Barry

Have you tried calling Al Futtaim and asking them?

Rather than looking for special offers I would recommend finding a good mechanic in a small garage who gives good prices all year round and stick with them. When you work with a good garage, you build up a level of trust that just can't be found at a dealership. There are a few mechanics who post on carnity and I'm sure any of them would give you a good price and be happy to have you as a year round customer.

@Jaan Rambo sorry for off topic but is this yours?

You could always do the old fashioned thing, you know, look over your shoulder before you change lanes.

I used to drive 18 wheel trucks to earn extra cash when mechanic work wasn't available and the blind spots are even worse. I know the blind spots are there so drive accordingly. However, a lot of car drivers and especially motorcyclists drive close beside you and don't realize and it's very easy for them to get crushed and killed if you change lanes or swerve. The best thing to remember is if that you look at a trucks mirror and can't see the drivers eyes, them he can't see you either and you shouldn't be on that part of the road.

Post your social media accounts so we can all follow each other im on instagram barrymcnicholl1983

If the vehicle has never been in an accident, 99.9% it's not a chassis problem. The UJs are easily tested. Move the steering from left to right without turning the wheels, just feel the play in it and have an assistant watch to see if they're loose.

Does anyone have a trusted Xbox repairer in Dubai? 360 slim model. Switches on, fan runs full speed for a few seconds then stop and red dot lights. Ive tried looking at YouTube repair videos but got no decent information. Have only established the x clamp is tight. Took it to al ittar, they kept it for 3 days then admitted they didn't know anything and gave it back. Help appreciated.

Like @Rahimdad says, we need to see it. There could be any number of causes. Toyotas are usually pretty reliable. Racks can leak but they rarely fail. If you have had a failure twice in a row, it might be bad luck with bad parts but you should investigate further before throwing another rack at it. Are the steering UJs (universal joints) good? Has the vehicle ever been in an accident? Are the chassis and sub frames straight? Was it properly aligned after fitment? And by properly aligned I mean on an alignment table using lasers, not using the string method. Your mechanic is right about getting it repaired at a local machine shop. Those guys will rebush and reseal it. It might even be stronger than an original rack. When my customers ask me, I always recommend repairing over buying second hand. When you buy second hand you might be buying someone else's problem. When you repair you know for sure what you have. Assuming the repairer is competent. If it was my car, I would email Toyota directly in Japan and explain the issue and see if a manufacturing fault is a possibility.

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.

I always use gulf stars in Sharjah for new Range Rover stuff. They're cheap, reliable, have genuine parts and they deliver to Dubai in 3 hours. The second hand parts are starting to make their way onto the market now, I've bought cams before but it's not too long ago that if you needed an engine you have to ship it from Saudi and pay 35-40k for it. Stuff like water pumps etc I would never buy second hand because of the effort to fit it and if it fails in a couple of months you have to strip everything and do it again.

180 for a water pump isn't bad but that's for a L322. Try pricing one for the new model. I could buy 2 full Tiida engines for the price of one Range Rover water pump. I agree with Mr Dallas that most of the high end stuff are just status symbols. How else can you explain a 1 million dirham 4x4 like the Bentayga that can't even climb a sand dune.

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.

If the insides of the tyre are wearing so quickly it's possible you have a suspension issue. I recommend you go to a decent garage and have all your bushings checked and a proper 4 wheel 3D alignment which includes checking camber, castor and toe. A lot of garages here only check toe on the front wheels so it's important that all 3 dimensions are checked on both front and rear wheels and remember if the rear wheels are out, it also affects the front wheels.

Be a man @DiamondDallas join us. You have a unique manual ralliart Pajero with an engine built by the best engine builder in Dubai. Not everyone can say they have a 3.7 Pajero! King of the desert trophy is yours for the taking. 😜

RE: @Gaurav post, a point I would like to bring up is cost vs reliability. Ive never worked on a cayenne properly. This biggest job I've ever done on one is fitting rim protectors and a diagnostic report. I know a few people who have owned them but none of them have ever let me drive. Maybe they're scared of my driving style lol but the fact I've never seen one in for proper work might say they're reliable. Maybe. I don't know. I have owned a Range Rover though, a P38 and I've worked on many from the classic to the latest model. All had major faults and not cheap fixes either. But I'm a mechanic, I usually only see cars when they're broken but I've noticed range rovers have a particularly high failure rate. Also the Mercedes ML, they seem to be plagued by electrical faults. Particularly the 350. It's not too long ago I lost half a day trying to diagnose a misfire on one and spent 3 hours monitoring coil voltages trying to find out what was wrong. But anyway, I digress, I think the more you spend on a car, the less reliable it will be. Look at cars like sunnys or yaris (yarii?) they just need oil changes and they run forever. A Maserati Quattroporte I looked at stopped shifting gears because they hadn't strapped the relays in the boot down properly. Dealer wanted 5k to repair!

