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English: Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) built in the exhaust pipe of a Peugeot) Deutsch: Dieselrußpartikelfilter (DPF) in einem Peugeot Français : Filtre à particules (FAP) de Peugeot Citroën (PSA) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may or may not be aware that the MOT rules have changed recently. One of the changes relates to the use of Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF) and the requirement that if a car is fitted with one as standard from new that it is intact and working properly. If it isn’t the car will fail its MOT.

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However, it seems that the only effective test that an MOT station can carry out is a visual inspection so it seems that in order to get around the rules some companies are offering a removal service whereby they remove the DPF leaving just an empty canister which looks fine but clearly isn’t working.

This infringes section 75 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which prohibits alterations from being made to a car that renders it unroadworthy. After the MOT rule change, the motor insurance industry has become more vigilant and has warned motorists that if they remove the DPF then have a crash they should consider the consequences of not having valid insurance.

Remember that if your car has a diesel particulate filter fitted and you want to avoid clogging in the first place, you need to run the car at a minimum of 50mph for a minimum of 20 minutes each month. This creates a chemical reaction that clears out the particulate filter.

Yet another potential problem when buying a used car, even with an inspection carried out by an engineer, there is no way of knowing how badly clogged the filter may be when you buy a used car. And they aren’t cheap I was told a VW owner paid £1,650 for a replacement filter. Do you really want a used car? STOP PRESS: Strangely I have just had a call from a desperate driver (oooerr missus) who thought that he would save money by taking a low cost ex demonstrator.

He’s had the car for about 4 months and the car is still covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. After the particulate light started to glow on the dashboard he took the car into the dealer to have it looked at and they said the particulate filter is blocked and it will cost £1,400 to have it replaced.

They then shocked him by explaining that this is a wear and tear item, not covered by the warranty. Another reason why you should never take an ex demonstrator, you just don’t know how the 50 or more drivers of the car have driven the car! By Graham Hill

Related articles

• Press release: New rules for MOT to test for diesel particulate filter (gov.uk)

I listened very carefully as the debate over smoking in cars with children onboard rolled on. As someone whose father smoked like a chimney in his car whilst my brother, sister and I breathed in the disgusting smoke, when we were very young, I know how uncomfortable it can be.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

It was bad enough in the house but in the confined space of a Morris 8 it was very uncomfortable and very selfish although I accept that at the time he didn’t know the potential harm he was doing. Fast forward to the 21^st century and the fact that cigarette packs tell you that smoking kills I find it hard to come up with an argument for not banning smoking in cars that are carrying children.

It is already illegal for drivers of company vehicles to smoke in their cars, vans and trucks so I couldn’t understand the ‘impossible to police’ argument as there are already legally enforceable laws banning smoking. If laws were only introduced if they were easy to enforce we would have very few laws on the statute book so like most people I agree with the ban and that we shouldn’t simply rely upon the responsibility of parents.

Lets face it if parents were responsible we wouldn’t be considering the new law in the first place to protect children, it would be unnecessary. It is illegal to batter kids even in the parent’s own home but virtually impossible to enforce, unless a child is taken to hospital and the police alerted so the ‘unenforceable’ argument doesn’t wash as a reason not to pass the law.

If parents light up in the car their babies and children can’t simply scramble out of their childseat or babyseat, climb out of the car and continue their journey on foot (or crawling) to avoid the smoke that they don’t know is harming them in the first place. So it now looks like the law will have grudging approval but how serious are those that say they are in favour?

On the 4^th October last year, in an old blog posting, I revealed that a Canadian company had developed an App that allowed anyone with a smartphone to photograph cars that are illegally parked which would be date and time stamped, located by GPS and with the use of plate recognition, the driver of the car identified.

This information would be forwarded to the local authority for a ticket to be issued, using the information captured by the app to convict the miscreant. Once convicted the person providing the information will receive part of the fine imposed. This apparently works in Canada whilst in the US there is a similar app used to convict anyone parking in a disabled parking space.

