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Here are the details of a scam that takes place in U.K. And Ireland and is currently on the increase. Someone is selling their car and advertises it. Someone comes to look at the car. There is always more than one person. While the first potential customer chats to the seller and distracts him, one of the customers friends will open the header tank and pour oil inside. The customer walks to the car with the seller and pretends to inspect it. During inspection he will open the header tank and 'find' oil inside. He will then proceed to tell the seller that the head gasket is blown and try to buy the car for half of what it's worth citing repair costs. Now, I doubt this would happen much in UAE. The majority of people are too lazy. But I'm interested to hear of any other potential car related scams that may or may not go on, wherever in the world.

Hi Guys, So last night a crazy idea came to my mind. Why not do a road trip around UAE? The idea is to just drive alongside the borders as much as possible. I came with two versions short one ( https://goo.gl/maps/GVYahWP27rM2 ) as most of the Fujairah region has been explored anyway or the long one ( https://goo.gl/maps/312mYbvwDoH2). Any suggestions are welcome, such as change in route slightly to make it more scenic. Any watchouts based on past experience

Too often I see people with a car that overheats. They just keep driving and think they can put water in when they get home and it will be ok. Below you can see the consequences. The first picture shows the coolant leaking from between the block and cylinder head. The leak is spread the full way around which is never a good sign and indicates major distortion. The second picture shows to an extent the damage inside the block. The cylinder walls are in my opinion beyond repair, no amount of honing can save them. The bottom of the bores are too badly scored. I measured 7-8 thou of distortion in the block and never even bothered measuring the head because experience tells me it's all scrap and a replacement engine is the only viable solution.

Thanks brother @Gaurav for very detailed write-up on choosing good tyres for my car. Also many thanks @desertdude for opening by eyes about Al-Futtaim. I am having my servicing ONLY through them since i purchased car and they always seem to be very pricey. Don't want to mention figures but i almost never had service below 4 digit figures. Whatever they tell me to replace or upgrade i immediately comply and still I am having mess with tyres and changed so many. I really feel scammed sometimes. One final request to very kind members, please give me information about really good and trustworthy garage where I can always go. Surely based on combined experience of members there should be some trustworthy places to go. As of tyres I will finalize "Geolandar A/T-S" and hopefully they will last at least 40-45k km.

have a friend who works at a high end workshop and he always complains about these so called high end vehicles as much as i have heard they are a bunch of failures...coolant leak,steering leaks transmission leaks engine oil leaks are very common even on newer cars as far as the japs are concerned these cars usually come to workshop only for oil changes and pad changes for the first few years so where is the question of reliability here....so where is my tercel i m lucky to have you it survived almost 10 heat ups but still drives as a butterfly....i remember once i came all the way from siji till ajman industrial area with a broken radiator but still it was only the radiator which i had to change not the engine....

