Talbot

Aldi RS6. Dealer. £500. What were they doing? Tyre pressures and a screenwash top up? I didn't think it was possible to have a car go into a dealer and it cost that little.

@Six-cylinder I think you may have your contact for wheels/tyres for the mini.

Has anyone been on a Mini-specific forum or FB group to ask if anyone has any no-longer-legal-but-not-fcuked 10" tyres? An alternative might be old trailer tyres, as many of them now use 10" tyres. Completely the wrong specification, but if they hold air..

However, what this car needs is the 4 old wheels with slave tyres that hold air, that some mini enthusiast has kicking about in the back of their garage (possibly from where they have bought new tyres themselves) and is willing to sell on for a tenner. That will be enough to allow the car to be rolled about and potentially driven around the FoD. Should it ever get to the point that it ventures back onto the road under it's own power, a set of tyres could be bought then. New tyres bought now would be marginally pointless.

That is a far better similie than I was going to use. And less crude.

I've welded a few similar year Minis in the past. They were utterly rotten... 25 years ago! That rot hole in the sill is worrying. I honestly don't think it's got any sills at all. Inner or outer, offside or nearside! Do the current tyres not even hold air? I'd be looking to see if you can get hold of a set of buggered-but-hold-wind tyres for the moment for as cheap as possible to roll it around on for the moment.

None, until you've confirmed that the first time you pull away the engine, front subframe and bulkhead isn't going to rip away from the rest of the car and bugger off down the road on it's own, leaving you sat in the remains of the car looking out into fresh air.

One of the major benefits is that in slippery conditions they are more stable in a straight line. In ice and snow, a FWD car is somewhat more controllable than a RWD one. That is, for the average (IE utterly incompetent) driver. Yes, I prefer a RWD car in the snow, mainly for the LOLs, but FWD is proven safer. Also for interior space. A RWD car loses a surprising amount of interior space compared to the equivalent FWD arrangement.

in most cases, the parking lamp feature was done with wiring switching only. The indicator stalk has multiple connections, which were fed ether with power when the ignition is on (Indicators) or when the ignition is off (parking lamps). It looks to me like one of the circuits is live when it shoudln't be, possibly due to either a short, or maybe a stuck relay or similar.

No it hasn't. People have gone back and deleted long standing threads, or deleted all their posts in a thread, making bits of it unreadable. We had a fairly significant thought process on ensuring that all photos remain visible on old threads as otherwise they become unreadable, the same should (IMO) be true of comments and posts. When you remove parts of the conversation, it makes no sense. Yes, posts need to be able to be edited for spelling and other errors for a while, but once it's been up for a bit, IMO it should stay. It's "published" at that point.

116 pages (and counting) of the little furry bastards* (I owned two until quite recently. Just one now)

I suspect a lot of the question here is what do you define as adequate? The merc I daily is about 1500kg and 177hp. It's perfectly comfortable in every situation thrown at it, and very rarely do you need to use all 177hp. I'd say most of the time I'm barely using 100hp in normal driving, sometimes less. When the MAF failed a little while back, it put it into limp mode, which meant it was power limited to about 80hp peak. It was a bit noticeable that I couldn't mid-range accelerate as well as I'd like to, but the car was still perfectly driveable and I did several thousand slightly tedious miles like that. With a replacement MAF, the car was a lot more relaxing and easy to drive. I've also driven the 4.3V8 version of my car. with an extra 100hp over mine. Lots more fun, but no more relaxing to drive on a daily basis. If anything was a bit more frantic, as if you planted it, the world starts whistling past rather quickly and you have to be paying attention. 50hp / tonne is driveable but gets a little tiring after a while. 100hp/tonne is a lot more comfortable and relaxing to drive. 150hp/tonne is probably more than you can sensibly use on UK roads.

"I've no idea what you're on about and am not going to make a decision without the right information that is clearly going to be my fault later." Seriously. Stop letting everyone make everything your issue.

German test is significantly more extensive than UK test. it involves motorway driving, night-time driving and I think also some wet weather experience is needed. It's a much more involved process.

