Did he keep the reciepts for the oil and filter he fitted? they might help.

when you say you never had it serviced do you mean you never had it serviced at a garage but had someone change the oil and filter for you or do you mean you just completely neglected to do anything to it at all? if you done nothing at all its no wonder its failed as the garage will quite rightly say its a small, highly tuned for its size motor that needs proper (not necesarrily dealer) maintenance and you wont have a hope in hell of getting anywhere with the claim. If you did have it serviced just not at a garage see if you can find the reciepts for the parts and get whoever done the service to write in the history what work was carried out. you might have a better chance then. if you arent succesful take this as a warning to look after your vehicle, it needent cost much for a basic service, 7 quid for oil 5 quid for an oil fiter, 5 quid for an air filter, half an hours labour to do, if you cant afford that maybe trying to run a modern expensive car isnt for you, theres plenty cheaper older cars that withstand neglect a lot better, £300 would buy you a car that gives you a couple of years then scrap it when its done.

crankshaft endfloat should be easy enough for them to diagnose, so its not really worth losing any sleep over, and if your brother is doing it replacing the gearbox input shaft (if that is the problem)should cost less than a couple of hundred quid and take a saturday afternoon, provided you supply sufficient amounts of beer? no way it should cost you a grand to get it fixed if you have free or cheap labour and are willing to search for a good deal on parts, no matter whats wrong with it, one of the contributors to car mechanics magazine recently bought a working roadworthy galaxy tdi for £650, and theres bound to be plenty of smashed ones with good engines/gearboxes in breakers. sometime you have to weigh up the cost and hassle of going back and forth to dealers and arguing with people whose job it is to discourage you versus getting your hands dirty and ending up with a result you KNOW is done right and will last. the thing to consider is the condition of the rest of the vehicle, is it one you want to keep for a while, if not, hand it back to the finance company, or look into paying it off then selling it through the auctions, whichever you think will leave you best off.

sounds like there could possibly be some wear on the gearbox input shaft, causing the friction plate not to slide freely when the clutch is released, with the gearbox off run your fingers along the shaft splines and feel for ridges or steps. if your that way minded you can do a bodge-up repair by filing the splines straight again, it works but introduces a little bit of play. that type of wear is usually caused by violent wheelspinning starts. either that or binding in the pedal linkage or a flexi hose collapsing internally. from my dealings with ford dealers your probably best off getting your brother to sort it.

in the meantime you can plug a standard ps/2 or usb keyboard in. itll get you up and running while your waiting on them getting their finger out.

that cracks me up. If you WERE of the mind to buy the software, copy it, then return it for a refund surely you would just download it off a P2P site and cut out the middleman. Most, not all but most PC world staff i`ve dealt with are fairly clueless apart from the basics, they just rely on BS and fake banter, some good deals on laptops sometimes though. The thing is if pc world had knowledgable staff who really knew PCs and IT inside and out the prices would go up as their wage bill would be horrendous. Most people who have the necesarry skills wouldn`t work for the wages pcworld pay just now, so they get the BS merchants or the part timers who are studying for the proper IT jobs, plenty of enthusiasm but not enough real-world experience yet. If you want a laugh go to pc world with a wad of cash, tell them youll buy an expensive laptop there and then if the unistall for you that godawful norton antivirus/internet security trial crap they come preinstalled with. I had 4 of them scrathing their heads saying it cant be done.

whatever happens dont let them respray it, reject the car if you have to. when you come to sell it any buyer who knows what to look for, even if they do a job that looks spot on when first done a couple of years down the line a trained eye will spot a respray a mile off and walk away or offer less than it would otherwise be worth, potentially meaning you wont get as much for it. is it a light coloured car with the shady bits on the bumpers? i`ve noticed that on every light coloured new mondeo i`ve seen, the bumpers are darker than the rest of the car, they use the wrong coloured primer for the bumpers IMO. thats why i chose black for mine.

pat it is not fraud at all in the slightest, it is perfectly legal, and is done by many people every day. the seller gives the buyer a signed letter explaining that they are aware there is outstanding finance and that they take full responsibility for the outstanding amount and that they undertake to settle it in full, then the car legally belongs to the buyer and the finance company cant reposses it they have to pursue the seller for the money. i was merely offering that if he had no luck handing the car back that i would buy it for more than he would get for it scrapping it which would help a bit toward the payments. At least that is my understanding of how it works, I was first told this by one of the call centre workers at Cardata when I was doing an hpi check on a car I was buying which had outstanding finance on it, they even dictated to me the wording to put in the letter over the phone, was very helpful of them. I phoned the CAB and they confirmed it was legal. thats scottish law though, check if it applies in england. this was 3 years ago but i havent heard of any changes being made.

what is the make model and year of the vehicle, what is the symptoms you are seeing, what exact work has been carried out, What HC and CO and λ values did you get? also where abouts are you? and why did my font change suddenly? doesn`t sound like you are having much luck with these cowboys so do the basics yourself if possible, buy a haynes manual and borrow some tools check the cam timing if the engine has been apart( its easy to put it back on one or 2 teeth out and get poor emissions/performance), borrow a compression tester and check you are getting adequate compression on all cylinders, change and gap the the plugs and change the leads and dizzy cap as applicable, make sure there isnt too much oil in it and take it for an italian tunup (rag the arse out it through the gears, drive it like a boy racer to get the catalytic converter red hot do burn the contamination off the substrate) and take it into a garage and get the emissions checked and see if they are any better. another possibility is the thermostat or the coolant temerature sensor failing making the car think the engine is always cold so the "choke" (warmup enrichment)is always on. does your temp gauge ever rise off cold?

if a k series suffers coolant loss the temp gauge wont respond in time to prevent the engine failing as the sender wont be immersed anymore. in a noisy car like a 214 at motorway speeds you probably wont hear anything until its too late. the alternator shed a fan blade which punctured a coolant hose, but as i was doing 70 there was no steam, the first symptom i got was power loss and by then the damage was done, when i put a new head gasket on the big ends started knocking under light loads and by this time i had enough and took a hammer to the car and carted it off to the scrappys as it had already and i put it down to experience. ive nothing but praise for the 2.0 diesel rovers though.

nathal what you suggest is fraud and could easily land you in prison if you do something daft like advertise the fact your going to do it on a public internet forum. mind you if you enjoy spending time in a cell and getting bummed in the showers you`ve found a money saving way to get a free full board holiday. well done.

what are the p-codes the ecu gave you? i cant believe an electrical fault would make a t reg car uneconomical to repair. a replacement ecu would cost around £20 from a scrapyard plus around £45 to recode the immobiliser to it. the quality of wiring on pugs isn`t the best and wiring faults/bad earthing points can give the exact same symptoms as more serious problems. no fuel coming through will just be a symptom of your electrical problems most likely. even if your ecu and immobiliser and other related electronics are gubbed there is another way around, you can fit a megasquirt engine managment system and just do away with all the standard managment, but this option requires a skilled person to do the work of course if you truly belive it will cost more to repair than the car is worth provided the body isnt too bad and the engine passes a compression test with acceptable values I could maybe take the car off your hands for a small sum if you have no luck with the finance people.