OMG!!! If I thought my day was going to be a long one with my indoor cricket tournament which started at 7 am on Friday and finished in time for me to join this training session. Boy, I was wrong. This was a day planned by a higher source to never end. What started of as a desert training trip ended up being train the trainer module 403. @Gaurav bhai, your patience really has no bounds and your cool exterior as a group leader makes you the most amazing leader. You are the Ice man. @Basil you rock the show being in second lead and trying to take the initiative to help someone. @shadow79 you just bring such a brilliant flavor to the drive, thanks for not letting me down and handling the radio very well to communicate important information as this is the correct use of the radio, the meat and chicken selection was amazing as were your friends and I am so happy I could meet them and they not only share the food but the spirit too. They were an awesome addition to our Carnity family. @Asif Hussain, you truly are catching up and I love to see your learning curve and how well you have performed, plus your little beast on the side slopes almost flattened them and took us to the other side. It touched the top of the dune. Plus it carried all the parts of the Rav4 which it kept shedding from time to time. At the start @Shadow79 crested and commented that only 2 people get remembered, the first stuck and the last stuck.He was absolutely spot on. His was the first and @Basel was the last. All Basel wanted to do was help @Shadow79 to recover from a pocket, fortunately @Shadow79 he pushed his Rav4 to a point where it just climbed out of the pocket without any trouble. Unfortunately for @Basel he got himself into the pocket which some what reminded me of my situation last year in Ramadan when I missed my Suhoor and had to fast without it. In my situation also it was the local boys who self recovered me, and this time it was no different. @Gaurav bhai and me got together on several occasions to discuss how to handle the situation, we were learning from the different steps we took towards the recovery. We had started with 2 ropes as the area was soft and incline everywhere, and the Patrol was quietly sitting out watching us try. The 2 rope trick failed as the momentum was not building and was not having any effect on the Patrol. Soon we shifted to the single rope, but than trying to climb upwards in a soft patch of sand was also not enough to get our beast out of the natures pocket. But we were getting close to the remedy as @Gaurav bhai wisely suggested to try and recover it from the back. Hesitantly I tried to make my way down as the Patrol like a magnet tried sucking my Pathy towards it, and with the soft patch I just tried getting myself out. Eventually @Gaurav bhai also tried to use everything in his Pajero and had to get out of there to avoid having 2 cars too close to each other. As we had broken 3 ropes already we were planning to head towards Faya with the hope that we would find someone with a winch, but than the 3 most amazing people appeared and as Gaurav Bhai stopped them asking if they had a winch. They did not have the winch, what they did have was the same idea as Gaurav Bhai but with something a little more specific in mind. As one guy shortened a broken rope 4 folds to make it short and strong, the other took Gaurav bhai trusted Pajero and with very steady pace started making a track on the soft incline patch. Watching them at work was like watching a piece of art being created in front of your eyes. Soon the 2 were connected and short but slightly powerful tugs got the beast out of the situation it had been suffering for the past couple of hours or more. There was cheer from all around and a smile appeared on Basel's face which lit up the dark desert. After the beast was out it suffered from a pop-out which had to be taken care of before it could be driven out of the pocket. As Gaurav Bhai said only respect from all of us to the true dwellers of the sands and their instinct, knowledge and experience. So as I always say, I have been out there for more that 10 years, but I am still learning, and lesson learned for me from this trip, always rely on the tolls you have rather than wish for something you don't have. So rather than sitting there wishing I had a winch, I should have thought about how to manage with what we had. If this was not tiring enough Saleem and gang bought out the grills, meat and chicken which was nicely marinated, shaken, stirred and ready to be digested by us. What a brilliant spread and we had plenty left as we were all filled to the brim. All in all an adventure not to forget, not because of the situation that we were in, but the team spirit which was so evident, Basel was not supposed to join us for the BBQ but he did, Gaurav Bhai and Asif Bhai had their families with Asif Bhai coming all the way from Abu Dhabi, and they could have left and nobody would have minded, but they stayed on. All of us stayed on and made it a wonderful memory, which we can relate to our grand children some day.

What started as a desert driving training, ended up with offering enough training opportunity to even most experienced folks in the group. Something new I have learned after very long time. Thanks to local boys to show something brilliant that I and Rahim bhai got really impressed with. And many thanks to Basil for creating such an opportunity window for everyone to learn something new and unique. We started the drive on time and initiated with 2 theory lessons at deflation point on Engine overheating and Wild life. After an hour of driving, we went to practice the art of side sloping on long dunes range. Many perfected their skills and other learned that art for first time with Rahim bhai supervision. After few attempts by everyone, we head to more cleaner area for doing the recovery training with safety. Got one of the car stuck purposely to explain the safety items and techniques involved with doing the tow rope recovery. Explained the reasoning and best practices involved for safer tow rope recovery. As the sun started to set, we head out for the lesson of self recovery and explain the key things involved to rescue yourself in almost 80-90% of stuck by simple self recovery techniques. Unfortunately that stuck was in deep soft sand and at a very bad angle, so we got to tow the car in the end. Then we head out for the unplanned tire pop-out repair that added the actual practical in the training session. By this time, it was pitch dark just below the fossil rock so we started with night drive theory and explanation for breaking the night drive fear and myths. After 10-15 minutes everyone was ready to shoot up the fossil rock area in the night. As we reached up, none of them realize the height until they stepped out of the car and walk across the ridge. Then the challenge was to face the steep decent with rock and sand in pitch dark. With an excellent guidance from Rahim bhai, everyone reached down safely in no time. Now we head to the bbq spot on right side, just behind the Faya area and kept on looking for a cleaner place without any bushes but failed. Then we thought of heading to Camel rock area and setting up the bbq session there. While on the way to Camel rock, we encountered couple of steep dunes with soft sand and realize to back out to simpler route but it was bit late as few cars were stuck here and there. All were recovered with ease except one, which was stuck in dune pocket filled with soft sand from back side and hitting front to the dune, nose fully dug inside the dune. We wasted about two hours recovering from the front and broke two tow ropes in attempt with 3 different cars and two different angles. By now we realized that front recovery isn't possible as moving the tip of dune isn't practical and we need to change our strategy. We thought of going down the pocket and realized it is too soft sand to tow out the stuck vehicle from back and we might risk two vehicles stuck next to each other in soft sand pocket. I and Rahim bhai went down one by one and realize that it isn't very practical to have so much long run in uphill in soft sand. As we lost all our hopes and running out of idea, we came across three local boys in Suzuki samurai who offered to help us with their brilliant and genius idea. They went down in the soft sand pocket with one of our car and created a short path by flattening the sand by 5-10 attempts, once short path of 10-20 meters was created, they used the short tow rope and gave gentle tugs to the stuck vehicle from back and moved the car out from sticky spot. After seeing this idea of using short (1/4) tow rope that can be immensely useful in such tight spot, we all learned something very new and impressive. Total respect to such great thinking and careful execution and precise coordination. By now we were about 5-6 hours delayed for our bbq session, and still everyone was very excited to start the bbq night and we laid out the spread in nice and open area filled with cool breeze in the middle of May. Many thanks to Saleem and his friends for bringing heaps of bbq ready meat and chicken and continuously cooking for whole night. And Asif bhai homemade cake made the yummiest dessert in the desert. The bbq session that supposed to be for couple of hours lasted for 6-7 hours and we all kept talking and sharing stories until morning 5:00 AM (I think). Overall it was very nice training and challenging day out to demonstrate that moment we sign up for desert drive anything can happen and we all need to keep ourselves calm and composed to face the reality. It was brilliant teamwork effort demonstrated by everyone and very patiently handled situation. All in all it was great training and learning for everyone. Here are the pictures from my camera, looking forward to see others click https://carnity.com/gallery/category/19-desert-driving-training-ii-19-may-2017/

