Tidy cars hiding grot

[John F]

Following a recent thread containing an early Range Rover, I decided to have a look at Rangies on ebay.

 

I found this cosmetically tidy example:

 

 

 

Looks very straight, no?

 

 

 

It's top spec as well, a soft-dash Vogue SE:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Range-Rover-Classic-Vogue-Tdi-Se-Soft-dash-Manual-300tdi-Rare-1994/162792955225?hash=item25e7375d59:g:3wgAAOSwYxBaKVSE

 

But it's hiding its rot well... here's its last MOT fail sheet.

 

MOT history

Date tested 6 December 2017 Fail

Mileage 176,676 miles

MOT test number 9839 2779 5616

Test location unavailable until further notice

Reason(s) for failure

• Brake performance not tested due to condition of vehicle (3.7.A.1)
• Nearside Rear brake disc contaminated by oil (3.5.1h)
• Parking brake lever has no reserve travel (3.1.6b)
• Nearside Registration plate lamp shows direct white light to the rear (1.1.C.1f)
• Offside Rear Outer passengers seat cannot be secured in the upright position. (6.2.A.2)
• Offside Front Shock absorber insecure due to corrosion (2.7.2b) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Shock absorber has a serious fluid leak (2.7.3)
• Nearside Rear Shock absorber has an excessively worn bush (2.7.4)
• Offside Front Shock absorber has an excessively worn bush (2.7.4)
• Offside Rear Trailing arm attachment bracket/mounting insecure (2.4.G.1) Dangerous
• Offside Front Coil spring mounting corroded and seriously weakened (2.4.C.3c) Dangerous
• Steering box has a significant oil leak (2.2.D.2e)
• Headlamp aim beam image obviously incorrect both (1.8.A.1b)
• Nearside Rear Electrical wiring insecure headlamp adjusting device (1.9.2a)
• Nearside Front Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Front Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Nearside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings floor (6.1.B.2)
• Nearside Front Front wheel bearing has excessive play (2.5.A.3c) Dangerous
• Offside Front Front wheel bearing has excessive play (2.5.A.3c) Dangerous
• Battery insecure and both terminals (1.9.1)

Advisory notice item(s)

• Offside Rear tyre worn on inner edge and unevenly
• Nearside Rear tyre worn unevenly
• major oil leak from engine
• various chassis areas corroded
• various floor areas corroded

 

[alcyonecorporation]

Fuck me, I'm stunned. 

A Range Rover with rust. 

I am astonished. I literally cannot believe it. 

[pauldoubleyou]

I had one of those for ten minutes and the only rot on it was a hole in the passenger wheel arch.

 

sold it for £100 as the v8 was knackered

[DodgeRover]

That fail sheet wouldn't put me off to be honest, I would rather have a crawl round and poke underneath myself before condemning it

 

Also you can't get much easier to fix really...

[bezzabsa]

cills, inner & outer, boot floor, inner wings...rear crossmember.....body mounts....anything else is usually ok..

[John F]

Hmmm there's a lot of work there and it all takes time.

 

TBH if I had the time & space I'd take it on, the Rangie looks good & would only increase in value.

[Talbot]

• Parking brake lever has no reserve travel (3.1.6b)

Given the picture of where the handbrake is, that's no surprise!!

[sierraman]

Saxos, 106s and Corsas can be rotten as fuck and look ok on top, usually round the spring hangers and inner wings.

 

A lot of French stuff with a heavy coat of Stonechip on the sills hides it well, beneath the shiny looking sills the metal is crusty.

 

Ditto X Types under the sill covers

[Pillock]

Aaah but under the sill covers means unable to inspect. Can't remove bits.

 

I'm still annoyed a garage failed my Astra GTE on sill rot, they took the covers off to find it. Admittedly there was very little sill left, but the inhumanity of it I will never forget.

[Squirrel2]

Didn't the 'Crying Pumpkin' Range Rover have a fail sheet as long as this? On similar corrosion points as well.

 

The body doesn't show the extent of the crusty chassis beneath.

 

Squirrel2

[Tamworthbay]

My mate had a disco that looked presentable, he loved it so much he looked at having ‘a couple of jobs done’ where it turned out that it was pretty much only the paint holding it together. He then bought a Range Rover that cost him £8k in repairs in a year. Then he flogged and bought a Volvo.

[BavarianRetro]

These are aluminium panels on a steel skeleton. The panels only corrode where they mate with the steel skeleton. That's not a terminal MoT fail for a Range Rover, by any stretch of the imagination.

