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The 2cv managed the 200miles trip back home this morning in about 4hours including a petrol stop. I’ve just limped the Mercedes over to the Citroen specialist. It wasn’t making a sound when I left but 18 miles later it’s creaking and groaning like it’s making its final 200metres. Lee will now investigate and let me know.

 

In the meantime, behold the magnificence of today’s courtesy car.

post-8687-0-39207500-1522158929_thumb.jpeg

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The 2cv managed the 200miles trip back home this morning in about 4hours including a petrol stop. I’ve just limped the Mercedes over to the Citroen specialist. It wasn’t making a sound when I left but 18 miles later it’s creaking and groaning like it’s making its final 200metres. Lee will now investigate and let me know.

 

In the meantime, behold the magnificence of today’s courtesy car.

Oooh lovely, a proper citroen!

 

 

/runs away

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Ghosty, if he was going to buy it he would have left a deposit at least.

 

So what now....? he will ruminate on it for a few days, definitely* get back to you, say he will take it, make an appointment to collect....thats a week or so right there....and he expects you to just sit on your hands during that time? Because i will guarantee he will be furious if you sell it to someone else in the meantime and he does decide to take it.

Fuck him.

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I drove the 1100.

 

The seats are nice, the steering wheel is nice, the suspension is nice, the brakes work.  Unfortunately it's as uncomfortable a seating position as a Mini.  It's got to go. :(

What was the problem with the clutch in the end? Air?

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It was air, a bad hose, a bad slave cylinder (all replaced with new, apart from the air which was replaced with fluid).  The clutch isn't 100% working yet, it's still dragging but as the car gets warmer, the clutch gets better.  Managed a 1st to neutral change and a 1st to 2nd change while it was running today and I can *almost* select all gears when the car is idling.  I just need to keep driving it around the yard until it frees off, which is tricky as I'm quite short on time this month.  Providing the video Mike took on his phone is good enough, you'll be able to see me driving around in circles very slowly later on.

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I’m minded to agree with the consensus on the Vulva. But there’s nowt as queer as folk; he might just surprise you. Your Dad also suspected HGF didn’t he? That was why he was going to pressure test it. If the symptoms are there, it’d make me think twice as a buyer. It’s galling to buy a car and have to immediately start on the spanners/bills without any honeymoon period at all.

 

Good luck tho. If he doesn’t take it, maybe a raffle is the way ahead?

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That's brilliant i love stuff like this. I might write to Reliant, ahh maybe not.

 

Try and recreate a brochure photo with your car.

 

Easier said than done. That one above is on a street near Central London and is now lined with parked cars and all the rest I'm sure are in continental Europe somewhere.

 

s-l1600.jpg

 

s-l500.jpg

 

s-l500.jpg

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Despite our combined best efforts over the weekend, the rattlecan Mk3 Cortina belonging to adammcc failed to achieve an MOT pass yesterday afternoon... apparently I'd left so much residual mess after changing the hoses and bleeding the lines that the examiner couldn't be sure they weren't leaking, despite showing good enough force and balance on the rolling road test. Shoulda gone over everything with kitchen roll. Oh, and a duff indicator bulb.

 

post-17915-0-25460300-1522163959_thumb.jpg

 

VIN plate check came back, though - Dagenham build car from February 1973. I'd heard tell that cars with Décor badges were Belgian-built strikebuster specials - am I wrong to assume that, or has the car just picked up a random bootlid badge from somewhere?

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41051924761_c8b9079b77_h.jpgIMG_20180327_160734172 by max_burton, on Flickr

 

:grin:

 

Put an Allen head socket on my 3/4 drive and used that to manually crank the sunroof. There was a bang, and it freed off. Pulled a couple of broken bits of plastic out of the mechanism and it now works fully.

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Civic is being delivered back on Thursday. I'm hoping, just hoping they haven't fucked around with it and ruined it.

 

My in-laws seem keen to take it on once I get it fixed and sorted. Which would mean I'd have to dispose of their Corsa C (I bloody hate Corsa Cs). Anyone got any clue what a 2004 1.2 example is worth? Pretty low mileage iirc - I think under 60k.

 

The Aldi TurboTart is also being driven up on Thursday too. So looks like I need to get this hire car out of the way asap, plus get the Civic turned around quick. Also maybe finally put the MGB up in the garage that I've been renting for ages!

 

The most exciting thing is that I'm having a proper mains feed put into the garage. This will replace the dodgy twin+earth that comes out of conservatory, disappears into the ground and re-appears into the garage. As whoever put it in didn't seal the hole, its full of earth and water, rotting out the back of the socket. :?

 

I dare not attempt to put too much load through that socket, overheat it and catch the polystyrene insulation that the previous owner also skimmed over. So hopefully with this new feed, I can safely* start to learn to weld.

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Well that took a while. Two blokes came down from Newcastle in an 11-plate Modus to look at it, fella says he's just sold a Scimitar and wanted a bigger classic.

