Apologies for this rush of postings, but with all this snow outside... There are fun bits to cars, like tuning, driving and ICE; it's the boring bits that seldom get a look in. Three scenarios I've had to deal with in the last few months were real aggravation that routine maintenace would have sorted. I appreciate that the enthusiasts on this forum will take care of routine maintenace, but there will also be relative novices looking for guidance, so I hope there will be a few useful pointers here that Haynes doesn't even begin to address

1) Mi16 rear o/s passenger door opened once when I collected the car and then didn't want to know. Managed to get the door card off and played about with a mirror and torch, but not really sure what I was looking at. Central locking motor was OK, wouldn't be the child proof lock so it was going to be the burst proof lock. Spoke to an autolocksmith (these are the people your local garage/bodyshop call to sort out lock problems - they have their own website) when my first liberal spraying of everything in WD40 didn't work. Also located a spare door the right colour in case violence and brute force had to be used. unsure.gif Sprayed even more WD40 on, it was dripping everywhere and went away for a few days. Came back, thinking about that new door and low and behold the door opened.

Moral, lubricate everything before you get locked out. No problems at all since but Mi16s are getting on, many have been left standing

2) Bonnet Lock seized open on a Punto 2 OK it's not a Pug but the principle is the same. Family friend couldn't get her bonnet to shut beyond the latch. Again, total lack of maintenance. Easily sorted but on the Clio2, Renault had to do a recall because the flimsy latch on that model didn't always keep the boonet down and there were a few accidents/close shaves.

Moral - Again not rocket science, just a bit of TLC from time to time.

3) Remote Central Locking meant door locks were never used and seized This was an unusual one on the 944s2. Again the car had been standing for a long time and the previous owner told me always used the remote. Neither door lock worked with the key. Passenger side eventually freed itself up with good old WD40, driver side was completely seized through corrosion. Eventually gave up and called an autolocksmith since his prices were much better than even thinking of buying anything from Porsche. sad.gif

He managed to get the lock apart and change these things called "plates" to set up the rebuilt lock to the original key so I still have one key fits all. He spent one and half hours and comes to either H/A or work and charged around £75 plus VAT. Worth considering when you reach that point that you can do no more. He also checked I hadn't messed anything up with the rest of the mechanism

Moral - lubricate those locks and use the key from time to time, even if you have a remote