But could and should it be extended to cover other crimes such as driving without a seatbelt fastened, using a mobile phone or smoking in a car with children onboard? I’m sure that there are passionate people out there that would provide the evidence through a purpose created app for no fee. So if enforcement is the problem is this the direction we should be moving in? I would welcome your thoughts – without the expletives! By Graham Hill

Related articles

• Ban smoking in cars carrying children: Labour forces vote on new law to fine offenders £60 (dailymail.co.uk)

I guess with the cost of diesel so high it was inevitable that people would try to save money by buying dodgy fuel that has either been bought cheaply, as it was intended for use by farmers, and as a result it attracts less duty or it has been stolen from farms where fuel is less protected than filling stations.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back

According to HM Revenues and Customs the sale of illegal fuel is up by 48% and not just from ‘pop-up garages’ and ‘huckster sites’ but also regular filling stations. In the past it was easy enough to identify the dodgy fuel if it originated from a farm as it was dyed red. But to avoid detection the crooks have found a way to strip the red dye from the fuel using a concoction of chemicals.

This is all well and good but the chemicals they use can damage the engine. The damage is made difficult to detect as the effects of the chemicals can take months or even years to be noticed. HMRC has revealed that they found illegal fuel at 388 sites in 2012 compared to 262 in 2009/10.

Closed (Photo credit: Joe Dunckley)

Whilst is seems there has been a surge the HMRC believe that it has more to do with the detection rate rather than a substantial increase in use or theft of illegal fuel. You can draw your own conclusions, just be careful where you are buying your fuel from and what harm the fuel could be doing to your car. By Graham Hill

Related articles

• More garages caught selling illegal fuel (telegraph.feedsportal.com)

What car can do 0 – 60 in 5 seconds, return 15 miles to the gallon and out perform a Ferrari F40 away from the traffic lights? Answer, a company car, or so the old joke goes. These days company cars are much better cared for as transport managers and employers know that poorly cared for cars could result in end of contract charges.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

So buying what used to be a dodgy ex company car is no longer such a risk. But as one buyer of a used car from a BMW main dealer found out, buying a used car isn’t always as safe as it seems when he bought an M3 that had previously been used as a track car. There was nothing wrong with the car and it drove perfectly but you can only imagine the stresses and strains applied to that car whilst being hammered around a race track by a racing driver or instructor.

Of course the buyer was upset when he found out about the previous use of the car but there is no obligation on the part of the dealer to tell him that the car was used as a track car and I have to say an M3 was built as a performance car so should not be in the slightest affected by its previous use.

But there is one use of car that buyers actually queue up to buy without knowing how badly the car may have been criminally abused. Treated like a performance car from new with certain components stressed to their limit many buyers actually boast that they have bought one of these cars in preference to a brand new car.

I’m talking about the ex-demonstrator. I always advise against these awful cars which are often worse than ex hire cars and wildly over priced. Yes you appear to have a large discount but often that is after a load of unnecessary extras have been added to the car in order for the dealer to demonstrate.

So you have a £20,000 car with £5,000 worth of extras added with a £7,000 discount, dropping the price to £18,000 or the price you would have paid for a new car without the bigger wheels, sports suspension, special paint, larger fuel tank, privacy rear glass, smokers pack etc etc. So often the saving is not as it seems.

But that is minor compared to the real problem. In industry I was group general manager for a PLC with around 700 vehicles. When you run a fleet of that size you are provided with demonstrators every day of the week. It was nothing for a a couple of transporters to turn up with 20 cars from Astras to E Class Mercedes brand new with no miles on the clock.

They would be handed out to staff to use who would drive the cars like lunatics (I’m embarrassed to say I was one of them).  A driver would drive the car out of the car park getting close to 60mph out of the car in first gear. We didn’t care as they weren’t our cars and we justified the abuse by saying that the cars were being ‘put through their paces’ which is why we had the cars in the first place.

And this is the rub. People that buy ex demonstrators believe that they are buying a car that has been carefully driven by nervous drivers with a member of dealership staff sitting beside them, hardly getting above 30mph. The truth is that they are handed out to drivers for maybe 2 or 3 days at a time and the cars are ‘hammered’.

They come back, often in a disgraceful state but are repaired, professionally valeted and sold proudly as an ex demonstrator. My advice is leave them, you are potentially buying a disaster unless you like having a car that spends more days in a repair shop than out of it. By Graham Hill

Last year Direct Line carried out a survey into car vandalism and found it to be at epidemic levels. They found that most people (64%) that had their car vandalised knew the person who vandalised their car. They questioned offenders as well as victims and found an ex boyfriend or girlfriend to be the top target.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

This was followed by a current or ex boss and even the ex’s new partner! Next door neighbours or people living in the same road were also offenders. So much for the assumption that all vandalism was caused by testosterone charged young males high on Special Brew and crack cocaine! So what was the type of damage caused I hear you ask?

