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Is the edit function playing up? If I click it, I get the drop down edit menu, but the links are dead. Anyone else get this or just me?

Got to be worth saying though, the failing MAF issue is more a problem on Diesels than petrols. Get the pipe sorted before you throw money at it.

The Mk2 Galaxy (and Alhambra and Sharan) is essentially a 14 year old car. Nothing has changed chassis-wise in all these years. Therefore, if budget tyres now are as good as premium tyres then, they are more than adequate for this car. The big thing is, are they as good? Does anyone know that for fact? From a materials point of view alone I would strongly disagree with the fact that they are even comparable. And if by some slim chance a bugget tyre is as good as a premium product from 10 years ago does that mean you should still knowingly settle for 2nd (or 3rd,4th etc) best. And did those 10 year old tyres get as much punishment as they do today? How many speed humps were around when the Galaxy was first brought out compared with today?

""Tiny, Pirelli are the only tyre used in WSB racing which is great for marketing but a hell of a loss leader for manufacturing, so we pay higher prices for that manufacturing and R&D loss which your company supports."" And Bridgestone have F1, Our WSB sponsorship is paid for by the motorcycle division, and covered entirely by them not car. If it wasn't ultimately profitable they wouldn't do it. ""Tread patterns are largely meaningless gibberish since as long as the water is cleared then you could get a tatoo 'artist' to design them (within stability constraints)."" So there is no need for directional or asymetric patterns? Or are they simply a luxury for those with money to burn? And if they were so unimportant, why do you say "Budget tyres now are as good or better than premium tyres were ten years ago, the technology has migrated and they often use tried and trusted tread patterns." If tread patterns are meaningless gibberish? ""Budget tyres now are as good or better than premium tyres were ten years ago"" How does a ten year old car compare with a modern one? In terms of performance and economy, cars have come a hell of a long way. Is it unreasonable to expect the same from tyres? Or do you expect your present day car to be able to perform to the limits of its abilities if the tyre technology is 10 year old? ""High performance cars and motorcycles need high peformance tyres, the suspension setup of some vehicles is so finely tuned that a slight change in tyre pressure has a pronounced effect on performance. The Shalaxy is NOT one of these vehicles"" No, I agree, but was tyre pressure part of the original discussion?? No, but tyre pressure does come into play when we talk about the immense changes in pressure that occur during such manouvers as swerving to avoid that small child thats just ran out in front of you. What I asked was, do you think a budget tyre will perform the same as a premium tyre that has had infinitely more capital pumped into the research and development of it? By your own admission mainstream manufacturers spend more on R&D. Undoubtably they spend much more on sponsorship, but there is a direct correlation between sponsorship/advertising revenues and profit, something you appear to miss out of your opinionated argument. ""High performance tyres have a short shelf life after manufacture and 'go off' as they sit on a rack in a warehouse. Never buy old stock at discounted prices no matter what name is embossed on the tyrewall"" ALL TYRES have a limited shelf life, NOT JUST high performance tyres. The lifespan is comparable no matter what the intended usage. Fortunately for the consumer, CE branding dictates that tyres must be date marked, this applies no matter what the tyre. Premium or Budget, High Performance or Mundane, your tyre should be date stamped, if it isnt give it a wide berth. ""There is a lot of rubbish talked about tyres, please feel free to come clean and tell us the truth about mainstream applications like our vehicles. After all you are anonymous and amongst friends"" Mainstream applications? Hmm, I dont see a "Shalaxy" as mainstream, as you say, and I quote " a two ton shalaxy " is far from mainstream. A car that can carry seven adults plus luggage at speeds way in excess of the speed limit is far from mainstream. I see them as them as specialised. Whether I am among friends or not, I have nothing to tell apart from the truth. Please tell me, who is it thats talking rubbish about tyres? ""Please tell me my dream of a soft grippy tyre which lasts for ages isn't a fantasy."" I aint a liar so no I cant, fantasy all the way!! ""After all my wifes Swift has Ceat tyres and they grip like buggery!"" Thanks for buying Pirelli! I really havent got much more to say, and dont want to be seen as pedantic. You have your views, I have mine. Lets shake hands and simply say we will never see eye to eye on this one.

