'93 Mondy thread - MOT pass

[egg]

With full credit to Paul Harbord on Facebook - here are the 2022 numbers for MK2's left by the way...

•  At least 2144 cars taxed and on the road (there were only 526 mk1's!)
• LX is most common with 458 variants left taxed
• Verona TD is the rarest with 1 taxed, Aspen and Aspen TD have 2 each taxed
• There were 204 Zetec/S's, 192 ST24's, 181 ST200's, 193 Ghia's, 312 Ghia X's taxed
• There were only 97 Diesel engined cars taxed.

[Popsicle]

On 12/04/2024 at 03:47, warren t claim said:

There's got to be an interesting story behind this.

https://www.gumtree.com/p/ford/2000-ford-mondeo-1.8-lx-td-5dr-11500-miles-estate-diesel-mondeo-classic-with/1473877788

Oh wow, I've done hundreds of deliveries down to the Airbus/GKN site at Filton over the years and seen this many times outside one of the stores.

I'd believe the advert story to be true, it very rarely seemed to move and often looked a bit unloved, but it always looked straight and tidy underneath the dirt. I mentioned to the lads in the stores to give me a shout if they ever found out it was being let go, that went well for me! To be fair I've not worked since November last year so it would be a bit unfair to moan at them.

 

[warren t claim]

22 minutes ago, egg said:

With full credit to Paul Harbord on Facebook - here are the 2022 numbers for MK2's left by the way...

•  At least 2144 cars taxed and on the road (there were only 526 mk1's!)
• LX is most common with 458 variants left taxed
• Verona TD is the rarest with 1 taxed, Aspen and Aspen TD have 2 each taxed
• There were 204 Zetec/S's, 192 ST24's, 181 ST200's, 193 Ghia's, 312 Ghia X's taxed
• There were only 97 Diesel engined cars taxed.

I very much doubt that either of those Aspen diesels were mine

The Verona TD surprises me because I didn't think that they were sold in TD variant. I'm sure that if they were I'd either have seen one advertised, bid on one at a salvage auction or known another driver who had one.

[KWhite]

May 1993 1.6 LX seen on X/Twitter that was spotted by Jude Currie.  Last MOT expired December 2008

[warren t claim]

2 minutes ago, Popsicle said:

Oh wow, I've done hundreds of deliveries down to the Airbus/GKN site at Filton over the years and seen this many times outside one of the stores.

I'd believe the advert story to be true, it very rarely seemed to move and often looked a bit unloved, but it always looked straight and tidy underneath the dirt. I mentioned to the lads in the stores to give me a shout if they ever found out it was being let go, that went well for me! To be fair I've not worked since November last year so it would be a bit unfair to moan at them.

 

There may be a logical reason for this low mileage. The original owner may have had a company policy for vehicles that extended to on site vehicles that insisted on diesel, estate, ABS, Ford etc. I heard of a similar policy insisted on by a NHS trust that rented a Megane Scenic for six months and returned it with less than 50 miles on the clock.

[warren t claim]

1 minute ago, KWhite said:

May 1993 1.6 LX seen on X/Twitter that was spotted by Jude Currie.  Last MOT expired December 2008

That looks saveable.

[warren t claim]

36 minutes ago, egg said:

With full credit to Paul Harbord on Facebook - here are the 2022 numbers for MK2's left by the way...

•  At least 2144 cars taxed and on the road (there were only 526 mk1's!)
• LX is most common with 458 variants left taxed
• Verona TD is the rarest with 1 taxed, Aspen and Aspen TD have 2 each taxed
• There were 204 Zetec/S's, 192 ST24's, 181 ST200's, 193 Ghia's, 312 Ghia X's taxed
• There were only 97 Diesel engined cars taxed.

A light metallic blue Zetec with the Escort GTI alloy wheels was on my want list to get plated and keep for myself. The problem was at the time they were the most sought-after model. IIRC, the Zetec specific grille cost something like £180 compared to £35 for the normal grille.

[warren t claim]

3 minutes ago, warren t claim said:

A light metallic blue Zetec with the Escort GTI alloy wheels was on my want list to get plated and keep for myself. The problem was at the time they were the most sought-after model. IIRC, the Zetec specific grille cost something like £180 compared to £35 for the normal grille.

Although over the years my fleet has included Aspen, LX, GLX, Si and Ghia models there are a few gaps that are triggering off my OCD. The fact that I've never owned a V6 isn't really that surprising due to my use case. After all, no sane driver would ever consider renting a V6 from me to do 50,000 mostly urban miles a year.

I never owned a Ghia X TD either. There's a logical reason for this though. If I wanted a Mondeo with leather seats I'd have just bought a set of hide seats from a salvage yard and fitted them to a lower spec car. Other than the leather trim the only bonus of having a Ghia X is having both sunroof and aircon as the Ghia X in TD spec didn't come with cruise control. 

The only saloons I owned were a couple of Aspens and one solitary GLX TD.

The biggest gap in my Mk1/2 CV is the fact that I've never owned, hired or rented out an estate. There's no logical reason for this as estate cars rent out easily. I've got nothing against estates. After all, I've had about half a dozen Mk4 estates, it's just that no estate appeared when I was Mondeo shopping.

