Talbot

I've not yet got a photo of the welding, as despite it being OK, and I'm pleased with the finish, I've been too annoyed to get a picture. Plus I only remember when it's dark, which will give a crappy pic. I'll get it at some point though. The couple of pics I do have: This was a lot of rot cut out of the car: Someone paid a lot of money for that metal back in the 90s. I'm glad it wasn't me. Car out of the garage, as mentioned above. This wasn't really enough space to work with: Once the car was out and in the daylight, I could have a proper look at the wiring loom and the damage that has occurred. It's ugly. First thing I found was that the hole in the sill(s) has let an astonishing amount of water into the car. As such the carpets (more accurately, the backers) are all saturated, so the lot got removed. They're astonishingly heavy: but then there's probably 5kg of water in there. Same with the front carpets, which are a lot smaller: On to the wiring. Since the Thermal Incident, I've pulled all the trunking out of the way and binned it. It was ruined. The cables were all melted together in one big lump of homogenousness, so I've broken all the melted PP away where I can, and have separated all the cables into either singles, or pairs, depending on how they should be: Mama Mia! That's some horrible Spaghetti! Urgh. Turns out that the permanently live cable that has caused this is a battery live that runs from the battery +ve terminal to a sub-fuse-box under the bonnet. That means there's a completely un-fused live running through the car (battery is under the offside rear seat) which only has to short on something to then set fire to any part of the loom it feels like. Seems like a massive oversight on the part of the designers TBH. Given that this car has umpteen fuses in it, including some fairly large (50A and 100A ones) on other sub-main cables, this one will likely get a fuse added to it. Now I know it's there, I'll just be permanently worrying about it, especially as it's overheated along it's entire length, and has softened all of the insulation. I've found a couple of places where it's melted to other cables elsewhere in the loom. Eg, this was under the driver's seat area: Look carefully at a small-diameter red cable towards the centre bottom of the image, and you can see bare copper where I've pulled it apart. That will need repair too. That damaged area again: The liquid is screenwash. One of the other services that goes through the area is the front-to-rear pipe, which will need changing as I don't want a join under there to leak. That will be hilarious* to fit, as the reservoir is behind the headlamp, and it's one piece all the way into the tailgate. Le Arse. It's burned right through and hence is siphoning into the car! Same is true of several vacuum pipes that are no longer one piece in that area: They'll have to be changed as a vacuum leak would be very boring. Those, thankfully, have connectors before they go into the door, so I can change complete sections from joiner to joiner. And to top it all off. I've noticed a stone smash mark in the windscreen with associated spider's legs running from it. Not sure if this would be an MOT fail or not.. it's right in the middle of the screen, and is definitely in the wiper sweep: If I can get the car sorted, that is only another £some as an insurance claim, but what a bloody ballache.

yes and no. Yes there has been inflation, but not quite that much. £900 in 2000 is about £1500 now. £500 was worth what £1500 is now back in 1983, which is a bit longer ago than most people are looking. Most cheap shite that I actually bought was in the £300 to £500 range. That is now £450 - £750. The difference is that what I used to buy were good working cars with MOT and tax. Now that £450-£750 gets you something that needs work.

It's the lack of supply of new vehicles that has done it. Covid shutdowns and now supply issues due to Putin's war means that there are limited new vehicles and have been for a few years now. As soon as the supply of new is restricted, second-hand becomes far more valuable. It means that older vehicles are now being kept on the road as the cost to buy a newer one is so much higher. The flipside is that an older car is now worth so much more. Which I see as a good thing TBH, as it means older cars are valued more. It will take about 10-15 years of supply of new vehicles for the shite end of the market to get back to being able to buy a car for howevermuch cash you can get out of the hole-in-the-wall or one month's payment on a new car. But I do think it will happen. The prime years for shite IMO were the early/mid 2000s. A late-80's / early 90's car with history and MOT could be had for nearly free. I did this several times.

Their overheads must be astonishingly low to be able to do a gearbox-off clutch for £150.

Just wanted to re-iterate that a full service has absolutely nothing to do with the clutch. There's essentially nothing that can be checked or looked at. £150 to fit a clutch is eye-raisingly cheap. and not for the right reasons. That sounds too cheap.

