Expensive morning - tyres and fuel flap actuator

[Kev]

I took the car in this morning as my petrol flat was stuck shut. They diagnosed (what I already knew) as a knackered actuator.

The part itself is only £16 but they charge £40 for half an hours labour to fit it and then VAT on that of course!

And my front Pirelli P-zeros were at the end of their life after 15,000 miles so I'm trying Continental ContiSportContact 5's this time. I had v3 before and they only lasted 12k miles so it'll be interesting to see if these are better, if not I'll go back to pirelli again.

£154 each all in but with the greasy autumn/winter roads approaching it's worth it.

[skippy]

And of course, something like the fuel flap is not going to reveal itself until you need fuel, unless there is some kind of warning light that comes on, that is unlucky!

[Kev]

I filled the car up thursday (last week) and it took 6-7 goes to get the flap to open, locking and unlocking the car to try and get it to trigger. Every day after that I tried it just to check if it was ok and couldn't open it once. So I got it booked in, drove like a nun, and as the tyres were getting pretty skinny I thought I'd kill two birds with one credit card!

[skippy]

Glad it's fixed Kev, I think our late friend RW1 has an article on here about the fuel flap actuator, I bet you were panicking a little when it wouldn't open. I guess it is better than the old style key flap (filler cap), but an internal cable release may possibly be better?

[Kev]

Yeah I read his post and looked at the pictures. There's an emergency release lever but you have to get the rear wheel arch lining off (and I don't have torx spanners) and possibly jack the car up and get the wheel off to get at it. I knew I had enough fuel to get me to the garage today and if they couldn't fix it I was just going to ask them to jam it in the 'open' position so I could flip the flap when I needed it but it would look closed. You'd think though they could put the emergency release behind a flap in the boot.

[skippy]

Yes - you would have thought there should be some kind of emergency release in the boot, taking the wheel arch lining off would be very time consuming and tricky to do, all for the sake of the fuel flap. It's possible the wheel arch lining could get damaged when removing also.

Moral of the story here and a warning to other folk, don't run the temptation to 'see how far you can go' when the range reaches zero, if that flap gets stuck your going to be .......