Sorry for another silly question Is there an easy way to fill the windscreen water bottle? The pipe on my car seems to be in an 'S' shape and it makes filling it up ridiculously difficult - took about 5 minutes this morning to put less than 500ml in (and the tank is virtually empty). I've tried fiddling with the pipe to make the water run through quicker but that didn't help, so I'm wondering if I can cut the tube to get rid of the bends in it to make topping up easier? Or is there some sort of trick that the rest of you use...?!

The corrugated pipe runs a very convoluted route to the reservoir bottle, best seen when the wing is removed. There could be a kink, mine is fairly slow to do (like everything else under the bonnet). and is probably the one thing I check before every drive so that filling up is minimal as the washer fluid seems to evaporate a little due to the engine heat. There is also the little blue pipe inside the larger pipe that avoids airlocks - that could also be the problem if kinked or blocked.

Regarding your g/box shunt/chatter noise, after a couple of thousand more miles, get the dual mass flywheel checked. Mine had to be replaced by the factory at 12k miles - all seems ok now, chatter is now a whisper.

Sorry, I think that was afr's problem, hope its not yours too!!!!

Lol, I have that 'problem' too - for me, not really a mechanical problem, more of a driver problem

I guess I will just have to exercise patience when filling the water bottle (not one of my strong points!!)

When I first collected mine I was a little concerned about this also. My personal moment was the long gap between 1st and 2nd. If I pulled away in 1st and then went up the revs it was very slow to loose revs and align naturally for the change to second. I had to do a "slow" change to let them drop back.

My answer was to convert my car to a 5 speed gearbox by ignoring 1st on all but steep hills. Given how high 6th is and low our speed limits are I think I might have a four speed....

The noise is the same, when it is cold there is a lot more noise and whine which reduces once warmer but this is a raw car. Nothing has fallen off yet and it still makes the same noises despite MOT and service so I figure its the way it is meant to be.

I did notice the S1 gearboxes are quite a bit louder than the later S2 I have when I was test driving. I don't know if this is common but the three I drove were all like this.