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Day-to-day car running...
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Monday, 03 September 2007 11:34 |
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"We're going to the Nurburgring. Happy Birthday" These words from my girlfriend brought a smile to my face. Especially as my birthday was over 2 weeks away. "We're leaving in 12 hours and you have to be up at 5am". I felt slightly less excitable. |
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Tuesday, 13 March 2007 07:41 |
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My Panda had its last (12k) service at Stoneacre in Wrexham. They left me thoroughly unimpressed, so I decided to try another Fiat dealer - TJ Vickers in Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury is the wrong way for me to go to work, but that didn't matter too much, as I was offered a courtesy car. When I booked my service, I had to wait a week or so to get the courtesy car, but as I could wait, I chose to. When I arrived to drop my car off at 8am, the staff were just getting sorted for the day, but I was given the courtesy car key, signed a couple of forms, and went on my way. The courtesy car itself was a Grande Punto 1.2 Dynamic. I had thought I might get a base model Panda, but I ended up with a courtesy car worth more than my own car! It only needed a couple of white stripes to finish it off. It was clean, about 6 months old, and in excellent condition. During the day, I got a phone call to advise that my front tyres were worn on the inside, and did I want them changing? I declined, but was given a price that was a sensible amount. Later during the day (about 3:00pm) I got a call to say that the car was completed, and that were a couple of advisories, but no problems. The advisories were a small chip in the windscreen, and a cracked front fog light. Both of those I already knew about. The foglight had been cracked at the 12k service, but Stoneacre never mentioned this at all. It was a nice change to get the call to say that the car was finished early (I'd asked for it to be ready by 5pm) as when it was serviced at 12k, I never got a call to say it was finished. When I got back to the dealer I had to wait for 5 minutes, as the only Service Administrator was on the phone. I had a stroll around the showroom, looked at the other cars there (their Panda didn't have a boot light either, but it had nicer upholstery than was available when I bought mine), and flicked through their folder of letters from satisfied customers. They also had a tray of sweets in the waiting area, with the Fiat logo on the sweets. Unfortunately I forgot to take any. When I came to pay for the service, I got a small shock. Luckily it was a pleasant one. The total cost of the 24k service at TJ Vickers was substantially less than the cost of the 12k service at Stoneacre, despite being more comprehensive. In addition the cost of the oil was more reasonable (still dealer price, but less than Stoneacre), the cost of the filters was less, and there were no random charges added on. When I got to my car, there was an added bonus - the carpets had been vacuumed. I know where I'll be going for my next service. |
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Monday, 26 February 2007 13:02 |
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I used to host several videos for people on the Fiat Coupe forum. That was back in the day when I had masses of bandwidth to burn, and invariably it did use masses of bandwidth. As I no longer have masses of bandwidth, I uploaded the videos to Google Video. Google have more bandwidth available than me. This also gives the videos more exposure (though as I don't profit from them in any way, it's irrelevant really). The links to the videos on my server are obviously plastered all over the internet, as I get many (more than 4) people visiting this site each month, getting an error for a link that is no longer there, then searching for some derivative of the term Fiat Coupe Video. As those poor people haven't been getting many results for their search, I thought I'd index my links below. So far these videos have been viewed more than 90,000 times. On the other hand, if you're looking for the Fiat Coupe workshop manual, I'm afraid it's gone.I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will sell you a CD with it on. |
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Friday, 04 August 2006 01:00 |
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Today the Panda had its 12000 mile service, after less than 6 months of ownership! In the end, after deliberation, I had the car serviced at my local Fiat dealer. |
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Wednesday, 19 April 2006 00:00 |
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Over 500 miles out of a tankful! Admittedly I did run out of fuel in the process, but 33.51 litre yielded 509.2 miles, which gives us 69.1 mpg. The car now has 6028 miles on it, which is half way to the first service. The trip computer said 69.2 mpg, so this is the first time is has over-estimated the mpg. |
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Wednesday, 19 April 2006 00:00 |
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Over the last tankful of fuel in the Panda, I have been making a real effort to drive as economically as possible. Previously I have been getting up to 63 mpg out of it - some way from the supposedly possible 75 mpg. Yesterday It got to the point where the trip computer said I had got to 69.2 mpg, but the low fuel light was on. I knew from previous experience that even when the needle was on empty, there was room for 30 litres of fuel in the tank. With a quoted capacity of 35 litres, this would mean that there was about a gallon of fuel left - enough for quite some distance. So I pushed my luck a bit. On my way home from work, I could have stopped in Wrexham, but I had only done about 497 miles on the tankful by this point, and I wanted to get more than 500. So I carried on, planning to fill up at Shell in Oswestry. About half a mile from the petrol station, coming out of a roundabout, the car shuddered, and the engine stopped. There was no more fuel. Luckily there is another petrol station about 100 metres after the roundabout, and I had enough momentum to get me to this point, and off the main road. I coasted round towards the pumps, and came to a stop about 10 metres short! I got out the car and tried to push it to the oump, but due to it being a slight uphill slope it was very hard work. Luckily there was a member of staff there to give me a push. I filled the car up to the brim. It took 32.5 litres. So Fiat's quoted capacity is wrong. At least this explains why it ran out sooner than I thought. Still, it works out at 69.1 mpg, which isn't too bad. The engine started after about 2 seconds of cranking, but the engine management light stayed on. The car ran fine though. The next day I ranf the dealer to get the engine management light sorted. Unfortunately their code reader was broken, and a new one was on order, but not available until May, so I booked the car in for May 5th. Of course the next time I started the car, the light went off... |
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Thursday, 13 April 2006 00:00 |
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426.1 miles on a tank, achieved with some fairly gentle driving. Using 30.13 litres means I got 64.3 mpg. The computer's estimate was 60.7 mpg though. The car has now covered 5519 miles in total. |
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Tuesday, 04 April 2006 00:00 |
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The car now has 5093 miles on it, having done 464.2 miles on the last 31.70 litres of fuel. That's 66.6 mpg, though the trip computer said 62.9 mpg - a larger than normal inaccuracy. |
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Monday, 27 March 2006 00:00 |
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Managed to get 427.0 miles out of a tankful, which gave me a warm glow. The fillup was only 30.91 litres, so there should have still been 4 litres left, even though the light had been on for ages. This means 450 miles should be achievable. The trip computer said 60.1 mpg for this tankful, and the calculator said 62.8 mpg. 4629 miles on the clock now. |
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Sunday, 26 March 2006 00:00 |
The car got a wash today! Only its second one so far in 2 and a bit months. I found a couple of small paint chips on the front spoiler, probably from stones. The bigger damage was that the offside front foglight is shattered. A replacement is about £60 for the part. I'm not sure at this point if it's worth repairing. I haven't even used the front foglights yet! Apart from that the bodywork is fine. I forgot to take the wheel cleaner to my parents where I was the car though, so they've never been cleaned properly yet. They are starting to look a bit brown now.
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