 

He spent two hours(!) looking it over. Was really taken with how tidy it is, happy with the way it drives but he's suspicious there's early signs of HGF, the cambelt is due on age and the front brake discs need replacing.

 

Still, he said he wants to buy it and he'll offer £875 and collect next Weds if his more knowledgeable Volvoist friend says it won't be hard to sort (of course it won't). That's fine by me, and I'll know by the end of the day.

 

You'll never hear from him again.

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Yo ghosty, if you wanna flog the Volvo I would change the cambelt. it's a piece of cake to do on those and wipes out probably the most-used price-chipping technique from 'buyers'. I always change the belt on owt I'm selling just to avoid discussing it with people. ("it'll cost me £200 straight off to get that changed" etc etc)

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I’m having hankerings atm. I’m as regular as clockwork - 10-12 weeks and I find myself sharking around.

 

I was behind a Hyundai XG30 last night coming out of Cambridge. Actually, it looked really cool. There are a lot of ‘try hards’ around these parts - but this somehow looked effortlessly cool.

 

And shite.

 

It’s like a bunch of 9 year olds were shown the back of a Maybach, then plied with recreational drugs for their entire play time, and then asked to try and draw what they recalled.

 

I reckon I’ve got to have a go on one before it’s too late. Has anybody here owned one?

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41051924761_c8b9079b77_h.jpgIMG_20180327_160734172 by max_burton, on Flickr

 

:grin:

 

Put an Allen head socket on my 3/4 drive and used that to manually crank the sunroof. There was a bang, and it freed off. Pulled a couple of broken bits of plastic out of the mechanism and it now works fully.

 

Christ a 3/4 drive to open a sunroof - must have been proper seized :-)

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I’m having hankerings atm. I’m as regular as clockwork - 10-12 weeks and I find myself sharking around.

 

I was behind a Hyundai XG30 last night coming out of Cambridge. Actually, it looked really cool. There are a lot of ‘try hards’ around these parts - but this somehow looked effortlessly cool.

 

And shite.

 

It’s like a bunch of 9 year olds were shown the back of a Maybach, then plied with recreational drugs for their entire play time, and then asked to try and draw what they recalled.

 

I reckon I’ve got to have a go on one before it’s too late. Has anybody here owned one?

Nope but I can definitely understand the appeal.....

 

Sent from my F3211 using Tapatalk

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My neighbours kindly allowed me to park the Berlingo on their drive, as I've got myself into some excessive-car-ownership bother.  Unfortunately it's disgraced itself by dumping the contents of it's radiator... it's rotted out at the base.

 

It gets worse - John (neighbour) went with my Mrs to collect a new rad from ECP, where the usual blundering incompetence was in full swing and they had to wait nearly 90 mins for the bloody thing.

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I collected my new Focus this afternoon

 

a83514572dd3b2f02334d55c17766985.jpg

 

And that's where my troubles started, once I got on to the busy A140 I noticed it kept spluttering under load and when i tried to get into the A14 it really struggled and even the EML kept flickering, once home I found the breather pipe had a hole in it from where it had been rubbing on the rad, I've taped it up and so far so good, the biggest problem though is that the front end it's really bouncy, to the point that the garage assistant at the petrol station I stopped at even commented at how much it bounced.

 

I can't believe it passed the mot yesterday being that bad, and it was done at the Ford dealers too, pricing up new struts and springs comes too £150, would it be fair to ring the dealer back up and see if he will fix it or compensate it for?

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A mate had the exact same issue with a Focus he bought at auction. Really jittery ride despite passing the MoT. New shocks and springs and I can't see much difference to be honest. But if yours is really bad can't hurt going back to the dealers and mentioning it.

 

Nice car otherwise although the gearing is short, so 5th is a strain on long trips.

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My gradual migration into non-shite motoring continues. 

 

s-l500.jpg

 

It seems like a good one, the seller runs a specialist Ford garage and owns a spotless Escort Cosworth, seems like a genuinely honest chap.  It's not perfect but its known issues are trivial. Sadly, I'm very excited as I've always liked these despite my old one years back being an over-geared 1.6 which had suffered a lot of neglect and abuse from previous owners.  I know the ST170 is often criticised for its shortcomings in the performance stakes but I'm not bothered, I'm not planning on racing it,

 

Picking it up on Friday, got a fairly fun collection day, albeit only 70 miles away, using my Dad's Nissan Leaf which I've borrowed for the weekend, a known patchy charging network (Taunton Deane services are ideally situated but seldom have working charge points I'm told) and I've a mate who is very keen to pilot the Focus back home for me.  Might as well make a day of it.

 

The Leaf has only done local trips and been charged at home so far, so this will be the first time we've tried a longer trip requiring public charging.  Should be interesting, I'm hoping that if the Taunton chargers really are useless then I can rely on the Wellington Nissan dealer.

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