leakingstrut

Surely if it’s their responsibility to do the recall, it’s their responsibility to fix anything they break while doing it? They are the ones who made the bloody car wrong in the first place!

I assume they started selling LHD cars a good few years before so people weren’t screwed after the switch? Stunning car!

I hope you manage to get one of them back on the road, I also had a 309 as my first car (red 1.3 Style post facelift) and loved it - good capable first car.

10” wheels so something small, I was going to say mini but the arches don’t look right. I’m going Innocenti based upon previous Italian purchases.

Ford Fusion. Loads of space, good handling, decent off road for a FWD granny car. We had one at work, and it survived over 180k of utter abuse with minimal issues. It was dog slow with the 1.4 TDCI but would sit at 90 all day and sipped fuel. We also had a fiesta van of the same age and engine but I would take the fusion every time. Chevrolet Lacetti Estate. Another work hack. Raggedy 1.6 pez went well, handled well even with the +10 profile M+S tyres we fitted - which also helped it be half decent off road. It rotted, had wet footwells and the ABS would randomly kick in a low speeds, but it never had FTP. Our lashitty was better than the 2l derv MK2 Megane estate it replaced in every aspect aside from power and heated seats.

If that was a tenth of the price it would be worth buying just to replace all the Ferrari badging with original Peugeot ones. Swap the engine for an old XUD for extra confusion.

‘86 200tdi on a ‘52 plate? My first assumption was ringing, but that’s not entirely making sense to me given the DVLA record and I’d assume you’d typically see ringed cars on an older plate, not a newer one.

Now? Volvo EX30 Twin Motor comes in at a smidge over 40k. Same with the Golf Alltrack if I want a bit more space and less electricity. In 1995 I’d be after a e36 325 TDS SE Touring. 35 quid over over 25k I think. I’d be wanting to option cruise and air con, which would probably blow the budget by at least a grand. In that case I might go for a 300 TDI Disco.

Not an album cover but one of the those new fangled moving pictures, the video for DJ Medhi’s Signatune by Romain Gavras is a lovely short film about a guy going to an SPL contest in an automatic third gen Prelude. Lots of max power era “tastefully” modified shite. https://youtu.be/bOyU_OzRXnM?si=PSSShp5V29F5-W_t

Just got absolutely reamed for my insurance, as a 40 year old driving a Volvo estate. Kinda money I’ve not spent since I was in my really 20’s. Quotes starting at 450 and that’s before I declared the crash.

Found out my wife’s pug 208 was a driving school car at some point in its previous life. About a week after we bought it I noticed some rough paint on the roof from the sign magnet, then later found the dual control system hidden in the passenger foot well, sans pedal. Its got 80k on it now, so I wonder if it’s still on the original clutch. Based up its history I think it did a year or two as a learners car down south before making its way up north. Not that bothered by it to be honest, it doesn’t seem to have been abused much.

An avant advent calendar would be great, will need to look into that for Christmas 2024. Oh look, I got a A4 1.9 TDI with 200,000 miles today. That’s good but I’m hoping for a RS2 tomorrow.

E46 main beam being at the top of the dash. In my ideal seating and steering position I couldn’t see it! p3 Volvo XC70 - needs the seatbelt on to release the handbrake automatically, and is fiddly to do manually. From what I can tell, you can’t disable the seatbelt buzzer. I don’t drive on the road without a seatbelt, but I often have bag on the passenger seat which sets it off, and I’m not going to bother wearing one when I’m doing 15mph along a gravel track and I’ve got a million gates to open and shut. Tempted to see if I can unplug the belt sensor and bridge it.

That’s absolutely crazy! It was a nice house, views out the back were fantastic!

I had a Citroen ZX Volcane TD for 6 months that paid me a pound for owning it. Bought on eBay in Leeds for £150 with 6 months t&t and 215k on the clock, I had a very memorable first collection caper in it, as it had a in incredibly loose passenger side wishbone and would lurch violently to the left upon reaching about 35 mph. That was a long drive back to Scotland. The rear axle was gubbed as well, giving it some interesting camber. My green ZX had blown its second head gasket, so that donated the front wishbone bits, and rear axle, and bonnet (the old one was chipped to hell). Ran it for till the MOT ran out, stuck it back on eBay and it sold for £151. Only costs were insurance, fuel and a can of black spray paint. That’s my first Toledo in the background, back when it was my my Dad owned it.

I’ve been very intrigued by how suspiciously cheap these are for something that would make a very useful van / people carrier / small camper. Always assumed they had some crippling issue.

