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W reg weigh in


andrew e

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Must be suffering from major mechanical failure or something.Hardly any car seems to be worth a bean nowadays, except in scrap value. (ok bit extreme, but you know what I mean).It seems to be an increasingly use-and-dispose Society, where perfectly repairable stuf gets chucked.Doesnt bode well for future shite does it? :cry::cry:

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It could be something far worse than that, it might have been just not running quite right, the worst thing of all. I poured £700 worth of ECUs and sensors and stuff into a 2000 (W) 80,000 mile full history Clio RT that wasn`t running right only to find that it had an emissions readout that would embarrass a Leyland Octopus and kept frying lambda sensors every time one was fitted,and at £60 a pop that quickly became unamusing. The thing was just infected and no-one could cure it.Don`t be surprised to see a few late model diesels heading there either, modern diesels of all types seem to enjoy spitting fragments of pump into the injection system leaving owners with £2500 bills, some with very low mileages, if this happens to anything older than 2003 with big miles on it it won`t be given a chance realistically.

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It could be a p/x from a main dealer.My friend (Works at a Renault Dealership) says that you can sign a document - disclaimer if you like to the effect that the dealer will give you around £500 more if you agree for the car to be scrapped :shock: e.g So Mr Jones, we will give you £1000 trade in for your W reg Clio, if you sign this document and agree for it to be scrapped you can have £1500, let me think about that one for all of 3 seconds says Mr Jones :roll: He tells me all sorts of perfectly decent motors are getting scrapped, X reg Zafira's, V reg Vectras, Y reg Kia's etc etcDon't know how they are covering the extra £500, government incentive/grant maybe to get "shite" older than 2001 off the road so they can issue the big Tax based on C02 figures maybe?It's wrong anyway..............

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It could be a p/x from a main dealer.My friend (Works at a Renault Dealership) says that you can sign a document - disclaimer if you like to the effect that the dealer will give you around £500 more if you agree for the car to be scrapped :shock:

Never heard of that one and I work in the motor trade, maybe its just that one dealership as there is no government backed scheme. maybe its an incentive for people to scrap older cars in the way Vauxhall did a few months back?WEither way, scrapping perfectly useable cars is just wasteful, especially in these times when we are all supposed to be living the green dream :?
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Don`t be surprised to see a few late model diesels heading there either......

Uh-huh. Some people we know have just had a Mazda 6 TD die on them, cost of new engine etc basically writes it off. Maybe someone with cheap labour rates or used parts will sort it, I don't know.Whatever, there's going to be a huge pool of cars missing in a few years time.
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It could be a p/x from a main dealer.My friend (Works at a Renault Dealership) says that you can sign a document - disclaimer if you like to the effect that the dealer will give you around £500 more if you agree for the car to be scrapped :shock:

Never heard of that one and I work in the motor trade, maybe its just that one dealership as there is no government backed scheme. maybe its an incentive for people to scrap older cars in the way Vauxhall did a few months back?WEither way, scrapping perfectly useable cars is just wasteful, especially in these times when we are all supposed to be living the green dream :?
Ah, that makes sense now as my friend works at a dual Vauxhall/Renault Dealership and these were coming from the Vauxhall side (they were not all Vauxhalls though). How did this scheme work with Vauxhall then?
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Absolute madness!Something has to be very very shit AND dead indeed for it to be actually worth having it baled and tying yourself to the never-never for another 5 years. Are folk actually that thick?Just makes me want to dig my heels in more and keep on with "make-do and mend" with our current selection of ageing cruddola. Is it just that everyone exists 'hand to mouth' these days? I.e. if your car breaks 'unexpectedly', no-one has any actual money to pay to fix it, but enough "credit rating" to score a new one on finance? GIMPS.

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I.e. if your car breaks 'unexpectedly', no-one has any actual money to pay to fix it, but enough "credit rating" to score a new one on finance? GIMPS.

Isn't that just what people do on Personal Contract Hire anyway? Pay monthly for three years then give the car back, get a new one, then continue to pay for 3 years, hand back...ad infinitum; not realising that they never actually own the car.Also heard of people handing the car back on HP after 35 (of 36) payments have been made - credit company then keeps the car - madness!
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To play devils advocate for a minute I don't think we'll suffer a huge lack of shite in the future because of this kind of thing. That car is 8 years old. Consider how many 60's/70's cars would have been headed for the breakers at that age with rotten sills. The shite cars we have now are actually the "good" ones that survived that kind of cull. Survival of the fittest etc. That said, I agree that that wastage in these days of "green awareness" is appalling.

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A W plate Renault Clio is a worthless piece of rubbish, along with just about every other French car since the days of the Renault 20. It's really no great loss and eight year old bread and butter cars have been scrapped since the dawn of time. In 1960, early Minors were getting cubed. In 1970 early 1100's were being scrapped. Etc etc etc.It's a shagged out eight year old Renault worth £800 on a good day and being a Renault, it would be a non stop cascade of problems. Horrid French junk.Selling an X plate Brava for 45 quid was stupid - it should have made £200 on the scales and good ridance to more rubbish. A mate of mine is a car dealer and he takes all his pre 1996 trade ins straight to the metal yard. An N plate Fiesta, M plate Legacy and a K plate Previa were all crushed last week. Why? Because the Fiesta made £170, the Subaru £230 and the Previa £290. Yes, they could have been put in an auction, but auctions are greedy bastards and the fees are horrific. If the Fiesta made £250 for instance, he would have got a return of £110. :shock: Yes, he could have advertised them in the paper and got every dole scratter from the council estate (Whass y'best price Pal?").Or he could just weigh them in as scrap. Instant cash, problem solved.The 750iL would have been put on a boat to Iraq - right now there is an insatiable demand for old E32 and E34 BMW's there and loads are being shipped out through Hull for instance.

