eddyramrod

I'm genuinely ridiculously excited about this. Screw you national lottery millionaires, I'm dreaming of a 1986 Peugeot diesel.

COS HE LOV VECTRA AND IS
 

Oooh, sounds good. Does it drive etc?

Mrs Sloth looked a bit despairing when I showed her what at 305 was, but she's still pissed at me for selling the Kia so fuck her.
She was pissed at me for buying the Kia as well, sometimes you can't win.
 
p.s.  Buy the last 2 tickets somebody, I need to know if I have won a Peugeot before I buy a rusty Ford Puma on Thursday.

*superb Rover themed treasure hunt-tickes only £4!*

She won't be saying you're mad when you win mate.
 
She'll be saying that you are inexplicably far more sexier.

Don't worry brownnova, in the event of your untimely death as a result of winning, the Peugeot handily doubles as a hearse. I have a fair amount of spare hardboard  which I can donate and I'm sure the collective might of autoshite would be able to knock up a rudimentary coffin for you.
 
(How tall are you by the way? If you're too big for the load-bay we might have to cut a bit off, or leave your feet sticking out)

Yes I am a fool and and what goes around comes around. Or so they say, whoever they are anyway. 
 
Back to the story at hand. 
 
Yesterday my mate phones me up at work and says "I've sent you an email, you need to look at it now", knowing that he is a serial shite collector at the top of the spectrum (P38 anyone?) I knew instantly that this would involve dilapidated rubbish, fucking about and general buggery. I was in. 
 
Anyway, turns out said mate is working away from home at the minute and the collection of said chod, which he had agreed to purchase, blind, before I accepted the challenge would be a solo affair with Mrs Crapcarcollector in tow. Who better to provide live updates than her? 
 
(Disclaimer, if this thread goes quiet, i've been murdered, probably left to rot next to the M6 and you lot will hear no more till the news at ten a week next Tuesday)
 
So, hopefully it will be live updates, a dead easy can you guess what it is yet, and an heroic tail of dragging something dead across counties on a car trailer I've not checked in two years. 
 
Easy. 
 
Catch you later.

so yes, I bought a 'mummy truck' - first impressions are favourable, it's comfortable, easy to drive and no slouch on the motorway back to edinburgh. at 67000 miles, it's barely run in but it does have a few battle scars - I took it to the local car wash on the way home and it's come up a treat.
 

 
thanks all for watching, it certainly livened up the journey

How's that for a pez shot ?
 

 
actually taken on the test drive but what a great little garage, a very nice lady asks "how much love ?" and does all of the hard work for you

Might park the reliant there, take the caravan electric hookup cable and confuse a few folk 

Modern?
So it's a 940 and not a 740?

my mate had some money invested in the firm that invented those digital bus stop timetables.
 
He's just taken delivery of his V8 Atom, which he has parked between his Aston Martin & his Ducatti.
 
Still, that means he hasn't got any room left for an MGF, has he? Pretty foolish of him, IMHO.

Whilst I was at Uni I bought a Triumph Dolomite unseen from eBay for £300ish - The owner had just done a round trip of Scotland, so I was concerned by the tone of his voice when he said "You plan to drive it home...?"
 
I arrived in Redditch to the Dolly looking good, but being a young'un had never driven a manual choke before, so put it in waaaaay to early and nearly killed myself on a roundabout!  Got to the pez station and a bloke said.... erm I think your car's leaking fuel!  A quick smell test revealed it was water that had gathered in the boot. Going well so far.  Remarkably made the journey back from Redditch to Bangor relatively trouble free after that.
 
On closer inspection however... It was a state.  Noisy gearbox, front and rear halves in different shades of green, and Frankinstein-esqe cooling midifications.  Oh and rusty, very rusty.  I sold it 2 months later to an Indian chap from Birmingham. 
 
You may know the car, the numberplate read JLO 939V and it turned up in Practical Classics a few months later, and then again recently! Happy to see JLO's still a shonky piece of shite! 

Saw a '08 plate 400cc Piaggio scooter advertised on a forum as a rough old dog but running and legal, with service history - £300. No pictures. So, of course, I bought it.
 