Barry 0521742967

Like Saleem says, it's the little touches. Things like leather being hand stitched and parts being assembled by a person rather than a robot. Heres me in a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti I worked on. No other reason for posting other than to show off.

Yes, there are some guys out there who enjoy rolling in their own dung.

Out of your list, I have owned BMW and Mercedes. BMW 318, 2 M3s, Mercedes C180, C220CDI and 190E. I didn't buy them new, I could never afford to, I'm a mechanic. I bought them when they were older and depreciation kicked in. To me, the BMWs were nothing special, they felt cheap and just had that badge that everyone seems to list after. The M3s were fast. Properly fast. Around 300 bhp, rwd and lsd. Good fun to lift the handbrake at 70-80 mph and do big slides but in terms of engineering, very basic. The Mercedes were in a completely different league when it comes to engineering and comfort. You don't really drive a Mercedes, you gently waft along in it. With regards to engineering, I was forever noticing little things that must have taken hours to design like the way the heater linkages were so over engineered when something simple would have worked or the way half the dashboard had to come out to change the radio. I've never owned Porsche or Maserati but I have driven them. The 911 was probably one of the worst driving cars I've driven. I'll never understand why they thought it was a good idea to hang the engine out over the back wheels. Very prone to snap oversteer. One wrong move and you're sliding backwards. The Maserati is a wired one. It's like a Ferrari but it's not like a Ferrari. Half the engineering is there but it feels like they got lazy come lunch time and wanted to come home so they started cutting corners. When it comes to expensive cars versus really expensive cars, I think 90% of it is just showing off and saying I have more money than you because most of the time there is a cheaper car that will easily outperform it.

I recently went to a job interview for the position of service advisor. I was surprised at how much of the salary was made up from sales commission. If you're making 6k per month you can easily bump it up to 8-9k by selling unnecessary ac regas, engine flush, injector cleaner etc. not to mention the bigger stuff.

I know for a fact these points are definitely not true. There are many many more wearable components in an automatic transmission than a manual. In a manual, only the clutch plate, maybe the pressure plate and flywheel if the driver is bad. In an automatic transmission, the clutches and bands are constantly wearing, regardless of the driver. Even more so off-road because it's running hot. Torque converters break down and fail. Cost to change manual clutch 1500 vs 3-5000 to repair automatic. Automatics are dangerous for rock crawling. They're jerky and uncontrolled. In a manual, you control the power, in an automatic, it is controlled for you. Water still gets in around the torque converter. It can enter the transmission through all the various seals. A bit of water in an automatic transmission will do a lot more damage than a bit of water in a manual transmission. Some manufacturers recommend that your change your gear oil along with transfer case oil and diff oil for this very reason.

It's a case of the customer knowing more about cars than a mechanic with many years of experience. The internet is to blame a lot for it. People thinking mechanics are dumb just because their hands are dirty is another part of it. Let's see them take an ECU apart, find a bad solder joint and fix it. A little knowledge can be very dangerous. People are always telling me this part is faulty or that part is faulty. I've learned not to listen and ask what the symptoms are and make my own mind up. However if someone doesn't want to listen and insists I change wrong parts even after being advised, I'll do it and take their money with a smile. A particularly funny one a couple of weeks ago, I had two guys in. Driver and his friend. There was coolant in the engine oil, oil in the coolant. I knew straight away that the vehicle needed a new radiator, there was a leak in the oil cooler part. The friend proceeded to tell the driver that water in the oil was normal, all oil had some water in it from the manufacturing process. I stood back and listened, laughing in my mind as he justified how it was all possible. I also had another guy last week who just bought a new car. He told me the brakes were finished and needed changed. I took a quick look through the wheel and told him the pads were brand new, probably less than 1000 kms, I'm honest, I'm not going to rip someone off. No, no he insisted and went to nabooda and bought a full set of brake pads and brought them back to me. I put the car on the lift and pulled the old pads out and showed them to him compared to the ones he just bought but he insisted they were finished. Ok no problem I said, give me 300 dhs and I'll change them. Back to brake discs, they rarely need skimmed. I can count on one hand the number of times I've done it in U.K. but here, it seems to be every second car 'needs' to have it done. They should be visually inspected. The runout should be checked with a dial gauge. Thickness should be measured with a micrometer or a disc caliper, the minimum thickness is stamped on the disc. Only then can you make a decision as to wether they need skimmed. But UAE, it needs skimmed, send it to the machine shop.

What if you used it with one of these?

Saw this on YouTube and thought you might be interested. Looks like an interesting piece of kit to use when you're all alone and stuck. Although you do need something to tie the other end to which isn't always possible in the desert.