Small Silver Crap, Adventures Of The £200 Suzuki - 12/04 - "New Careful* Owner"

[Matt]

More recent update can be found here.

 

Those of you who follow me on Flickr will likely have seen that I bought this 2003 Suzuki Alto GL for 200 quid on Saturday, thought I'd post a thread here for anyone that might be interested in following my progress as I spiff it up in order to sell it for profit, well that's the idea anyway, we'll see how that pans out when I send it off for it's MOT (due January 31st). I suppose the beauty of buying a car for 200 quid is that if the MOT is a big fat fail I can give it a good wash, which it badly needs, and sell it for the £235 it would have cost me at that point.

 

It was bought new by a chap in 2003 who passed away about 3 years later leaving the car to his sister in law (or some such distant-ish relation) who then had the car until earlier this month having given up driving due to old age/immobility. It's only got 36k miles on the clock but as many people would be keen to point out low mileage isn't everything, in fact it's supposedly bad if it's only driven a mile or two at a time in town. The previous owner has lived at least five miles from the nearest town the whole time she has owned the car so I think it's safe to assume that it's been driven well into operating temperature whenever it's gone anywhere. The downside of her living in the middle of nowhere is that from her house she would have driven a mile down a single track country lane which around here means lots of wet sticky shite (literally shit in most cases) being splattered all over the car so looking over it's MOTs from 2006 through 2014 it's had a few corrosion issues come and go, namely the front offside anti-roll bar mount area. That said there didn't appear to be any nasty patches at the end of the sills and the wheel arches don't look like beelzebub's bubble bath.

 

 

The worst parts of the bodywork are the bonnet and the rear bumper. The story with the bonnet goes that supposedly the owners daughter was checking the oil etc one day and got distracted, forgot to the latch the bonnet properly and upon driving the car later that day BANG, the bonnet flies open. You might have spotted the rust patch, dent and lifted near-side top corner in the first photo above - I've also just noticed that it nailed a wiper blade in the process. As for the bumper apparently the owner reversed into her daughters car, from what I can see the damage is cosmetic and limited to the plastic bumper cover which is good news.

 

 

 

Now onto present day. Thankfully the owners daughter also lives in the middle of nowhere and has said that I can keep the car on the patch of waste-ish ground outside her house that it's currently parked on for a while which helps ease stress over the logistics (I don't have drive other car insurance  ). That said I have no ducking idea what I'm supposed to do regarding the tax! I know I have to either tax or SORN it but I don't plan on insuring it for longer than I have to (read: a couple of days at most if I can get away with it). Can I SORN it without the full V5 and before it's in my name then later apply for tax without the full V5 still not in my name and no certificate of insurance (having taken out temporary insurance beforehand)?

[lisbon_road]

I don't think you can SORN it before it is in your name.  You can insure it without tax now.  I think they decided that if anyone wants to give them money, they'd take all the obstacles out of their way that they can.

 

Car looks ok in the photos.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Is it taxed now? If so just drive it home in the period between you signing the V5 and the V5 arriving at Swansea.

[eddyramrod]

That looks like a tidy little toy on the whole.  Hard to see how you can go wrong at the price, well done.

[Cavcraft]

RFL until the 1st Feb so it has 'drive away' tax on it.

 

Tammy Wynette will be made up with that.

[hairnet]

it has tax on it untill they post the v5

 

you are a posh krujoe aicmmfp

[Matt]

Is it taxed now? If so just drive it home in the period between you signing the V5 and the V5 arriving at Swansea.

 

 

RFL until the 1st Feb so it has 'drive away' tax on it.

 

Tammy Wynette will be made up with that.

 

 

it has tax on it untill they post the v5

 

 

If only I had a driveway! Those bloody victorians, building houses with no future proofing...

[UltraWomble]

I predict a queue of people wanting that

[Cavcraft]

That's a right little win-mobile that. In other good news, Matt, according the Vehicle Enquiry website, it's only £30 per year tax!

 

 

https://www.vehicleenquiry.service.gov.uk/

[Cavcraft]

[vulgalour]

£30 a year tax!  I am amused by the option to pay monthly.

[Squire_Dawson]

Regarding this silly new road tax law, will the spies not check the date of sale/transfer on the V5 and note when the new keeper taxed the car? Surely they'll be looking for the two dates to match up? I'm still confused by this crap.

[Lacquer Peel]

I thought you were sick of your tinny little Suzuki, seems odd to buy a tinnier and smaller one.

 

Great mingebag motoring, anyway, you should LPG it.

[Matt]

That's a right little win-mobile that. In other good news, Matt, according the Vehicle Enquiry website, it's only £30 per year tax!

 

 

https://www.vehicleenquiry.service.gov.uk/

 

It is indeed, I'm sure that 99% of for sale ads will gladly say that in the title (as will mine when I sell it).

 

£30 a year tax!  I am amused by the option to pay monthly.

 

£2.63 a month! Not sure why anyone would do that.

 

I thought you were sick of your tinny little Suzuki, seems odd to buy a tinnier and smaller one.

