tim-spam

I've generally found my local VW agent is better at supplying parts than the Seat dealer, and things such as the stereo, dash parts, etc. are straight out of other VW cars - Seat cars, although based upon VW platforms, tend to differ more in bodywork / trim, whereas the Alhambra and Sharan are virtually identical. In addition, Ford had very little input on the Mk 2, as they were 'bought out' in 1998 or 1999.

What are the improvements that have been made?

If you use a good quality oil in the first place, I wouldn't consider using a fushing oil as the engine internals will be clean anyway, and I wouldn't want flushing oil residues detracting from the properties of the lubricating oil.

Actually, it's a VW, which explains why some Ford dealers are even more ignorant of the Galaxy than they are of Fords.

For some time now, I've had quite loud rattling noises coming from the centre console area - this has not been consistent, and has varied from slight every now and then, to loud and every time the car goes over a bump. The source of the noise was creaking contact between the lower centre console and the centre part of the dash. So, last night, I removed the lower centre console, and stuck a length of 'P' section draught excluder to the lip on the dash that protrudes down into the lower centre console. I then replaced the lower centre console and the result is that there are now no creaks or rattles. What's more, the lower centre console now feels much more solidly located, as if it was designed like that in the first place. In fact, I guess that it probably was designed with some form of packing in this area, and that this was deleted as a cost saving. After all, if these parts had been designed with no packing intended, there would almost certainly have been sufficient clearance designed in to eliminate the possiblity of contact and the consequent creaks and rattles.

You don't really want to turn the engine over after draining just to get a little more oil out of the engine, as this is likely to do much more harm than good. The oil left in the filter housing will also ensure that the oil pump is well primed before starting the engine thus protecting the bearings from running dry.

And Ford had even less to do with the Mk 2's. Basically, the Ford Galaxy is a VW Group car with Ford badges, which is one reason that Ford dealers are so bad at maintaining them.

Diesel engines produce more soot than petrol engines, and diesel engine oils are designed to hold this in suspension - hence the black oil. In my experience, however, the newer pd engines produce far less soot than older technology diesels, and the oil blackens far more slowly.

mmmmm....that's interesting. I would guess that there was a problem with your previous car, because if you look at the torque curves for the 115 and 130, they are almost identical up to around 3000 rpm, which means that the towing performance would be very similar indeed - after all, 3000 rpm equates to around 75mph in 4th, 90mph in 5th and 105mph in 6th.

This is definitely not a MAF problem - if it was, there would be no increase in noise. What you have is a split or, more likely, a detached charge air pipe / hose. The charge air pipes / hoses are the large ones between the turbo and intercooler, and between the intercooler and intake manifold. I had one pop off last year, and the symptoms were similar to yours - the cause was the spanner monkeys at the local main agents not re-assembling them correctly after replacing a couple of coolant hoses damaged by them not having installed the fuel filter correctly. Once I had reassembled everything correctly (no new parts were required), everything was fine.

The 215/55R16 tyres on my Alhambra are reinforced, and this is specified in the manual - this is also what the car was originally supplied with. This size of tyre is available in reinforced and non-reinforced versions - look on mytires.co.uk and you will see.

It is possible that the selector is at fault, but the symptoms make it more likely to be the clutch.

Right, I've just done a little experiment. Rolling forwards at 15 mph, I tried gently pushing the gear lever into reverse, and guess what - after a little resistance for around 1 second while the synchro rings did their work, it went into reverse with no problem whatsoever. Therefore, the 6 speed VW gearbox has synchromesh on reverse gear, and a very effective one too. No argument or doubt about it. Therefore, the problem selecting reverse could well be the synchromesh preventing the gear from being selected due to clutch drag - so I think that the clutch is the most likely culprit.

But you must either link out or replace the oil cooler first, as this has clearly failed. Unless you do this, all your efforts to clean out the cooling system will be in vain - the leakage does not have to be large to cause havoc, and it will be much worse with the engine running and the oil hot. REPLACE THE COOLER BEFORE EVEN THINKING ABOUT REPLACING THE CYLINDER HEAD GASKET.

Which means that there must be some sort of synchromesh on your reverse gear..... I bet it crunches when you drive into your house though.....

