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Expensive LED Lights


Selwyn

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I have a 2015 Ford Mondeo, Just took it for MoT, failed on one thing daytime running light on drivers side works but when you indicate it turns off as the flasher light is incorporated, When you cancel the turn signal its supposed to come on again, it doesn't.

Any other car change the bulb or relay, no problem. a few quid. But the car has LED lights so the headlight control unit needs replacing, So that will be £260 plus fitting, oh, and by the way it will take about 10 days to get one. so off the road ten days for a daytime running light.

Whatever you do don't buy a Ford with LED lights! 

Watch out for Ford service Employees, they are easy to spot, they wear a mask, a stripey shirt and carry a bag marked SWAG.  Corporate banditry in the first degree!

 

Selwyn

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1 minute ago, Selwyn said:

I have a 2015 Ford Mondeo, Just took it for MoT, failed on one thing daytime running light on drivers side works but when you indicate it turns off as the flasher light is incorporated, When you cancel the turn signal its supposed to come on again, it doesn't.

Any other car change the bulb or relay, no problem. a few quid. But the car has LED lights so the headlight control unit needs replacing, So that will be £260 plus fitting, oh, and by the way it will take about 10 days to get one. so off the road ten days for a daytime running light.

Whatever you do don't buy a Ford with LED lights! 

Watch out for Ford service Employees, they are easy to spot, they wear a mask, a stripey shirt and carry a bag marked SWAG.  Corporate banditry in the first degree!

 

Selwyn

Could have been worse mate! Think yourself lucky it wasn't a BMW with the halo type lights. You'd be mortgaging your firstborn.

Regards,

Pete

 

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40 minutes ago, Selwyn said:

I have a 2015 Ford Mondeo, Just took it for MoT, failed on one thing daytime running light on drivers side works but when you indicate it turns off as the flasher light is incorporated, When you cancel the turn signal its supposed to come on again, it doesn't.

Any other car change the bulb or relay, no problem. a few quid. But the car has LED lights so the headlight control unit needs replacing, So that will be £260 plus fitting, oh, and by the way it will take about 10 days to get one. so off the road ten days for a daytime running light.

Whatever you do don't buy a Ford with LED lights! 

Watch out for Ford service Employees, they are easy to spot, they wear a mask, a stripey shirt and carry a bag marked SWAG.  Corporate banditry in the first degree!

 

Selwyn

 

Unfortunately this sort of tomfoolery is only becoming more and more common. Cars are becoming so complicated adding layers and layers of non-serviceable frippery but the first buyers who order them new simply don't care as when it breaks it won't be their problem. The way I view this is that as a society we are punitively taxed and socially engineered in the name of our carbon footprint but the single biggest improvement to planet earth we could make would be to cut right back on heavy industry. You don't save the planet by building new 2 tonne cars. Even those buying new cars are environmental vandals until the car reaches late life because every new vehicle made comes with a massive carbon footprint before it turns a wheel. There should be well considered environmental requirements on manufacturers of machinery like cars around sustainability, and that will really boil down to ensuring that mid-life cars remain economically viable to continue using until late-life. It's criminal to think how many cars are scrapped prematurely because some unnecessarily complex item which costs a fortune to replace has failed.

 

Another example:

- Rear view cameras and screens in lieu of door mirrors - it's hard to beat the intrinsic reliability of a piece of silvered glass, and they need power to work even when not broken so getting out of the car when parallel parked for a while has an extra hazard

 

 

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21 minutes ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

it's hard to beat the intrinsic reliability of a piece of silvered glass,

I'll have to disagree in a tongue-in-cheek manner there, as my passenger side mirror made a bid for escape the other day.  It was hanging on by a black, stringy thread, as the adhesive had gone off due to the constant hot/cold cycle of the heating element.  Fortunately, I used some modelling tools to clean and repair it, but we'll see if the heating element works once the cold weather comes along.  £11 if it's bust. :shrug:

 

Speaking of which, the bit I didn't quote, while it makes a lot of sense and could apply to just about everything manufactured in our screwed up world, will draw us into a great big teacup tornado about global warming, politics and all that and everything, so we'll call a halt on that :)

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@Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies would have been interested in an article in MG Owners Club magazine decades ago when the environmental stuff had kicked off.  It had done an analysis making exactly Jamie's point - that the main impact of a car was in its manufacturing.  If you can keep the car on the road for twenty years it has a lower carbon footprint than a car that need scrapped at ten years.

 

I do recall having a big Lotus back in the eighties and needing a new lamp for the pop up headlight  as the back coating had tarnished/rusted.  I cant recall the amount a replacement set was from Lotus but it was eye wateringly expensive.  My local independent garage however told the Lotus dealership he would be back in touch.  He then spoke to the local Lucas sales rep.  Yes it was a Lucas product.  Yes it was the headlight for the old Land Rover Defender of post WW2 vintage and Yes a set cost 30% of what Lotus were charging unless he wanted it in a Lotus cardboard box rather than a Lucas cardboard box.  Nowt changes.  No wonder the car industry refers to the UK as "Treasure Island"

 

 

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  • Julien changed the title to Expensive LED Lights

It’s getting ridiculous. All things to go wrong.

My car can self park parallel or bays. Tried it when I first got it in an empty Tescos car park…scared the life out of me! never ever thought of using it since!

 Also car has five cameras sides,front,back & vertical views, plus front & rear parking sensors. If you can’t park with that little lot, well it asks a question.

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1 minute ago, sinnerboy said:

My car can self park parallel or bays. Tried it when I first got it in an empty Tescos car park…scared the life out of me! never ever thought of using it since!

