he got away with it ?
Personally I think I would be having a bloody good moan at Vauxhall as it only has 55 thousand miles on the clock.

Christmas Day or not, remove the latch assembly, clean thoroughly with brake cleaner and then lubricate the living daylights out of all the moving parts with 3in1.

Water gets behind the weather strip between the glass and door. Take a second look and you'll probably find it split next to the rear edge of the window frame. Water drips from here onto the linkages and eventually they bind up.

Address it now whilst you can get the door open as decent condition replacements are basically non existent and new ones haven't been available for at least a decade.

Merry Christmas to all OOF’ers from a bitingly cold Henley in Arden. We have had power cuts and snow back home so “ going away” was a good idea!

I had 3 aged aunts who lived there back in the day.

Merry Christmas everyone.   

its certainly more fun than christmas telly !

the weather/cold doesnt help as any grease or oil on the locks ,mechanism and associated parts will be stiffer compared to warmer weather .its worth lubricating everything you can get at with ypur chosen lubricant (down the button recess,in and around the door catch etc and see if if gets any better .idealy remove the door card and get into it properly .giving yoh the chance to check the actual mechanism behind the catch for the failing centre spindle issue and any other rust/dry issues and possible even trying to sort the central locking issue .if the system is totally inoperative if doesnt  point to an actuator fault as such thou as that usually makes the system erratic to lock and unlock randomly ??

after further testing i have concluded that "some " rogue component in the second stage of the preamp (just a transistor in second stage)is causing the issue .even thou everything seems to test similar in values to a good unit .im going to try some freeze spray when i get some but in the meantime on one faulty unit i have fitted the standalone preamp board from a philips 752 this morning which has eliminated the problem completely .thus proving my theory that there something there which is either a design flaw or an age related one .either way this does solve it and make the xassette crystal clear again .needed slightly higher coupling caps (4.7 instead of 2.2uf)
 other idea which im contemplating is modding to a usb stick input as well as or instead of the cassette .might try this on one unit to see how it sounds .
the realy annoying thing here (althou its a learning curve) is the amount of parts /ic's etc that ive swapped over now and years ago when i knew less about what i was doing ! and didnt need swapping at all !?   hey ho !

Hallelujah !!!! 

Merry Christmas to all OOF’ers from a bitingly cold Henley in Arden. We have had power cuts and snow back home so “ going away” was a good idea!