The new news 24 thread

[Pete-M]

Shite or not, it sold in less than an hour.

[greengartside]

Well, after much worry and stress, I seem to have stuck GOLD.....

 

 

Local to me, it's a '93 Carina-E in 2.0 GLi mid-range shite spec. Only 88k from new as well. Gonna have a look tomorrow after work and maybe lay down a deposit on this barge......

[trigger]

What happened to the Focus?

[greengartside]

It's pretty much dead, tax and M.o.T are up and I'm pretty fed up with spending money on it now. SWMBO hates it too so that made my mind up it's best for frag feed!

[Cavcraft]

I'm at that point again where having three cars and could do with getting rid of one. Trouble is I love the hatchback too much to sell it, the estate is mega useful as a sort of van for picking up bikes and the 406 I want to keep as we're still pondering buying a caravan.

[skattrd]

The bora is fixed (I think/hope)

I replaced the N75 valve yesterday outside the post office. The turbo was woking again but there was an occasional stutter/hesitation. I took it round to the garage and plugged it in to a computer, which said air flow meter. I popped in to GSF this morning, picked up a new AFM (£30) then went back to the garage. I fitted the new AFM, chnaged the fuel filter and blocked off the EGR for good measure. Big clouds of black smoke and powah are now back ... yay! I hate the boring a little less.

[vulgalour]

I saw a car that I am probably purchasing today.  It's not my usual fare and has had a bit of barrying but nothing a wheel swap and my usual deep clean routine can't resolve.  It's very solid, on the face of things, certainly much more so than the 213 I'll probably be dropping now.  Tomorrow/Monday I'm off to hear the prospective new car running and have a better poke around, but it looks moderately unmessed with under the bonnet.  What has surprised me, though, is how good a fit for me the Mk1 Golf Cabriolet appears to be and this one looks like it could well be worth a punt at the price, even though it ticks pretty much none of my requirement boxes.

[Micrashed]

Spotted this today whilst feeding the tribe at the local Unlucky Fried Chicken which surprised me by the fact it seems very un-fucked-about with

Then after watching Dispicable Me 2 we swung by the local Fraud delership where there was a bouncy castle for the kids to try and break  limb on... And I discovered where all the Mk2 Fiestas are hiding....

Also discovered that the Fraud KA feels incredibly claustrophobic and only has 4 actual seats and fuckall visibility, the Fraud Fiesta feels only marginally less claustrophobic  and in fact the smallest Fraud that has decent visibility and feels OK space wise inside is the B Max.... Which I cant afford anyway.

Whereas the Mk2 above has bags of space inside and bags of visibility.

 

 

Also discovered these for sale...

[wuvvum]

I've had another day of mixed success on the shite-fixing front.  I replaced the fanbelt on the Rover 400 - that actually turned out to be a piece of piss to do, and took all of about 40 minutes - would have taken less but I had to get the fugging undertray off the car before I could get to the crank pulley.  Needless to say the 'tray won't be going back on again.

 

Then I decided to attempt to fit the new silencer to the LNA.  This didn't begin well as the car (which had been sat for several weeks since the old silencer fell off) refused to start - this was eventually diagnosed as lack of fuel reaching the engine, so after a bit of pissing around I ended up having to prime the fuel pump by shoving a long bit of fuel pipe on the outlet and sucking - this did the job, but I got a gobful of pez for my trouble.  The attempt to replace the silencer was thwarted fairly early on as I failed to get the old broken bit of exhaust to disengage from the middle section, despite the best efforts of my lump hammer and big f*ck off adjustable pliers.  I've saturated the join in penetrating spray and will have another go tomorrow - if that fails I'll have to take it to a proper garage with proper tools and pay them to do it.

 

The Carina E failed its test this morning due to the blowing exhaust, which I was expecting.  Interestingly the tester didn't actually fail it on the blow itself, but the blow was confusing the Lambda sensor so the Lambda reading was out.  The car didn't fail on anything else, and the rest of the emissions readings were way below the limits.  Unfortunately where the exhaust is blowing is around the weld where the heat shield is welded to the pipe, which makes it a complete bastard to get at.  My uncle got around it in the past by shoving large amounts of Gun Gum down the gap.  I spent a fun half hour or so on my back under the car scraping the old gun gum out (this at least enabled me to pinpoint exactly where the blow is coming from); tomorrow, weather permitting, I'll drop the exhaust down to improve access and see if I can stop the blow.  I'd rather not have to buy a new exhaust as it's one section from the cat backwards, which makes it more expensive to buy and also a bit of an awkward bugger to fit.  We shall see.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Eight grand for the six on the right, BARGAIN. 

