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Build quality and reliability are two related concepts, but not the same thing.

I'd say that if you are looking for cheap motoring in a car under ten years old, say for £3-5k, then Japanese is the way to go, as they'll tend to have the best reliability.

But if you are looking at going cheaper still, say 10-15 years old and £1-2k then I'd go German, as their build quality and longevity will tend to win out.

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Had a MKII golf gor 6 years untill 02. Not nearly as good as the Honda I have now. They all say they should run to 150k. Year right. Mine was shot at 85k, but it did work hard.

Still not convinced on any pro cam belt arguement. Heavey duty engines have gear driven cams and they mostly just need oil and filters and run for years. Just wondering if the 5.9 Cummins in my tractor would create too much of a bulge in the bonnet of the car....

Think it was an E plater. IIRC it had a tarted up old 1.6 lump that hadn't changed much since they first stuck in a Pinto. I was told at the time that the 1.6 and 2.0 were older designs, basically the same blocks with different heads according to one person. I was told the 1.8 was the more modern one and more reliable. How true all of this is I don't pretend to know. All I can say for certain that mine was an utter dog, and the attraction of cheap parts soon wore off when the bloody thing needed them more often than petrol.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The 1.8 CVH is based on the American engine. Similar to the 1.6CVH but with roller rockers. A weeny crank so needs the crankshaft damper. Very reliable but prone to faulty cam followers giving a rattle at start up. Don't be put off though it goes quiet when the oil gets round.

All CVH engines drive the water pump by the timing belt. A bearing failure in the water pump can throw the belt. Never ignore a water pump noise...you have been warned.

All Sierra engines are pretty robust. The very early carburettor Pinto ones had problems with the auto-choke. Also a tendancy for judder on take off due to faulty hydraulic engine mounts.

Always change the oil on time. If the Pinto engine overheats it can throw out oil. If this happens ALWAYS change the belt as it will have been contaminated with oil and will fail early.

just my 10p worth.

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Ta for that Gizmo. CVH was the engine I was thinking of for the 1.8 but couldn't remember. Still, not likely to own one again now. I got so fed up with the aggro my Sierra gave me I flogged it and bought a VW on the basis of their reputation for reliability. Within 6 months a selector fork broke and gave me a box full of 2nd gears and it was less than a year later that the cam belt stripped all its teeth off when starting up one morning . Second car in a row that I was very glad to see the back of. The Honda has been good on all essentials and has only ever conked out for minor stuff... old battery gone flat, old rad dumping coolant. The only engine related malady has been the dizzy going when its internal bearings packed up. Apparently not unknown with some VTECs, but annoying as I expect 'em to last as long as the engine, and Honda parts ain't cheap. I ended up buying a used one from a scrap parts dealer, actually two, the second one's packed up in the garage just in case. But all the really important stuff I pay to have done now, especially the cam belt.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

That's extremely unusual. Normally electronic components fail in the first few weeks of use or they don't fail at all. There are bits of your computer that are exceptions - hard disks and fans are mechanical so will wear out in time, and power supplies in desktops face an inrush of power every time you turn the switch on, so they sometimes give up. (Solution: leave them on all the time - the internal temperatures all stabilise and they will run uninterrupted for years.)

It sounds like she was just very unlucky. It still isn't worth getting an extended warranty!

John

The first two PCs I owned both suffered a total hard disk failure within the first three years of ownership, so I was grateful I had purchased an extended warranty (mind you, making a claim on the Dixons Group made getting blood out of a stone seem easy )

The third one suffered the same thing after 3 years and 10 months, so it was outside the warranty term.

The current one (which doesn't have it) has lasted 20 months so far...

This experience would suggest that extended warranties are worthwhile for PCs.

It's certainly taught me that I need to back up my key data regularly

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Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

In my experience the cost of the extended warranty often exceeds the value of the item that needs replacing, particularly after a couple of years.
Of course, it's all very well for me to say this as a qualified PC tech, but I'm sure that you could purchase, for example, a replacement Hard Drive of equivalent capacity to the one that failed, and get someone to fit it for you for less than the price of an extended warraty.



