colino

While I know I should be joining in with the well dones, it just reminds me of the (first) love of my life. After a short, intense, passionate engagement in South Africa, I imported Her at great cost only to find out she was expensive to run, had had extensive body enhancements and had considerably more miles on the clock than she claimed.

It might just be the photo, but I think I see a slight smidge of overspray on one of the tyres.

While I have a soft spot for Mercs, at this age, with potential oil leak, turbo issues, maybe a senile auto box dissolving wiring looms, brakes, suspension and tyres sure to be on the shopping list, my offer would have been scrap value less my trouble. It's sure to break for more, but who wants the hassle?

Alpine was weird. They delivered round the streets with giant bottles costing something like 8p.

Apologies if this is only a new one to me, www.motorscan.co.uk is a handy little tool to plug reg numbers into to get basic car history info.

Unfortunately you have a formidable foe.

Using cars is an interesting point. For most consumers, it's a bit like a commercial vehicle where you never own it. You've used the best part of it, still need one to be 10/10 so you replace it with a new one so the lease is a constant overhead built into your costs. People who like cars, old or new, who buy them outright will become a minority.

You mean Rootes, the experienced car maker who bought the company, Pressed Steel, on that site and expanded it, who were so renowned in their quality that two Swedish companies found the logistics just fine to buy the shells for their cars and take them back by land and sea to build their very, very long lived cars? The UK is a tiny country that in many ways still treat investment as an arrow to the heart. Can't wait to see the real economic impact case for our new intervention with Nissan. We were meant give up cash for jobs cases for FDI years ago.

Psychology has to come into play here. Just how much longer can you mess about with cars in general and use the excuse your trying to make it as nice as possible because she bought you such a lovely present?

Post war (I know a very long time) neither the US or the UK in general gave a toss about quality, knit together anything that looked a bit new up top would find a buyer. Quality control was an expense that only the Japanese would waste their money on and they could keep Dr. Deming. Management was an old boys club and the fabled bean counters spoke a different language. I like the story when Jaguar wanted to save money on units a bright spark pointed out that no one could see the carpet under the seats. What they did mean was save a square metre of carpet in every car of expensive carpet, what they didn't mean was cut the bit of carpet out of finished cars. The UK car sector has never been phenomenally profitable so saving money and sticking with what they knew counted. Industrial relations were an issue, but so was lack of investment. For every BL or Crazy K strike, there was outdated equipment churning out unwanted product and then leaving it to the buying public to carry out the final product testing.

Your secondary battery should have a nice plastic cover over it secured by a not so nice 10mm plastic nut. The cover looks like it has been awol for a while.

Very under-rated, but look out for the rust at the rear arches, the window regulators made of cheese and, on the ti, a pretty weak transmission.

Just a quicky on how much they cost new. You will never find out the truth, we know what overall budgets for example the MoD has, but you wont get any meaningful detail. On one hand they would say its a security issue, on the other, they never tell the truth anyway. That's why you get the great expose every few years of the Army for example being allegedly conned into paying £2000 for a spanner. Garbage like that hides all the hidden projects, the failures and the over-runs.

I wouldn't have the undertray on your priority list, a lot of Jags seem to suffer speed-hump/nether regions interface at some point. I would though try and mooch a die to tidy those threads up or at least use up all your pipe tape for engineers.

Surely the Fiat 127 must have been the most popular rotter of all time? They were there everywhere, now none to be found.

There really isn't a valid engineering reason for dmfs in cars other than NVH becoming so important to manufacturers. For that reason, a dmf being replaced by a conventional flywheel/clutch, as long as it is designed for the job, will work perfectly well, have a longer service life and probably go unnoticed by the driver. It really is a stepping stone solution until European drivers finally accept automatic gear boxes or evs become the norm.

Well done and look forward to people quoting Clarkson to you. Annoying things in this era of Jag are daft things like sun visor vanities snapping, boot and petrol flap failures joining in with the header tank, rads, water valves, door handles. Hugely under rated though.

Well done and best of luck in everything that you do, but don't for one second think that someone who was an administrator at HMRC knows anything about successfully starting and growing a business.

I know its doom blue and shaggy, but I'd tell you to buy it if it wasn't for the SBC. There are very cheap units on ebay to fool the counter into thinking its had no brake pedal pushes, but who else has been in there before you?

If a Simca 1100, "purrs like a kitten", he doesn't know how to adjust tappets. That one looks suspiciously like the same colour as mine was - after I'd hand painted it with Parsons Repaint.

Just get everything polished and put them on Car & Classic. There's a Mercedes 230TE identical in every way to the last one I sold. Such is the fervour/lunacy today, £15,750 and it hasn't reached reserve.

First of all that monotonous, "Wizard", yes that incompetent tosser has worked magic, by grabbing on the coat tails of a YT star. He is a typical technician where big lumps are unbolted and sent off to someone skilled to repair and he makes another drudge of a recording explaining how he did it. For some more unwanted advice, I would have no more than 4 cars in that shed, too easy to make clutter your enemy/excuse. You have a great channel, so that shed is your studio/money maker so it should be a comfortable workplace. Why not do a crossover with that masochist who loves to roll around in cold, wet driveways replacing clutches? You would both get new followers in that great Venn diagram of subscribers: You would get a new lease of life in that family car/business parts chaser at a discount too. Feel free to ignore, that's what the tinternet is for.

I'm sure you are all wise heads and don't believe for a second that anyone is getting trussed up apart from the buyer. Any promo trade-in offer means the screen price already has the padding added on. Going back to ancient times when the government protected us from ourselves by needing you to put down a 1/3 deposit when buying a car on HP, every dealer worth his salt priced the stock accordingly. That was the era of £1500 trade-in for anything, famously by Peter Cannon (The Big Noise in Fords) giving a £1500 trade-in value to a frying pan. Nothings changed. No trader is fleecing himself, nobody is getting sacked.

I'm sure you can coax golf fuel economy out of it, but rust is real on w211s. Bigger issue will be the shit SBC system.

They are fairly sensitive to tyres, but even more likely to throw the toys out the pram with sticking brakes. They can get hot enough to turn the grease in the wheel bearing to fluid and you notice a wheel bearing is knackered the next time you drive it, but miraculously, the brake has freed off!