I was amazed that the 120mm hung around on their site for as long as it did - I spotted it about a week before I had the cash to buy it and really didn't expect it to still be there! Unfortunately it looks as though they've sold all the bargains and the stocks don't seem to replenish that often.

If it makes you feel better I missed a K 135mm f3.5 earlier... I have the M version and I'm really more interested in the K 135mm f2.5, but if a cheap and tidy f3.5 passes in front of me I'll probably pounce on it.

I still think my 55mm f1.8 is the best £8.50 I've ever spent. Only snag is that I now keep my eyes open for K series lenses - have a 120mm f2.8 and 85-210mm f4.5 of the same vintage now (which cost rather more than £8.50 each)!

I have both M and A versions of the f1.7 and the f2, must do a comparative test sometime. I went through a phase of picking up cheap mouldy 50mm f2s and cleaning them out to go with some film bodies, only paid about £5 each for three of them. There is a bit of dust inside now, but they took perfect photos when I tested them on digital.

My good A 50mm f1.7 cost rather more - £42!

Saabs can be fun, when they're working properly. My dad has been running a 2006 9-3 TiD (150bhp) as a lease car for the past four years. All was well until it developed an annoying fault whereby the traction control system would go nuts and the car would default to "limp home" mode with the accelerator pedal inoperative and the engine held at 1500rpm. For obvious reasons this led to us delivering it to the Saab garage with the instruction "we don't want it back until you've found the problem and cured it". Turned out to be corroded wiring, which was eventually traced to dad finally admitting that he'd driven the thing through a flood! All in all I'm amazed it's still working really...

The ECU was absolutely stupid though. Traction control failure should not cause the car to go into limp mode, it should just flash up a warning light and disable TCS. That car will cheerfully light up tyres in 2nd gear regardless of whether TCS is on or off, so the whole system is pretty irrelevant!

Back to the KM - does anyone know what sort of strap the K series were supplied with? Leather, like the earlier M42 bodies, or a webbing one with chrome buckles as supplied with the M series bodies?

Ugh, Haynes manuals...

I was really glad when I found that the official workshop manual CDs for most Land Rovers have leaked into the wild. You get exploded diagrams as opposed to the "incomprehensible text and a grainy photo which doesn't really show much" of the Haynes efforts!

You can buy a basic diagnostics unit from ebay for about £20, that'll enable you to do things like reading fault codes and resetting them.

I suspect that the reason the AA et al are able to give some impressive percentage of vehicles "repaired at the roadside" is because that percentage of faults with new cars are due to electronic hissy fits, where you only need to plug in and tell it to stop being stupid!

The problems usually come when people don't look after the car properly. I see this all the time with Land Rovers. It may be a big, tough truck but that doesn't mean you can skimp on servicing. You need to grease propshafts, make sure the axles have oil in the right places, keep an eye on wheel bearings and above all else listen for any unusual noises. Yes there were badly-assembled examples but most of them have been broken up for parts now.

I have never needed to call for a recovery wagon, and only had it fail to start as a result of a life-expired battery or a poor quality "reconditioned" alternator causing a major power drain. It was even struggling into life with four dead glowplugs in below freezing temperatures!

The only Fiat I've ever had much contact with has been a 1993 Ducato van chassis (under a Hymer A class motorhome belonging to my parents). It sounds like WW3 when you give it the beans as the exhaust is a huge steel pipe sticking out from under the driver's door and it's deceptively fast for a 3.1 ton vehicle. Put it this way, they don't often have to pull over and allow faster traffic to pass, as providing you get a fairly flowing road it'll keep up with most cars!

The only problems with the Fiat parts have been down to an incorrect drive belt (notched, when a smooth one should have been fitted) and a loose connection on the start solenoid which has since been cured by the highly technical approach of pulling the spade terminal off and squeezing it with pliers.

I think I had the Citroen version (ZX 1.9D) as my first car. Great machine until the head gasket blew.

The only problems I've had with the Land Rover have been due to worn out parts. At 122k and fourteen years old I think it has an excuse to demand some new components!