[John F]

Yep, I know.

 

The point I was making was that almost-pristine looking cars can need lots of work.

[catsinthewelder]

I did a shed load of welding on our early Disco for the last MOT it had.  It was all really easy though as the bits that rust are all flat and hidden away so the ugly welds last seen on hidden bits of Vulg's 1100 can be left to show the tester that it is a continuous weld.

 

Just need to find out if the rear crossmember is going to be within my limited abilities.

[John F]

catsinthewelder, on 11 Dec 2017 - 6:25 PM, said:

I did a shed load of welding on our early Disco for the last MOT it had.  It was all really easy though as the bits that rust are all flat and hidden away so the ugly welds last seen on hidden bits of Vulg's 1100 can be left to show the tester that it is a continuous weld.

 

Just need to find out if the rear crossmember is going to be within my limited abilities.

 

I did the crossmember on my 300 TDi

 

 

 

 

It's a tricky part to reverse-engineer out of scrap (as I discovered), it took 25 different pieces of metal to fabricate, but entire repair sections are apparently available.

[Matt]

Saxos, 106s and Corsas can be rotten as fuck and look ok on top

 

Swifts too; right where the back of the front wheel arch joins the floor is three layers of steel, moister gets between the top two layers and by the time you can see it from the bottom the top layer is fucked. Could be worse, North American models dissolve to the point where the front control arms can become detached from the body (again rusting from the inside first so by the time you see it it's really bad).

[Zelandeth]

I was looking at a Cherokee like this a year or so back.  Was absolutely spotless everywhere visible, Limited SE spec, low miles and no prior fails.  The seller was insisting that he give me it with a full year's test.

 

Got a very apologetic phone call when I was half way there to look at it saying it had failed the MOT "catastrophically" and that the seats were basically holding the floors together and the carpets were holding the sills to the body.

[sierraman]

Swifts too; right where the back of the front wheel arch joins the floor is three layers of steel, moister gets between the top two layers and by the time you can see it from the bottom the top layer is fucked. Could be worse, North American models dissolve to the point where the front control arms can become detached from the body (again rusting from the inside first so by the time you see it it's really bad).

Yes a mid 2000s model I used to work on occasionally looked like it had been at sea underneath.

[Partridge]

Accord MK6s are good at hiding it. Mine looked quite minty (apart from the odd giffer mark) but it was rotten as buggery in certain places underneath. I dread to think what was/is hiding under the plastic sill covers.

 

**COUGH COUGH** X-Type **COUGH COUGH**

[John F]

Accord MK6s are good at hiding it. Mine looked quite minty (apart from the odd giffer mark) but it was rotten as buggery in certain places underneath. I dread to think what was/is hiding under the plastic sill covers.

 

**COUGH COUGH** X-Type **COUGH COUGH**

 

Partridge! You're back.

 

Welcome home, cock-drawer.

[Junkman]

When was the last time any of you lot looked at a Rover P6?

Or bought an R16 with a valid German TÜV, while we are at it?

[John F]

Junkman, on 12 Dec 2017 - 01:18 AM, said:

When was the last time any of you lot looked at a Rover P6?

Or bought an R16 with a valid German TÜV, while we are at it?

 

The last thing I bought with German TÜV was a 1979 Audi 80, with 6 months' TÜV and a totally borked nsf wheel bearing, for £20

 

It was a while ago...

[Junkman]

Following a recent thread containing an early Range Rover, I decided to have a look at Rangies on ebay.

 

I found this cosmetically tidy example:

 

 

 

Looks very straight, no?

 

 

 

It's top spec as well, a soft-dash Vogue SE:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Range-Rover-Classic-Vogue-Tdi-Se-Soft-dash-Manual-300tdi-Rare-1994/162792955225?hash=item25e7375d59:g:3wgAAOSwYxBaKVSE

 

But it's hiding its rot well... here's its last MOT fail sheet.

