[dazmond]

van still in garage......!!not heard off them today.ive been busy pressure washing a friends drive(for free of course!).


ive been driving around with the oil light coming on for over a month now so i think my engine would of seized by now if it was the oil pump!!

[Spruce]

I had the head gasket done on my berlingo best part of £700 and i had phantom electrics..would go out to the van in the morning and there would be all kinds of weird things happening with lights on the instrement panel so had a load of rewiring done £300 im in a better the devil you know situation now

Sadly, the odds are that there was a poor earth connection to the bodywork.
The only problem I had with an old 51 plate 1.9d Citroen Relay was an earth problem and it created havoac with all the gauges. It was the earth cable from the battery to the engine on the engine side that had electrically corroded - alloy gearbox housing and steel earth strap bolt are not good bedfellows.
When I worked in a dealership, the number of faulty sender units (usually water related) tested and rejected as claims by the factory would have all been down to a poor earth. Unscrewing the sensor, cleaning the threads and putting it back would have solved the problem in most situations.
Spruce

[JS_Cleaning]

i had 4 weeks off over xmas due to weather below -10, first day back i had a power washing job that a custie was torturing me to do, got to the custies house and 3 parts on the power house had cracked or shattered over the cold spell, so off i goes to my local power washer repair guy, was charged handsomly for the parts,

was heading back in the main road toward town doing 60mph and a young lad 17years old comes out of a side road doin about 40mph, tbones me on my passengers side door, writes off the van i spend 4 weeks in hospital, and a further 4 weeks finding a new van/wfp system on the cheap, still payin off the bills from the debt it put me into, probably wont see compensation for another year as the young lad is contesting it...

on the bright side today was my first day being caught up with my work since before xmas

[Tom White]

i had 4 weeks off over xmas due to weather below -10, first day back i had a power washing job that a custie was torturing me to do, got to the custies house and 3 parts on the power house had cracked or shattered over the cold spell, so off i goes to my local power washer repair guy, was charged handsomly for the parts,

was heading back in the main road toward town doing 60mph and a young lad 17years old comes out of a side road doin about 40mph, tbones me on my passengers side door, writes off the van i spend 4 weeks in hospital, and a further 4 weeks finding a new van/wfp system on the cheap, still payin off the bills from the debt it put me into, probably wont see compensation for another year as the young lad is contesting it...

on the bright side today was my first day being caught up with my work since before xmas

That sounds like a self-employed window cleaners nightmare, mate.  Have you got a family too?

If that happened to me at this very stage I'm at, it'd be house repossession time I think.

[Johnny B]

In 2007 I bought a 1988 Mk2 Fiesta van off ebay for the princely sum of £54. I drove it home (180+ miles) without any problems at all. The MOT ran out the following day.

When I checked it over, it needed practically nothing doing to it, so did what was needed and submitted it for its MOT. It passed.

I ran it for 3 years and had no real mechanical problems with it. The engine and box were brilliant. The bodywork was the only issue, as it needed welding each year for the MOT from then on (no surprises here).

Last year I gave it away to a young lad, as I had replaced it with a very clean and tidy later Fiesta van (1999) which gave plenty of problems at first (alternator, battery, clutch, gearbox etc), but now the gremlins are finally dead and all is now well.   

John.