@*&$ing French cars.
Posted by: BigH47 on 28 November 2014
Trying to do my daughter and SIL a favour we "subbed" them for new battery of SIL's car, a Renault Laguna and I thought I'd fit it for them.
Easy I thought a few nuts and Robert's your dads brother.
Not only does it require 3 different size spanners, until I realised that the +ve connection is has a screw down device, which you can't unscrew of course. Tease this off with light taps of a small hammer and "viola" , you find a threaded piece fitted to the +ve terminal , back to hammer and screwdriver this time.
Finally succeeded to remove this piece and fit to new battery. Easy peasy.
Almost an hour and a half instead of what would be a 10 minute job on 99% of cars, even my Mazda which has the battery under the boot flooring is quicker than this.
This is why the most I usually do maintenance wise these days is topping up fluids and the occasional wash( the car that is).
Rant over , I do feel better now.
My wife's TT has had two sidewall blow-outs. fortunately she was on the M27 in the rush hour. A snail could move faster at that time of day 
One of our cars runs on run flat tyres and we carry a spare. I don't mind a skinny spare as a temporary measure but no spare is just plain crazy. You don't get a spare wheel because you don't get punctures often? Then why do they fit airbags and anti lock brakes or seatbelt pyrotechnic pre tensioners. I've had more flats than airbags deployed, seatbelts going into emergency survival mode or collisions avoided purely by the fitment of ABS combined, so Merc's probability argument has reached the wrong conclusion and omitted the wrong feature. As so often happens when marketing (and weight reduction at any cost to reduce emissions no matter what the inconvenience) goes up against fact, the twaddle wins.
Good points, Harry. I'll have to remember those for my next conversation with the Mercedes sales reps.
Will be back at the dealer again soon. Recently took my C-class in for summer wheels and tyres to be swopped for my winter set. I've had the latter for about three years now and when I traded in my old C-class in for a newer one earlier this year I took particular care to ensure compatibility on the wheel and tyre size (17"/225) so the winter wheels could still be used. Imagine my irritation when the technician got the car up on the ramp and discovered that Mercedes had changed the width of the bolts as between the W203 C-Class and the W204 that I now have. The latter have thicker bolts that won't fit the old wheels, rendering my winter wheels and tyres redundant! Seemingly the technician wasn't aware of this change either? So I'll be back again soon once I've bought a completely new set of winter wheels and tyres. 
My wife's TT has had two sidewall blow-outs. fortunately she was on the M27 in the rush hour. A snail could move faster at that time of day
That's particularly bad luck Mr Mole, necessitating two new tyre I guess. Still, I'd swop you the M27 for the M25 any day.