Conan

My Volvo listed 10 previous owners but I know at least 3 of those is the same guy moving registration to various businesses. Still it's pretty high number of keepers. My latest acquisition (which I haven't reveal to anyone yet) about also listed 10 previous owners although this time it's actual 10 different guys. It's still a decent car though. I also have had cars with lower amount. I had a late W124 with 2 previous keepers, one being the original owner and the other's his next of kin. 4-5 seems to be about the average for 20+ year old motor. I find it makes absolutely no difference to how good a car is or isn't. I should also note that in my location, not many would buy and sell cars within a year or less of ownership. If the guy's planning to do so they would not change the registration. So it is much more unusual for any car to have high number of keepers.

Disclaimer: I'm a number plate nerd and 100% a sucker for period and detail accurate plate. If Drosje plate is legal I'd totally put it on. It's not even like if you're putting something that does not belong. It actually once was a Taxi. I am of an opinion that detail like this can turn a great car into one that will make someone's day. Well, it'd certainly make my day at least.

This too is what I've found to be the best thing about driving any classic car, but especially ones which many people have fond memories of. I think it helps that most old cars are smol (well, more smol than modern equivalent) with simple, less aggressive styling (for example, big round headlamps) and thus feels less threatening to anyone that sees it. I've been following since the wanted thread. Seems you got a great car. 😃

Seems like a good challenge. I wonder if I can hunt down a reasonably priced one locally (Either Minichamps or Corgi would do) considering there's probably 3 people in this country who even got a clue what an SD1 is. 🤔 You never know though. Might get lucky.

Slowly, but surely. No part of the car is left in bare metal anymore, but still need some more filler. Soon enough primer will go on, then some colour, then assembly.

My Minichamps CX 1/43 was a bit lonely so I got it a companion. BMW M535i by Autoart. The box's not in great shape but the model itself is in excellent nick.

Smol update. A good haul of parts seems to always come near the finish line, or at least, if the repair's done anytime soon I'll be able to continue without pause. Quite pleased with everything that I've manage to sourced. New shock absorber cartridges, never had a car with serviceable struts before so I'm pretty intrigued as to how and why this came to be. If I were to guess when shocks technology got better, they can make them smaller, so instead of servicing the original components inside they just put a thinner unit in it's place. It was supposedly cheaper than replacing the whole unit like most modern cars, but I would not have guess that from the price I've to paid (exorbitant). A pair of top mounts to go with that. Left and right uses the same design, and yet I could only find each of a different brands, which should be an indicator of how much a pain in the arse finding parts for it is. I'll also replace most of the other front suspension components such as ball joints and bushings, luckily those are the same with the much more common E70 Corolla so not too difficult. Not pictured is a working front seatbelt. The one on the car just reels freely so I might as well go full 1980's and not wear them. A working belt would make me less anxious. Headlight bezels, the front offside bezel is broken at the top (I have not a clue when this happened, I went back and look at pictures and they weren't actually broken when I got the car). They need refinishing though and I have yet to find a solution. They're chrome-painted plastic. Another set of centre caps for the new wheels. The bottom row is what they came with and although I'd have been okay with them they're clearly not the best, and now I have spares if some goes missing as a bonus. A few other things I've also ordered but not arrived yet. A new antenna, maybe a bit pointless as the radio doesn't work, but half broken one on the car always irk me so... and a new interior ceiling light as that's always been missing from the car. They still make new ones of both, thankfully. Tomorrow I'll be checking up on the progress and will report again.

I went to see this car today so a smol update. The worst of the rots have been welded. The progress so far I'd say is very good, although the early December target still isn't a sure thing. The guy working on this told me very remarkable how little fabricating and welding it actually needed especially for a car this old.

That is something quite a lot of people have asked me. It came from the factory in Barney colour and it will stay that way for as long as it lives.