No! The way its done is...... Each factory has a specific product range, ours is SUV so the majority of ours are 4wd (Porsche Cayenne, Range Rover etc) We also make UHP (Ultra Hih performance) which are our P Zero ranges, for anything from Porsche, Maserati down to warmish family saloons. To back up these ranges we also make more conventional lines P7, P6000 etc for "conventional" cars as sticking with merely the high end tyres makes the factory extremely vulnerable to market forces such as the current economic downturn - I am currently on a 4 day week and for feb march and april only working 3 weeks in 4! The plants in high cost countries such as here, Germany and Italy only produce premium products. With our labour and energy costs it would mean we were running at a loss to produce budget tyres. Then you have your low end tyres (upto 15" lower speed ratings etc)where profit magins are much tighter, these are made on "low cost" countries such as Romania where the labour costs are considerably lower thus allowing the company to be more competitive. We also have factories in Turkey and China among other places making either Pirelli branded or complementery products. As I said in a previous post, we have around 30 mainstream tread compounds, we make runs of between 150 and 400 treads for a particular tyre, then change equipment and compounds and move onto the next size. We do group together those product lines that are made using the same compounds so that we sometimes stay on one compound for 6 sizes, other times we load a compound to run 150 treads and then change over comletely to the next size! This is terribly expensive, but it ensures that the Porsche tyres you buy for yourself are made from one set of specific and extremely tightly controlled materials every time and the Volvo tyres you buy for your wife are entirely different. The same can be said for every component on the tyre, each one is custom made for the specific tyre range. No cross contamination of compounds or other materials (all the plies both fabric and metallic are different too). That is why a premium product (and im talking industry wide here not just pirelli) is more expensive than a budget product where all the tyres are more than likely made with just one or two compounds that are bought in bulk reducing overheads once again. We sell waste rubber which has failed QC, gone out of date (stand times are often just 7 days before a compound is scrap) or even been through the manufacturing process once already then been rejected for any one of hundreds of reasons to places as diverse as the Ukraine and India where it is put back into the "food chain" to make all manner of products including tyres. If a company buy that rubber for tyres, they are getting tonne after tonne of old out of date uncertified and unidentified compound in a mix of Silica and Carbon much of which would never be used in the tread of a tyre and using it to make god knows which part of that "Huflungdung" tyre which is so cheap youd be foolish not to!

Emotional inteligence? No but opinion based on experience both as a driver (of most things 2 wheels and up) and through my previously mentioned work background. I was not talking about handling in the scenario, but a potential real life situation where you might be driving a fully laden 7 seater car on hot tyres and have to swerve, thereby increasing load on a tyre to way beyond its rated capacity. We as a manufacturer destructively test tyres and engineer them to fail well above their load/speed ratings as do all the the mainstream manufacturers. Yes you pay extra, but your not just paying for a name. The point is that a product built and designed at a budget has the same budget all the way through the manufacturing process. The compounds are cheap, the components are cheap the reasearch and development is biased towards getting the product to meet the basic requirements rather than exceeding them (which obviously requires greater investment). There are at least 8 different compunds of rubber go into making the various components of a tyre and at least 10 seperate components. Tyres built for specific purposes like extreme speeds or loads will have many more. Every tyre has its own specific list of different components, there are probably in excess os 30 tread compounds in general production at Pirelli. Do your typical budget tyres have this diversity or do you think it more likely that the same compounds are used across the board? And no ones wasting your time except perhaps yourself, it is you after all who chose to read and reply to this thread. Richard, Pirelli do have "complementery brands" as do most (if not all) the bigger manufacturers. These unfortunately I have no experience of.

otherwise known as grip, something I think Chinese tyres tend not to have and so give you that light oversteer feeling.... Ive got to admit it, I'm with Seatkid 100% of the way here (and not just because I work for Pirelli). I know how much we invest in R&D, testing etc. not just in the finished tyre but every single component. I wouldn't trust budget tyres, with mine or my kids lives. I dont doubt for a minute that they may drive quite well 99.9% of the time, but i want to know that the 0.01% when I need it most somebody has spent a lot of time and effort ensuring that the product that is keeping me in touch with the road is performing exactly as it should when it matters most. I dont think i'd like to be doing 70 on the motorway after say a 3hr trip fully laden and need to change lanes in an emergency situation (perhaps because that foreign LHD truck has pulled out of the outside lane unexpectedly) if my tyres were "Huflungdung" at

Sorry its not clear from your post, but have you replaced the worn belt? Is your lower engine cover in place? There is a known problem (read it in a service bulletin) with certain models and driving with no lower engine cover in the rain. Apparently road spray hits the pump/pulley/belt and results in loss of power steering. Sorry i cant be more specific with the information regarding exact models affected but my TIS disk seems to have got lost.