[Sigmund Fraud]

Eight grand for the six on the right, BARGAIN. 

 

Indeed, though I suspect that in a couple of years it will be closer to £800 (and then I'll buy one !).

[Mr Lobster]

Wonder if its the same woman running the cafe at EH Ford there? She used to do some cracking food when I worked there - massive bacon / sausage / egg butties and superb roast dinners. All that food did rather stop much work being done in an afternoon though which is perhaps why I left after about six months.

[cort16]

Although I was looking at the Cavalier I went to see an Audi A8 today (very similar I know). It was the later facelift (51 plate) of the original model and a 2.8 Quattro, which they only made in the later models. It wasn't that expensive but it had an odd wheel wobble and needed new discs and pads all round. Also the 2.8 with 4wd is pretty bloody slow. I ended up passing as I could sniff a big bill looming so went home to rub down my saab (not a euphemism).

[cobblers]

So I turned the "occasional drip" from the derv pump on the golf into the fuggin exxon valdez with my brief veg exploits. I got a new (not new) pump off ebay for a oner, and by a series of coincidences I sold the old leaky one for £60 at the exact time the new one arrived. 

 

While swapping the wiring over with the pump off, two of the 4 glowplugs snapped their heads off and were an absolute nightmare to remove, these were the two that are really hard to get at behind the pump so I was so glad to have good access. They had obviously not been changed for ages as they were different to the two accessible ones.Went to Halfords for a new set of glow plugs at 7:50pm on Friday night, and they actually had them in stock which was a surprise. £39.99 the set was no surprise, but I dug my trade card out (that expired in 2007) and they cost  Ã‚£9.43 or something like that which took the sting out of it.

 

There's apparently all kinds of tools needed to set the timing right, I'd planned to time it up so it just runs and then drive it to my mates garage and get him to time it proper. First try it would barely run and smoked the entire street out so I put a load more advance on and it started and ran perfect. It's faster than it ever was (which is an abuse of the word fast really, it's still anything but fast) and also starts a lot more easily. This could be down to the glow plugs though, as even when it's warm VW are smart and run them for a bit when you open the drivers door to get in - sneaky!

 

Currently umming and aahing about putting veg back in it. I dunno if I CBA.

[holbeck]

I must have shite-ism quite bad. I just won a steel wheel and brand new tyre for an R8 on flea-bay.

 

The only problem being, I don't have an R8. I do however have a shed.

[Cavcraft]

Changed the oil and filter on the hatch this afters. I sort of get the feeling I will regret this, but I pus a drop of old engine into the fuel tank. I also added a little petrol which seemed to be struggling to get past the oil in the filler neck. 

 

However to counter that act of stupidity I sprayed one of the front wheels a 'stand out' colour. Naturally I CBA masking it off properly so it actually looks worse then I could have imagined.

[Rocket88]

I saw a car that I am probably purchasing today.  It's not my usual fare and has had a bit of barrying but nothing a wheel swap and my usual deep clean routine can't resolve.  It's very solid, on the face of things, certainly much more so than the 213 I'll probably be dropping now.  Tomorrow/Monday I'm off to hear the prospective new car running and have a better poke around, but it looks moderately unmessed with under the bonnet.  What has surprised me, though, is how good a fit for me the Mk1 Golf Cabriolet appears to be and this one looks like it could well be worth a punt at the price, even though it ticks pretty much none of my requirement boxes.

Brakes will be crap, and if it's got a heavy clutch, check the cable isn't munching it's way through the bulkhead. These are never going to be as cheap as they are now................

[Lankytim]

Changed the oil and filter on the hatch this afters. I sort of get the feeling I will regret this, but I pus a drop of old engine into the fuel tank.

 

I stuck a sump full of old engine oil into the works 05 reg VW passat, along with the 4 litres or so of electric heater oil and a splash of petrol. No smoke, runs fine. Not sure I'd want to make a habit of it though.