Yep. Only with an ADR registered instructor. Which, quite frankly, is a bollocks rule. I've taught a few people to drive, and it would have been beneficial to take them on a quick hop on the motorway for experience before the test. You're either competent to supervise a Learner or not. And most people are not.. 3yrs and over 21 is just not enough qualification to supervise a Learner.

An unpopular opinion: Drivers should be re-tested on a regular basis, and to a far higher standard than they are currently. This is actually more important than checking the car on an annual basis. However, this will never happen as the Government makes far too much money from fuel duty and other vehicle taxation, so removing dangerous/idiotic/incompetent/blind/drunk/thick-as-shit drivers from the road will cost them too much money. I would happily sit a driving test on a regular basis.

Try this one wierd trick: (no really, this actually works...) Balance it on one wheel while rolling it. I know that sounds utterly stupid, but a wheelie bin (especially when empty) balanced on one wheel is noticeably quieter than when on both wheels. Absolutely no idea why. It just is. Not recommended when it weighs as much as a small moon, or if you're trying to move it over gravel or some other impossible surface.

If you've never set fire to a car while welding, you're just not getting enough heat into the weld. Try cleaning the metal back further and stepping up to the next power level. Maybe a bit more wire feed speed too. .. and I totally did not* set fire to the Merc C250td on the driveway a couple of days ago. Nope. Not me. Never. Briefly.

Trailer it down to Shitefest, trailer it back with somewhat* less rot. Could work....

If you really want to just squirrel it away in a corner and revisit it at some point in the future, I would absolutely recommend an outdoor-speicification CarCoon. @Crackers has had some recent experience with one of these, and they really are good. A car put into one of these is actively dried out, and will not rust any further. Yes, they are a little bit spendy when bought, but the running costs are utter peanuts (you could likely run it from a solar panel if you're so inclined) and you'll then always have it to put another future project in. If space isn't the primary issue, then it could well be a good option for the time being. and mean that when you do make the decision on it, it's not 2/3/4 years more rotten than it is now. Second-hand one here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364775783912 And even if in 2 years time you still decide to get shot of it, the CarCoon will still be worth decent money. That second-hand one has only depreciated by 17% of the cost of a new one! (surprisingly)

Just a couple of thoughts: That's not a lot really. Rust looks spectacular when it has run a meter up a sill, but in reality the time it takes to sort an entire rotten sill vs a "50p sized patch" is completely disproportionate. As Juular mentioned above, it's not the actual act of welding that takes the time, it's the stripping out of the interior, the cutting back of the rot, the fabrication of replacement/repair panels and making them fit, the making sure you don't set fire to anything (trust me on that one) and the having somewhere to do all that work. The actual *welding* bit is maybe 5% of the overall process. Probably less I would not recommend learning to weld on rusty car bodywork. It's one of the most difficult things to weld. Access is often terrible, you have old paint/underseal/primer/etc. floating about, the fit of the panels is often rough, you're usually having to weld upside-down, and can never quite see what the hell you're doing. Workshop welding on a bench on thick (5mm plus) sections is where you ideally start, and then work towards more difficult stuff. To say "i'm going to learn to weld on a rusty car" is like saying "I'm going to learn to drive (from scratch) in a formula 1 car. On a racetrack. During an active race." Whilst I am in absolutely no position to take on any projects at the moment, I'd say that with the interior stripped out, a new sill available and a load of sheet metal (plus maybe a box-and-pan folder), that's maybe a couple of days' work to sort. Especially if you have access to the 2-post lift it's currently on. Makes life about 9.74 times easier.

That's fair enough. I was thinking mainly for lighting, charging stuff and possibly for AC reeeegas, as it seems to be a running theme that I gas at least two vehicles per shitefest now. (vac pump is about 100w, so counts as being "not a bloody great 3kW heater.")

Looks like there is power on site. Is that accessible to use by happy campers? @catsinthewelder

Bcoz Sprotscar. I think this is fast becoming the car with the most difference between "how it looks" and "how it is mechanically"