blackbart

I thought that it was about time that I wrote about my fleet!  The Stepway has it’s own occasionally updated thread on the Modern board, but the others just get occasional mentions dotted around the place.
 The 2cv - A 1985 Citroen 2cv6 Special - Greased Lightning
 The 2cv was my first car. Bought way back in 1994, before I could even legally drive! My Dad and I tidied it up a bit, restoring the bumpers etc, it had some welding done and it was soon ready for the road. Quite a bit sooner than I was! It was my only car for 8 years, and I had many adventures in it (including 3 of my top ten worst journeys of all time!) I joined the local 2cv club (CARS) and went on a variety of rallies and club nights with them. I'm more of an "associate member now, as I haven't been to a meeting for a long time, but am still in the mailing list and sometimes see them at rallies. I still do a couple of rallies every year. It’s not immaculate, but it’s an “honest” well loved example.
 It is mostly standard, apart from the wheel trims and striped roof, which should only be on a Dolly. The “dalmatian skin” door cards came with the car and were not really to my taste. I briefly removed them, but it looked far too dull, so they went back in. There is now more padding in the (probably) four layers of seat covers than in the actual seats, another layer being added each time that the previous ones got tatty. Like many cars, there is an element of “Trigger’s broom” about it when debating how original it is, but it has not been restored, more preserved.
 Once I started working in the motor trade (which was probably a lot better for the car than when I was using it to deliver phone books!) I was getting quite a lot of earache about parking it outside the showroom. At the time, it was 17 years old, and I was considering changing to a newer car anyway. I finally had a regular, if not large, income and I had been looking at the various trade ins as they came in . Eventually I started to realise that if I bought a cheap one I would not necessarily be any better off than I was, but the decent newer ones were often not much cheaper than buying brand new.
 While I was thinking about the options one day, a worrying creak developed in the 2cv. While it was still driveable, something was clearly very wrong. My then mechanic declared the chassis “buggered”. On looking at it, there were A LOT of patches on it, and there just wasn’t really enough left to repair it. This made everything rather more urgent. (Funnily enough, the previous year, the MOT tester said "this weldings awful, it's a definite fail, who did it?" When I replied "You!" it turned out that it was ok!)  The 2cv was now basically worthless (it was 2002) but I couldn’t bring myself to just scrap it, when the rest of it was still pretty good.  I knew that trade in was pointless, and I’d get very little selling it as it was, but for £350 (new chassis and labour), I’d get a car worth probably £1,500 back. (Note, my ideas of valuations do not necessarily bear any relation to reality, but enabled me to justify my decisions!)
 So I ordered the Clio! The 2cv was eventually repaired, but was promoted to holidays and adventuring, while the Clio was now my main car. So now I accidentally had 2 cars! I couldn’t justify selling the 2cv after spending all that money and to be fair, I didn’t really want to.
 The Clio - 2002 Renault Clio 1.5 Dci80
The Clio was (and is) an excellent car. It’s comfortable, it’s fast (1.5 dci80) very economical (65 mpg) and is superior to the 2cv in every way. But, it’s not the 2cv. Going out was no longer an adventure. You couldn’t see the car across a car park (although nowadays, cars are so enormous that the 2cv is dwarfed by virtually everything). I remember when the Clio was around a year old, I’d taken both cars out over the weekend. The entire exhaust had fallen off of the 2cv and the air box had come loose, but the plip battery had failed on the Clio and I was FAR angrier about that!  I suppose that it was unfair, and over time I got very attached to it. I had all manner of holidays and adventures in the Clio and it served me very well.
 Of course there has been the odd thing go wrong, I think that I’ve changed all of the injectors over the years, at least two rear wheel bearings and the usual wear and tear, but really nothing that significant for 18 years and 97,000 miles of use.
 Which brings us to 2017. The Clio was fast approaching 15 years old and as we are regularly told that French cars don’t last very long (!) I was thinking about what to do. The Clio was worth maybe £500 despite being a great little car, but any significant bills would probably mean the end. The car tax laws were changing, meaning that what was then £0 would soon be going up to £120 or more per year. When you keep a car as long as I do, that’s a lot more important than if you are only thinking of a few years. 
 So, I once again weighed up my options. I’d used a Sandero for a training course and found it to be quite a good car. Then I used a Stepway, and it was like a completely different car, it just felt so much better equipped and generally better, even though it was essentially the same car! I would have happily had another Clio, and to be fair that probably IS a better car, but I could have bought a Sandero AND the Stepway for the same price. I simply couldn’t justify that.
 So, I looked into trading in the Clio. It was worth very little, and they would give me even less than that. My Dad had just retired and wanted a runabout rather than running his Scenic everywhere. So, it made sense to keep it until something expensive broke. So now I accidentally had 3 cars!
 Dad did indeed use the Clio for a while – regularly telling me when he had put diesel in it, despite the fact that he had used all the fuel that was in it, so not really as generous as he made out! Then my brother’s moped was stolen (within 3 hours of him buying it!) so he borrowed the Clio for a while, and it became a “pool” car, where I paid all the bills except for fuel, but rarely saw the car. I couldn’t really help feeling that this wasn’t ideal!
 Eventually it came back (broken!) and is now mainly used when I am going somewhere that I don’t want to take the Stepway, like occasional commuting. The merit of this was proved recently when someone snapped the rear wiper arm off while it was parked. I got a very good deal on the new arm because it was obsolete stock!
 The Stepway - 2017 Dacia Sandero Stepway Laureate 1.5 Dci
The Stepway is a very good car and has everything that I need. It’s a high spec one with Sat Nav, parking sensors and camera etc. That’s a bit extravagant, but I intend keeping it for a long time, so wanted it to be “right”. No, I won’t get the difference back when I sell it, but in all probability, in around about 2032 I’ll accidentally end up with 4 cars anyway!
