A & F Imports Ltd. (Jim Rock)

[Ivan E]

Good luck with the new site. Think its a good idea having an Ireland specific site.

Now to get the ball rolling........

Has anybody dealt with A & F Imports Ltd. They seem to buy their cars direct from Japan and sell both here and in the UK. They sell through Jim Rock in Loughlinstown?

[CJ]

Cheers Ivan

I spoke with A&F a few years ago before I bought my first FTO, they seemed Ok to deal with and I believe they have a good reputation in the trade. From what I can gather, they make most of their money out of exporting to the UK.

Ciaran

[Ivan E]

Thanks Ciaran. Seems to be the general opinion alright. Just want to make sure as I found a car in another place that I seemed to be getting a good deal, but wasn't so sure about the car as the mileage wasn't registering. Told by the lads on another forum in JCars to stay away from it so just doing the same check with this place.

Thanks for the input.

[Ivan E]

Just to let you know that I went ahead with this place and got a '95 white GR manual. So far so good and am very happy with it.

There was 2 other fto's there, an '95 silver GS tip bought at auction and a '97 black GR tip, facelift which seems to have been sold now, only 27k miles on the clock and looked the part.

But they do sell them and they will take trade ins of them also so no harm for those of you looking to trade yours in for another. I'll keep you informed on how it goes etc.

BTW, A&F and Jim Rock were seperate up until recently. Doesn't seem A&F operate within the UK anymore and have joined with Jim Rock in the last 6 months.

[CJ]

Congrats on your new puchase Ivan, white is a pain to keep clean but the tradeoff is that the FTO looks great in white. What was the milage and the price by the way, also what price did he have on the 97 facelift?

Ciaran

[Ivan E]

He had 3 FTO's in there. The white GR I got was a manual and had a facelift type front bumper, which really does add to the look, but have to be careful as low down. Anyway, it was meant to be for sale at €8,995 but he quoted me for €7,995 and that's what I paid for it. So he made a mistake there as I rang on the day he got it, he gave me the first quote, the wrong one at that. He had it advertised on the site a few weeks before he got it so I assumed it was gone until I rang. It had 105k km on it which works out around 65k miles.

The '97 facelift was black, a tip and had something like 27k miles on it, think that's around 45k km. I think it was a GR but it was a 2.0l V6 in any case. Looked in very good condition but its no longer on the site so must have been sold.

Finally they had a grey GS that was bought at auction, it had 65k miles on the clock and looked in good shape all the same. It was going for €8,495.

[Ivan E]

Actually one thing I want to ask is this, so far the car has run as well as expected but had a problem with the remote central locking. Using the key everything is fine, but yesterday the driver side lock stopped working when I used the fob. The passenger side still works as does the immobiliser. But the drivers lock fails to lock or unlock. It does twitch each time the button is pressed, looks like its stuck or there's not enough power to move it.

Anyone have anything similar?

[CJ]

Ivan, you may have to replace the motor, its cheap enough to do and you can get it from Maplins. Check out the following page on Steve Hemmings site for more info:

http://www.mitsubishi-fto.org/workshop/ ... index.html

Rgds

Ciaran

[Ivan E]

Thanks Ciaran,

Have researched into it and it looks like it is a common problem with the FTO. You can either replace the motor with the one from Maplin like the link suggests or else just remove it and clean it out, but the same problem can happen again.

Might be good idea to have an area dealing with common fto problems?

[CJ]

Might be good idea to have an area dealing with common fto problems?

I did think about this but theres a few guys out there who have done a good job of putting the common issues and fixes on their site. They are referenced in the 'Maintanence and Serviceing' section on the Links page.

Ciaran