It's been months without an update. So here is one. These pictures are literally from today. I found the actual correct type original steel wheels (confirmed because it matches the spare) for £50. For such a hen's teeth object I consider this a huge score. Then, the actual reason why the updates has been very sparse. This car has not been driven since late August. For more than 2 months this car's been in the bodyshop. It's supposed to be stripped to bare metal, welded, and a repaint. Not great timing you see, because for the past 2 months it was a monsoon season which means bodywork like this cannot be done without it effecting the end result. The work you see above got started 4 days ago. There are signs somebody was here before. This has always been very obvious even without getting the paint off. This bit here was covered by a trim piece. The rust's there because water did collect here quite a bit under the trim. It didn't get inside the car however, and that is a very good thing. Everything considered this is still a very solid car. Incredible as it's turning 43 very soon. These are all surface rust which can be remedied relatively easily. Again, signs somebody was here before. I believe the black marks are from previous repair, possibly chemical ones and not actually electricity. This actually resulted in paint peeling off which led to more rust. Also why this needs redone eventually. The absolute worst bit of this car is the roof. This hole actually leaked water in as well. And the filler thickness is of comical level. One consolation is that it's only the roof that's like this, the rest of the car only got a light skimming before. It can be fixed. This car should be shining, shimmering and splendid again by early December. For those who might be wondering, I've been quoted about £1,400 for all this work. More than what I've paid for this car.

Today I went to look at this 1992 shape Honda Civic Saloon. These've been on my radar for a few months now. It's 1.5-litre VTEC Manual. The seller said £800 would buy it. Anything above 1/4 throttle the thing would hesitate and buck. Possible cause: bad distributor. Reason: rev counter also goes crazy when it goes nope. The rest of it is pretty wretched as well. Otherwise it runs and drive just fine. I'm pretty sure I could spend another £2-300 fixing the issue and other few things and have something to bomb around in for a few months, part it out when I'm done and not lose much. But the level of arsedness is at all time low at the moment. It's not an uncommon or unusual car.

My Toyota Corona Liftback got 260,000 odd miles on it in 43 years. Apparently it was previous owner's only car for 30+ years which got sold only because he stopped driving. I can understand why. It's dependable car. Perhaps not a surprise since it is a Toyota. I think currently is the longest it's been off the road (getting some major work done, it's been nearly 2 months) but hopefully it'll be back in regular use very soon. Most of it's brethrens are long dead due to rot.

The Will brand is pretty interesting. It was an attempt at creating a brand that catered specifically to the youths. A lot like what Toyota would later did with Scion or GM with Saturn. Except, this wasn't a brand started by Toyota, but a host of Japanese conglomerates. Panasonic was a participant with a massive array of electronic products, along with Asahi making Will beers, Glico making Will snacks, etc. one participant was a tour company name "Kinki". The Will Cypha isn't the only one Toyota made either. There was also the Will VS which basically was a weird Auris, and another Yaris-based Will Vi with it's absolutely bonkers styling, even more so than the Cypha. All of this ended in 2005 to the surprise of absolutely no one.

They're front heavy, quite susceptible to lift off oversteer, with vague, rubbery steering, and they struggle to put 225hp down the tarmac even with UUHP tyres in the dry. Driven at 8/10ths they are perfectly safe and quite stable. Once you go nearer the limit the shortcomings are becoming very clear very fast. It is just my 2 cents. I bought mine for many things but sharp handling. 😆 It could make sense for the police to use R ECU. But I don't think it makes that much of a difference considering it's about 15hp more with the automatic. My point is that even the normal T-5 225hp is quite fast already especially in period.

These don't handle nor stop as standard so I doubt they'd put more horsepower through it. Mine have the bigger brake disc (302mm) that these supposedly later have and it still doesn't stop for shit. That and once it actually got more power stuffs tend to break a lot. Stock they're plenty fast compared to most 90's tin anyway. Later S60 isn't much better because surprising amount of the components are carry over. I reckon many of those "300hp" ex-plod Volvo are just people chip tuning it themselves.

I forgot. On the circuit board some guy printed a bunch of little moose. They probably don't realised but it does make my day a little bit better.

The fuel gauge and temp gauge stopped working a while back. They were intermittently working before but they finally died completely. Since they both went out at the same time it's not likely going to be the sender or the sensor but the cluster itself is kaput. So I just bought a used cluster off the internet and swap them over. Well it is only £30 so if it's not that nothing is lost, right? I don't know which engineer in Gothenburg designed this car so that the entire dash pad had to come out to remove the cluster but I wish them well. The diagnosis was correct though. The circuit board failed on the original cluster. Everything is now working correctly and the Tripmeter gear isn't broken like the other cluster as well, so that's a nice bonus. It's a bit of a shame the old cluster is nicer cosmetically, but if it cannot function properly then it's useless being clean and nice.

I'll distract you from the recent calamity. As it happens, no, that was not the first film to feature a Stellar as the main starring role. This was. I doubt it'll be the last as well. Late 80's nostalgia is going on pretty hard in South Korea.

