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Swapping?


CHRIS1980

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Not wives.Does anyone swap cars on here? I know we have the for sale tags but is there one for swapping? I want to get a Lada Niva,but I have my money tied up in my Frontera so swapping would seem a good way to get a new motor but still keep on the road. I've looked on the swapz website before but it's full of crap I even saw one advert where the bloke had a smashed up mk4 Astra and wanted to swap for a BMW or Range Rover,he even had the cheek to want a full MOT on them!

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Swapz has really gone down hill. There seems to be less and less people using it as well.

 

About 3 years ago I did a bit of swapping.the aim was to see if I could swap my way into a better car/profit.

 

I started off with a £700 Vectra, swapped for a Golf. I ended up pulling the modifications to sell, then swapped for a Volvo S40 Sport. I then swapped that for a Fiesta which I sold for £1600.

 

The key is to be picky. I didn't half get offered some shite on there. I made sure I stayed fairly local so I could view and it wasn't so much wasted time if it was a dog.

 

My mate got caught out on there mind. He put a Passat TDi up and swapped for a mint looking E46 320i with full MOT. Turns out the BM only had a months test but he didn't realise until after the swap.

 

Fortunately it flew a test and he sold for a grand (Pisshat owed him £650).

 

Mind you, he didn't tell the bloke he swapped with that the Passat grinded it's way through the gears either, so was fair enough.

 

Do be careful.

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Swapz is usually the shit that no one would consider buying on Gumtree, a lad I knew swapped a lovely 22000 mile Renault 19 16v chamade for a rough e36 325 coupe he scared himself in it when he lost it driving like a penis, he then swapped it for a "mint" rs turbo, i cast my eye over it, the first thing I noticed was the front end was twisted as it had been smashed up and stevie wonder had put the panels on, i found several areas of rot, the best being the rear inner arch's which I could insert a clenched fist in the rust holes, i suppose as with anything the site is buyer beware but there are a lot of dogs on there

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Swapz was, and sometimes still is, great. The biggest problem (besides people trying to offload some proper rubbish) was the inordinate amount of cars worth sort of £800+ that were not HPI clear.

I had a few try it on with cars that were under a log book loan type arrangement, so you need your wits about you.

 

If you want a swap on here then start a 'for sale' advert off and instead of using the pre-arranged tags ('for sale' 'wanted' etc) use the little box that lets you create your won and put 'swap' in there and leave the other blank. You could always mention you want a swap in the advert header that you type out, too. 

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I tried Swapz for electronics, music kit and cars - I think I got one decent deal out of it, but on the whole the car side of it seemed to be full of dreck. I didn't even get as far as HPI-checking anything! Really liked the idea, but it reminded me too much of people at school who'd swap ANYTHING for things, and then have their mum show up angry that they'd swapped all their Star Wars toys for a Pong console or something.

 

It should be good, really. Like "I have a guitar worth £400 and want a synth worth £400, surely someone wants the other way around". It ended up more like "I have a guitar worth £400, would I like a halfbuilt pit bike, a night with their wife* and some old trainers".

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Here's a great example.

 

I put my 190E on there, just to see if I got offered anything interesting really. I'm not really intending to swap it, unless something of major interest appears.

 

I've been offered this. I think this shows the calibre of swapz these days. Also, he is in Plymouth, I'm in the North East and he made it clear when showing interest that he 'won't travel far'. Yeah, jog on dickhead.

 

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I don't know about swapping but I was wondering about the possibilities of loaning/test driving cars through our forum.  There's a few cars I'd like to try before buying, rather than lay out a £grand, then realise I can't stand the thing after a day and lose money on.

 

Cars I'd like to sample currently are Mercedes W202/W203 C Class, early Volvo S60 and older Subaru Legacys.

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I am currently swapping the Montego for a Pug 206, I want a car for mum to drive and have two other classics, so one "modern" is not a bad thing. The swapee (is that a word (it is now)) is an Rover enthusiast (so he says) and trades Pug 206's! He offered me a blue one which he had MOT'd and it failed on brakes and track rod end, which he had done, but had 12 advisories (mostly minor ones). He said that as it is for mother to drive he had a better 02 plate one coming in next week which he said would be more suitable. I don't feel I am getting too bad a deal as I am getting an MOT'd 206 for the price of a Montego which I paid £200 for which needs a lot of work! He seems to generally have good feedback on there. It is the first time I have really used it but apart from him being difficult to tie down it seems okay.

 

I had the usual "£100 quid m8 and I will pick it up the weekend" as if they are doing you a favour!

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Recently through AS I effectively swapped the Rover 220 for my current escort, and previously on AS a 205/ bx. Usually if Ive had my run with a car I put up a sale / swap ad up here and it allows the most flexibility. The benefit of the forum rather than swapz or whatever speaks for itself, theres more of an element of likeminded people and mutual trust on here admittedly the choice at any one time by comparison is going to be limited.

 

Re loan cars- there is one doing the reminds at the mo ( the busmo lancia Y10) and previously as one offs the bollox (now shitpeas ) rover 25 and fiat argenta. I think I'm too possessive with cars to take part in a car loan at either end but the idea is a great one.

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I had my CL500 on it and drove 250 miles from Glasgow to Wigan to swap with an SL280 and when I got there the roof wouldn't go up so had to bring the CL hime.

