TOPIC:

Get a balloon, they're eco-friendly, & if it goes wrong you won't have to worry about the expense of fixing it. Great aircon too

Waiting patiently for the day the human race gets wiped out & the survivors are reduced to horse & cart, fetching their own wood to keep warm & growing their own food. Zombies would be good too, I'd enjoy that

HI!... I'll stick to my Ford's thankyou. Simple to fix and usually cheap to do it. I've pulled a 5.4L engine and 4R70-W trans out together in my driveway out of my 99 F-150 in less than 2 hours. I've owned one front wheel drive vehicle in my life and will NEVER buy another one. Rear wheel drive for life. lol!

Yep Fords are fantastic, well the old ones at least.
If you can't see the floor when you look in the engine bay, you know you're gonna struggle to fix it when it breaks.

Yep I hate front wheel drive too - great for not losing control, no good if you've lost control & are trying to get it back.
Lose control in a front wheel drive & you may as well just sit back & enjoy the crash.
Not to mention all the bits that wear out due to the overcomplexity of the drive

Had fun at the weekend (not)

My 17 year old stepson (Myles) has recently passed his driving test and his Grandad very generously bought him a car and his Dad has insured it. The mechanic that looks after Myles' Grandad's 1968 MGB GT (that he has owned since new!) was selling a 2003 1.6 Renault Megane II for not much money, so he bought that. Not my choice of car for a 17 year old, but a free car is a free car. And it is quite tidy and respectable.

Anyway, Myles came home and said the front indicator isn't working and the rear one is flashing really fast. No problem I said - it will just be a dead bulb. "5 minute job" I said, "...although it is a French car", I said, "hurr, hurr..."
So off to Halfords to buy a bulb. Popped the bonnet only to find no way to access the rear of the headlamp cluster.
OK, time to get the manual out... Turns out to change the indicator (or headlight) bulb in a Megane there is an access panel inside the front wheel arch. I found this, but my arm does not seem to have enough joints in it to allow me to reach the back of the bulb (I needed another one in the middle of my forearm). The Renault user manual actually recommends you take the car to the dealer to change the indicator bulbs!
It is literally as if they designed the whole front of the car then realised there was no way to get at the bulbs, so just cut a hole in the wheel arch and called it done.
Eventually I found I could get at the bulb if I removed the battery, but I could not get enough leverage on it to get it out. You have to turn the back cover through 90 degrees and I could only get it to about 45 before it stuck fast.
Myles looked on the Internet and apparently it is quite common for the contacts to get dirty and stop the bulb working on this model. As the bulb did not look blown, we decided to reconnect the battery and try it again. Lo and behold, there is light!
All of the jiggling the bulb cover (combined with the swearing) must have cleaned the contacts enough for it to work. How long it lasts, we'll see.

So, there are three morals to this story if you own a Renault Megane and the indicators stop working ...

1. If the bulb doesn't look like it's blown, just jiggle it.

2. If the bulb does look like it's blown, buy a bulb from Halfords and when the spotty teenager behind the till says "Would you like us to fit that for £5, Sir?", say "Yes, please", then go away and have several nice cups of coffee.

3. If you decide to change the bulb yourself, you will need to rapidly evole into something with double-jointed forearms (but which is probably perfectly incapable of drinking coffee ).

I suspect this is done purposely. Not much margin on selling a new car but a lot more on maintenance.
Be glad it's not Italian, with the same symptoms it would probably have meant that the wiper fluid was empty.
Maybe you can use some contact spray next time you cut a hole in the car, that should help against oxidation...

Hi Martin,
I've got the same Passat as you(2006 TDI 140HK Estate), and I can tell you that you have been lucky...
To much to list, but I've been through a lot.(flywheel, EPB motor, several ECUs, etc, etc)

I've now ordered a Toyota RAV4 hoping the quality is better...

-Lars

That reminds me that I should replace the front middle chain ring on my bike.

I recently had to replace the head lamps on my work van (Toyota Hiace) Turns out you have to remove the complete light assembly from the front of the van to do so

Martin,
To change a light on a megane you need to turn the wheeles.
Modern Renaults are reputed for their poor systems. For example to change a front bulb on a modus, you need to dismantle the front bumper

I will moan I don't have this one. It's a 961 (now where did I see that number).