Barry

I know there's not much love for Rudolph diesels invention in this part of the world but I guess it's because not many people have been exposed to it. Let's show some love for the Diesel engine. Haters need not apply.

I must check Mrs B and see if she's due for recall soon.

In what way do you mean superior? I've seen plenty of audis and bmws with crazed lacquer. If you mean the quality of painting here is crap then I totally agree. If you want to be a painter in Europe you have to go to tech school and complete an apprenticeship under a qualified painter. Here they just hand a spray gun to any fresh import and say, ok habibi, paint. It's the same as mechanics. I been to a few European countries and I can say the standard of work here is the lowest I've ever seen. And it will always be like that because people chase the lowest prices rather than pay a professional for a good job. My friend got rear ended a few months ago. Should have been a simple fix but it wasn't. He got the car back with different colored reverse sensors. The broken bit of the tail light was stuck back on with silicon. The bumper didn't line up. You could see the sanding marks in the body filler through the paint. The paintwork was done in an oven but the door was left open so there were telltale signs of silicon/oil contamination, orange peel effect everywhere. When they were done with the paintwork, they didn't even bother to flat it down with fine wet and dry, it looked like an acne scarred teenager. The paint was also full of baked in dust. I don't get these garages who spend money on a paint booth then don't use it properly. The number plate wasn't even put on straight. I was glad I was with him when he went to pick it up. I gave them so much abuse and got them to redo it. Second attempt wasn't much better but he needed the car back to go to work so what to do. This was an insurance approved supplier too. The painting process is remarkably simply but for some reason they refuse to follow it here. Instead they would rather mask everything with newspaper and blow paint on in a dusty environment. On the other hand, if you're paying someone only 2,000-3,000 dhs a month to do a highly skilled job, why would they care about the job. A good painter makes that in a 3-4 days in Europe. I once met a British guy who was asked to train a load of new painters. I won't mention their nationality or I'll get called out as racist but let's be honest, there are some nationalities who have a reputation for bad work. It might be a stereotype but stereotypes happen for a reason. Long story short, the new guys all knew better and refused to listen to anything they were being taught and the teacher was so frustrated. He asked them something simple, rub the paint down between coats but they just kept on painting and building layers up. The new guys all decided they knew better than a painter with 30 years experience. To summarize, painting in UAE is crap because people have little to no training, crap salaries, crap employers, no sense of pride, no interest in the job. The materials and equipment are available but nobody cares. Just make it cheap habibi.

It's good manners to turn your car off when refilling. The fuel boy is standing outside all day in the heat and standing beside a hot running car isn't nice for anyone is this weather. Anyway, some cars won't run properly without the fuel cap because of the way the EVAP system is set up. Might be normal for your model. Still worth finding a friendly mechanic and asking him to run a scan and see if P0440 comes up then you can investigate further.

A days work. No biggie. I used to do a lot of Peugeot and Citroen heater matrices at home. They aren't earthed and corrode and leak. Got it down to a fine art and could do some of them in under an hour. Land cruiser 2 hours. BMW 4 hours. Once you done one and know where the screws are it's easy. The old vauxhalls were my favorite. 2 screws on the side of the dashboard, remove the panel, old matrix out, new matrix in. 10 minutes. I'm not into patching things up, I like to do things properly. Re the overheating. That car doesn't look like its overheating. A lot of people here confuse overheating and running warm. When the car overheats, it blows steam out the radiator cap. Running warm is no big deal and not worth worrying about. When the hand starts to touch the red, that's when you worry. The hand does look a little low to me. I would plug it in and look at the data stream from the coolant temperature sensor just for fun to see what's going on.

Sorry, I'm not working on cars at the minute

@aditya72 I done your timing belt around a year and a half ago if I remember correctly? It does no harm you give your car a check anytime. I would advise doing it whenever your next service is due. 20 minutes will check the major stuff over. It’s always best to know early if a problem is developing so you can prepare and remedy rather than breaking down on the roadside.

Sign me up for the one with the biggest airbags

Ok I uploaded it to YouTube. Watch in slow motion. Credits to @Gaurav

Even if the LSD is good, a torquey engine will still make the car lean to one side. Even with a welded diff, if the engine is good the car will still lean over. Basic physics.

I guess you have seen the video of the Pajero pickup that’s going round? What do you thing of that? I think it would be cool if they did it with a lwb and added the flared arches from the swb.

