m4rkw

If you plan on keeping the car a long time then absolutely yes - should ideally be done every 50k or so. £150 sounds cheap, mine was £300 at an independent!

I'm a big believer in not putting anything into your car that the manufacturer didn't explicitly recommend. I always tell my garage not to use their "flush" products when changing the oil or the coolant. If those things were necessary they'd have been specified by the manufacturer.

Can that be done on a hybrid? I looked into doing mine (non-hybrid) but found some scary stuff about toyota engines and valve seat recession which put me off.

The people peddling that stuff must be printing money, it's amazing what people will believe without stopping to think. Toyota spend MILLIONS on R&D getting their fuel economy up and their emissions down as low as possible. There's a reason they don't put stuff like this in the tank from the factory - doesn't do anything.

Unsurprisingly in actual tests they don't do anything beneficial: https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/news-and-views/advice/bike-maintenance/does-a-miracle-fuel-additive-really-work

Placebo effect is strong. Is there any evidence to support these claims other than people thinking they made a difference?

I tried Sygic but I think TomTom is better because it monitors your speed through average zones for you which is quite handy.

Satnav should just be your phone. It'll be 100x better than any in-car satnav.

Give it a try 🙂 I've never been much of a fan of oracle software, you can see an example of why here: https://m4.rkw.io/blog/owning-virtualbox-via-mitm.html Things move on all the time, maybe it's more reliable now.

Attached the drivers mini_vci_win10_64bit.zip

If you have an intel mac and enough disk space I would strongly recommend using Boot Camp and installing windows natively. VirtualBox was highly unreliable in my experience, and if you're messing about with talking to your car you really want stability. You can download a windows ISO here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO You don't need a product key as its free to use if you don't want to customise it. Just run Boot Camp and give it the ISO and it should do everything for you. After windows is installed it will pop up a dialog to install the boot camp drivers - just click Next until it completes. After it's done it will boot straight into windows every time, which is annoying. You can fix this by rebooting and holding the option key until you get the boot menu, select the macOS disk to boot into macOS. Then when you're back in macOS, go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk, unlock the pane and select the macOS volume, then click back to come out of that pane. Then it will default to macOS on startup and you can boot into windows by holding the option key. Once you've got windows installed give me a shout and I'll chuck you the driver bundle.

Ehh no. Car still has to be legal in the uk. Might be worth a call to your insurer and/or the DVLA just to see if there are any options you didn't consider but i think you're probably right that it needs to be transported back. These guys look like they could do it: https://eamonmclaughlin.com

https://www.french-property.com/guides/france/driving-in-france/mot-tests-control-technique "If it was registered in another country and not yet registered in France, then the existing registration document will suffice, ideally with a certificate of conformity." This seems to suggest you can get a french MOT without needing to register the car in france.

I have the mini-vci drivers for win10 64bit if you need them. Depending on the VM technology you use you might find the connection isn't very reliable. Vmware worked better than virtualbox in my experience, but if you want to be as stable as possible your best bet is to use bootcamp and dual-boot windows. This is only available on the intel macs, they removed it from the M1s due to the architecture difference.

Did you try Electrum?

I wonder whether it's possible to get a french MOT for it though. Might have to register it in france first but that's probably not too expensive.

Since brexit I doubt they share much information, probably unlikely to even be noticed.

Or another idea, you could register the car in france and get a french MOT, call your insurer to report the change (or clear it with them beforehand) so your insurance is valid, get the french equivalent of road tax and then you'd be legal to drive in France. And then just take it to a pre-booked MOT test immediately on arrival in the uk. Once done tax it and update your insurance again.

Sat for 2 years is not good. That plus the rust, I'd walk away even if the car was being offered for free.

As others have said, it's the knowing which part to fit to correct the problem that's difficult and why it costs money. Perhaps that's a high labour rate but it doesn't seem too far fetched for a main dealer. The cost of fitting a single part you don't need based on an incorrect assumed diagnosis would far exceed this fee in most cases. More so if the part fitted was poor quality aftermarket junk that caused a new problem. Given the choice between a garage that charges for diagnosis and one that offers it for free I would choose the former every time. Diagnosis takes more knowledge and skill than replacing parts, and it takes time. If you're not paying a fair market rate for someone's time upfront, expect to make up for it and then some later. Nobody's giving money away 🙂

You're allowed to drive to a pre-booked MOT appointment so I'd make an MOT appointment as closed to the tunnel port as possible (ideally one that doesn't do repairs so they have less incentive to fail it) and leave really early in the morning so as not to miss it. Maybe explain the situation to your insurer beforehand if you're particularly worried, hopefully they'll be ok with it or if not perhaps they can suggest something. Of course there's still the issue of getting there in the first place but hopefully that will be possible soon. Do you not have RAC or AA cover? Depending on level of cover they will do repatriation for broken down cars.

Are the OEM ones not worth the money?

Is it not possible to fix it in france and drive it home then? Or just too expensive?

Yep. Garage diagnosed it for me. You should (almost) never replace parts from fault codes alone as that’s a quick way to waste a lot of money.

If the car isn't level when you check the dipstick you'll get an inaccurate reading.