I ended up with HMC's Focus Ghia. Rave actually bought it to spin for a profit, got it back here to the London area, then decided he wanted to have a crack at my airlocking / overheating Rover 75, so we did a swap about three weeks ago. All I wanted was something compliant and would get me to work without any fuss, which it did until Tuesday this week when the battery snuffed it. Due to various reasons, it wasn't until Friday when I was able to fit a nice new Bosch battery to it.
What have I done to it, apart from the battery? It came with a new set of plugs, so I fitted those. You could have measured the gaps on the the old plugs in yards, rather than mm's. Cleaned the thing up a bit, lipstick on a pig, but it satisfied me. At some point, it seems to have sat for ages somewhere. There was moss on the wiper blades which had gone rock hard, got all that off and the blades are doing what they should now. The rear wiper arm, which is broken, but still does the job ok, was also moss encrusted.
I've bought all the stuff to do a thermostat replacement, but don't fancy the job myself, so I'm going to put it into a local mot / repair shop to have it done. Bought everything needed for an oil change, so that'll be done sooner rather than later. Other than that, not done much at all really. As said in the ad, the clutch bites high on the pedal, but doesn't slip, so that's good to go.
What I really want is a nearside rear door in Tonic blue, I'm sure that's what the colour is. Also need a complete driver's door mirror, and a good radio antenna. Anyone who has these parts laying around, please feel free to pm me, rather than clutter up HMC's thread.
I'd really like to know a bit about the Focus before it came into your possession HMC, If I'm correct and it did stand for a while before you bought it, it'd would be interesting to know why someone gave up on it, because it's not a bad little bus really.