I also got offered an M3 cab that the seller had declared as CAT C. He seemed really keen so I HPI'd it and it came back as CAT B as in "Vehicle may not be returned to  road but parts may be sold." even though it had an VIC. I thought that might be problematic so called it off.

 

Basically beware of folk trying to offload problems.

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I've never managed to complete a transaction on swapz yet, Had all sorts of offers for motors but it always seemed to be people trying to offload crap, I did get an interesting offer on a merc 300ce, some chap said he'd do a straight swap of my car for a 2 acre building plot with a derelict house on it in the Bulgarian countryside. Kinda wish I'd followed up on that one a bit.

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Here's a great example.

 

I put my 190E on there, just to see if I got offered anything interesting really. I'm not really intending to swap it, unless something of major interest appears.

 

I've been offered this. I think this shows the calibre of swapz these days. Also, he is in Plymouth, I'm in the North East and he made it clear when showing interest that he 'won't travel far'. Yeah, jog on dickhead.

 

86F9F969-5D83-417E-B1B0-0BF6078978A9_zps

 

I actually vaguely know this guy and this car. Bought some stock Scirocco steelies off him, and the car was rebuilt at my VAG independent in Devon. It had some bodge hack job to turn it from normal Scirocco into a pickup in the ?late-90s maybe. He bought it two years ago and unbodged and repaired from the ground up. It was running twin Dellorto carbs for a while, but then he converted it to a PD-Vag derv lump for daily commute.

 

Bit of an odd beast really. Too much pineapple for my taste. I think he regrets pouring the money into it as I doubt he'll ever get it back.

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People normally swap cars that they are having issues selling for a decent amount. I've swapped a few cars lately. I had the jumbuck up for sale, no interest at all so swapped for a Sierra then sold it for £500. I swapped a set of rare bmw e21 wheels and a vw gearbox for an e30 my pal paid £150 for then swapped that for an e36 328 drift car that I sold a while later for £500. There's a bit of swapping goes on over on retro rides.

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People normally swap cars that they are having issues selling for a decent amount. I've swapped a few cars lately. I had the jumbuck up for sale, no interest at all so swapped for a Sierra then sold it for £500. I swapped a set of rare bmw e21 wheels and a vw gearbox for an e30 my pal paid £150 for then swapped that for an e36 328 drift car that I sold a while later for £500. There's a bit of swapping goes on over on retro rides.

On swapz that's what I've seen. Lots of broken chavvy crap with Lexus rear lights. Which is defiantly not what I want. I wouldn't want to get something crap and I wouldn't want give someone crap. I've know of this forum for sometime and have only just joined but I know that there are like minded enthusiast of the kind of cars we all like on here and by that there's a chance of me swapping for a car I want.....Lada Niva by the way. :)

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I don't know about swapping but I was wondering about the possibilities of loaning/test driving cars through our forum.  There's a few cars I'd like to try before buying, rather than lay out a £grand, then realise I can't stand the thing after a day and lose money on.

 

Cars I'd like to sample currently are Mercedes W202/W203 C Class, early Volvo S60 and older Subaru Legacys.

I've been meaning to start a thread entitled "Let's Get Organised" or something like that since I started reading this forum. I think most people on here are like me and get the shakes if they've not bought a car in a while. You buy something and you feel normal for a while but then the symptoms start and you find yourself spending hours scouring Ebay/Gumtree/Autotrader when you should be working...sleeping...looking after the baby. Sometimes you end up with several old cars at the same time while feeding your habit. At my peak I had 8 cars in 4 countries. There are so many crap cars out there I'd like to try, but only for a month or so.

 

The cars on here are so cheap that the sale price hardly matters.  It's the insurance, road tax, and time & effort in getting rid of the old one and collecting the new one that counts.  So, why not have a "Pond" of shit cars people can dip in and out of?  Here's the plan:

  • Buy some tat like that £400 Glasgow Jag or £300 Saab 900 or £350 Lada Samara. Just anything that no longer depreciates.
  • Take out insurance with Aviva or Direct Line or another company that does not charge admin fees for changing vehicles if done online.
  • When you have had your fun offer it up in "The Pond". E.G. "Volvo 440 WLTM something sporty".  The same photos & description could be used over and over again. Maybe using the Garage feature.
  • Co-ordinate with the other swapper so the swap takes place on the 1st of the month (as far as the paperwork is concerned) so no one loses money on Road Tax.
  • Meet the other swapper in a cafe at the half-way point between your two homes. That way you can be pretty sure both cars will make it home. Swap keys and V5s over a cuppa. If there is a big difference in values hand over some cash. Triangular swaps, chain swaps, and meet-ups would also work.  
  • Short term loans and then swapping back would also work. It hardly matters that there are extra owners on the V5s with these kind of cars.
  • Stick the vehicle back in "The Pond" again when you start to get the shakes and fancy a change. Or you need a van for that removal. Or a convertible for the winter.

So a continual supply of ever changing shit cars for minimal cost and effort. Sounds like heaven to me, and think of all the extra work I could get through if I wasn't looking at Ebay all the time. For starters I quite fancy trying one of those boxy Volvos since I started reading this forum. 240s/850s/760s or whatever they are called. Don't think they need a bunch of different names. Or a tatty Rover P6.

 

So, any appetite for "The Pond"?

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