Table of contents for March 2026 in Car Mechanics

WORTH £27.54 By subscribing to Car Mechanics, you'll start saving money straight away. Use our great offer (below) to subscribe and you'll receive each monthly magazine for less than you can buy it in the shops. Hurry though, this is a limited time offer. Plus, we will send you a Sealey 21pc Screwdriver Set, supplied in a storage case, free of charge. Since 1978 Sealey Tools has provided us with professional tools and workshop equipment from its base in East Anglia. For a limited time, Sealey are kindly offering to new Car Mechanics subscribers one of its SIEGEN SCREWDRIVER SETS, supplied in a storage case. Order your subscription today and you will receive a FREE Sealey Siegen 21-piece Screwdriver Set. CONTENTS Lifetime guarantee. Chrome Vanadium steel satin finish shafts with shot-blasted and…

Aston Barclay BCA update Though a final decision has not been announced at the time of going to press, it’s looking increasingly likely that the British Car Auctions acquisition of Aston Barclay Auctions will be going ahead. This was announced back in April 2025 but was put on hold following intervention by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The CMA were concerned that this acquisition would remove competition within the auction business and give Constellation Automotive (owners of BCA along with Cinch, webuyanycar.com and Marshall Motor Group) an unfair advantage. The CMA has now published an interim report, and while it stresses that this is not the final version, it does say that, “The CMA has provisionally found that the completed acquisition by Constellation of Aston Barclay has not resulted,…

Quite an essential part found on all automotive vehicles, which literally holds them together, are fixings or fasteners. Whether they are screws, nuts, bolts or clamps, they are designed to exert a force between two or more parts in an effort to keep them connected allowing correct operation in a range of conditions over years or even decades of service. While information on the fixings alone could occupy an entire magazine of pages, this feature focuses on the quite often overlooked method of securing them effectively and correctly with the aid of a torque wrench. What is a torque wrench? Before we get to the tool itself, let’s examine what torque is first. Put simply, it’s the amount of force you apply to a fastener. The harder you twist your…

GENERAL Written off Q Just over a year ago I was driving my 2016 Toyota Yaris and was involved in a small collision where a car coming from the side road pulled out in front of me too quickly for me to stop. I was not going at a great speed, but the car seriously damaged the nearside front wing and crumpled the bonnet on my Yaris. The insurance company took the Yaris away for repair and I then heard from them that it was a write off and they were going to pay me out. At this time my son-in-law said to not accept the first offer, and this was good advice as the offer did increase. With the received payout and adding some funds I purchased the slightly newer…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH Those who pay attention to the details in my automotive tales, may recall a hint at a change with one of the cars that graces our driveway. Mrs R’s 2015 Ford Kuga Titanium X 1.5i AWD was needing a bit of money spent on it. A timing belt and the associated bits that go with that, four tyres, rear brakes, possibly a rear wheel bearing and an irritatingly intermittent rear door lock problem needed addressing. The door lock problem is well documented on the internet, and it would be fiddly to fix, but doable. The brakes and wheel bearing are all good Saturday morning spannering jobs which didn’t faze me, but the one that did was the timing belt. My name has never graced a V5 of…

As I travel up and down this wonderful land of ours, I really do doff my forelock to those who are brave or stupid enough (delete as applicable) who run a classic or retro classic daily driver. There isn’t a day goes by where I fail to spot something interesting on the roads, from the odd Audi 100 to a Sierra Sapphire. If you really keep your eyes open, you’ll spot something worth looking at. I’ve tried it myself once or twice, if you keep them in good shape they can be, as they should be, no less reliable than anything else out there on the road. I did a forty-mile commute once in a 1979 Renault 18 in the winter and did something similar with a 1990 Rover Montego…

Back in the January issue, I introduced my new workshop heater and promised to report on how it performed. To recap briefly, my garage/workshop building is in a somewhat isolated location and was in desperate need of a reliable and powerful source of heat if it was to be used in winter. I tried fan heaters and an 11kW space heater, but neither was anything like powerful enough. Hence the purchase of a 35kW SIP Fireball RP125. This is a radiant-type heater, so-called because it radiates heat which then heats objects rather than the air around them. If that sounds high-tech, it really isn’t. In fact, it’s exactly the same modus operandi as used by a wood or coal fire. Two months on, it’s time for a progress report. It’s been…

Rob Marshall wins an award The Guild of Motoring Writers Dinner & Awards 2005 took place in December at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, London. Guild members gathered for the annual dinner and a celebration of excellence in journalism, with the presentation of the Guild Awards. CM contributor, Rob Marshall, asked me if he could enter a couple of his monthly ‘Instant Expert’ features to see how they performed in the world of automotive journalism and PR awards. I’m very pleased to say that Rob won the an award for his BEV feature in the January 2025 issue. You can see Rob in the main image (top right) and right, he is presented the award by Mark Griffiths of Genesis. The official report in the Guild of Motoring…