In top place is keyed or scratched paint, followed by damage to door mirrors then smashed windows. In fourth place is radio aerials snapped off then snapped windscreen wipers. Tyre slashing is in 6^th place, stolen badge next and in 8^th place smashed lights, in 9^th dents from Car Surfing (whatever that is) with graffiti or paint on car at 10^th. So there you have it, if you are going to fall out with any of the above make sure you lock your car away! By Graham Hill

Bits & Pieces: Ageism still exists it would seem! Insurance companies can still turn you down for insurance based on your age and this happened to over 100,000 last year. However, to help the elderly keep mobile the Government introduced a scheme that meant that if an insurance company would not provide cover due to age they must refer the driver to an insurer who will and apparently it worked as they are all happily still driving. Stop complaining about old drivers – you’ll be there one day!

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

For those who enjoy the occasional spliff then jump into their car and weave their way home in the belief that they won’t get ‘done’, think again as the Government has announced an investment of £120,000 for cannabis screening devices to be installed into police stations in an effort to tackle drug driving. It is estimated that drug driving is responsible for 200 deaths on the road each year – no laughing matter.

On the earlier subject of age there are now over a million drivers on UK roads aged over 80 and amazingly there are 195 aged over 100. The Institute of Advanced Motorists added that older drivers are actually safer with fewer, in terms of percentage, having points on their licences. By Graham Hill

A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference, discussing the world and European car markets. One of the speakers said that he believed that the geeks would soon take over the car industry. We are already seeing Google developing a driverless car but unlike BMW and Audi, who are also developing driverless technology, the Google car will be packed full of amazing geek stuff.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

At the time I pretty much dismissed what was being said as pie in the sky and years away. Then I read about a new car stereo being launched by Alpine, the CDE-185BT. It looks like a normal stereo head (that’s the display to the uninitiated) but you then start reading what it can do. First off you can control everything with your smartphone.

It connects with facebook and keeps you up to date on the go. You don’t have to read anything it reads the updates out loud to you. You can even ‘like’ posts. Through its unique Tunelt feature you can custom tune from bass levels to speaker output and it can all be done via an app on your mobile phone, available as an Android or iPhone app.

You can stream music through Bluetooth, you can operate phone functions using hands free or talking through the head unit. There are loads of connection options through the front and rear of the unit. A USB connector is incorporated into the removable faceplate, ready to play music stored on a memory stick. There is also a 3.5mm mini jack aux input. The clever way that the unit is powered means it won’t switch off when the engine of a stop/start car switches itself off.

You can even buy extra cabling to connect up the unit to the car’s remote steering wheel controls. Finally it has variable RGB illumination. This means that you can have over 150,000 different lights behind the buttons and inside the two line LCD screen. And to think I thought it was just another stereo. Car manufacturers take note! By Graham Hill

Bus Lane (Photo credit: didbygraham)

Years ago, at the age of 21, I worked for the International Perfume manufacturer Faberge as their cost and management accountant. For those old enough to know they were the creators of world changing Brut, the first ever unisex fragrance. One of the advantages of working there was access to cheap bottles of Brut and any other product they sold at the time.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Perks of the job, in the same way that my dad and my brother in law received big discounts on air travel by working for British Airways. But what benefits do those men and women that drive around all day in dayglow cars with flashing blue lights all over them. Not many I would suggest.

They don’t even get to take the company car home for private use in the evening and weekend, the wife might not agree but the kids would love it. One of the few benefits I can see is that motorists seem to get out of the way when they see a police car waiting to move into traffic or are cruising through the centre of town.

You might also assume that they have free access to restricted areas where only busses, taxis and cyclists are allowed and of course bus lanes. After a busy day of chasing around after cracked up 15 year old joy riders, stopping robbers who are likely to pull out a sawn off shotgun from under their seat after being forced to stop by one of these brave boys and girls in blue, you would think that they are entitled a little bit of privilege, such as nipping down a bus lane in order to get home to their bangers and mash.

If you thought that and you live in Birmingham you would be wrong. Birmingham City Council actually send out fines to the police for improper use of their bus lanes. Have you ever heard of anything so amazingly bloody ridiculous. Since last September more than 400 notices were served on the police amounting to £24,000 after putting up signs barring all vehicles, other than buses and taxis of course.