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To play devils advocate for a minute I don't think we'll suffer a huge lack of shite in the future because of this kind of thing. That car is 8 years old. Consider how many 60's/70's cars would have been headed for the breakers at that age with rotten sills. The shite cars we have now are actually the "good" ones that survived that kind of cull. Survival of the fittest etc. That said, I agree that that wastage in these days of "green awareness" is appalling.

Fair point. Trouble is, modern cars can't be fixed (bodged) in the way an old one can - the bits are so specific and expensive, or made of plastic and utterly useless at lasting more than a few years without fading, cracking or whatever.
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Trouble is the motor industry has had horrific overcapacity for many years. Too many factories of too great a size etc.Who's gonna buy all the new stuff if old ones are kept on the road?This might explain why anti-corrosion warranties are starting to shorten. Why bother rustproofing a car to last twelve years when the odds are the on-board computer will die before ten?

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I have been on the market now for 6 weeks for an under 1.4cc motor to get the lower tax bracket and to be able to get my youngster to learn to drive in and thay are hard to find for under £600.All the cheepo motor dealers say there is a shortage now 'cos of that robbin git in power', the price of petrol and the cost of retaxing, even on radio2 this morning it was mentioned that people do not wan't biggies anymore and smaller cars are now commanding some stupid prices on fleabay so this could be the last Clio you see on a scrappy truck!

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Yep, it`s bollocks. As the 3 Corsas, 4 Fiestas, 2 Micras and a Clio currently being ignored on my lot by everybody in the world because they are`nt £395 or less will attest to.If there`s fighting going on over small cars then my gaff should be the scene of a massacre.

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Guest greenvanman

As someone who just scrapped an 8 year-old Skoda may I offer an alternative view? I bought the car for £500 and got more than that back when it was written off by a stupid woman who scraped one side of it up. I was happily prepared to drive it into the ground over however long that took, but the ABS broke, followed in close succession by a front wheel bearing and then the clutch. If it had been a car I liked in some way I might have thought about fixing it, however the driving experience and general reliability offered by this wretched pile of crap was frankly risible and getting weighed in was almost too good for it. But whoever saw it on the transporter will just have seen a shiny black V-plate Felicia with pretty alloys on and thought 'That looks too good to be scrapped, surely?'. Sometimes there's more to these things than meets the eye.

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i bought a W plate vectra sri 140 last year. It had been a write off previously which was recorded as cat c. It was only a wing ,bonnet ,head light and bumper so hardly the end of the world. Sorted it out but after a few months driving i had an incident with a minor under bonnet fire. Basically some wiring from the air con unit burnt out. But the insurance co wrote it off again. So a nice shiny w reg vectra sri will have been weighed in. Most annoyingly they wouldnt let me buy it back so its gone to its death with a top of the range multi point lpg system on it. Bugger.Realistically though, as a double write off... it would've been a hard car to sell on if i had sorted it again. Bloody stupid though as it only had about 80k and was almost mint.

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7-8 year old cars have always been scrapped - I remember C reg stuff in the scrapyards I visted in 1992/3, usually Fiats - Pandas, Stradas (sorry Reg) & Regatas and Renaults (several 25s). Also 8/9 year old Cavaliers and Sierras (stolen and recovered) being brought in.Also the place I worked in in 1996 broke a G reg Rover 827 due to head gasket failure, and a F reg Renault 19 1.4 due to being generally shagged-out. FSOs never used to last more than 6 years and they couldn't be sent back to Poland!The main difference is these cars were being broken for parts. This is still happening now with post 2000 stuff.Out here in the Celtic sticks where anybody with a pulse needs a car to get around and metal yards are scarce, anything sub 2 litre with a Mot usually finds a home. A 2000 Clio would most likely been repaired, I assure you - even with a secondhand engine.Vic, I'd come down to West Wales with a transporter with all your little ones and stick them in the local auction - I guarantee you'd make some money :)

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On the other side of the coin, my 405 estate is finally back on the road after rolling off my drive and through a brick wall a couple of months ago. On top of the £375 purchase price (plus £300 for a cambelt, waterpump and glowplug change) I've spent £250 on secondhand panels and lights to replace the entire front end, paint and a new windscreen.

 

So that's over £900 on a 405 TD estate - silly money for one of these really - so I can see where others are coming from. So why did I save this particular one? Mainly because all the tough mechanical work has been done (including a new cylinder head), and it's a 2 owner car with a two-inch-thick history file - so a very strong case for "better the devil you know".

 

But I think everyone makes a judgement call at some point in their car's ownership when faced with big expense. Me? I'm just going to own and drive it as long as I possibly can, until I've recouped what I've spent :lol:

 

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This is true Craig. My saloon stands me at about £1500 all-in (new brakes including hoses, suspension bushes and shocks all round, plus a new rad), but with lashings of Waxoyl and 5k oil changes they should both last me a fair while yet without further major expense. I've just calculated I've done 20k miles between the pair of them in the last 9 months and have never 'failed to proceed', 50mpg average helps too!Just a small plate to be welded into the n/s front inner wheelarch for the wagon and it should hopefully sail it's MOT at the end of October.RG - fair bit of orangepeel particularly on the bonnet - should have cut it back with 1200grit more quickly than I did, so it's now rock hard. Any tips? Looks good from a distance though, dunnit? Also, I need to get the old (adhesive rather than painted) coachline off, again any tips?

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Yeah, swings and roundabouts tho innit, e.g. in Welfs 405 you have to turn the wipers on yourself when it starts to rain rather than them doing it automatically, so although the 407 costs 19 grand more, you get other benefits which are difficult to put a price on.

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