 

MOT history

Date tested 6 December 2017 Fail

Mileage 176,676 miles

MOT test number 9839 2779 5616

Test location unavailable until further notice

Reason(s) for failure

• Brake performance not tested due to condition of vehicle (3.7.A.1)
• Nearside Rear brake disc contaminated by oil (3.5.1h)
• Parking brake lever has no reserve travel (3.1.6b)
• Nearside Registration plate lamp shows direct white light to the rear (1.1.C.1f)
• Offside Rear Outer passengers seat cannot be secured in the upright position. (6.2.A.2)
• Offside Front Shock absorber insecure due to corrosion (2.7.2b) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Shock absorber has a serious fluid leak (2.7.3)
• Nearside Rear Shock absorber has an excessively worn bush (2.7.4)
• Offside Front Shock absorber has an excessively worn bush (2.7.4)
• Offside Rear Trailing arm attachment bracket/mounting insecure (2.4.G.1) Dangerous
• Offside Front Coil spring mounting corroded and seriously weakened (2.4.C.3c) Dangerous
• Steering box has a significant oil leak (2.2.D.2e)
• Headlamp aim beam image obviously incorrect both (1.8.A.1b)
• Nearside Rear Electrical wiring insecure headlamp adjusting device (1.9.2a)
• Nearside Front Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Front Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Nearside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings floor (6.1.B.2)
• Nearside Front Front wheel bearing has excessive play (2.5.A.3c) Dangerous
• Offside Front Front wheel bearing has excessive play (2.5.A.3c) Dangerous
• Battery insecure and both terminals (1.9.1)

Advisory notice item(s)

• Offside Rear tyre worn on inner edge and unevenly
• Nearside Rear tyre worn unevenly
• major oil leak from engine
• various chassis areas corroded
• various floor areas corroded

 

 

It's fucked.

[John F]

Oh yes, it's probably several hundred hours' welding fucked, but doesn't it look nice?

[Junkman]

It's beautiful.

 

GIB, ffs!

[Clanger]

^^^ Yeah.  What he said.  If you can nail your disco back together then this should be a piece of piss...

[dieselassist]

Looveley these Early/80's/Early 90s rangie's................ "wud  spend lotsa sweaty hours spunking hot metal MIG wire jizz up its underbits" ...."its my own life to ruin like this unproductively"  etc etc

[leanycan]

Following a recent thread containing an early Range Rover, I decided to have a look at Rangies on ebay.

 

I found this cosmetically tidy example:

 

 

 

Looks very straight, no?

 

 

 

It's top spec as well, a soft-dash Vogue SE:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Range-Rover-Classic-Vogue-Tdi-Se-Soft-dash-Manual-300tdi-Rare-1994/162792955225?hash=item25e7375d59:g:3wgAAOSwYxBaKVSE

 

But it's hiding its rot well... here's its last MOT fail sheet.

 

MOT history

Date tested 6 December 2017 Fail

Mileage 176,676 miles

MOT test number 9839 2779 5616

Test location unavailable until further notice

Reason(s) for failure

• Brake performance not tested due to condition of vehicle (3.7.A.1)
• Nearside Rear brake disc contaminated by oil (3.5.1h)
• Parking brake lever has no reserve travel (3.1.6b)
• Nearside Registration plate lamp shows direct white light to the rear (1.1.C.1f)
• Offside Rear Outer passengers seat cannot be secured in the upright position. (6.2.A.2)
• Offside Front Shock absorber insecure due to corrosion (2.7.2b) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Shock absorber has a serious fluid leak (2.7.3)
• Nearside Rear Shock absorber has an excessively worn bush (2.7.4)
• Offside Front Shock absorber has an excessively worn bush (2.7.4)
• Offside Rear Trailing arm attachment bracket/mounting insecure (2.4.G.1) Dangerous
• Offside Front Coil spring mounting corroded and seriously weakened (2.4.C.3c) Dangerous
• Steering box has a significant oil leak (2.2.D.2e)
• Headlamp aim beam image obviously incorrect both (1.8.A.1b)
• Nearside Rear Electrical wiring insecure headlamp adjusting device (1.9.2a)
• Nearside Front Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Front Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Nearside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings (6.1.B.2) Dangerous
• Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings floor (6.1.B.2)
• Nearside Front Front wheel bearing has excessive play (2.5.A.3c) Dangerous
• Offside Front Front wheel bearing has excessive play (2.5.A.3c) Dangerous
• Battery insecure and both terminals (1.9.1)

Advisory notice item(s)

• Offside Rear tyre worn on inner edge and unevenly
• Nearside Rear tyre worn unevenly
• major oil leak from engine
• various chassis areas corroded
• various floor areas corroded

 

 

I wouldn't be surprised my if my Micra had turned out like this prior to my dad doing an absolute ton of work to it and yet it may still fail it's MOT. 

[andy18s]

Oh yes, it's probably several hundred hours' welding fucked, but doesn't it look nice?

Oh it's nice,but 2k nice when you know it's problems?

[Talbot]

Oh it's nice,but 2k nice when you know it's problems?

Probably yes, as if it's very tidy with a fresh MoT it could easily be £5k nice to the right person.