IIRC in 1999 the AHU 90bhp engine was replaced by the ANU 90bhp engine which I think is a PD variant. Ah well, every days a school day. Would have put money on the PD being 115 and up!

Check the vacuum reservoir, its a tennis ball sized sphere at the front of the engine. Sometimes the pipe/bung becomes loose. Note this vacuum reservoir thing only applies to PD engines. If its a 90 its not a PD

Do early diesels have a catalytic converter? If so have you checked it? When they expire, the core usually collapses and if this happens they can block the exhaust (happened to my petrol). Crawl underneath and give the cat' a good thump, if it sounds as if something moves inside then that could well be your problem. A tell tale sign would be that performance would be poor in all gears at higher revs.

The following is an excerpt from a technical bulletin- "Optical Hydrometer (Charge eye) Note: The optical hydrometer (Charge eye) is NOT for Service use, it is only for production information and use at Pre Delivery Inspection (PD I). The Charge eye indicator provides a visual method of determining the state of battery charge:

Tax is irrelevant to book prices, but have a look around other online valuation sites, Parkers, Whatcar etc. Wildly varying valuations but all higher than those.

Contrary to popular belief there are only 2 types of gearboxes fitted to galaxys. Automatics And Ones that work! :rolleyes: :( :blink: :16:

Ever since the S-Max was announced it was touted as Mondeo based, it is the C-Max that is Focus based. The Galaxy and S-max share the same platform and so does one of the newer volvo saloons. Found this

Nope, Sorry, the mounting is under the car body, to change the top mount you have to remove the strut completely. Dont be tempted to try to lock the chrome rod with molegrips from underneath if the allen head rounds out, that'll knacker the shock. The job from memory requires the car jacked up, wheel off, pinch bolt at bottom of strut removed, (you may need to remove the caliper and the track rod end from the hub, cant remember!), release the strut from the hub, then at the top you need to remove that nut, and believe me it can be a right ba....d to remove! The mounting comes in 2 parts, the metallastic mount and a bearing, replace those and refit in reverse bearing in mind that the bolt at the bottom of the strut should be replaced (but invariably isnt) too. I ended up cutting away at one nut with a dremmel to remove it, the usual problem is the nut picks up on the rusty thread on the shock and you end up rounding out the allen key hole so you cant lock the shock to stop it rotating. I cant remember whether the mount retains the spring or not in which case you would need spring compressors, I was changing the shocks, so I needed spring compressors anyway. And when youve got that done, pop round the otherside and do that one too!

For what its worth, yes the strut tops are a pig to change because of the way they rust. the rust being confined to the thread at the top of the shock absorber chrome rod and the associated nut inside the upper mounting cup (and I am speaking from experience there). I would agree with Sepulchrave in the fact they are unlikely to be worn, a common mistake seems to be the examination of these items when the car is off the ground (usually on a two post lift).

I was always under the impression that the Mk1 was either a 90 or a 110 none PD engine, and the Mk2 was 115 and up PD engine. Anyone know for sure?

I was thinking along the lines of the potentiometer/sensor on thr throttle pedal, however came accross this old thread, perhaps its of interest? CLICK ME I'm not sure about the air scenario however, she would probably be a bitch to start if there was air being drawn into the system. Electronic issues seem more likely.

Broken wires in the door loom between the B pillar and the door are the most likely culprit

20,000rpm? Wow, thats a high revving diesel! Im inclined to think the throttle potentiometer may be at fault, but only a VAG-COM check would tell for sure.

IIRC its on the side of the head underneath the coil packs, the housing for it has 2 sender units on the underside. You will need to remove at least 1 coil pack to access it and they are held on with torx screws. Its a while since I sold mine, but im sure it was the thermostat housing that the temp sender was mounted in.

There is a solenoid in each door, but the problem is highly likely to be the wires in the loom between the door and the b pillar (inside the rubber boot). They often break, not just the conductor usually the insulation is broken too so if you pull back the boot the problem should be self evident. The galaxy door looms are rubbish and this is probably the best place to look.

Cat C and Cat D are not the same. Cat D vehicles are less extensively damaged than cat C, they may require very little work to put back on the road. Often the insurer will demand surrender of the MOT, in which case you need to MOT the vehicle to put it back on the road. Cat C vehicles are beyond economical repair and may be structurally damaged. In such cases you will need to surrender the V5 and MOT to the insurers and before the car goes back on the road it will need a VIC (Vehicle identity check) at

Surely it tells you on the notice that you received exactly what the penalty is?