[Angrydicky]

Jon, I'd love to hear about the resto of your Amazon.

[Cavcraft]

Without wishing to sound sycophantic, Jon's Amazon is MEGA. I hope that even if you could afford it you wouldn't respray it mate, it looks fine as it is.

[skattrd]

I've not seen the aforementioned Amazon (we need pics) but I do think 60's & 70's Saabs & Volvo's look good in primer/oxide.

I still want a shagged looking Saab 95/6 wagon.

[Cavcraft]

http://m.flickr.com/photos/64497997@N04/9122402557/

[dollywobbler]

Hmmm. With all these modifications and improvements, I'm not sure I'll be able to beat you in the 2CV if we ever indulge in track time again! Would be good to see it on the road again. Amazons are fabulous.

 

Exciting news! The Discovery now has the correct 13" rear wiper. I no longer have feelings of inadequacy. Amazing what a difference two inches can make...

[Rocket88]

Recently, a colleague at work asked my advise about buying a new brat carrier. I found him a mint, low mileage 2003 Alhambra TDI, 60k miles, 2 cambelt changes, reams of service history, lovely inside and out. His, if he wanted it, £2k. Wasn't interested, as he'd found a 2005 VW Touran tdi, 55k miles, black with black leather for £5k. I advised him to check the service history, but he didn't bother, and bought it anyway. Yesterday, the cambelt snapped....................................

[Cavcraft]

I think the Allhellbra will have a FAG TDi engine anyhow. Pretty sure that gang (Sharan/GalaxySeat) all had the same engine.

[Rocket88]

Alhambra has the bombproof 1.9 tdi, this Touran has the 2.0 diesel, which isn't as reliable....as he's just found out......] although that cambelt was due for changing last year on a "time" basis, especially over here, local driving conditions are hard on cambelts.

[Rocket88]

AAZ instead of PD? The latter are fucking terrible.

It's not a PD, as far as I can gather. Snapped with him and his entire brood on board, his other half was not amused, especially as they've just spunked five large on the thing with Black Horse finance........... 

[Cavcraft]

Yeah I meant Galaxy/Alhembra/ were same motor, the Touran being a later and stand alone model. Also wasn't the AAZ a much earlier engine so Touran will be PD?

[cort16]

I think the 1.9 and 2.0 are both PD's it's just VW made a big thing about it on the 1.9 as it was one of the first to do that high pressure common rail pish.

The 2.0 seem to be distinctly more unreliable but I think that's mainly to do with DMF issues. My old A6 had the 2.0 TDi with 170bhp and I felt like it had all the bad points of a diesel with none of the good points (no torque).

My old 130 PD TDi 1.9 A4 always felt like it could pull a house down. I bet next to each other the A6 would muller it but the A6 never felt quick.

 

The timing belts just one of those things. I assumed that A4 had, had the belt done given the mileage on it when I bought it and I strung it out to 92k until my nerves gave way. The guy who changed it said it was so worn it was starting for fray. I was probably about 3 weeks from valveageddon.

[dollywobbler]

As I seem to be in 'service' mode, thought I'd better chuck some oil and a filter at the BX - as I've been meaning to do it since, er, March...

 

Took it for a spin. Two thing lets that car down - the clutch and the soot. It's got a really stiff action, which suggests either a duff cable and/or pivot, and it judders a fair bit, which is probably down to oil-soaked mountings. The clouds of soot are just silly. 

 

I'm actually of a mind to try and get it properly sorted. I need to find out why it leaks so much oil, which may be related to the boost issue. Why the change of heart? Because in my opinion, there's very little to match a BX in terms of comfort AND handling. Naturally, there are cars that do both better, but I don't think there are many that do both so well.

 

Now it has new spheres, it glides like a Rolls-Royce but you can still punt it into a bend at a good lick. It has responsive steering and if you keep your speed up, you can stay in fifth and not worry about going anywhere near the clutch.

 

The ride spoils you. Jump into something modern and you notice just how jiggly the ride can be, even on smooth tarmac. Its only failing is badly broken road surfaces, where it bangs around a bit (similar to the 2CV). 

 

Perhaps I'm not ready to give up the world of BXs just yet.