[egg]

10 hours ago, KWhite said:

May 1993 1.6 LX seen on X/Twitter that was spotted by Jude Currie.  Last MOT expired December 2008

Excellent thanks, that was on greengartside's list, but not one I had confirmation existed in saveable condition - can you please send me a link to the tweet, ta?

[KWhite]

8 hours ago, egg said:

Excellent thanks, that was on greengartside's list, but not one I had confirmation existed in saveable condition - can you please send me a link to the tweet, ta?

Certainly! I didn't realise it was already on the list 

 

[egg]

11 minutes ago, KWhite said:

Certainly! I didn't realise it was already on the list 

 

I always appreciate a picture for my 'personal use'!!

[KWhite]

17 minutes ago, egg said:

I always appreciate a picture for my 'personal use'!!

Same as. I have a folder on my laptop dedicated for K Plate Mondeo's, because I'm cool...

[egg]

2 minutes ago, KWhite said:

Same as. I have a folder on my laptop dedicated for K Plate Mondeo's, because I'm cool...

Well, as there are more ST24 MK2s alone than K reg Mondeos - why not!? I'm sure history will remember us 😆

[warren t claim]

6 hours ago, egg said:

Well, as there are more ST24 MK2s alone than K reg Mondeos - why not!? I'm sure history will remember us 😆

We need to remember that the Mondeo was introduced halfway through the K plate year. 

[Eyersey1234]

6 hours ago, warren t claim said:

We need to remember that the Mondeo was introduced halfway through the K plate year. 

Wasn't it about April 1993 it was launched? 

[egg]

1 hour ago, Eyersey1234 said:

Wasn't it about April 1993 it was launched? 

March I think, although some were registered as early as January as production had started in Gent before Xmas 92.

[greengartside]

Yup, earliest production month is October 1992 AFAIK. Obviously other were built for test purposes before that date.

[warren t claim]

On 28/03/2024 at 17:52, warren t claim said:

 

I had one driver who totally refused to buy a car on the weekly from me and insisting on renting despite me telling him it was dead money. He'd been with me nearly two years and as my longest serving driver he'd managed to work his way up to the top of the food chain on my rental fleet finding himself driving a Mk2 Ghia X manual hatch with full leather in metallic grey. He'd recently swapped to this Ghia X from a GLX 1.8 diesel hatch because he had his own operators licence and did airport transfers like a Poundland NorfolkNWeigh and was happy to have a 2.0 petrol over the diesel fitted in his GLX as the Ghia X had cruise contorl fitted, a feature unavailable on any Mk1/2 Mondeo. It came as no surprise that he didn't really have to pay any fuel penalty as the 1.8 Endura D diesel lump wasn't the most economical oil burner at motorway speeds. The problem started when this lad took one Manchester Airport job too many and fell asleep on the M56 whilst driving to pick up one of his clients. He woke up after the Mondeo hit the central reservation causing him to spin accross all three lanes before coming to a halt sideways covering lanes 1 and 2. He was only insured third party, as almost all drivers were back then, which happily paid out for several yards of Armco but left me with a pretty big bill for a Mondeo that was way beyond repair. 

When I chased him for the money he started to whinge stating that he'd given me something like £6000 over the last year or so which more than covers what I paid for the car. Now that's sort of true but he'd not had the Ghia X more than a couple of months. If he'd have bought the first car I rented to him off me on the weekly, a Mk2 1.8 petrol LX in Panther Black IIRC. He would now not be looking at a huge bill to replace the Mondeo that at the time was the pride of my rental fleet. Eager to avoid a bare knuckle fist fight with a 20 stone 5'5" bloke who looks like he'll drop dead of a stroke at any moment now, I agreed to rent him a metallic dark green 2.0 LX automatic Mk2 Mondeo for £185 a week. £80 rental, £55 insurance and £50 to pay me on the weekly for the crashed Ghia X. After a few months I awoke to discover the Mondeo Mk2 parked outside my flat with the keys in my letterbox. I was expecting that to be honest but what really hurt was seeing him later that week driving a settle buy 406 from the other firm I mentioned earlier. I really couldn't be arsed chasing him for anymore money.

After seeing a similar Mk2 Ghia X trundling about today a long-forgotten memory about my similar car popped into my mental history.

Rather than being sourced as a Cat C/D salvage this Mk2 came into my possession a slightly different way. 

I was presenting another Mondeo for test when a lad who I half knew who made his living supplying credit hire taxis at £80 a day to drivers who'd had a non fault accident approached me. He had the Ghia X on his fleet but had to pension it off due to the insurance companies insisting on him supplying cars less than three years old and would I be interested in buying it. He was asking £5000 for it which wasn't too bad at the time especially as it had something like eight months taxi plate left on it meaning that it'd be on my fleet the same day after the formality of transferring ownership details with the council.

