Lord Sorbington

You can get a seal kit from Witor and change them all, a very easy job. Depends how bad the leak is, I drove mine many hundreds of miles before I worked out where the smell of fuel was coming from.

I recently had the pleasure of travelling in a Continental GT Speed, 616bhp I believe, a very impressive machine.

The extra oil drilling in the upper surface of the repro rocker arms I bought was a mixed blessing too.  Good for rocker tip lube but caused extra oil consumption. Apparently the saloon rockers only had an oil way for where the ball acts on the pushrod but the "sports car" rockers had the extra hole on top of the rocker arm too. I bought a repro rocker shaft too, it was so nice to have a smooth, quiet engine again!

Check the adjuster screws too, I had severely worn, ridged balls on some of mine which combined with knackered rockers arms and very worn shaft meant they could never be adjusted properly.

The original Lucas starter on my 2000 mk2 was 37 years old when I had to replace it as the solenoid was getting a bit unreliable. The recon replacement from Fitchetts worked well and spun the engine notably faster than the worn original.

I got some from TD Fitchetts, no problems with them.

My mate (Marina / Caddy Steve) used k seal in his Discovery V8 when the head gasket started to leak.  It kept it going for a few months but, predictably, it expired in a big cloud of steam one day.  Sadly, this was just after he'd sold the car and the AA man found traces of K seal in the system which led to a very irate new owner and my mate having to take the wreck back and give a refund. I'd avoid using it.....

TD Fitchetts in Telford stocked re-con diffs and driveshafts last time I checked.  Full driveshafts with hubs were around �120 each, diffs were pretty dear I think, �600 ish? Phone and ask. I was fed up with used driveshafts on which the hub bearings started to get noisy after a few thousand miles so went for new in the end. Greyhound Garage in Telford replaced the seals on my diff and renewed the nose piece + quill bearing assembly for around �180 all in.  He said that he could rebuild the diff if need be but in the end new seals were all that was required. Call them on 01952 613964

The handbooks on my BMW and Merc warn against allowing excessive wheelspin, especially allowing one wheel to spin as it will wear out the diff.  A small price to pay.....

Could be the float levels on the carbs being too high causing slight flooding, maybe the needle valves aren't seating properly or are worn, not shutting off fuel into the carbs when they should.

Agree, distributor cap and rotor arm for starters.

Dunno, some Peugeots were into CANBUS wiring systems by then.  One model had a problem where you opened the door, the instrument cluster would power up so you could see the mileage displays but also added three miles each time! All the same, I'd go with the basic alternator fault theory before delving deeper!

Greeks wrote:A strange one I heard from someone the other day. They had a dead battery on a one year old modern car. Turned out to be because they parked in their garage every night but didn't lock the doors. Apparently current may still be drawn (for some reason) if the doors are unlocked. Unlikely, but it could be worth testing the battery again with the doors locked? Yes, the electronics on some modern cars can stay powered up so you can open windows, have the radio on and all sorts of other stuff but power down gradually after the car is locked. Luckily my BMW doesn't do this as I always forget to lock it, it's often unlocked on the driveway for days at a time.  ??) My Mum's Passat had a faulty radio which drained the battery when the car was left unused for a week.

Greeks wrote: Is he/she the only gay at your garage  ;D Seems a bit harsh to single them out. I wasn't even going to mention that!

Have a look in the manual, I think all new cars are supposed to have daytime running lights.  My 2011 1 series (non xenon) has them but if I enable them via the central dash display it's just the dipped headlamps.  They come on all the time to act as daytime runners which I don't like so I set them to "off".  I suspect the X1 has the same set up unless you have the xenon option with separate daytime running lights as your friend has fitted. Do the new LED lights come on and off as daytime running lights should?  Just remove the bulbs from the daytime running lights in the headlamp units?? Edit Are the lights in the headlamps the "angel eye" type?  You probably need to keep them to act as the side / parking lights for the MOT.  I think you can buy white bulbs for them to match the LEDs?