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Adrian_pt

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  1. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Yoss in Is there any such thing as 'overly modern' or 'overly old' when it comes to daily use?   
    I daily a B reg, but by daily I mean weekend / skip / shop runs as I'm based in central London. About 5k a year, much more this year as I ended up doing a lot of travelling across the UK. For me it's doable if 1) it's a decently made car in the first place 2) you don't skimp on the maintenance and 3) it has enough poke to keep up with motorway traffic. Smiles per gallon easily offsets  the lack of creature comforts (cold wet mornings are a pain) and the fact that things will at some point go wrong. Had it for 16 years,  no real plans to change - I'll even take the Ulez hit. But I'll be the first to say it's not for everyone. 
    I did, about three years ago, have to daily (as in 2000+km a month) a 1984 Dacia for a couple of months...
  2. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Low Horatio gearbox in Is there any such thing as 'overly modern' or 'overly old' when it comes to daily use?   
    I daily a B reg, but by daily I mean weekend / skip / shop runs as I'm based in central London. About 5k a year, much more this year as I ended up doing a lot of travelling across the UK. For me it's doable if 1) it's a decently made car in the first place 2) you don't skimp on the maintenance and 3) it has enough poke to keep up with motorway traffic. Smiles per gallon easily offsets  the lack of creature comforts (cold wet mornings are a pain) and the fact that things will at some point go wrong. Had it for 16 years,  no real plans to change - I'll even take the Ulez hit. But I'll be the first to say it's not for everyone. 
    I did, about three years ago, have to daily (as in 2000+km a month) a 1984 Dacia for a couple of months...
  3. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from LightBulbFun in Is there any such thing as 'overly modern' or 'overly old' when it comes to daily use?   
    I daily a B reg, but by daily I mean weekend / skip / shop runs as I'm based in central London. About 5k a year, much more this year as I ended up doing a lot of travelling across the UK. For me it's doable if 1) it's a decently made car in the first place 2) you don't skimp on the maintenance and 3) it has enough poke to keep up with motorway traffic. Smiles per gallon easily offsets  the lack of creature comforts (cold wet mornings are a pain) and the fact that things will at some point go wrong. Had it for 16 years,  no real plans to change - I'll even take the Ulez hit. But I'll be the first to say it's not for everyone. 
    I did, about three years ago, have to daily (as in 2000+km a month) a 1984 Dacia for a couple of months...
  4. Like
    Adrian_pt reacted to jaycey001 in I brought a Lada Niva!   
    Ive been in the market for a reliable, long distance cruiser for some time and had narrowed my search down to a Discovery Tdi or even a Dacia of some description. I live in Southern Spain so needed something that would be reliable for driving back to England in several times a year (I know you are now checking the title of this thread, dont worry its not a glitch in the forums 🤣)
    So I was browsing Wallapop and facebook market place, which seems to be my only pass time at the moment, and up came a 1992 Lada Niva with 52,000 Km on the clock and it had a Snorkel fitted!! So I immediately contacted the owner and arranged to view it the following week. I had assumed the vehicle was in Granada province as per my search criteria but on investigating realized it was closer to Madrid than Granada and was a good 6 hour drive away, across mountain passes, incredibly steep inclines, hair pin bends and sheer drops.
    Regardless, a friend agreed to drive me there and we headed off to view my future reliable pan-European cruiser. The boot of his 1997 Pushrod Fiesta was filled with spares, tools, tow ropes, jump leads, spares and camping gear (just encase)  and we headed off. Even in the passenger front seat I felt travel sick driving along the mountain passes and after a few hours I longed to be behind the wheel of the Lada so I at least could focus on driving and not if I was about to vomit over the mountain side.
    We passed through many tiny Spanish towns and farming communities and eventually arrived in a village in Ciudad Real and saw the Lada parked at the road side, without a Snorkel, just a hole in the bonnet where it should have been. Good start I thought!
    The Lada had about 3 foot of thick dried mud stuck to every surface which made rust checking impossible, I went to check the oil but the seller didnt know where the dip stick was and when I found it there was no trace of oil in the sump at all, on date checking the tires it was obvious they were the original Ukrainian rubber and well cracked with unknown inner tubes, the drivers door window didnt wind down, but the screw driver wedged in to hold it up was included in the sale, Bargain!
    I went to start it and when it burst into life the seller made a surprised and relived sound as if he wasnt expecting it to start. All good signs of a bargain I thought and after traveling all that way I knew it would be impossible to negotiate the price, which it was. On a short test drive the cabin filled with petrol fumes and crawled along at a leisurely and very noisy  pace.
    Obviously, as any Autoshiter would do I handed over a big bundle of cash with a smile and jumped in ready for the 200km drive home. As the seller counted his cash he commented that driving it was "Pure Joy" he then loaded me up with free Coca Cola (possibly anticipating a breakdown and didnt want me dyeing of dehydration in 40C heat!)
    First stop was a petrol station and filled it to the brim for a total of 29 euro we then headed off across the mountains, the fuel gauge swung erratically along with the oil pressure gauge around every turn  and after 2 hours behind the wheel I knew I had a gem of a car, driving it is like a cross between my old 89 O Series Petrol Sherpa van and a 300tdi Defender, just a collection of all the worse bits of both of them! The steering is vague to say the least and on tight bends you turn the wheel and it seems nothing happens until a few seconds later when it eventually bites and flings you in the direction you want to go, the breaks are non existent but the gearing is so low all you need to do is come off the accelerator and your crawling along.
    Another hour or two later we decided to find a camp site, which led us into a national park, with ridiculous 12% inclines which included a hair pin at the top and every time I had to get up one of these hills I would need 1st or 2nd gear and every so often the engine would miss and feel like it was about to cut out, by then I would have a huge line of traffic behind me, when going down the hills the huge line of traffic would back right off as the exhaust popped and banged due to over fueling. Even my mate who I was following could smell the un-burnt fuel coming off the car.  Another feature is that when you go above 80km/h the wing mirrors self fold allowing for more aerodynamics - those clever Russians knew what they were doing!
    Finally at the campsite I sat and drank many beers while my body recovered from the trip.
    The next day early in the morning we had the most difficult part of the drive across the main mountain range, the car started first time and despite doing about 12mpg and being severely out of tune it got me home, a total of 270km in the end.
    On inspection the snorkel was in the boot and ready to fit (apparently it kept falling off, hence why it was removed)  and since getting all the mud off it is in very good solid condition and the millage seems genuine, the only real problem was that the clutch fluid reservoir was empty and the flexi hoses so corroded you could fit a euro coin in the cracks.
    Its now with my mechanic and is being converted to electronic ignition, weber carb, full service etc etc and come April I plan to drive it back to England - I will update on how that goes 😅
    Here are a few pics:



  5. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from MKT in Late registration madness   
    Registered August 83, though sales stopped in 1980 or 1981. The seller claims it's a 1975 model, which it definitely isn't - but it does seem like it hung around unsold for a couple of years.


  6. Like
    Adrian_pt reacted to Datsuncog in Classic prices, bubble burst?   
    I don't think anyone's planning on actively outlawing internal combustion engines - the current thinking is to stop selling them new in the UK by 2030 or so, with the view that 99% or so will be gone by 2045, their natural life cycle complete.
    I think we may be seeing a bit of a slow-down in classic prices, possibly due to oversupply on the market, as others have said - a glut of 'just needs minor work to sort m8' cars optimistically bought during lockdown last year, but which have now been languishing under a tarp on the drive since last October, and are now being sold on.
    Same way the prices of cheap panel vans went sky-high this time last year, as borderline scrap Transits and Sprinters with two weeks' MOT suddenly became valuable OMG STAYCATION CAMPER PROJECTS overnight. A recent drive past a metal recycler indicates that a fair few of these have now moved on to their inevitable fate.
    There's always been exemptions in legislation put in place for classics, even where safety or environmental factors drive the legislation - e.g. seatbelts, leaded fuel. That's probably not unrelated to the ownership of such cars by wealthy and influential people, who don't want to see their collection of vintage Ferraris and Bentleys relegated to static display only. So I can't see any mass scrappage of classics happening anytime soon, and therefore no likely major collapse in prices.
    From a transport planning perspective, the number of miles driven by cars over 40 years old is miniscule compared to that clocked up by fleet repmobiles, minicabs and commercial vehicles. Hence the argument for tax and MOT exemption; granting it only affects such a tiny number of cars that there's no real financial hit to the Treasury, or significant risk to the travelling population.
    Older cars are more polluting, no question - but as a percentage of the number of vehicles on the road, and the limited mileage most of them do, there'd be no measurable difference in national emissions if every car over 40 years old were to be removed from the roads tomorrow.
    I think it'll become a bit harder to find petrochemical fuel stations in a few years time, and petrol/ derv will probably become more expensive to buy - as sales volume drops and increasing numbers of electric vehicles push those businesses which are already marginal past the point of viability - but there will still be fossil fuels available for a long time yet for those cars which run on it.
    What does interest me is the burgeoning firms who say they can retrofit classics with electric power - certainly pricey at the minute, but as the price of batteries falls and secondhand motors come onto the market from scrap Prius/ Leaf/ Zoe models, might this become a more common thing?
    And might it create a new market for classics, as people with no real mechanical aptitude can now drive something 'different' from the white PCP masses, but which only requires minimal routine fettling compared to ICE vehicles?
    I know a chap who built an electric-powered DeLorean DMC-12 a few years back...