Did you have to bash the top of the dash while trying to start it? Mine did that, also the cluster would randomly die while dying or just not work. I assumed it would be more than a £60 fix and scrapped it…. it was also rotten and free to be fair. It was a gift* from my dad when I’d found him a nice mk1 Volvo s40 and I’d figured out an upcoming work project would give me enough miles to claim to buy something nice**. *Saved him scrapping it, it had cost him £450 and lasted a couple years already **£3200 worth of rough Freelander 2

Ford Fusion - also not shit. A properly brilliant little car. Great off road but also not immune to ditches. I was going too quickly and hit a deep patch of pine needles. Drove itself out unscathed. Towed nicely too - it was a very light boat, the back end was still sagging! The was the second trip after I convinced the boss the driving to the north coast on the bumpstops might not be a good idea, and we should take a second car to lighten the load. The lesser sibling. Many jobs ago we had a Ford Fusion and Fiesta. Both 2004’s with the 1.4 TDCI. Both bought pretty much new and were abused daily to 200k. They were both great, but the fusion was the star of the show. The fiesta was a bit quicker and felt sharper, but could the back end could be twichy. The Fusion was well planted, despite copious body roll. Both were good off road, but the fusion’s ground clearance was a life saver, I did once dent the sump but luckily didn’t hole it. It could swallow kit and to the point of being massively overladen and shrug it off. Yeah, it was slow and overtakes required planning but it was an absolute joy to drive. The wee 1.4 TDCI revved quite happily - getting up the hill coming south from Inverness required 3rd gear and redline to keep it at 70, but it did that hundreds to times without complaint. I was young, stupid, drove it like an arse and had some of my best driving experiences in it. I spent a lot of time up north, and this was back before the NC500 was the NC500 and you actually enjoy the drive without being blighted by crampervans. And never got a speeding ticket in it. I got three in the Fiesta, and I’m pretty sure it was cursed. That thing must have accrued 30 points in it’s lifetime, when none of the other vehicles in the fleet ever got a ticket.

Chevrolet Lacetti - not shit! Korea’s finest Green Laner on the Old Coach Road in the lakes. Managed it better than a LWB Trasnit, which I had to reverse 5km because I couldn’t get it turned. 🎼Something something levee wasn’t dry. No problem for a Chevy. While very good off road, it wasn’t very good at being reversed into a ditch. Windows were steamed up - thought I had more room. Only time it ever got stuck. We bought one as a work vehicle after our second gen Megane shat it’s AC unit. The electrics had a gone very French (boot would open itself, and was held down with a bungee round the wiper, and we had to pull the window fuse as they had a mind of their own), and then we discovered we had been driving around for 6 months with no MOT due to my boss thinking he had bought it with a years ticket. It also had no rear brakes, and the strut tops were done, so it was bridge time. I was pushing for a MK2 New Edge Mondeo TDCI, but having very Autoshite sensibilities my boss wanted something less mechanically complicated (i.e petrol), and most importantly cheap. So I reluctantly went to see a reasonably priced car and unfortunately it was perfect, and I had to buy it. 1.6 pez manual estate in sort-of-green. As it was going to get used off road a lot (we also had a Ford Ranger, but most places that was overkill, and we needed two vehicles for three staff) we fitted some winter tyres with a +5 profile for extra ground clearance. It had a high sump and not much that could catch on stuff underneath so it performed amazingly off road without getting ripped to bits. In most situations it would but climb over stuff just over idle in first - just enough power to move but not so much it would spin too easily. On the road it wasn’t exactly sporty, but could be hussled along very nicely, spending most of it’s time flat out around the highlands. It outhandled the Megane easily, although having intact suspension, brakes and non shit tyres probably helped. I always felt it an XUD9TE or something would have suited it perfectly, but the 1.6 was decent. The interior was kind of grim, but as a work vehicle it was always covered in muck, lunch detritus and rolling tobacco anyway, and the seats were comfy and it had plenty of room. It was far from perfect - it never needed much maintenance aside from needing the sills patched but there were some issues. The rear footwells would fill with water, and it ate about one headlight bulb a month. The bonnet lock was dodgy, I ended up having to strip and refit it in a service station somewhere in England one night, but it was never right. I think they are common issues, after we got this one my dad also bought a lacetti. It was wet inside and got written off when the bonnet flew open at speed one day! The abs would kick it when braking normally at low speeds - you just had to brake through it. When you were used to it was fine, but if you let someone uninitiated drive it they would shit a brick! That’s what eventually killed it, my boss was up from down south when we were moving offices, took it on a tip run and upon returning told me to take it straight to WBAC! We got a whole £50 for it, and with the Ranger also retired at that point I started a long period of hire cars. And that’s when I discovered Qashqai’s aren’t the heaps of shit I thought they were - genuinely great cars.

Walked past a Chinese Takeaway today called the Golden Crown. Which is also a brand of tyre on one of the bin lorries at work. I don’t know what the thinking is with the council buying tyres - sometimes they get premium brand and other times they get ditchfinders, on the same vehicle.

I think you are on the money there. E46 is peak 3 series. Most of them have no screen to age like milk. Better than the E36, and more timeless than the E90. I was considering a nice 330 touring but prices are already climbing for good ones.