They then used CCTV to catch those driving down the bus lane and issue £30 fines that double after 14 days. So far about a quarter of the tickets issued to the police have been cancelled as the police have proven that the cars were on emergency calls. They have had to use valuable resources to prove that the car was on a shout at the time.

The police have also confirmed that they will be looking into all remaining fines to see if the car was on an emergency call. WHAT??? Instead of stopping villains from duffing up old people and nicking their life savings the police will be busy checking their telemetrics and video footage to see if the drivers were on emergency calls at the time of being caught in a bus lane.

Is it me? Please tell me it’s not me that doesn’t get it? Whoever is responsible in the council for this ridiculous situation, and I don’t care whether you are a man or woman – you are a total knob! By Graham Hill

Related articles

• Councils not amending bus lane signs (bbc.co.uk)

You know you are starting to morph into your dad when you are told about new technology and you start asking why rather than when. I recall the introduction of power steering and my dad saying, ‘Why?’ Followed by his reasoning, ‘You can’t feel your way round bends, it’s dangerous and will lead to accidents.’

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Next came electric windows, again my dad’s response was, ‘Why?’ ‘Just something else to drain the battery and go wrong, it’s the beginning of the end – mark my words!’ Not sure what it was going to be the end of but here I am reading about the latest technology that will be used to control your entertainment system.

No not touchscreen, that is so yesterday’s technology, we are talking eye technology that by 2017 will be used to control your stereo system. Australian manufacturer Seeing Machines is developing the new technology based around a smart camera on the dashboard focused on the driver.

It can monitor the driver’s head movements and how open their eyes are. It can also track what they are looking at so instead of having to reach over to the touchscreen to say switch on the radio you simply have to look at it! Why?? Ken Kroeger, CEO of Seeing Machines said that the camera was accurate to one degree over 1.5 metres.

The article then bangs on about reconfiguring instruments so icons would be closer to the straight ahead eye level position, even embedded into the windscreen but I’m going to stop here because I’m now bored because I cannot for the life of me think why this could be of any help whatsoever.

I drive down the motorway in my Mercedes and after 10 minutes of driving I often hear a ping and a small picture of a coffee cup appears on my dashboard because apparently I’m suffering from fatigue and am in urgent need of a stop and a cup of coffee. Sod off! I know when I’m feeling tired and it isn’t 10 minutes after getting behind the wheel after 8 hours sleep.

Is this a joint venture between Mercedes and Costa? For goodness sake – as my dad would say, and I agree with him, Why? By Graham Hill

New moan started, a few years ago a journalist with about as much knowledge about all things financial as a garden fork started a blog. In fact it was started about the same time as I started mine.

The difference was that I didn’t allow every John Henry and his mate to post things on my blog, unlike my charismatic friend. If anyone wanted to post anything on my blog I would mediate and if what they wanted to post was incorrect or simply trying to sell their pet insurance policy I would trash it.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

On the other hand many other blogs would allow complete (but often well intentioned) doughnuts to express opinions online which others would then take as absolute gospel. For example I have seen someone desperate because they are facing a £1,500 charge to repair a PAS pump, 3 weeks after the manufacturer’s warranty has run out on his car, seeking advice because he’d been told the repair was outside the warranty and therefore fully chargeable.

As you know from postings on my blog this isn’t unusual. In this case the car had only covered 15,000 miles but some numbnuts said, oh dear, sadly as you are outside the warranty there is nothing you can do, chat to your bank manager and arrange a loan. Which is what the poor sod did!! So this ill informed do-gooder just cost the driver with the problem £1,500.

The truth is that under the Sale of Goods Act the driver had a legitimate claim against the supplying dealer as the goods have to be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. The ABS pump should last as long as the car, at least 8 years, so the dealer should make at least some contribution towards the cost of repair as the item concerned would appear to not be of satisfactory quality.

Oh and notice I said dealer and not manufacturer, the claim is against the company that sold you the goods, not the manufacturer. It’s up to the dealer to seek compensation from the manufacturer. This is just one of many pieces of advice given by ignorant subscribers with no legal knowledge whatsoever.

Sometimes on this and other blogs the advice has been accurate at the time it was given in say 2009 but the law has since changed and the advice is now wrong. So if you are one of those people that searches through blogs for accurate information, tread very carefully, the advice you follow could cost you a fortune.

It’s about time that blogs were properly policed before too many people catch a serious cold. 2^nd moan over! By Graham Hill