afireinside- wrote:I own a smiley recovery truck and also occasionally usea friends 140ps mk7 recovery truck
My smiley has a turbo and manual fuel pump wound up so it pulls pretty well, The mk7 has good torque too but i find it has a very narrow powerband and only moves when its on boost.
I prefer my smiley for reliability and just driving town to town but the mk7 is by far more comfortable on the motorway with 6 gears you can cruise at 90.
If I just did motorway driving i think i would go for a mk7 but as most of my jobs are local I'll stick with my old faithful di
To true , I have a mk7 because my job needs it as I do a parcel round
if I was a builder etc doing local work then a old mk5 would do
I'm the first to admit that Mk7s are nicer to drive, have better performance, are much quieter etc etc, than a Di. BUT compared to the Di they have a high "component count" as the Yanks say, ie much, much more to go wrong, dodgy timing chains, DMF's, egr's, injectors at how much a set?, cracked pistons, intermittent electronics faults that drive you nuts etc etc. On the rare occasion a Di goes wrong, they are easy to diagnose, cheap to fix and if the worst comes to the worst, another engine from a scrapper for £150 and you're going again. 