 It is really just an updated version of my Clio, with essentially the same engine and a lot of the same equipment, but I knew that and I liked that! If something has served you well for (then) 15 years, why not get another? It’s bigger and higher, so not quite as economical, but I have no complaints.
 It may seem very extravagant to have a growing fleet, but between them they probably cost me less per year than many spend on beer and fags. They do all still get used, the 2cv not as much as it should, but it will be back in use soon (when I get the oil leak sorted). One major bonus of the virus, is that we don’t open Saturdays at the moment, so I have a bit more time to try to give them a run when the rules allow.
 Which brings me to the mopeds!
 Unfortunately, my cars were repeatedly vandalised outside my work place – keying, broken window, repeated punctures, culminating in one of the 2cv headlamps being removed, smashed and the glass spread under all 4 tyres. I always made sure that it was parked in a general use space, never outside anyone’s house, not in the same place every day and it was virtually without fail the oldest car in the road by a BIG margin, but yet nearly new cars from the showroom might sit on the road in the same space for weeks on end untouched. This meant that I could no longer risk the damage, and even though the suspected culprit seems to have long gone, I only use the car for commuting in an emergency now. So, I bought a series of mopeds that I can keep in the yard – in that they have never specifically said that I can’t, so therefore I can!
 The Sky - 1999 Honda Sky 50cc
Firstly, there was a 1999 Honda Sky. Due to a mistake at the DVLA, it was registered to my brother (who bought it for me, via a contact). It actually took them longer to sort this (changing the name from Andy2cv to Chris2cv) than it lasted! It was vandalised at work, and according to the mechanic needed all the seals replacing on the engine, which just wasn’t worth doing. The following day, the V5 arrived (after 6 months and I think 8 letters)
 I’d had enough, so gave the remains of the bike (it had thrown me off when I tried to ride it after the vandalism, so was quite broken and the seat is still in my garage 13 years later!) to my brother on the understanding that anything he got for it was his. I know that someone bought the remains because the DVLA later wrote to me and told me someone was trying to register it! They had somehow missed the re registering to my brother and then to whoever bought it! I have no idea what the new owner registered.
 I was telling this story at work, when a colleague said that she had an old moped in her garage that I could have. A deal was struck and I swapped a bottle of Jack Daniels for it – bizarrely, the cashier at Tesco wouldn’t sell me a 1L bottle as he thought that I was under age (I was in my 20’s) but a 750ml bottle was fine! A bit of work, a new exhaust and it was back on the road. It was a 2002 MBK Ovetto and became know as Pedward (because like Jedward, it was a bit shit!)
 The MBK - 2001 MBK Ovetto - Pedward
It was never a great bike, the speedo didn’t work, so I got a new cable for it which lasted for maybe a fortnight. I kept trying to get a new speedo, but they were normally well over £100, or came with a scrap bike, which I didn't want! Having spoken to an MOT tester, the speedo and mileometer don’t HAVE to work, so I just left it – it was hardly going to affect the value! I was much later told that it had been adapted, apparently into a 70cc! I didn’t know about this, it must have been done before I had it. It was surprisingly fast! I obviously didn’t know how much faster, but it kept up with my brother on his much larger bikes!
 I remember one day, (maybe 2008?) we were doing the Mayday rally to Hastings in convoy. Rather foolishly we went on the M25, as it would have meant a long diversion to miss about 2 miles of motorway. Of course the police were there, and pulled me over. It then occurred to me that two policemen were controlling maybe 20 scooter boys on the hard shoulder. I was at the back, so I gunned it and got the hell out of there! There were literally thousands of bikes out, so once I was off the M25, I was safe. I should add that all of my vehicles are totally legit now and I haven’t done anything like this since!
 Pedward broke a few times and was getting less and less reliable. It didn’t owe me anything, and then a (different) mechanic told me that the fuel tank had cracked and would cost way more than it was worth to replace. So I sold it to some 16 year old, who gave me £150 for it!   He crashed it the next day. Three years I kept it going, he didn’t even manage a day!
The Peugeot - 2010 Peugeot V-clic - Junior 
The day that I found out about the tank splitting, I investigated new mopeds. After a good look around I saw a brand new (2010) Peugeot Vclic for £995. At the time I had been advised to avoid anything Chinese, as they were “shit”. I thought Peugeot should be ok. I (much) later found out that it is in fact Chinese! As with the cars, I’d looked at second hand, and the best(!) that I saw was marginally younger than Pedward, had clearly been in a crash, needed both tyres and the exhaust replacing (at least), and was £600! The new one suddenly seemed far more sensible. Especially when the salesman accidentally gave me a £100 helmet when I collected it! (He asked “did we say that we would give you a free helmet in the deal?” I was hardly going to say no, was I? )
 The V-clic has been fairly reliable. Not so much in recent years averaging 3 FTPs a year, but it lives a life of 2.6 miles each way 5 or 6 days a week in all weathers and is routinely caned the whole time. I have thought that I have killed it on at least three occasions, recovered it to my mechanic who has patched it up and charged something like £30! We have decided that the next big bill will be the end, but it just keeps on  surviving!
 I have thought about a new one. That model is no longer made but I looked at the new equivalent at my local dealer and was fairly impressed. Not so much when talking to the dealer who said “you’ve got a Vclic? That must be the only one still going!” 
 I was getting close to going in and ordering one in early 2020, when a colleague said “do you know that your bike is on it’s side?”  Obviously I didn’t, so I went to look and it was indeed. About 6 feet from where I’d left it, now with a big scrape along one side. On looking at the CCTV, a customer had hit it when driving her car out of the yard and dragged it along, before driving off. To be honest, if she had said sorry, maybe bought me a drink, that would have been that. Instead, Big Boss billed her for the damage and had our bodyshop repair it!
 This kind of put me off having something that wasn’t a bit crap, and while I was thinking about what to do, covid happened, so everything went on hold. At the time of writing (February 21) it is currently broken, but I will try a new battery on Monday.
 