    Before.

    After.
    And it'd be nice to be able to put all those Allegros and Maestros which were robbed of their engines by Mini lickers back on the road, no?

  7. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from somewhatfoolish in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    The Fiat 131 Marengo was a new one on me - two-door estate sold as a commercial vehicle for a couple of years.  Lonsdales must be on every street corner by comparison.

  8. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from LightBulbFun in Late registration madness   
    Registered August 83, though sales stopped in 1980 or 1981. The seller claims it's a 1975 model, which it definitely isn't - but it does seem like it hung around unsold for a couple of years.


  9. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Isopon in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    The Fiat 131 Marengo was a new one on me - two-door estate sold as a commercial vehicle for a couple of years.  Lonsdales must be on every street corner by comparison.

  10. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from adw1977 in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    The Fiat 131 Marengo was a new one on me - two-door estate sold as a commercial vehicle for a couple of years.  Lonsdales must be on every street corner by comparison.

  11. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Remspoor in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    The Fiat 131 Marengo was a new one on me - two-door estate sold as a commercial vehicle for a couple of years.  Lonsdales must be on every street corner by comparison.

  12. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from JeeExEll in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    The Fiat 131 Marengo was a new one on me - two-door estate sold as a commercial vehicle for a couple of years.  Lonsdales must be on every street corner by comparison.

  13. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Yoss in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    The Fiat 131 Marengo was a new one on me - two-door estate sold as a commercial vehicle for a couple of years.  Lonsdales must be on every street corner by comparison.

  14. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from angle in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





  15. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from loserone in 1980s Dacia Duster / Aro 10   
    One UK market Duster has survived in .... Murmansk. Apparently imported in around 1990 by a local sailor. Seems to be in nice nick too.


  16. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from SambaS in 1980s Dacia Duster / Aro 10   
    One UK market Duster has survived in .... Murmansk. Apparently imported in around 1990 by a local sailor. Seems to be in nice nick too.


  17. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from somewhatfoolish in 1980s Dacia Duster / Aro 10   
    One UK market Duster has survived in .... Murmansk. Apparently imported in around 1990 by a local sailor. Seems to be in nice nick too.


  18. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Mrs6C in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





  19. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from face in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





  20. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Datsuncog in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





  21. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Austat in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





  22. Like
    Adrian_pt reacted to Tayne in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    I wouldn't quite say "Highlands", its 5 miles south of @Saabnut.
    Some of it might still be there, that photo is about 10 years old.
  23. Thanks
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from martc in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





  24. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from Remspoor in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





  25. Like
    Adrian_pt got a reaction from LightBulbFun in Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.   
    Yes - one in as-new condition, unregistered since new, Suffolk IIRC, and another in the Highlands in dire nick. Another minibus recently died a death. 
    They were actually imported (like the AROs) in two goes - one in around 1975 and the other from 1979 till around 1981. Not popular!
    Interestingly* the UAZ was being imported at roughly the same time, known as the Trekmaster. 





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