DIY guides to keeping end of life vehicles running on a shoestring budget. A window onto the world of home mechanic'ing of cars everyone else would have given up on a long time ago
29 Sep 2025 2 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
The best thing about a new(er) car is the warranty. Its still a bit of a minefield though! Let me expand. My 2021 Dacia Sandero Stepway was in for an MOT and service last month, and I mentioned that there were two issues I wanted looked at. The pa...
15 Sep 2025 4 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
Quite a while ago I posted about a strange issue with the OEM stereo in my Lexus IS250. It would randomly turn off, or turn on all by itself while driving. Sometimes it would do it once then be fine for several weeks, sometimes it would do it multipl...
8 Sep 2025 4 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
Due to terrible planning, all three of my cars need to be submitted for their annual MOT inspection in June. This makes June an expensive, and stressful month! I phoned my local MOT garage well in advance to book in three tests, which always gets a c...
29 May 2025 4 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
The Lexus had developed a slightly irritating ICE issue where the audio just stoped working. Sometimes it would go a couple of hours without it happening, other times it did it three times in 5 minutes. The symptoms were that regardless of input (I h...
5 Mar 2025 2 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
The front tyres on the Dacia had worn on the outer edges, which I assumed was because the tracking was off. This had bugged me a bit, but on a recent long journey (its usually doing local trips) it did understeer quite a bit on a wet and greasy round...
5 Dec 2024 1 minute read 1 comment Lawnmower
Having replaced the main battery on the Dacia a little while back, frustratingly the 'Warning, check SOS' error keeps coming back. I had hoped this would go away, but clearly not. Some more investigation was required, though being relatively new th...
4 Nov 2024 3 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
One of the cars on the fleet that I seldom write about is the newest member - a 2021 Dacia Sander Stepway which I've owned for about 2 years. To be fair, over that time its not really put a foot wrong - since it was bought with 8000 miles on the cloc...
30 Sep 2024 4 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
Bit of a fleet update since I've now accumulated enough jobs to make it worthwhile typing them out. It being the school holidays I've been busy out and about with the kids to keep them amused. We went down to a theme park with the kids, it was a good...
2 Sep 2024 1 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
I would like to sincerely apologise to the residents of my local town for what happened on Thursday evening As I left my Tai Chi class, feeling very relaxed and at one with the universe, the exhaust on the Daihatsu sort of disassembled itself a bit....
19 Aug 2024 2 minute read 0 comments Lawnmower
I knew the tyres on the Lexus were a bit iffy, they were 5 years old and nearly worn to the tread markers on the back. The fronts had some tread left but were budget brands. The front tyres were Sunny 'Sport Macro' and the rears were Jinyu Gallopro....