Well I think a huge part of why some older cars seem to be more reliable in 2022, not only that the owners are likely gonna be people who cares, but also because if it's survives this long it's very likely to have been a good example out of eleventy billion made. Car QC can be visualised by a steep bell curve. Some example are better made than the manufacturer expected, some are worse. Every single car ever made got a specific measurement of time manufacturer expected them to survive. So if they're problematic from day one it wouldn't likely survive past manufacturer's expectation, on the other hand if it were to survive for even longer than expected it gotta be a properly good one. Especially those who have owned many examples of a single model would see it this way as well I believe. Once I have been around enough old cars I start to feel like some specific car out there are just made so well that it's no wonder why they last longer, even models with reputation of being haphazardly made can have a better example than expected.

For anyone interested in this topic I'd suggest giving a YT channel called William Moser a watch. This guy simulate combustion firing noise along with visualisation in form of light bulb and the result actually sounds a lot like real engine would. There's A LOT of theoretical firing order shown and also a lot that does exist but not in high rev application like in typical passenger cars. I'll provide an example starting with 1.

Cheeky cunt blew it's rubber brake lines. All 5 of them. Caught it before I cannot stop though. New one put in. Exactly the same as 1974-1987 RWD type Corolla so very easily sourced replacement. It's now also got a rev counter. For counting revs. More shenanigans found as when I've rev it out to the max speed indicated for each gear on the speedometer, it's only 4,000rpm. FOUR THOUSAND. Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro. What's this? 1947 Crosley?

Did some more works today. Yesterday I was gonna use the car for night run but when I went to start it I found the headlamps were not illuminating. It was dark out so there's no point in trying to diagnose. Guy who put the radiator in noted that there was quite a bit of crud in the cooling system. It's 42 year old iron block engine so that's to be expected especially when I got the car there wasn't even glycol in it, just plain, hard water. I've drained and refill the radiator when I got the car 2 times and got a lot of the murky rusty water out but not all of the crud. The shop told me they chuck some radiator flush in so I have to drain and replace again today. I did the first drain and refill with just tap water. Bleed for 15 mins and drove the car 20 mins. Come back, drain and refill this time with some genuine Toyota pre-mix so I don't have to faff about with trying to get a hold of distilled water. It's all good now but the next change will be I reckon in 6 months time then it can go to proper 2 years interval (saying this like I'll be keeping it that long). Then I started diagnosing as to why the headlamp wasn't working. I went through every relay there is in the engine bay. (There was, all in, 8). Not a single relay is labeled as to what they do and there's way too many wires to run them through. I hit every single relay just to see what happen. The headlamp suddenly came back. I tried high beams. Nope. I hit the suspected relays again. This time the headlamp doesn't work, but high beam which turns on all 4 lamps at the front works. At this point I decided I'm going to put the high beams on and unplugging each relays to find which one it was. As it happens, all the relays that have new and easily removable plugs are not forward lamp relay. It was the one without the nice new plug but instead individual wires. I randomly removed one of the wire running to that relay and found it to be exactly the same. Everything working except main driving lamp, even the main beams still working. Maybe it was the other relay. So I plug it back in but the small individual connector was clearly loose and a bit corroded. At this point I thought surely it cannot be that lucky, but I was lucky. Plug that wire back in and the headlamp is back. I knew exactly how this tall farang felt on that day. I use some pilers to make the small connector a bit tighter and it's still working as it should. Dipped beams, high beams, sidelights, all rear lights. Then I notice one of the side indicator isn't working. I thought to myself at this point, now that is the reason why one of the indicators was indicating slightly faster all this time. I run removed the offending lens to find that there's nothing wrong with it. So I run the wiring back to find one of the connectors to be a bit iffy, a bit corroded. Some light cleaning and it's working again! Look at the above picture again. Yay. I like having cars with correctly working lights. Seeing cars on the road with non functioning lights pisses me off. I'm sure others are the same.

Fuel injection is BORING.

I've been driving only 7 years and have had 5 cars. Compared to all of you it's nothing to write home about. 😅 Although many people have said that I change car wayyyy too often. 1995 Mercedes-Benz E200 W124 (2016-2018) 1989 Toyota Corolla GL (2018-2020) 1995 Volvo 850 T-5R (clone) (2020-) 1986 Mazda 626 LX (hairnet ride which due to the event he never get to see in metal) (2020-2022) 1979 Toyota Corona Liftback (2022-) Not counting others that I have at my disposal but not actually in my name.