I think the parcel shelf is specific to the 3 or 5 door, someone will come along and confirm in a minute!

Sadly, I'd have to cut my own throat financially to do that, unless anyone here wants an exceptionally well looked after, low mileage RX8 as a toy? :)

So in a couple of weeks I'm going to have to ditch the freelander because buying first house and I don't want to run two cars for a while. I'll return eventually, probably with some horrendous V8 monstrosity over in the defender or diso camps. (Ew, I know.) This isn't an ad yet, I have a couple...

I'd have to check, but I think mine goes fully home on my soft top. It quite often snags on the outside of the channel though then suddenly jumps home with a thump.

The plot thickens...

I heard that :D

Does sound like something is internally dying on the box. There's not really a lot in the selector linkage that could be affected by heat, unless something has jammed or melted? Could be something very odd has happened to the oil, but it would have to jump to the viscocity of tar to jam up...

That's been dragging the wall for a long time, impressive that there's a delamination effect going on just above the rings. Were the thrust bearings in place on the big end or were they missing? Looks like it's just gradually been dissolved, melted away in places. Ugh, nasty!

My advice would be to not buy a key/transponder off eBay - by the time you're done screwing around and actually find a key place that'll cut it, you've burned enough personal time that it would have been cheaper to just go buy an expensive one from the locksmith in the first place. Most...

Remind me to sell my shelf on here when I eventually get shot of the 3 door :D Lucked out - mine had one fitted when I bought it.

Jack up one of the rear wheels and spin it forwards and backwards. If there's a loud clunk/a lot of free play where the shaft enters the gearbox at the front of the car, your IRD is probably toast. Options are to pull the shaft and replace the output pinion with a blanking plate, or do it...

Yeah I was doing a spot of reading about this a while ago - about how someone found a way around the rules. That you could simply tweak a small percentage of the oil and call it a "fully synth." The whole setup now is ridiculous - and the variance between oil manufacturers is mad, causes so...

Hmm, I understand what you're saying - it's entirely possible there's a red herring here. The interesting thing is I realised last night I still have most of a bottle of this gear oil left, bought at the same time, if I've got time this weekend I could drop it and refill, see if I can reproduce...

There's nowt wrong with the drivers side one, it's rock solid. The one with a tiny amount of play in it is the nearside one that goes into the gearbox.

I'm just calling it as I see it at the moment, it made a din, I swapped the oil, it stopped making a din. No VCU to screw with it. I suspect a bad oil batch where it's shear didn't come up to spec or something, after a couple of months the plug looked like the picture above. Maybe I used the...

Double checked - yes it is, I'd avoid driving the car until the belt is replaced!

Make sure you pick it out before driving it any further - there's a couple of nasty things that can happen if they get snagged in the pulley. Doesn't the TD4 water pump run off the fanbelt or am I getting confused?

Was definitely dark material, I'll grab the oil brand when I get home tonight for people to have a look. I was wondering if it was just dirt that had cleaned off - but it was stuck to the magnetic plug so I don't know. Doesn't seem to be any worse for the wear though, no play at all in it and...

Changing the IRD oil instantly fixed it. Was reproducible - as soon as you took it up to the speed again it started making the din. EDIT: Also the volume of shavings in the amount of time was silly, I'd expect that volume in years of use.

It was particularly the gearbox side wheel (uk passenger side) that had the slack in, would be interested to know how much slack others have!