Now im normally wax lyrical about my astravan and endlessly singing its praises to whoever I can bore to tears at the time but I came to it today to head over to see a customer in hull 160 miles or so from me started fine and drove away, I got about 50 yards from my house and realised id forgotten something so reversed up the road and stopped broadside to my drive way, to my horror there was a rather large lake of oil underwhere the dam thing had been parked!

 

So I had a quick look and could see there was visably fluid on the undertray So i took it to a local garage that has done the service work on it recently and it appears that the crank shaft oil seal has failed causing it to wee fairly rapidly! So they recon its 8 hours labout and i've now got a lovely 106 diesel great!

 

Lucky I went back eh? Considering if I had driven to hull I suspect it would have been out of oil by the time I got there. - The pitfalls of reversing onto ones drive is that you dont see the area where the van has been parked overnight!

 

Shame really as its first 100k were absolutly brilliant!

Lucky catch mate, but it's still all good if that's the only thing that's gone wrong since you had it.

Yeah its been good to be honest! Service ever 20k, its had two sets of tyres, set of front brake pads a pair of wipers and two headlight bulbs @105k in 2 and a half years.

 

Good really! Just glad I caught it, boss will want to change it now though... which you'd think would be a good think but I like that van, I doubt a new one would have all the options like this one!

Sounds like my Vectra estate, it's done 114k and the only thing that has actually failed on it was the EGR valve. Which as well all know are only used to cause problems lol. Apart from that it's been great.

Its come out to a bill of £400 or so!

 

I'm sure it'd be cheaper to do on a 300zx!

I love my astravan super reliable, but so does my missus, which leaves me stuck driving her plastic fantastic mini!!

Well done for spotting the leak though.

 

They are fairly simple to work on, is that not a job you can have a go at?

I love my astravan super reliable, but so does my missus, which leaves me stuck driving her plastic fantastic mini!!

Well done for spotting the leak though.

 

They are fairly simple to work on, is that not a job you can have a go at?

 

Yes and no, mainly no as ive not got the skills time or tools... its also a company van so not actually my problem.

 

I had the "phone call" before, poor little SB09 PCF is on borrowed time now boss asking if I want a new one, I said not yet besides what are you going to do with this one, he replied "I was going to asked you to sell it and go buy your self somthing new".

 

So we'll see in 6 months, need to try and manouver my self into a position where I can demand a car rather than a van :)