davehedgehog31

Was talking about this the other night, the price of cars has taken quite a lot of the fun out it for me. The type of thing you'd pick up for £400 with a ticket is now well into "actual money", money that could make a difference elsewhere in life. There's an element of rose tinted specs, it was always hard going trawling Gumtree but don't recall it being quite so dire. I like buying and selling and experiencing different makes and models. In the glorious year of 2018 I went through 13 cars, can't see my turnover ever being that high again. More inclined to look after what I've got now seeing as they appear to be actual assets.

My entire fleet... I had five about a month back.

Good to meet you @cort1977 and glad it's going as well as I'd expect. It's a great car and I'll miss it. The driveway stains have been caused by some of my other appreciating* modern classics* I may add 🤣

Good to meet you @fairkens Pretty sad to see the Rover go, hope you're having a comfortable drive home! When it comes time to move it on do let me know 🤣

Carlisle? Excited to see what it is.

Elephants arse textured plastic. Has to be late 90's early 2000's Nissan? Primera?

The C looks like an Asian car typeface and it's posh enough to have a rev counter. Still no clue, I'm going to go Ssangyong Rexton

All the best motors come from East Kilbride Oh, wait...

And where are we up to with this Wimpy?

There's a Wimpy in Dingwall

I have always said my ideal fleet is three cars, enough redundancy if one breaks or needs work and enough variety to keep it interesting. I had a fleet of four, the LS, Kangoo, Rover and Subaru so needed to do something to address the situation. So I bought this from @sdkrc

Well bought man, looks like a textbook collection trip too.

I take it you could. I did spill some and white spirit cleaned it up easily. I might try and clean some of the dried overspray off the exhaust, will let you know. The application would be very easy with better access. Just need to get the stuff good and hot first, it's like lard at room temperature and returns to that state quite quickly when it cools. Like I say though, seems to be acceptable to thin it a bit with some white spirit.

Sadly the last thing to smash that particular one was the big claw at Copart. Goodnight sweet prince.

Cheers man. I had heard that Lanolin based products were on fleek at the minute, as the youth would say. I worship at the altar of Project Farm and he said good things about Lanolin based Fluid Film which got me curious.

With winter fast approaching the roads will have salt on them any day now. I already have the sacrificial Subaru, but given the Kangoo has four nearly new Michelin all season tyres on it, I thought I should use it. It's very clean for an old van and is a genuinely useful tool that I'd like to have around for a while yet. I'd thought about various ways of protecting it against rust. It was pretty clean to begin with so didn't want to hide it under stonechip, I also don't have the patience to apply it neatly. In the end settled on a Lanolin based wax. I looked at Lanoguard initially, but at £100 for 5 litres I thought better. I went for a product called Corrolan; https://www.rust.co.uk/product/cat/corrolan-sustainable-rust-proofing-43 At £35 for 5 litres it seemed like a more affordable bet for when I made a hole of applying it. They have a couple of products, the "pure" is a thick underseal for exposed bodywork and the "Active" is for cavities. I suspect you could probably just thin the "pure" down with white spirit and use it in cavities in a pinch. I got 5L of the pure and 2.5 of the Active. It's seriously gloopy stuff, when it arrived it was almost solid. I sat it on a little 130 watt tube heater overnight which had the whole bottle runny. You could hear some of it in a vessel in a pot of boiling water if in a hurry. Alternatively it can be thinned with a bit of white spirit. Given the time of year I should probably have done this too. This is the gun I've got to apply it, it's a Sealey Professional number and seems very good quality; Got the van up on stands. I done a bit of preparation. I treated surface rust underneath with Vactan the day before. The OSR arch was scabby so I cleaned it right back with a wire wheel to solid metal, vactan then primer and paint. Removed all the plastic liners and the spare wheel beforehand too. This was my first mistake, it really needed to be much higher in the air for the undercoating. In future I think I'd drive it up on ramps, or jack one end right up and do one half at a time. The main issue was that I couldn't get the tip of the gun far enough from the floor to get a wide fan on the spray. As a result I've probably applied it too thick in places and used more product than I would have with the car higher up. Still, it's well covered all the same. I used my 6 litre SGS compressor to blow it on. I had it heated, so very runny and it managed fine. I'd probably add a nip of white spirit next time. I didn't mask anything up really, just put a carrier bag over the front brakes. I could probably have been a bit tidier, but it's a van so aesthetics aren't high up my list of priorities. Anyway, got there in the end. The flash on the pictures makes it look a bit glossier and patchier than it is, but it's well covered. Less visibly, I used the extension with the 360 degree nozzle on it to get wax into the cavities and front subframe. We'll see if I regret it the next time I need to do any work on it. It dries to a slightly tacky finish that you can scrape off, I'm sure a bit of effort with a pressure washer would take it off. The stuff gets good reviews online. Hoping it will provide good protection while being relatively easy to remove or top up as required.

Seeing the car in its proper habitat is making me miss it even more. Let me know when it's time for it to move on again 😂

Nice to meet you both! Quite the first adventure for it, you'll probably do more miles by Tuesday than I did in my full ownership. It will be great on those roads, it really makes sense on the twisties. Missing it a bit already, but it's gone to a good home.

Assuming you have four of them, if you pop one at the bottom of your black wheelie bin each time it's emptied they'll be gone by Christmas.

Could have taken his own photos mind.

Cowboy bastard cliche bingo in that advert.

If it had a bald tyre on it then it was unusable before he fitted any tyres?

🤣 Good spot, just going to leave that there.

It is indeed in the hideous tax bracket and it was indeed Tebay. Spied the Legacy on Autotrader and comms were exchanged. @jaypee and I went down a week past Sunday. It was about 5 minutes from Tebay services at a lovely big rural house. The run home was uneventful and we enjoyed a chippy in a very rainy and dark Moffat. Definitely felt like winter was setting in, so was the ideal time to buy a car like this. The chap selling it had a good collection, including an E39 M5. The Subaru had been his wife and his car for the last 12 years and had been a well maintained workhorse. It was competitive money, with a years MOT and a spare set of winter steel wheels with Nexen M+S tyres. There's a fair bit of documentation with it, although he said he had done mostly his own maintenance at his previous address where he had a lift etc. It's an Outback with the 3.0 Flat 6. Nice spec with full electric leather, working AC, Cruise etc and a few nice extras like a detachable tow bar and genuine Subaru rubber mats, boot liner and dug guard. As has been mentioned it's in the hideous tax bracket, although for some reason the insurance was extremely cheap, like less than the diesel Rover 45. Plan for this one is to run it over winter (and possibly next summer given working AC) and spend NOTHING on it, something I'm not very good at.There's a rattle from the front which is probably a drop link, both were advisories and it's taking all of my willpower to not buy parts. I can tolerate plenty shonkiness, but suspension noises make my teeth itch. I know of these things propensity for rust. I poked my head under and I couldn't prod holes in anything, but the sill covers will be staying where they are. It's a weird car to drive. With the 4WD and plenty power it can cover ground quickly. The ride is very, very firm for what it is, but that is combined with pretty light steering, so it's not really a drivers car. Still, it always feels very well planted and surefooted. Hoping for some fairly inhospitable weather this winter to test it.