 

Great mingebag motoring, anyway, you should LPG it.

 

It was very cheap after all...They will allegedly do 70.6 MPG 'extra urban' and 57.7 MPG 'combined' so I think the savings from running it on LPG wouldn't really be appealing enough to fit an LPG system. Also there is hardly anywhere to put a tank!

[Matt]

18/01 - First thing I did today was get some interior photos, it's all in very good condition inside although there is a bit of a mouldy smell.

 

 

Lets have a look at what goodies the PO left me.

 

 

- Keyring mounted mini screwdriver kit

- Pen (what used car purchase is complete without a dud pen?)

- Nail gun nails (I think)

- Plane blade

- Wheel nut removal tool (I swear every car I buy has some crappy wheel nut removal tool in it)

- Thing for removing your boots

- Block of wood (that'll go in the fireplace)

- Parking disc

- Grotty leather chamois sponge thing

 

I've also just spread out the wad of tax discs and I've got every one the cars ever had. The price has come down a fair bit over the years; the first disc from 2003 with "DEALER" stamped on it says £44.75 for six months, that's £63.53 in todays money so one years worth of tax for this car would have been £127.06 in todays money back in 2003.

 

 

I then had a closer look at the really small details to see what could be improved when I get the chance to detail the car and it looks like the bodywork will respond really well. The actual body work is pretty good, there is the odd scratch as you would expect after 13 years of giffer ownership but there isn't a single parking ding to be found. The paint will look a lot better after having a clay bar put over it and I think it would look even better with a machine polish to get rid of the various marks. There is plenty of mould around the rubber strips on the roof, the door tops and the side mouldings. The side mouldings and scuttle panel will get treated with a back to black type product as they've gone quite gray. 

 

 

Second was to get rid of that horrid sunstrip that just didn't fit, was torn in the centre and generally annoyed me. I thought I was going to have to fight it and spend weeks scraping away glue residue but as a nice surprise it peeled off effortlessly. Lets hope this car keeps giving me nice surprises and doesn't throw up any nasty surprises.

 

 

 

So I'm looking under the bonnet and I clock the header tank, woops, I forgot to look in there on Saturday, better have a gander at that. Then I got a nasty surprise.

 

 

GODDAMNIT.

 

 

The oil level is A-OK, the colour is roughly right and there's no mayo on the filler cap or under the cam cover - Am I looking at the early stages of OMGHGF here? Excuse my while I retreat to eat pasta then hide in the basement sanding the spare wheel and forgetting that I ever looked inside the header tank.

[catsinthewelder]

That looks a great little car for the money, just a shame it isn't yellow. I'm quite a big fan of these at the moment. It's probably easiest to get it home via a pre-booked MOT to get around the lack of tax. If you choose your tester carefully you can probably leave it on site till you've had time to get it legal.

[Lacquer Peel]

Some cars develop mayo on if they're only used for short runs, my Subaru Justy was bad for it. Hope that's all it is.

[vulgalour]

^This.  Especially with little cars.

 

The finds look like a My First Psycopath kit.

[twosmoke300]

Usually short runs cause Mayo under the oil filler not the coolant tho .

[hairnet]

RFL until the 1st Feb so it has 'drive away' tax on it.

 

Tammy Wynette will be made up with that.

fit in the high speed van

[hairnet]

its 12 years old with 36k on

 

italian tune up

 

mayo will go

 

esp with regular use and or motorways

[ruffgeezer]

I'm not so sure, 100%* of these moody little Poozukis that have darkened our doors have required head gasket replacement, although one was so thoroughly cooked we chucked a second hand engine in it.

 

IIRC it's some Chinese or Indian affair built under license, hence the Maruti-Suzuki labels on the engine.

 

 

 

 

*ok we've only seen 2 but the statistics don't lie.

[2Thumbs]

If it was just mayo under the oil cap, I'd say it was moisture and short journeys. Oil separation in the header tank is another thing all together I'm afraid.

[twosmoke300]

Yup , Mayo in the oil is caused by water vapor in the oil not burning off . Mayo/ oil in the cooling system can only come from an oil/water cooler or omghgf I'm afraid.

[Cavcraft]

Some cars develop mayo on if they're only used for short runs, my Subaru Justy was bad for it. Hope that's all it is.

 

 

This and the mileage of the car means (hopefully) that's the most likely cause.

[Matt]

The short runs ideas do give a glimmer of hope but I'm finding it hard to deny what 2Thumbs and twosmoke300 have said.

 

What would the most sensible plan of action be now?

[skattrd]

The short runs ideas do give a glimmer of hope but I'm finding it hard to deny what 2Thumbs and twosmoke300 have said.

 

What would the most sensible plan of action be now?

 

Compression test or gas test to see if the head gasket has gone .... if it has replace it, if not don't.

[nacho man]

I like how the tacho goes to 10000 rpm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[wuvvum]

I like how the redline is only just over half way round...

[Matt]

Compression test or gas test to see if the head gasket has gone .... if it has replace it, if not don't.

 

Is there anything other than a failed head gasket that could cause the coolant to be fouled?