After some healthy negotiation, we agreed on £4500. Despite what you might think, I didn't have £4500 just sitting around waiting to be spent on Mondeos, drugs and slappers so we struck up a deal, £1500 down and £500 a week over the next six weeks which sounds like a lot but it was just about manageable for me at the time with six cars out on hire and another three being payed off on the weekly. The three I had out to drivers buying from me allowed me £300 a week and as long as none of my rental fleet needed anything major like a clutch then I'd be OK.

What hurt was that I only had one final weeks £500 payment left when it was written off. 

 

[warren t claim]

"How did you keep a fleet of Mk1/2 Mondeos alive under hard use Warren?" is a question that maybe one or two of you might be semi curious to know the answer to.

Most fleet owners who ran the same type of car worked on the total neglect basis due to them always having a dead car and a couple of spare engines. To them, a Pound spent on servicing was a Pound wasted. If a cambelt snaps then they'd just lob in another motor the following day. To me this seemed like hard work and I'd rather keep the fleet maintained so at lest I could have a life away from the taxi trade without getting called out to recover a dead car every week. 

Although my fleet was usually split 67% petrol and 33% diesel I ran the same service schedule regardless of motive power. Every car was treated to an oil change every six weeks and unless the car had a full service history prior to my ownership it'd get a new cam belt before it was either sold or rented out. 

Contrary to what you might think I didn't do oil changes myself. At the time Kwik Fit were really competitive on oil changes, especially on my Zetec petrol  Mondeos. As everyone following this thread knows, the Zetec is a pretty fickle lump regarding oil and hates shit oil. This meant that every six weeks I'd tell the driver to get the oil changed at Kwik Fit, get a recept and I'd knock the cost of about £30 off their bill that week.

One lad who had a non metallic red 2.0LX hatch off me decided to take the piss. He clearly had a mate who worked at Kwik Fit and for a few months chose to submit receipts for oil changes that hadn't happened. One day he brought his car back to me for front pads and after I'd fitted his brakes I did my usual trick of checking the fluid levels. His oil wasn't just like treacle, but low as well. 

What this lad didn't know was that at the time Kwik Fit didn't have a drum of Ford Zetec oil on site to do Mondeo oil changes. In fact they didn't even have 5 litre containers of oil to put in the sump. What they actually did was fill the engine using 1 litre bottles of oil and this meant that there was always half a bottle left that their servicing lad would leave in the boot as a top up between oil changes. Needless to say that despite his car allegedly having an oil change two weeks prior there was no half litre of oil in the boot. When I asked him when the last time he topped the oil up he told me that he hadn't needed to and when I enquired as to the whereabouts of the half litre of Zetec top up oil he had no fucking idea what I was talking about!

[egg]

Good sleuthing. Not sure it was the most sensible trick pulled by said driver. At least he could have topped it up...

[egg]

There was a rattle from the front end of mine, luckily just the bonnet stay had snapped and the rod was rattling about (oor err), I last replaced it 8 years ago when I first got the car. Luckily I have two more in stock.

Just hammer the little stick section through to attach to the bulkhead

[egg]

Motorsport heritage innit?

[egg]

On 12/10/2023 at 16:47, egg said:

I had an old very yellowed headlight reflector

Some say,  oven cleaner can help

It can, but probably not enough to make it re-usable

I had another go at this, leaving it in the oven cleaner for longer, again more yellowing has been removed as can be seen from the tub, but still probably not enough. Just an experiment though, I have spares of these. 

 

[Popsicle]

21 minutes ago, egg said:

I had another go at this, leaving it in the oven cleaner for longer, again more yellowing has been removed as can be seen from the tub, but still probably not enough. Just an experiment though, I have spares of these. 

 

Its improving with each bath, maybe leave it in longer or a couple more goes and it will be crystal clear.

[Popsicle]

Thinking about it we used Elbow Grease Oven Cleaner, £2.19 from B&M, you put the solution/headlight lense in a bag and leave it to do its thing.

I've never used it on headlights but It did an excellent job on our glass oven door and shelves.

https://www.bmstores.co.uk/products/elbow-grease-oven-cleaning-kit-356762

[egg]

10 minutes ago, Popsicle said:

Its improving with each bath, maybe leave it in longer or a couple more goes and it will be crystal clear.

yes, but I think it's also effectively bleaching/burning the plastic and maybe actually damaging it, I think maybe try a really hot 30c day and leave in the sun - I guess it's a kind of retrobrighting like people do with vintage computing stuff.

[Popsicle]

12 minutes ago, egg said:

yes, but I think it's also effectively bleaching/burning the plastic and maybe actually damaging it, I think maybe try a really hot 30c day and leave in the sun - I guess it's a kind of retrobrighting like people do with vintage computing stuff.

Ah I thought they were glass, not plastic. Which is daft of me as its a bit too new for glass headlights.

[egg]

B'cos @Peter Cgot a build date letter for his Sierra - I thought I'd better get one for my car for its history file.

[JakeT]

Ideal for when In nine years time it can be time to apply for free tax. Fuck me, 9 years until the Mondeo can go historic.
I feel the same with my 1993 E36 mind. BMW now offer a ‘birth certificate’ for cars, but at €125 it’s a bit rich for my tastes.

[egg]

This bloke has got his 93 Mondeo out and about