So, current situation:
2cv – Fun car - working, not used enough, currently leaking oil.
Clio – 2nd car. Working. Recent new battery.
Stepway – Main car. All good, recent MOT and service.
Vclic – Commuter- Recent FTP, awaiting battery/further attention next week.
 
Updates to follow occasionally.
 
 
 
 

Lastly. 
Had wanted one for years. It popped up on a FB group. 
Had a couple of sherrys at the time I seen it. So of course I bought it sight unseen. Then arranged for it to be transported down. 
It's my current daily and I like it a lot. 
I'll get some better pictures of it soon. 

Currently im getting around 25 around town, but thats using heaters, heated seats etc in this weather, when the weather warms up i will check and clean the egr valve as i should be getting ariund 30 round town, as for the electrics i am really surprised as everything works. Maybe i got a good one lol. But its a lovely place to be on a long cruise.  
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Currently im getting around 25 around town, but thats using heaters, heated seats etc in this weather, when the weather warms up i will check and clean the egr valve as i should be getting ariund 30 round town, as for the electrics i am really surprised as everything works. Maybe i got a good one lol. But its a lovely place to be on a long cruise.  
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here's the ultimate in quirky. top of the range vel satis initiale 3.0 isuzu diesel. was a press car, so also got a few extra, extras like sunroof and half wood sterring wheel, both ultra rare items. car is black, with black leather, in nice condition, its only done 71,000 from new. probably the best spec uk car out there, and very rare with only a couple of hundred left on the roads. you mentioned comfort, well you wont find a more comfortable cruiser. it has electric everything.
pm me mate if you need to know anymore. looking for £1500.

too true, been there, got the t shirt lol

sorry all, ive been busy, yes its in coventry, the dmf was done about 6 years ago for around 800 quid at a ford main dealer according to receipts, so i dont know. all i know is its reliable. it was mint before i got my grubby hands on it lol. just one lady owner. i have all your emails, so to be fair it has to be first mail first. then if he doesnt want it, i shall move down trhe list. i just want someoneto get a bit of use out of it, as i can't be arsed with prats on ebay and swap for an xbox gumtree.
all the best

Some people like that sort of muff, we'll have no kink shaming here please.

I think your doing the right thing avoiding Gumtree and EBay tbh. You just know how that will pan out.

It deserves scrapping for that steering wheel muff

all paid up mate.

i'll take 22, if it's gone. throw me a random mate. cheers.

