tim-spam

1) I have never said that. For example, for someone buying in the 'banger' class, a large petrol car can be bought at extremely low prices compared with a diesel such that, on a purely financial basis, it makes sense. At the other end of the scale, I would expect a Porche GT3 (which I had a fantastic day driving around Donnington in a while back) to be fitted with a high revving petrol engine - which of course it is. Also for someone with a very low annual mileage, a petrol engined car may just make sense, although rising fuel costs are making this less and less likely (even with the 10p a litre price difference). 2) I have done the sums - see above. If buying new or newish, even a small car makes more financial sense as a diesel. In my case, I bought the Alhambra at 2 years old, and there was a petrol engined one next to it with a similar age and mileage at

Any car, whatever the make, with a variable vane turbocharger will be subject to the same problem. On a Jaguar, for example, tripping into limp mode involves a trip to the dealer to reset - nice little earner that. However, the benefits of the variable vane technology far outweigh the occasional problems.

Same Ford/Peugeot/Citroen diesel engine...

This has been covered lots of times before - try a search and you'll unearth lots of useful information.

Ignore all of the anti-diesel nonsense - once you've tried one and looked at the figures (fuel costs and depreciation for example), you'll come to the same conclusion as the vast majority of other forum members and go for a diesel. Unless you do a very low mileage and don't mind having a car that is virtually unsaleable after only a few years, diesel really is the only sensible choice. Drives much better too, especially when loaded. By the way, the VAG Group TDI engines have won more industry awards than virtaully all the others put together - and this is from within the automotive industry and not from journalists writing in magazines.

Except VAG have gone all metal (as did BMW, Mercedes, to name but two others who used to be plastic), whereas Ford and Vauxhall have stayed plastic....

Quite a long time then...

Vacuum leak - should be cheap and quick to fix.

....and what about the wonderful keyless pulleys? Wrecked quite a few engines already according to my local garage. Only time will tell if the belts actually last 125000 miles - if it was mine, I would certainly replace it sooner than that.

Belt.

Could be the auxiliary (electric) water pump failed. Edit: Or even the main water pump impeller.

Not with the latest Galaxy - VAGCOM only really works on VAG Group cars.

It also helps to disperse the heat from the cylinder head after a hot shut-down - this is why it runs for a couple of minutes after switching off the ignition. If you ran without the auxiliary pump long term, you risk warping the cylinder head. This is happily very rare with the VW TDI engines.

So, not really defect free then. In fact, brakes pulling to one side is not very safe either - if it was 3 years old, it would fail an MOT for that.

Of course, the Mk.2 has an Eberspacher - mine's lovely and warm even on the coldest days....

Only on Mk.1's. For the Mk.II's, it's VW engines and gearboxes, except for the 4 cylinder petrol Galaxies.

Actually, in my experience, VW is usually cheaper than Ford for spares - they appear to know a lot more about the car as well.

Not really a nightmare, so long as you have a reasonable tool kit, and engine locking kit and a trolley jack. It will take a fair time due to the number of pieces you have to remove, but you will find that most parts are accessible and come off fairly easily. Re-assembly takes a little longer due to having to adjust the cambelt tensioner.

I've just had to take off the cambelt just under 14000 miles after changing it at 80000 miles - the reason? On Tuesday evening when driving on the motorway for about 15 miles, the temperature gauge crept up into the red, forcing me to slow down to around 40mph until the temperature dropped to 90 degC again. This was caused by the dreaded 'slipping impeller' problem on the water pump, so I had to replace it. When removed, the impeller fell off. It's good to see that the new pumps come with sintered metal impellers, so this particular problem should not be repeated. I believe that BMW, Mercedes and VAG have all changed away from plastic impellers to metal (Ford and Vauxhall have not - oh dear). So, if you still have your original water pump and are due to replace the cambelt, change the water pump as well - I wish I had. Still, after 4 hours' work, all is now well, and I suppose the coolant was due for a change anyway, which it has now had.

Except for the 2.8, which is VW. Only the 2.0 and 2.3 fitted to the galaxy alone were Ford units.

Check under the plastic push-in cap over the receiver / dryer - this is on the top of the cylindrical cannister integral with the offside of the condenser. The cap just prises out - my guess is that the 'O' ring on the metal cap under this that locates the receiver / dryer has failed. Simple fix.

Exactly. See sums above: payback in 15000 miles or less.

...but it nearly always does. And the driving characteristics are so much better as well.

I tried (but obviously failed) to bring this thread back to some sense. So, to try again, I'll state something that should be obvious to all who read the beginning of this thread. Diesel is the only serious choice for today's motoring, especially for larger cars (such as MPV's) and average and above mileages. Whether or not the petrol-heads like it, this is the reality.