Got a one way train ticket to Londinium, lugging my bike gear. It had been kept outside all its life & he'd dropped it on the ice, nicely cheese-gratering one side of the bodywork, but it still wasn't quite the nail he'd described. I paid the seller (nice chap), took it to the petrol station and rode it 230 miles home in the dark. It ran like a champ. I took it on a two-week tour of Spain earlier this year & it performed heroically. Sometimes these things do work out

Agreed to buy my A40 Somerset unseen on the strength of a few photos and a list of the work done recently. A mate had it and I fell in love and asked for first refusal on it. When he informed me he was thinking of selling it, I jumped at the chance. I got my dad to give me a lift down to Somerset in the NorfolknWeigh Rover 600, where after a brief test drive I drove it 180 miles back to Essex, with only one stop to refuel and check the levels. To its credit, it made it with only a bit of misfiring as I joined the M25. This turned out to be crap in the tank due to a lack of use.
 
Then the starter solenoid jammed, so I replaced it. Then the ignition switch started playing up, so I had to hotwire it when I needed to drive anywhere. I tolerated this for a while, before sourcing a NOS switch from Ebay. I had various problems with the engine randomly cutting out, which I struggled to get to the bottom of. Eventually, I found this was a bad connection inside the aftermarket distributor, due to cost-cutting. A proper Lucas item then went on, and I haven't had any more problems with it since. The charging system packed up, so I converted it to an alternator.
 
Recently, I treated it to new front shock absorbers, to replace the incorrect ones it had on there (the arms were 1" too short, resulting in negative camber), uprated commercial leaf springs, and new pins and bushes all round, at great expense. It's also had lots of smaller jobs done, such as welding and modifying the exhaust, fabricating and welding in an 18" section of the boot surround, and fitting flashing indicators. I've also got lovely period (well, early seventies) seatbelts to go in it. Apart from that it's just been all the usual maintenance, several oil changes, grease-ups, adjusting the brakes, tyre pressures, re-stuffing the drivers seat, and so on. But for a 62 year old car, which I've done 10,000 miles in the last year in, including trips to Yorkshire, the Lake District, and Wales (twice), it's not doing too badly. I love driving it, and find it more comfortable than anything else I own. It's no trailer queen, but it's a true practical classic, used for those jobs most people would use a eurobox for - and I love every minute of it. Now I've ironed out a load of problems with it, it's become genuinely reliable, with no breakdowns in the last six months (touch wood).

Cheeky bugger!  Some of my blind-buys have worked really well.  MR2 leaps to mind, that was and still is a damn good car.  It just wasn't quite the car for me long-term.  Some, it has to be said, have worked less well, such as my Plymouth Gran Fury with the Flintstone floor.

If we're not careful autoshite is going to need to get a gaming licence
 
Autoshite your rafflez r r concern

I actually think it is a reasonable way to pass on a car. If you want it, you bid. If not then you don't. Actually forget that with our resident raffle fiend
 
It's a bit of fun, doesn't cost much and everyone is happy.

My local Poundlands (two branches) have some more of the 1/43 sports cars in, if anyone wants any.  Seem to be quite a lot of DB4s in this batch.  I only spotted two I didn't see last time: an E-Type (no point, got several) and a modern Nissan thing (modern, so again no point).  But if you want any, and they're scarce where you are, shout up, I don't mind picking up what I can for you.

anything bought from eddy 2 hours after he decides he hates it

The most blind faith was a multi-buy affair a few years back. In Aberdeen I needed something with a bit of grunt to pull a trailer so strolled into the car auction when it was still operating in the city and saw a nice green R-reg Vectra V6 SRi rolling up to the block. A quick glance inside showed no dash warning lights and the ticket said long MOT and some tax so I bid it up to £600 and won it, paid and drove it to where I was staying. Next morning I grabbed the ScotAds paper and picked out a trailer for sale. Called the guy and drove to Auchtermuchty or somewhere ridiculous like that, had a quick glance at the tyres, ignored the underside as it was knee-deep in nettles, paid the dude, hooked up and drove straight up to Inverness where I had arranged to buy a mini tractor. Strapped it on the trailer and drove straight down to Dover, then on down home. A stub axle sheared right off the trailer on the fucking Paris ring road causing chaos, but it was a hefty trailer so I shifted the tractor a bit to re-balance things and finished the journey on three wheels. It wasnt until I got home that I opened the bonnet of the Vectra for the first time....all was well. sold it for a profit too.
 The trailer was proper rotten though...used it until I felt too scared to put any weight on it then broke it up for its parts. Still got the tractor.

The Roffle 305 was probably my biggest leap of faith.
 
30 year old French car bought blind from the Internet, straight into a 400 mile run home.
 
2 day collection.
No dramas.

Hundreds of years ago, cats were revered as Gods. The cats have never forgotten this.

It's great to see that most of the good spotted threads are still going.
 
Keep up the excellent work, it's much appreciated.