Hi mate, the sellers tag reads South East london.

Hi mate, the sellers tag reads South East london.

as things never went to plan ken, bang me down for 22 and 48.
cheers.

as things never went to plan ken, bang me down for 22 and 48.
cheers.

1998 Xantia 2.0 pez auto [Desire...........Papa, Nicolle etc etc] located in Kent
 
115k miles, full cow and wind..............
 
Comprehensive service book history, although very few receipts.
 
I'll let the pictures tell the story. Now superfluous to requirements, and far too good for a WBOD.
 
Spheres and Cambelt recently done.
 
700 snotters to a shiter.......would take commodious WBOD in p/x
 
 
 

hI all
 
Has anyone , ever had a good experience selling a car on ebay, because i stopped a few years back, but decided to give it one last chance...
i've just got over the worst 3 days of my life, i took the car off ebay instantly after 3 offers in a minute, all for £250, as i was getting bombarded with texts and emails.all 3 were booked in to pick up either tuesday, wednesday and thursday. after avoiding ebay to sell cars for a few years now, i was praying it had changed, but obviously not, in fact it's worse, who would have thought you could get a brand new bugatti veron with a 5 year warranty for £250 effing quid, when i specifically put on the ad title, CITROEN C2 FURIO FOR SPARES !!!
i've had every excuse in the book, from, my son was rushed to A&E, i missed my train, and get this one, I went to leicester instead ?????
I was even going to pick these low lifes up from the station, and because i work for myself, i have spent 3 days waiting for calls and texts, while trying to juggle my worklife around,
NEVER, EVER, EVER, AGAIN. :mad:

hI all
 
Has anyone , ever had a good experience selling a car on ebay, because i stopped a few years back, but decided to give it one last chance...
i've just got over the worst 3 days of my life, i took the car off ebay instantly after 3 offers in a minute, all for £250, as i was getting bombarded with texts and emails.all 3 were booked in to pick up either tuesday, wednesday and thursday. after avoiding ebay to sell cars for a few years now, i was praying it had changed, but obviously not, in fact it's worse, who would have thought you could get a brand new bugatti veron with a 5 year warranty for £250 effing quid, when i specifically put on the ad title, CITROEN C2 FURIO FOR SPARES !!!
i've had every excuse in the book, from, my son was rushed to A&E, i missed my train, and get this one, I went to leicester instead ?????
I was even going to pick these low lifes up from the station, and because i work for myself, i have spent 3 days waiting for calls and texts, while trying to juggle my worklife around,
NEVER, EVER, EVER, AGAIN. :mad:

hI all
 
Has anyone , ever had a good experience selling a car on ebay, because i stopped a few years back, but decided to give it one last chance...
i've just got over the worst 3 days of my life, i took the car off ebay instantly after 3 offers in a minute, all for £250, as i was getting bombarded with texts and emails.all 3 were booked in to pick up either tuesday, wednesday and thursday. after avoiding ebay to sell cars for a few years now, i was praying it had changed, but obviously not, in fact it's worse, who would have thought you could get a brand new bugatti veron with a 5 year warranty for £250 effing quid, when i specifically put on the ad title, CITROEN C2 FURIO FOR SPARES !!!
i've had every excuse in the book, from, my son was rushed to A&E, i missed my train, and get this one, I went to leicester instead ?????
I was even going to pick these low lifes up from the station, and because i work for myself, i have spent 3 days waiting for calls and texts, while trying to juggle my worklife around,
NEVER, EVER, EVER, AGAIN. :mad:

hI all
 
Has anyone , ever had a good experience selling a car on ebay, because i stopped a few years back, but decided to give it one last chance...
i've just got over the worst 3 days of my life, i took the car off ebay instantly after 3 offers in a minute, all for £250, as i was getting bombarded with texts and emails.all 3 were booked in to pick up either tuesday, wednesday and thursday. after avoiding ebay to sell cars for a few years now, i was praying it had changed, but obviously not, in fact it's worse, who would have thought you could get a brand new bugatti veron with a 5 year warranty for £250 effing quid, when i specifically put on the ad title, CITROEN C2 FURIO FOR SPARES !!!
i've had every excuse in the book, from, my son was rushed to A&E, i missed my train, and get this one, I went to leicester instead ?????
I was even going to pick these low lifes up from the station, and because i work for myself, i have spent 3 days waiting for calls and texts, while trying to juggle my worklife around,
NEVER, EVER, EVER, AGAIN. :mad:

sorry dean, no it's not insured, it was just bought as a back up car for my son, but he's just left it to die lol. kids eh  ?

sold in 1 minute to the ebay crowd. if they turn up lol.

hi mate, its a 1.4 and if i remember its around the 95 mark on the clock.