Matty

This is quite important, I have found Alan Partridges five bedroomed bastard house on google earth
many years I've searched manually, no luck at all. Trawling from estate to estate, looking at planning applications for the mid/late 90s, aerial shots, never found fuck all!
 

But here she is! last sold for £1.8 million

 
One day I'll find the one briefly showed that he built.

I am working today because it is only 25° C in my office instead of 30° C outside. Well that and I have spent so much week day time searching car parts I now have quite a pile of must do things.
Notice the 3 drive ornaments recycling, rubbish and garden waste. They do spoil my view but moving them makes using them a chore.

FTFY

Its all a bit boring given the high concentration of car nuts, most people opting for cheap daily drivers. Plenty C1/Aygo/I10 and of course my colt...
but sometimes Chris bring his Navara in...
 
😃

beeps be gone again
need to plug it in again
but there seems to be a pattern emerging
so it comes on and stays on for a few days, then seems to be off for 2-3 days before popping back on
it seems to pop back on when the weather is very humid……..interesting

The 1.0 isn’t that bad if you get the belt done then continue to use the correct oil. You are looking at around a £1000 at an independent though for the belt but once it’s done just change the oil regular with the correct grade and it’ll be fine. 

Big day today. First time I've bothered being in a show. Burnley classic car show at Townely Hall and tbf it's always a good one.

Just for you @cort16join me on a trip through the cheapest 911s in Scotland...
 
First up I looked at this one in a dealers to get an idea of what a good* one would be like.
 

It was actually pretty decent but the clutch felt horrible. I didn't drive it but was assured there was a new clutch in the workshop for it. It was at a typical used car sales type place so I wasn't particularly confident about them doing a clutch on it. Not really the sort of place to buy one from IMO but it was clean and had a load of history.
Next up was this one, up for £9600 or thereabouts.
 

The guy had a fair pair of balls on him, he'd bought it as a non runner and got it shipped up from down south to avoid getting a Scottish car. 
He replaced a load of parts before finding the fuel hose on the sender unit inside the tank was the culprit. 
There was zero history with this one but at first glance it looked pretty good. Sadly when it was reversed off the transporter the bumper got fucked


More worryingly there was rust on the B pillars. Early cars like this didn't have arch protectors and this is where they start to go.


The drivers side felt soft to the touch so not ideal. A quick test drive showed a clunk from the front end and more worryingly some transmission noise from the front end(it was a 4wd one) Next!
I'd spotted this one for sale at a broker (Trader selling on behalf of the seller) and it seemed ideal-a facelifted (slightly more power and nicer interior) Carrera 2 with no sunroof in a lovely shade of grey. It was £18k until I told him I wasn't buying it...
 

 
Firstly when I spoke to him he asked if I'd seen it since the stickers were added. I said no and he proceeded to tell me how the car was owned by his neighbours son and he'd decided to part with it and said he'd send some pictures over. 
Eventually the pics came over, showing a different car. This one in fact, which wasn't advertised at the time but was there at the dealership when I rocked up, priced at £16995. The Fuchs and RS wanabee spoiler didn't do it for me and neither did the rust...

It took a bit to actually arrange to go for look at the grey one it but I was promised a massive file of history, great example etc etc. I asked for a reg number to check the history and was promised it but never got it before going down to look at it. 
When I got there it was OK, but had a few issues.
Rust on lower rear front wing/sill
Front bonnet/boot struts were fucked.
Rear discs had a fair sized lip on them and a few other things that frankly didn't make it seem like an £18k car and certainly not as good as he made it out to be. 
The seller went to great pains to point out a crack on one rear light lens and said how when the chap approached him to sell it he said he'd "put his mark on the car" and showed me a clean MOT test from a few weeks ago. 
We took it a drive and it felt pretty good. The service history wasn't available at the time so I took the reg number and went to do some homework with the promise that he'd get the history.
Checking it out when I got home showed a not great MOT history, including a load of advisories from 2022, including a rear light lens 🤔

