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We took my OH's Peugeot 407SW when we went to Derbyshire on holiday last week, i rarely drive this car except when we are going on a long trip. Knowing that it is a bit neglected when it comes to fluid level checks etc i did enquire if it had been checked over recently and was assured that it had and was fine. The car felt a bit unstable on the motorway at 80ish mph which is not what you expect from a large French car, so after we had arrived and it had cooled down i checked the tyre pressures, the rears should have been 40 psi, one was 10psi & the other was 17psi, the fronts should have been 38psi, one was 30psi and the other one was 36psi ! The answer i got was that the dealer should have checked them when it was serviced - that turned out to be 11 months and 15000 miles ago ! I give up ! How we didn't have a blow out on the motorway i will never know !
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Maybe you should just bite the bullet and do the checks yourself anyway. How much oil was in it?
It worked for me...
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In future i will, she still can't understand why i was so bothered about them ! The oil level was ok, she relies on the "OIL OK" on the display when it does its system check on start up, but i did pull the dipstick to make sure.
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40psi is a lot for rear tyres even fully laded is this what is reccomended in the handbook?
It really is upto you to check everything before you set off including the spare and tyre treads & washer bottle boring as it is your driving it.
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Yes, 40psi is the recommended pressure when it is loaded & 38psi normal. My own car i check tyres & fluid levels etc every week, looks like i am going to have to do both of them from now on !
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Thanks for reminding me why I do weekly checks. I dont care if it is OCD. If the car did not "feel right" why didn't you stop at a garage/service area and check the tyres, inflating a hot almost flat tyre is better than a blowout, family on board or not.
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Surely you could see a tyre down at 10psi?
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Amazingly the tyre didn't look that flat. Before i put the gauge on it, i guessed it to was going to read about 25psi. I ended up buying a air pump and pressure gauge, then checked them every morning for the next few days as i was sure it must have at least one puncture - it hadn't, so god knows how long they had been like it !
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Perhaps the easiest and most important things to do are to check that your oil's OK, and check the tyres, weekly. All you need is a bit of kitchen paper for one, and a tyre pressure gauge and a footpump for the other - how much is that - a fiver? How much time - 10 minutes?
Last edited by: FotheringtonTomas on Sun 18 Jul 10 at 19:35
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As i have previously said, i carry out fluids and tyre checks on my car every week, the Peugeot isn't my car, it belongs to my partner ! I was just making the point at how some people neglect their vehicles, and i dont expect that she is the only one !
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She should get someone to do it, then, and pass it off as part of your business expenses.
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>> As i have previously said, i carry out fluids and tyre checks on my car
>> every week, the Peugeot isn't my car, it belongs to my partner ! I was
>> just making the point at how some people neglect their vehicles, and i dont expect
>> that she is the only one !
>>
No excuse, you were driving it.
There is no way I would let my wife or (adult) kids drive a car in that condition.
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Having seen the total neglect of cars indeed anything mechanical by every woman i've ever known it's easier and safer for them if you perform these service regimes for them.
It's what a chap does.
tin hat on.
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A colleagues wife phoned him at work to say that there had been a red warning light illuminated on the dash of her car for 2 days, and did he think it was important !
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>> A colleagues wife phoned him at work to say that there had been a red
>> warning light illuminated on the dash of her car for 2 days, and did he
>> think it was important !
>>
Mine has proved to be better trained. She phoned to say that she had stopped because the car had beeped at her and a light depicting a head and shoulders with a diagonal stripe was on. After confirming that she had her seatbelt on, it turned out that she had put her shopping on the front seat and tripped the bum on seat sensor and the seatbelt was not done up.
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>>.....there had been a red warning light illuminated on the dash of her car .
>>
Last year as I left home in my daughters car with said highly intelligent daughter in the passenger seat when just along the road the red light on the dash came on.
She was unimpressed at me saying "We ave a problem!! We are going back home"
I had to explain that a red light is a warning and I was not driving it any further.
I fitted a new battery next day. Like many new style batteries it just instantly failed with no warning.
I am still hopeful my daughter will climb the learning curve re lookimg after the basics of a car.
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I do the checks on both our cars, though the fact that we both park on a slope does mean that the oil level isn't checked that often.
Readung the original post I have a question for the panel:
if you are driving along and you suspect the tyre pressures by how much should you adjust the recommended pressures to compensate for hot tyres?
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I would put the pressure up to the reccomended light load figure and sort it out next time the tyres were cold. Got to be better than 10psi.
As I have weekly check OCD :), I dont expect it to be a problem I will have.
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My wife is pretty good with warning lights, and would never drive a car with a light on without pulling over, switching off, and calling me first. As she did when the MIL came on on the Scenic. The fact it went down to about 4 bhp at the same time definitely helped though ;-)
Tyre pressures and fluid levels are my responsibility, and I'm quite happy to potter outside and do that most weekends. I have no concerns that my wife would ever drive with an oil or ignition light on. A flat tyre? I'm not so sure.... ;-)
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Was in getting some new tyres last week, and the lady in front of me for new tyres was also getting a check of the battery / alternator as it had been reluctant to start a couple of times. Cue conversation along the lines of
"Battery / alternator's fine. When was it last serviced?"
"Er, not since I've had it"
"And that is?"
"3 years"
"So plugs have not been changed in that time"
"Not unless they change them at the MOT"
"Er, well, as the battery is OK, shall we start with changing the plugs and see if that improves it?"
I suspect that had a service been offered it would have been declined as an unnecessary expense!
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And people still allegedly pay a premium for "one lady owner" on the used market. At least I assume they do, as no trader seems to miss the opportunity to quote it in their ads where applicable.
Of course we all know there are women who look after their cars, and blokes who neglect them, but why does the market "value" lady-owned cars?
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If I didn't clean, check the fluids and tyre pressures etc and indeed fuel my wife's car then no one else would. It gets done every week along with mine.
On the fuel front, she has been known to realise that she has none left and simply nick my car if she's out first so it's not generosity on my part it's more self-interest.
However, I don't interfere with her domestic duties at more than a cursory / supervisory / feedback sort of level. Advice / appraisal and so on, you know the kind of thing.
:-)
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>> It's what a chap does.
>>
Agreed
After all I only have one wife and only one daughter - I would hate to lose either, even worse to know I could have done something which would have prevented it.
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Tyres - again - Mike Hannon