Absolutely I lost a whole load of captured videos after a disk failure, I'd wiped the tapes but hadn't got around to writing the DVDs. What a dummy

Especially wouldn't get one for a PC. Hard drives are so cheap now you might as well get a 30 or 40 GB one, stick it in as D: and back up everything to it once a month or so. Then you only have to worry about the board keeling over or a dodgy update from Microshaft stuffing things up . Sometimes think they should have called it Windon't.

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Especially if the parts in question have their own multi-year warranty... why pay for a store warranty if you're covered by the manufacturers anyway?

And as you say, PCs are so cheap these days that you'd practically need the entire system to fail for the cost of the replacement parts to exceed the cost of the warranty...

Don't know about now but Barclaycard used to give a 2nd year warranty on goods bought on the card.
Warranty is like insurance. Someone once told me only insure what you cannot afford to lose. You are better off putting the money you would have spent on extended warranty in the building society. At least you get the benefit if it dosen't go wrong.

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Belts are designed to last a set amount of mileage, and manufacturers set the service limit well below that standard, they only break when the vehicle has not been serviced properly.

No matter how well a machine is engineered, if it is not serviced properly, it will break down.

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Steve

Wow, I've never kept a HDD for that length of time.

PC components are pretty cheap, It doesn't take much knowledge to change a Hard drive (I've even known programmers manage it ). If you don't have backups or better still an image of your system then no ammount of extended warranty will help.

I once totted up how much I would have paid for warranties and what I had actually spent on repairs/replacements and found I had made a substantial saving. Plus when something breaks it's a great excuse to upgrade One sales assistant even tried to sell me an extended warranty on a £35 DVD player for £25

A few years ago I worked with some one that had a MKIII 16V Golf GTi. It was about 5 years old, maybe six. He'd had it about 6 months. It was bought from a main dealer and had never been out of the daler network.

One day he had it serviced. It was a friday It was due to have a cam belt change. They didn't change it. On the sunday it expired on M25 in Kent. It bent 8 valves and was off the road 10 days or more. The dealer took no responsiblity at all and gave the owner a huge bill. £800 springs to mind.

I would have paid for a new belt and the fitting and told the dealer if he wanted the rest of the money to see me in court.

Gear driven cams please.

Even though you needed it, it may have still been poor value! For example, a 3 year old PC would have a disk that is about 1/10 of the size of a modern one. Was the cost of the warranty less than (say) 1/10 of the price of a modern disk? Or, another way to think of it - a 40 gig drive today costs 30 pounds. Was the warranty much less than this, or much more than this? How do extended warranties account for huge deflation such as we get in computers?

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Whilst I'd be mad at the garage if they hadn't serviced my car as I'd asked them to, I'd also be kicking myself for not double-checking that they'd done what I'd asked BEFORE I paid them and drove away from the garage...

As I drive a BMW (snob ) the belt issue is redundant as they use chains on every model built since 1993 and before that only used belts on the 4 cyl models except for one 6 cyl engine. They have obviously seen that reliability is more important than cheap "fixes".

My E36 M3 (1995) spends most of its life at high revs and yet the chain is still quiet and the engine is perfect even at 100,000 miles.

Bugger cars with belts.... damn, I forgot I also have a Subaru, better go check the mileage.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Surley not worried about the subaru, they spend more time being serviced than anything else.

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Steve

Their are many differant types of services available, he should of specified that he wanted the belt changed, which he then would of been charged for (more work & money for the garage).

Really am not too fussed, chain or belt, all my vehicles have stringent servicing.

When ever you have a job done, ensure you get a detailed invoice, all work should be listed out EXACTLEY to what work was completed, If it is not, you do not have a leg to stand on.

Your driving can only be as safe as the vehicle you are driving

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Steve

Cost of extended warranty -v- cost of new PC

Then their is also the fact that an old PC on extended warranty is way behind in Tecnology, 3 years is a hell of alot of advancement in the IT world.

Warranties, especially on PC's, have rather alot of terms or rather get out clauses for the Insurance company, and normally are not worth the paper they are printed on or the cost of warranty.

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Steve