AxWomble

Amazing find! I aspire to have a car with so many dials in the instrument cluster 😍

Nothing like a bit of cheap maintenance to get a simple car up to a good spec. It’ll serve you well if you keep this up!

These Clios are brilliant - we’ve got a friend with a very neglected 2007 1.2 that just will not give up. Never gives a moment’s trouble - she throws it at the mechanic once a year and says “get it through the MOT” and is handed a freshly serviced car and a bill of no more than £300. Cambelt isn’t difficult either - daft not to for that money

I’ve got this on our van insurance and paid an extra £24 to get it up to £20,000 worth of repair or replacement for the car that I’m borrowing too. I’m 25 - it’s rare but still exists!

You’re making the mistake of thinking that car manufacturers want to make products that last. Making it unscathed through the warranty period+2 years is all they need to maintain a reputation for reliability nowadays. Some don’t even manage that and folks will still buy them!

Our first car - a 1995 Citroen AX, bought unseen for £250 from a man near Telford, in Feb 2020. I ignored the ominous oily puffs from the exhaust and handed the man a fistful of crinkled notes. It proved itself almost immediately by jump starting my B.I.L’s car - he’d left the radio on while we sorted out the tax and insurance. Didn’t use it as planned that summer for continental travel coz COVID, but it proved itself over the next year/15,000 miles of weekly commuting from London to the South Coast and visiting far-flung relatives. Only a 1.0, and a tired one at that, happiest at 63-65mph. 70 felt cruel for any distance (4 gear remember), but it managed 93 on a private test track, once. Bog basic spec - windy windows, manual locks, steel wheels. It was a ‘Cascade’ so it had stickers and a sunroof - fancy! Nothing electrical ever went wrong, apart from a fan switch. It smoked when cold (valve stem seals I think) and about once every 2 months if you were in traffic it would suddenly engulf itself in steamy exhaust smoke. I didn’t really really look into this but I think it was some sort of very intermittent head gasket leak - never used any water and never contaminated its oil. Used to scare our friends silly! I miss the old AX - nice spindly steering wheel, proper weighted steering feel, gutsy enough for most usage and fantastic fun on backroads. With hindsight, the 106 diesel that followed was a far better car - the AX leaked, was rusty, and all the bolts were made of cheese. I’d still have it back if I could afford it!

I learned in my dad’s identical 53 plate. It was a cracking thing, and such odd pedal position and clutch that I can drive anything without thinking about it now - everything seems normal and roomy in comparison! I’ve not driven anything since that was easier to park, apart from the two vans we’ve had.

Cracking job! I’ve never pressed F5 so much across a day before...

Radio faults are my main issue - generally because I only had time/inclination to sling it in the dash using the first switched 12v feed I could find. I haven’t had radio presets for years. Not having a driveway means that things always get put off at least a week - brakes started pulsing under heavy braking at high speed before the weekend but we were busy so it’ll have to wait till the end of the week to have a look at what’s going on.

Welding patches onto an old car is a never ending but predictable (and cheap) way to keep it running. Far, FAR better than unpredictable and costly repairs to even the simplest modern car.

Or you could be the first person in history to do a full restoration of a Golf Mk4 SDI! Would probably be cheaper than a modern alternative, but financially responsible, errrrrrm maybe not

Good going! I had two MOTs within 3 weeks of each other and my heart could barely take the strain…

With a reaction like that, I’d be a bit scared to leave it in his hands. What a shame to lose a good mechanic like that

Our friendly MOT place has advised us to grease the unions with the flexi pipes before - to stop them seizing solid

Our old AX had that when we bought it - in the form of a very lightweight shell and two sticking calipers 😂

Bonnet open warnings. I can almost always tell if it’s slightly open - it just looks wrong somehow. But I see lots of cars driving round with the bonnet released to the first position, so maybe it’s a useful feature for most

Nice to see the ‘instant’ MPG readout too, if you want to do some informed hypermiling

Heated Mirrors - we didn’t even realise our van had them until we were doing a journey from London to Norfolk in freezing fog 😬 Thought I’d press the HRW button on the dashboard for the fun of it and the mirrors magically cleared! Prior to this, I’d presumed it was a redundant switch for a higher spec van with glass in the rear doors. Especially as our van is povvo spec and doesn’t even have airbags or ABS. Not a feature I use more than a few times a winter, but very useful to have in certain conditions

I do find this useful for smooth downshifting, in all fairness 😂 and for maintaining speed if you need to drop a cog on a steep uphill

I do find this useful for smooth downshifting, in all fairness 😂 and for maintaining speed if you need to drop a cog on a steep uphill

You’ve got some good mitigation with that plan - can’t go too far wrong, unless it grenades. Keep us posted!

My in-laws got a Tentbox Lite last year and they go away with it all the time - used to have it atop a Nissan Pathfinder, that went poorly and now they’ve got it on a XC70. He’s done a diesel heater in a box thing so they even use it over winter. Big estate+roof top tent is a great combo!

Handy to know the going rate for this kind of thing - ours will be up fairly soon, once the new van is liveable. What did you put it up for?

Or alternatively, a Vivaro/Trafic? Same sort of T5 size but a bit cheaper and might get you a more comprehensive conversion if you’re lucky. They’re obviously less popular so you’d have to look harder. Would echo what @cobblers says - a Relay/Ducato/Boxer is really a class above a T5 in terms of size, and will feel a fair bit less like a car. Ours has never met a parking space it couldn’t fit into, but it’s always tight. A T5 would always fit with no extra thought required.

Crumbs. That’s a bit iffy. We’re putting belted minibus seats in our new van but we are at least using the original installation hardware in the same way the manufacturer intended. I guess they’re not testable on the MOT beyond checking that they’ve been installed with some level of good practise - although the gov.uk page on this seems to suggest that unless they’ve been glued to the floor, anything goes 😂 “Additional seats should be fitted securely so that they are likely to remain in place in the event of an accident” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/converting-a-van-to-carry-passengers-in-the-rear/converting-a-van-to-carry-passengers-in-the-rear