I drove porshe cayenne (drove not owned) and Lexus LX, Cayenne has the interior look,hand stitched leather and all fitting of luxury Room, LX also has feel of Comfort, My Old kia Sorento was full option top of range was comfortable with less than half the price of both the cars. MY pajero gives me a feel of a car which I love. Never sat in Rolls or Bents or Range so can't comment. I think car should give a feeling of a car not a luxurious hotel room. UNLESS ????? (Use your imagination to answer that ). Car is a Car. Some people use them as status Symbols. Not to along ago (1998) my Dad gifted me Caprice SS Impala Black 1998 model. The Power the Comfort and the Drive of that Car I miss till date too bad it got Cancelled due a bad accident and I did'nt even know what happened till i got out of car and saw what happened (safety features) Now that is What I miss in Cars of Today.

In a nutshell lets just say its the difference between a donkey and a thoroughbred horse. Al hamdulilah Ive owned and/or driven most luxury rides on a long tern basis save for a Rolls Royce or Bentley ( on my bucketlist ) You can stuff as much leather and gizmos in a camry or Corolla at the end the of day, its still a corolla or camry. There is no comparision. BMWs, Audis and Porsches are basically more for European sensibilities, where "handling" is preferred over comfort. In my Biased opinion nothing beats a Range Rover when it comes to luxury and in this country with an ample supply of cheap parts as well as scrappies. Running costs are less than a jap eco box. Just yesterday bought a water pump and drive belts for a L322 Range Rover 180 for the water pump and 100 for both drive belts.

First step is to stop going to Al Futtaim as they clearly dont know what they are doing. Uneven wear is not the tyres fault. if you alignment is 100% correct then the problem lies in your suspension and/or steering linkages. Worn out bushes or sloppy ball joints. Mostly seen on modified Sheeps the entire front end has so much negative camber looks like the car is trying to do a split from the front.

I had something similar issue in past when I was driving with cooper tires and cooper dealer renaissance trading in deira 04 2669166 sent me to some specialize 3D lazer wheel balancing workshop to adjust the toe, camber and bla bla's like barry mentioned. It was about 5-6 years back and all I remember that they were using the John Beam balancing system. Either you find some dedicated specialize tire balancing guys to cure this peculiar problem or call renaissance guys and get the name and number of their trusted workshop where I been, as I don't have their contact detail. For the offroad tires, there are few tires I can suggest and recommend based on my 10+ year own experience in offroad. Listed below based on my preferences: Yokohama Geolander A/T-S Awesome for offroad in sand, wadi and mountain. Reasonably comfortable on road Reasonably acceptable on fuel mileage Reasonable tire life of 30,000 - 40,000 kms Michellin LTX M/S-2 Awesome for sand but not great for wadi and mountain. Super comfortable on road Good for fuel mileage Awesome tire life of 60,000 kms Cooper ATR Good for offroad in sand, wadi and mountain. Reasonably comfortable on road Looses tire chunks at half life Reasonable tire life of 30,000 - 40,000 kms BF Goodrich Very good if your car engine has power modification as they are very heavy for hill climb otherwise Awesome for self recovery in sand and great in mountain traction Tooooooo noisy on road - similar to Cooper STT having aggressive tire tread Bad for fuel mileage Dunlop / Bridgestone - Stay away for offroad usage as far as possible. Instead of Michelin LTX has best of all, but still I rate them second because best tire term should be as an overall factors. I think Yokohama Geolandar has crack that formula very well to strike a balance in offering Good + acceptable without any bad aspect. Secondly while shopping stick to denomination of A/T-S or M/S-2 or ATR specifically as all company slightly different variation comes in same tire name but for road usage like Yokohama Geolandar H/T (highway tread) - NO NO for off road.