Shims are easily made and cheap. Khalid and alam in al quoz used to make whatever size I needed. Usually next day delivery. Same day if you harass them enough.

I hate to say it but you got screwed. Better to go to a small garage, get the work done for a small price, tell nobody and keep the receipt to show to the next buyer that the work was done and keep the resale value up.

Do an owners review on the Pajero please 😊

If you know anyone who has a dial gauge and a magnetic stand and some engineers blue, it would be worth checking the pinion height, preload and backlash. Sometimes you can save a diff by adding a few shims here or there. There are some good guides online and it’s not rocket science if you have the proper measuring equipment. Bearings do also wear out and can be changed.

Do you mean the whole body of the car leaned over? If so that’s normal for anything for with high torque when taking off. I couldn’t find any videos of cars doing it but check these trucks drag racing and you can see it a bit. Its not a driveshaft issue. The engine is trying to turn harder than the wheels and differential will allow it. This causes the engine to tilt over and the rest of the vehicle to go along with it. Try revving something with a big v8 at a standstill and you will feel the car rocking from side to side a little. This is a small demonstration of it.

What I have taken from this is that local dealers refuse to fix cars specced from other countries. I would say that this is because they feel bad that they didn’t get the initial sale and are saying a big FU to the customer. Service information is readily accessible by emailing the manufacturer, even google, most service and parts manuals are available online. My country imports a lot of JDM cars. The dealers refuse to touch it out of pure bitchiness but the parts and information are available and people do fix cars with no apparent parts or service information. A good mechanic doesn’t care which country a car came from. He will understand how the systems work, find the diagrams and get the parts as necessary. As I can attest to. I had a rhd Japanese Mercedes in once. Gargash said I don’t know. I google the part numbers and called them, yes sir we have it in stock. @desertdude is right. There are some bargains to be had with careful research. Not everyone is obsessed with selling a car after they have used it. Some people like to buy cheap, sell cheap. Take this for example. Buy a GCC mustang for 50k, sell it a year later for 40k. On the other hand, buy a US mustang for 30k, sell it a year later for 20k. You aren’t losing any more but your initial outlay is less so more free cash for beer!

I think the whole GCC v US spec is mainly to scare people into paying more for local cars. If an American car can handle the heat in places like Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, then it can handle the same heat in the gulf. Easy to get the history of American cars on carfax too. 30 or 35 dollars will give you the history and tell you if it has been wrecked, flooded, stolen etc. GCC v EU is a different story but it's only small things like thermostats and fan switches that are cheap and easily replaced.

Post some pics of your car!

Yeah I know they have a bad rep for their work but Jason has always been very helpful with advice any time I’ve been stuck. I used to work for his cousin.

Look at the corner of the window. Cars have a stamp like this. See the little 8 in the bottom line? That means the glass was made in the 8th year of the decade, ie 2018. Obviously you’ll need to make an educated guess at the decade but that shouldn’t be too hard. Now we know the glass was made in 2018, there’s a fair chance the rest of the car was made in 2018 too. Now, not every car has this date stamp on the glass but a lot do so it’s worth checking. Another method is to remove something plastic from the car and look on the back. You may see a small stamp that looks like this, This will tell you the month and date the plastic part was made. Again, you can use this as an educated guess as to what year the car was built.

You need a new mechanic. Anyone who removes the pipes to the dashboard doesn't understand how a vehicle cooling system works. When you bypass the heater matrix, you're taking a huge chunk of circulating coolant out of the system. Less coolant flowing through the system means the engine runs hotter. More chance of overheating and causing serious damage. I would go back and kick him in the balls and tell him he doesn't understand the most basic things about how a car works. Check that inside the radiator is clean and the fins aren't blocked and that the "mechanic" has filled the system with coolant and not just used tap water. Check that the fan comes on when the vehicle reaches temperature at idle. I would be inclined to check that the water pump is working properly too. Worth taking a look at the recirc flap and control motor too. The bad smell could be bacteria in the system. It happens in this humid weather. You can buy cans of special disinfectant that you spray into the air intake with the ac running. Seriously though, find another mechanic. This guy hasn't got a clue, he's a butcher.

Burt Reynolds just passed away. Didn’t think he was as old as 82. RIP Bandit. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45441860

Tuning isn’t an issue as the engine is controlled by a computer. When was the last time you had a full service including spark plugs? Would be worth plugging it into a computer to see what’s going on when the spluttering occurs.