My folks' car has this, and it has been used precisely ONCE, when the rep taught them how to do it at hand-over.  If it wasn't electronic, it would have seized by now :lol:   I'll have to give it a go next time I borrow their car to take them somewhere :hmmm:

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I've just had my car serviced. 

 

One of the "to do" items was to check on why the "engine fault" light had recently come on. When I got the car back, the service report said: "Scanned vehicle and checked for faults found. (P1339, P1340, P1336, P1062). Carried out test schedule for fault P1062, recommend to update engine software as 1st step and reset all the adaptive. Update engine ECU and re-set al {sic} adaptive cleared faults and test drove all ok"

 

I still have no idea what work was done, but the light is no longer on ...

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I once had a Subaru Outback Impreza, bought at two years old from a friend. Within a couple of months I noticed a rotten egg smell after journeys - shortly after that, the check engine came on, so I took it to the local Subaru dealer. I told them what I'd noticed and that the obvious culprit was the catalytic converter beginning to fail.

 

Their response was "Oh, no, sir - we'll let the computer tell us what's wrong."

 

Long story short, after months of increasingly bad feeling between myself and the dealer, and more money than I could afford to replace sensors that made no difference, they suddenly decided to replace the catalytic converter under warranty, and - get this - told me never to come back for service work there. The cheek! They're no longer in business, which is not a surprise.

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14 hours ago, Ray S said:

Someone I know has been waiting five months for an exhaust for his new Land Rover! They sent one, but it was the wrong one...

 

Ray

I was unable to get a replacement middle and back exhaust for my Fiat Multipla - sorry sir none in the country - so my local garage arranged to get a bespoke stainless steel one made by a local exhaust fabricator.  Although not cheap (£400 fitted) it only took three days to have made and will easily outlive the car.

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12 hours ago, Mike said:

My folks' car has this, and it has been used precisely ONCE, when the rep taught them how to do it at hand-over.  If it wasn't electronic, it would have seized by now :lol:   I'll have to give it a go next time I borrow their car to take them somewhere :hmmm:

 

 I also have this on my Tiguan. I'm rubbish at parallel parking so a great help. You should see other drivers when I use it, especially if I have my hands behind my head. No need for laxatives.  :hypnotised::analintruder:

 

Dick

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Not sure if the rules have changed but daytime running lights shouldn't be an MOT failure for a pre-2018 car. You say your Mondeo is 2015. Naturally the dealership should still encourage you to replace the unit, but check the failure status.

 

Matt

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Yes we did... 2020 Hyundai Kona EV. And it's a cracking car. latter part of 2020, so it's a 70 plate (for our non UK members, UK reg plates have the year of registration in the plate, so 2022 is xx 22 xxx for 6 months, then xx 72 XXX for the second half of the year, which changes each year). And has all the bells and whistles. Also is the extended range version. Full charge is up to 292 miles. Which like any car range is dependent on road conditions and driving style. At the end of the day, that is the way that all car sales will be in a few years. We just decided that it was time to do it now as our diesel was getting a bit long in the tooth and got a good deal on it.

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18 hours ago, Nick Belbin said:

Anybody going to buy an all-electric car second hand??

Potentially, yes.  One would make a good second car for my family to do all the relatively short trips required.  The question is what size of home charger?  I'm tempted to go for a 22kW one, but that would require increasing the supply capacity to my house which adds to the cost but may be good for future proofing, as future bigger batteries will require more charging.

I read there are 400kW chargers available, but I think it will be a while before they come to domestic supplies!

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We have a Renault Zoe as a second car and a 7.2kW home charger and it’s proved to be a brilliant combination for local stuff.

 

For longer journeys, we are taking delivery of a Mazda CX-60 PHEV next week as I couldn’t find anything that is pure electric with the range I need for work.

 

By choice, I’ll never go back to pure ICE, petrol or diesel, as the electric is so much nicer to drive.

 

 

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With the way that petrol prices are rising, an electric vehicle is definitely on the "to do" list for the future. Unfortunately, out here in the country the back-up facilities are less than ideal - there's just one public charging point in town at the moment, and getting a sparkie to install anything at home is about as likely as winning the lottery - so a plug-in EV might be the go for my next. Trouble there is that they're all so bloody expensive (although hopefully that will change in the near future) and too big for my needs. What can a poor boy do?

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On 10/19/2022 at 3:33 AM, Admiral Puff said:

the service report said: "Scanned vehicle and checked for faults found. (P1339, P1340, P1336, P1062). Carried out test schedule for fault P1062, recommend to update engine software as 1st step and reset all the adaptive. Update engine ECU and re-set al {sic} adaptive cleared faults and test drove all ok"

 

I still have no idea what work was done, but the light is no longer on ...

 

That sounds suspiciously like my Alfa - at least that has Self Healing Italian Technology for electronics and the warning lights are completely random :D

 

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On 10/18/2022 at 7:46 PM, Paul J said:

I think I'll  replace my car with Moggy Minor  Possibly cheaper on light bulbs etc😜

Agree completely,if i had the money i'd sell the Fusion and get a Mk IV Cortina or MkII Escort as a daily driver....

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I have an old 80’s series Landcruiser - new side mirrors $500 (that’s each!) - 1 self tapper and some swearing -10c. Radiator overflow cap seal - nope, can’t buy it separately (on my fourth one) so you have to buy a complete overflow bottle - $270 thanks sir. Cars are far more expensive that a few model kits! Am considering a Tesla as I believe you can use it as a battery at home which might make solar power a possibility at home.

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