In today's show, Steve rants passionately about ho much he loves Peugeots, some observations of parking in Brighton, and an opinion about public transport and particularly the busses.

Andy: So wersquo;re with Steve, this is the third take, Irsquo;ve had a bit of a technical problem, a bit of equipment failure here going on with the old recorder but never mind, this is the third take now. Steve yoursquo;ve had your brother down havenrsquo;t you, apparently he's a chef from Oz?

Steve Kennard: Yes he is, yes.

Andy: Have you been having nice barbecues and things?

Steve Kennard: Absolutely, yes hersquo;s been making the food taste really wonderful. Being a chef you know hersquo;s ndash; as I say hersquo;s ndash; even something silly like mashed potato tastes totally different, absolutely different. So yes itrsquo;s been nice to see him and yes hersquo;s gone back to Oz now so I need to get my work head back on again.

Andy: Yes and therersquo;s loads of ndash; is it Peugeots on the shop floor at the moment? I bet you love French cars donrsquo;t you?

Steve Kennard: Absolutely, Fr-

Andy: Let me guess, electrical problems?

Steve Kennard: Yes French cars ndash; most of the problems we get with the French cars that come in are electrical problems. There is... [Car horn]

Andy: Excuse me...

Steve Kennard: Yes. Yes, this is live. Yes therersquo;s...

Andy: No editing here.

Steve Kennard: No definitely not. We actually have a ndash; there is a Peugeot 206 there, therersquo;s not an electrical problem actually, that particular one there has had a cam belt failure. But actually when we looked into it, it wasnrsquo;t purely and simply a cam belt failure it was actually a partial seizure on the engine which has then done the cam belt. Itrsquo;s had a total snowball effect. The result is it requires another engine; itrsquo;s not viable to pull that one apart and rebuild it. But-

Andy: What caused it to seize in the first place?

Steve Kennard: Well we havenrsquo;t actually taken it out and stripped it down that far; wersquo;ve taken the cylinder head off and had a look to see because it had a belt failure. The engine itself was fairly well locked up and you know it wouldnrsquo;t move either way so we took the head off and had a look at it and even with the head off the crank shaft was extremely tight to turn and it shouldnrsquo;t be.

If yoursquo;ve got the cylinder head off, yoursquo;ve got no resistances; if the bottom end of the engine is in pretty good shape then it should rotate pretty freely. This one here itrsquo;s taking quite a length of bar on it to turn it over so itrsquo;s suggesting to us that the engine has suffered a bit of a partial seizure at some stage and itrsquo;s probably that thatrsquo;s resulted in the belt failure because the belt in fairness didnrsquo;t look that bad.

If you inspect the belts, most belts when theyrsquo;re coming to the end of their working life have got evidence on the belt. If you inspect the belt you can see around the base of the teeth starting to crack up, just a general you know visible inspection of the belt will give you an idea on the condition of the belt. This one here didnrsquo;t really look too bad. It ripped off some teeth where the engine had obviously suffered this seizure and thatrsquo;s it. And of course then it runs out of sync, cam shaft to crank shaft and-

Andy: You get things banging into each other?

Steve Kennard: Yes yoursquo;ll get valves touching pistons which is whatrsquo;s happened, but even then with the head off the engine should still rotate pretty freely. It hasnrsquo;t been, or it wonrsquo;t do that, so itrsquo;s telling us itrsquo;s got a problem internally and thatrsquo;s going to result in ndash; you know we can take the engine out, strip it down and rebuild it but nowadays the cost of doing that is more expensive than actually buying a ready built unit to fit in. And thatrsquo;s what wersquo;re going to do with that ...