The reverse gears are also helical on these cars, as they are on my wife's 1990 Mercedes 190 - the reason is all to do with 'refinement'. In fact the old VW411's of the late 60's / early 70's had helical reverse gears, but no synchromesh. Many newer cars now have synchromesh on reverse gear - true, it may be of a weaker design than for the forward gears, but you can select reverse gear on my Alhambra when creeping forwards with no crunching, as you can on vectra pool cars at my place of work. The Merc 190 however crunches, as there is no synchromesh. I would obviously not try it at higher speeds (not on my car anyway....). More expensive cars have had synchromesh on reverse for many years - I believe the Porsche 924 had it for example. Although I don't know, perhaps the 6 speed Mk 2's are the only Sharalhambras to have reverse gear synchromesh?

When you try to select reverse, is there any noise from the gearbox - caused by the synchro rings trying to slow the input shaft. Another thing to try next time it happens is to select a forward gear first - this will stop the input shaft from turning - and then immediately try to select reverse again. If this works, it would tend to confirm the diagnosis of a slight clutch drag. In addition, if this does work, you may decide just to live with it, assuming that the problem is not too serious or too frequent. Also, if you can select reverse easily with the engine off, this would tend to rule out the gear linkage.

If reverse gear has no synchromesh, and if it is crunching when selecting reverse, then the reason is that the input shaft is still turning, which means that the clutch is dragging. If the drag is slight, the synchromesh on the forward gears would be able to stop the input shaft from turning and allow the gear to be selected. However, if the clutch is dragging badly such that the synchro rings can not slow the input shaft down sufficiently, the gear will become difficult (or impossible) to select, accompanied by the sound of scraping synchro rings. On level ground, the car may even start to creep backwards, assuming that reverse gear has synchromesh - if not, the gear will crunch. If the clutch is dragging only occasionally, it may be oil contamination - is there any oil leaking from between the engine and gearbox? If this is the case, a temporary improvement can sometimes be achieved by slipping the clutch in a high gear to heat it up and "burn off" the oil - don't overdo it though! Another possiblity is that the friction faces are rusty - has the car been left standing for extended periods? If this is the case, it may get better on its own with regular use. Hope this helps.

Perhaps your brake light switch is on its way out - sometimes a poor contact can cause a bulb to flicker at high frequency causing premature failure. I would however consider this a bit of a long shot, as I would think that the time taken between poor contact and total switch failure would be comparatively short, but it may be worth checking the resistance across the switch contacts and the voltage at the bulbs.

The 'R' in the tyre size number does not stand for 'reinforced'. I think it stand for 'radial', although I am not 100% certain. A reinforced tyre will be marked as such - sometimes RF or XL is used, but the words 'reinforced' or 'extra load' will usually be written somewhere on the tyre. If you use mytires.co.uk, you can specify reinforced tyres when searching - this means that only reinforced tyres will be listed, and makes things much clearer. That is where I bought my new tyres a few weeks back - I chose the Nokian NRHi tyres (215/55R16's), and they are an unbelievably amount better than the Dunlops which they replaced - highly recommended.

I couldn't have put it better myself!

The main question is, of course, whether the LED bulbs are 'E' approved - I'll try and find out. As regards insurance companies, they use far too much of what we pay in premiums paying salaries to people whose job it is to find any excuse they can to avoid doing what we pay them for - brilliant!

Sounds like total incompetence to me - how many contol units? How many gearboxes? There is probably something fairly simple wrong that they can not find, so they resort to changing parts at random to 'try and see'. But they've even cocked this up - if you change a part and it doesn't fix it, then it's probably something else. But, they've tried changing the same parts several times! Assuming, of course, they've been doing what they say they've been doing. If it was me, I would reject the car. With the new model waiting in the wings, there will be bargains aplently, especially on the less popular petrol models - you may even end up with a newer, higher spec. model.

What's all this about scraped knuckles? If the lower RH dash panel is removed, there is no problem with access - unless, of course, the Galaxy is different in this area to a Sharalhambra.....

So far, the only problems I've had with mine have been very minor, and most caused by the 'spanner monkeys'. As for the diesels being more trouble than the petrol versions, I doubt it very much (in fact, I would guess that the diesel would be the more reliable of the two) - I would have to spend well over