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artdjones

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Everything posted by artdjones

  1. I've found that old Italian cars can surprise you sometimes by being far more rust free than you might expect. Of course, I've seen eight year old ones with half the floor missing and no door bottoms. But back in the day I've also seen things like 15 year old Mirafioris which hadn't been pampered but were totally solid. Of course it could depend on steel quality. The Italians were notorious for using steel with high oxide levels to build cars, but my theory is that some batches of high quality steel were randomly used, producing vehicles that had a fair amount of rust resistance.
  2. That's Google Earth for my house circa 2009. A Renault 19 saloon that went for scrap eventually, my green ZX estate that had a red tailgate after the hrw exploded one day, a white 405 estate someone gave me free which I got through a test and then sold, and a 306 saloon I bought cheaply with hgf, which I put a new head on then sold to my brother-in-law who ran it for 5 or 6 years. At the back is a totally rotten Saab 96 I was breaking at the time.
  3. Nice area, although I haven't been in Chepstow since leaving the UK, 32 years ago.
  4. There might be a difficulty with length. The RME is a 1½ litre, and Riley even found it necessary to lengthen the chassis in front of the A pillar to accommodate the 2½ litre engine in the RMB/F. Also, the XK is very heavy, probably enough to spoil the balance of an RME. The engine/autobox out of a Daimler Conquest might suit.
  5. Lots of roads that used to be passable to two way traffic won't be any more.
  6. When no win no fee lawyers were allowed.
  7. In 1994 I started cleaning the windows at a West Cork hotel. They had just bought a brand new 1.3 Corolla estate for a hotel runaround. They still have it now, although it was replaced in its duties many years ago by a second hand Avensis estate, which was itself replaced by a van last year. They've had the body sides tidied up a couple of times, so it's pretty tidy inside and out, and is now just a few months off classic tax. Next door is the owner's new car, which has just replaced a totally immaculate Camry.
  8. Big fleets can be pretty ruthless in situations like that, especially if there are lots of good spares to be harvested from the vehicle.
  9. I posted this back on 2019, but it's still trundling around. It's owned by a landscape gardener.
  10. Get a bit of dowel, blob some super glue gel on the end, push it down the hole so it presses hard against the rubber, after a couple of minutes pull it upwards, and hopefully it will all come out.
  11. Theres a fleet of electric buses in Dublin that have been hanging around for a year with no charging provision as yet.
  12. The inner wing isn't too bad. I remember splicing in the whole top and front of one from a scrap car onto mine back about 1994.
  13. I was talking about Lanchester, not Daimler itself.
  14. I've only been there once, but my brother lived in Sheffield for 5 years and my wife for 3 years before we were married. They both got on really well with the friends they made, but I don't hear them harking back to how great South Yorkshire is.
  15. Are you boasting or asking for sympathy?
  16. Probably just as well it didn't go ahead. They started with completely unconventional cars designed by a genius and ended with cheap Daimlers, which were as boring and conventional as it was possible for them to be.
  17. Obvious answer, it was stuck and then unstuck. Maybe put some injector cleaner in the tank?
  18. You would probably be amazed at how many train travellers are public servants* on expenses.
  19. Once the faults became well known the aftermarket came up with some solutions, but their reputations never recovered. A reasonably low spec Megane 2 estate or saloon is a fairly good bet. We sold a couple of saloons with no comebacks.
  20. There was nothing wrong with Allegros . Cheap to run, comfortable,they could have done with a hatchback option. They could rust, but were a big jump forward from the ADO16 in that respect.
  21. I totally agree with this. Total non car enthusiasts are buying cars that accelerate faster than a Ferrari Daytona or a Countach. And way faster than the hot hatches that there was a moral panic about back in the 90s. And these cars weigh over 2 tons, not 900kg. One day there's going to be a bus queue of primary school children mown down by a yummy mummy who presses the loud pedal too hard then panics. Then it will be all long faces and handwringing.
  22. When I decided to move to Ireland I realised I would have to leave my Dolomite behind, as an 1850 engine would be too expensive to insure and run. So I looked around Cardiff for a cheaper to run car, and settled on a Citroen Visa Super E. Which was very different to anything I'd had before, and was ridiculed by my friends. It was identical to the one above, except rhd, with the same blue, blue interior. I expected to not like it, but I still have nostalgia for it now. Cheap to run, reasonably reliable and very comfortable. We've only had three non-French main cars since, two disastrous Passats and a Rover 620 SDi, which was very good.
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