I mentioned this to him when he called to follow up the next day and he said he now had the history and would send over some pics. He did, but these only showed the 2022 MOT fail and work to pass. I contacted the specialist who did the work and they confirmed that was the last time they worked on the car, it was sold to the current owner shortly after. 
I said this to the seller who said the current owner had spent load on it  but couldn't seem to manage to send me any evidence of this, saying "there's loads of history, you'll need to come and have a look"
Hmm, it's a 3 hour round trip mate and you pretty much shot yourself in the foot by pointing out the cracked lens that was an advisory on that test that miraculously wasn't on the fresh test you'd arranged, along with the more serious advisories? In the sea with you!
In his defence it may have had more history, frankly I wasn't wasting any more time on it though...
One more was this one

Guy was sound, he'd had it for 4 years but his (absolutely lovely) classic Mini rally car was nearing completion and he wanted the 911 gone to create space in the garage for it. Lad.
Reasonable history and it drove well, he wasn't afraid to give it the beans too. Sadly it was just a bit too rusty, each arch needed some attention and I couldn't spend £14k on something that looked a bit ropey
For context mine was cheaper than that one!
 

Braap
https://youtu.be/Y1KK9vCvrVY

That's a beauty.

Dark paint, twists. Yup, that works. 
Hopefully the reg isn't foreshadowing... 
I keep looking at the van and thinking that I really should have something like that. 

That is very cool! I just showed my son and he wants to know if you are putting the engine into the van 🙈😂

I did have a Renault t-shirt until the electrics failed on it

I had decided on a facelift 3.6 2wd non sunroof car until I decided to just buy the best one I could find. I'll do a proper update on searching for one of these at some point. The 4wd might save my ass at some point.🙈

The only thing that disappoints me about this purchase is that now I'll never be able to see you on a bus wearing a satin Porsche branded jacket.
The law is that you CANNOT wear one if you've ever owned or driven a Porsche. 

My copilot this morning seems to approve 

Carrera 4 with awd what are you some kind of big girls blouse?  Those bills are eye watering, they are for your car right? 😀
I am just kidding I have read  the awd makes them a bit more all weather usable rather than tweaky bum at 25mph as it's there's been some light drizzle.
It seems like a bit of mine field at the bottom end of the market but having the manual is a big plus never mind an engine rebuild receipt.
What horrors did you see on the other 6 you looked at.?
 

Whats been going on. 
A works c1 had a quick service,
 friend of a friend friends freelander 2 had a quick sevice and a look over.  Meh. 
Hyundai accent belonging to one of the girls at work had some suspension concerns. A couple of ball joints and drop links later and its running smooth. May return for a bit of work later on.
Shes one of the nicest people you could meet so i gave the exterior a good scrub and a wax as it hasnt been washed in years. Headlights a quick buff and boy those Wheels took some effort. 


Took the spitty out for a blast one evening and it was running pretty bloody well. A nice evening too.
Today i needed to pop to a farmers market. i thought ill take the country lanes and the wee triumph.
Must have been a road closure somewhere as the quiet lanes i took were locked up. The heat in the engine bay i think caused the running issues.  The carbs were absolutely roasting. Couldnt touch the float chambers! 

So a couple of shade stops let it air out (me too as i was being cooked!)

About 2 hours for 13 miles.  The brakes kept going softaswell and the overdrive stopped working on the way home!
Ahh well, little niggles. 
 
 

Set of pads today on Mondeo, they weren’t near being fucked but I figured I’d sooner be doing them in summer than January. So chucked a pair on from Comline (watch out folks with my budget brake pads!!!).
Next job is a pair of tyres on the back.

No photos but a few minor electrical jobs today on the Mondeo, the small bulb that goes off when you unlock the car had a poor connection so was working on/off and fixed the trip computer buttons, figured the switch had completely gone so was anticipating fucking around taking the airbag out to replace but a severe dousing in contact cleaner has brought them round. Did have to top about 150ml of coolant up, cannot see where this is leaking so I’ll monitor it for now. Rad looked ok, couldn’t see any leaks under stat. The EGR was disturbed last year so maybe i didn’t top it up quite enough. 

Marauder. Find another

If your going to sell a lot of ice cream

Very original, low mileage car
(The astra not the p4. But I can't get the bloody photo to delete)