Given space and cash I’d buy the cars that I have the best driving memories of. Maybe one or two of them would be worth money in the future. If I’ve got enough money to buy a bunch of shite and a shed to store them in I’d wager the shed will appreciate quicker. E36 325 TDS Manual Citroën ZX Volcano TD Peugeot 406 Estate (pre facelift) Ford Ranger (mk1 post facelift) Ford Fusion 1.4 TDCI Chevrolet Lacetti Estate

Money sent for 3, thanks!

Stripping and painting still ongoing, but has been delayed due to thinking oh while I’ve got the tools out I’ll quickly tidy up some of the rust on the Freelander. And once again the thread gets derailed by modern shite. Then the wheel arches disintegrated in my fingers. Maybe I should have tidied it up a few years ago 🙄 It is very repairable. But if I’m fixing it, I want to do it properly, and if I’m doing that I need to do a bunch of other preventative maintenance. I really don’t need another project. So I start looking at replacements, 5-10k, auto awd, and nice inside. Everything looks shit. Budget increases to 12.5k. Everything is still shit. Maybe I should fix the Freelander. It’s doing that thing where a car knows its cards are marked and suddenly it’s better that it ever has. Most cars look like they’ve been dipped into the sea when you look underneath and have a full history of bugger all servicing. Glad I bought a code reader, one absolutely perfect XC60 had no lights on the dash but gave an expensive sounding code for the transmission. But now my head has been turned by shinier things, and I end up blowing the budget on a Volvo XC70. 2014, D5, 75k, FSH inc timing belt. Adaptive cruise, leather etc. It handles like a boat, and isn’t particularly sprightly around town, but on the motorway it gets to license losing speeds alarmingly quickly and quietly. I was getting 40mpg till I got a bit lead footed and it was at about 32 when I got home from Edinburgh. That’ll do, pig. I’d have preferred a 2015 (ulez) onwards in an actual colour, light interior or sunroof and ideally the polestar upgrades and paddle shifters, but the used car market is a shit show. Despite blowing my budget I’m already wanting to spend money on it 🙄 Aero roof rails are a must, so I don’t mess it up inside carrying wood. I can add wireless CarPlay for £450. Sump guard £150. Oh and strip the plastic off and deal with any little bits of rust underneath before it sets in. It has two brand new toyos on the front, and decent Pirelli scorpions on the back. But I want a set of matching all seasons or mild all terrains, so I’ll look for some wheels for new tyres and sell the current ones. I think the Freelander wheels would fit, but as they are oversized already I can’t see them not rubbing. May chuck one on the front to see. And get a wheel alignment while I’m at it. And a gearbox and haldex service, they are “sealed for life” but I’m not sure that’s a long life. Freelander needs to get punted, or possibly parted out but it’s still got MOT at least. A for sale thread my appear soon, but I’ve dumped it in Edinburgh so I need to drag my ass back there to get it.

I know this is an unpopular option but I don’t think Landrover have lost the plot. Personally I would have preferred if they had kept their utilitarian focus, but their boat was already turning towards luxury by the 90’s if not 80’s, so I don’t know why anybody is surprised the new defender is a luxury SUV not a bare bones utilitarian thing. If they hadn’t moved to a luxury / lifestyle focus I can’t have seen them staying in business - being relatively small and unable to build a reliable vehicle to save themselves. I don’t particularly understand the dogma of it not being body on frame or live axle and therefore shit - it’s very capable off road, and it’s really good to drive on the road. Of course it’s bigger - everything is. Yeah, it’s refined. I’ve done enough miles in an old Defender not to mind that. There are plenty of good reasons to hate it - it’s a high end JLR product so it’s expensive and will break. It’s a luxury SUV which means it is an attractive nuisance to people with too much money who never go off road. But I don’t think it’s the wrong replacement for the Defender because that’s basically impossible to build in this day and age if you want people to actually buy it. Look at the Grenadier - I wouldn’t say that is any less compromised than the Defender. It hits more “proper off roader” tick boxes but I wouldn’t rate one over the other as a hardcore off road or expedition vehicle - both are capable, expensive toys. My main complaint about it off road is that it’s so capable that it’s just boring. I used to work at a Land Rover experience center and myself and a lot of other instructors preferred the Disco Sport and Evoque - they were capable but no low range / air suspension / locking rear diff meant they required a bit more driver input. My second complaint is that new one is only low range car that doesn’t have a dedicated terrain response dial, which seems stupid on their most off road focussed vehicle. My third complaint is that I’d like one but even if I had the money I still wouldn’t want to spend the asking price, but that’s all new cars! We had a few long steep grassy hills, when we saw a bunch of skid marks on them we knew some old defenders had been out. We didn’t have them anymore by the time I started there but people brought them to do LANTRA training. Even somebody who had only driven a fiesta before would get a stock Evoque up there every time. The old defender was great, but it was also very old hat. The same things that make it good are the same things that mean an Evoque would beat it off road until the Evoque ran out of ground clearance. There is a good reason the new one is nothing like the old one, and it’s not like you can’t get an old one in good nick for a lot less than a new one if you need it that badly. Or be sensible and just buy a pickup.