FORD FOCUS EML on Q My friend has a 2016 Ford Focus 1.0 125bhp manual with 109k miles and it has the engine check light on. There are no symptoms or issues of stuttering or loss of performance. The engine runs very smooth and is getting around 58 to 64mpg. The owner has cheaper OBD tool which states P0420 catalyst not at full efficiency. A mechanic we know has a more professional OBD computer and it doesn’t find a fault relating to this, but they removed check light, which then came back on around six hours later after 150+ miles. In the last year the engine has had parts replaced relating to the wet belt. Any suggestion on next steps? Thanks in advance. Gary Forrest A The code P0420 is indicating that…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH Over the past nine months, my key workshop activity has revolved around a certain red Volvo 240 estate. To be totally frank, there wasn’t a huge amount wrong with it, but it was kind-of getting to the point of needing a bit of mechanical attention over and above a standard service. You know the sort of thing; discs and pads all round, front wishbones, a dose of rustproofing plus a few more cosmetic-type issues such as refitting the chrome trims between the rear bumper and body. Oh, and most important of all; sort out the crackling and generally intermittent radio performance. The issue that finally however persuaded me that the time had come to give E17 PAS a bit of general TLC was when it stopped idling…

Many terms appear to mean the same thing. Take ‘remanufacturing’ as an example. What differentiates it from ‘repairing’, ‘reconditioning’, ‘recommissioning’, or even ‘restoring’? Surely, they are all interchangeable? From a practical perspective, the issue is more important than debating semantics. When seeking to recommission a faulty component, opinions differ on what work is required. Some professionals might state that replacing the faulty part that caused the component to fail is all that is required. Others argue that only a full strip-down and renewal of all wearable parts is acceptable. The circular economy Car Mechanics readers have long recognised that repairing a major component, rather than replacing it with a new one, offers cost and environmental benefits. The world has caught up with this philosophy. Today, remanufacturing has become such big…

MERCEDES-BENZ CL600 Wiper failure Often replacing a wiper or indicator stalk is quite a straightforward process, but many like the one fitted to this 1997 Mercedes-Benz CL600 6.0-litre petrol require the removal of the steering wheel and stripping down of the column shroud to take the fitting that goes around the outer steering column off. The Mercedes had come into me with a wiper problem, and at first the symptoms were pointing towards the wiper motor, but after further investigation it turned out to be the switch mechanism on the steering column stalk. Removing the steering wheel is accomplished by first disconnecting the 12V battery negative terminal, and Mercedes on this one also recommend disconnecting the SRS multi-plugs (red), located under the passenger footrest. The job then continues by first…

Peugeot’s medium-sized SUV/crossover is a popular family car that is cheap to run. It was launched in 2012 and over half a million were sold before it was facelifted in 2016 and revised again in 2020. We’re looking at what is classed as the first generation of the 2008 model. Under the bonnet of the vehicle seen here, there’s a compact 3-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine. One of the major concerns with this engine is its wet timing belt – the belt runs through the engine oil. We followed the timing belt being replaced on this 2008, which had started to deteriorate at 60,000 miles (see CM May 2025). Despite the recommended service interval for the wet belt being set at every 10 years or 112,500 miles for the first change…

FEBRUARY 2026 The Secrets of Sealing • Project Toyota Aygo 1.0 Pt3 • Servicing a ZF 8-speed autobox • Buying + Owning: Citroën C4 Cactus (2014-2020) • Ford Ka Bumper Dent Repair • Electronic Diagnostics: Nissan Qashqai 1.6 dCi • Windscreen Chip Repair • Spotlight: Steelman Pro Wireless ChassisEAR 2. JANUARY 2026 Ford EcoBoost 1.0 Wet-Belt Renewal • Project Toyota Aygo 1.0 Pt2 • Hit the Brakes: Ford Fiesta Mk6 • Citroën C5 Speedo Fix • Buying + Owning: Nissan Juke (2010-2019) • Porsche Boxster 2.7 Radiator Fan Resistor • Mazda CX-5 Diesel Case Study • Electronic Diagnostics: BMW 318i E90, Pt2 • Spotlight: Ring Jumpstart 5-in-1. DECEMBER 2025 EV Transmission Repairs • Project Toyota Aygo 1.0 Pt1 • The Rise of the Headlight • Wheel Alignment Guidelines • Buying…