It never ends... Got all the Sill painting done, mainly so I can get the wheelarch liner back in, the front wheel back on and get the car back on it's wheels and out of the garage. Not because I'm finished, but so it looks less like I've crashed into the garage! Except the NSF window is down, and I dare not reconnect the battery to wind it up due to all the loom damage. So I'll pull the doorcard off and jump 12v direct to the motor. So of course I broke off several bonded plastic parts from the doorcard as it's 27 years old now and has all gone brittle. Fabulous. Then also notice that the door card has been scorched and blackened in a few places by the fire too. So that's going to need a replacement card. Got the window up. Superb. Brake off, roll the car backwards out of the garage, and what's that crescent-shaped mark on the OSR door? Ah balls, that will be where the garage door mechanism has been rubbing on the car and has scraped all the paint off. For fucks'sssss ssssssakes! I feel that may be true again.

Given that I need to drive approx 1000 miles next week, that would be just about the worst possible "another silver Merc" possible! Tis a 2005 C180 Kompressor saloon. Surprisingly with a gearbox from Barcelona. It's also been sat under a tree for about 3 months, so is in dire need of a decent wash. Passed it's MOT yesterday, pick up tomorrow. Thus far I've driven it about 4 miles, and it just feels like any other Mercedes. I'd have preferred something a little less similar to the car I already have, but it presented itself at exactly the right moment, so I would have been a fool to say no.

I've not got any more photos at the moment, as I'm still *utterly* pissed off about the wiring loom fire, but all the welding is now finished. It looks half-decent, and if I hadn't had the unintended high-speed oxidation incident, I'd probably have been looking at MOT on Monday. Having had time to look at the damage to the loom.. it's pretty bad, and not as localised as I'd hoped for. It looks like there is a fairly beefy "live" through the area that burned, and that has shorted to several of the grounds that run through that same area. Consequently, the grounds and the live have all overheated further up the loom away from the "thermal incident" location, so it's going to necessitate the removal of most of the interior to be able to trace cables and make sure there's no other damage. The Polypropylene trunking that the 210 uses as it's loom containment was completely melted and burned away for about 150mm, which has not only stuck to a lot of the cabling, it's also plastic-coated a surprising amount of the floor, which will all need chipping off. The heat also also burned through several of the vacuum pipes that this car relies on not only for central locking, but also for most of the heater control surfaces and the headlamp leveling. The 20-odd thin cables that ran through that area are a complete knot of exposed copped, melted PVC and remnants of loom tape. It's a *proper* mess, which is going to take me a little while to get sorted. I'll get some pics tomorrow. (which I need for reference anyway..) So I've bought another car to tide me over. Had a couple of offers of loan cars, which has been most appreciated, but I have a feeling this isn't going to be a weekend's work, so I would feel wrong imposing on a lent vehicle. It was blind luck that there was a car available to buy for very cheap, which I could agree to, get MOT'd today, and it be ready for Monday morning. It's not what I would have chosen, but given how obscenely expensive "cheap" cars are now, this was a no-brainer. .... another silver Mercedes. 🙄

Would be lying if I said this had not happened to me. On several occasions in the past I have bought a "breaker" for it's engine or some other part, and ended up keeping the breaker and breaking my keeper. In this case the rot in the donor car is pretty extensive, and it's a lesser spec car, so I have no problems nicking bits off it. Thankfully the owner (merc specialist I've mentioned before) is happy for me to use bits from it to sort mine.

30 years of internet experience has an effect...

That is very interesting to know. I have a list of interior/trim bits that I could really do with to keep mine in not-falling-apart condition. Would you be willing to PM me his details? Newhaven isn't even that far from me..

This is indeed a worry. I am hoping that nothing untoward has happened, and I can just splice in a new section of loom, but I really don't know for sure. One saving grace is that the Merc specialist near me has another E300 in for breaking, which is both complete and a runner, so if I need a new computer or 6, there may be a supply of them available. 🤞

I got a lungfull of crap I didn't want, but other than that, as mentioned above, the only casualty is some plastic trunking and wire insulation. Fingers crossed the short didn't do any other damage... (info in "mercedes" sig link.)

Fire. More specifically, fire where I didn't want there to be fire. 😡