The new news 24 thread

[tooSavvy]

Very true but personally I couldn't sell a car that looked like it had been dragged though a hedge backwards and was full of Sheep dog hair.

 

... I have seen a car that has gone through a hedge backwards and was surrounded by sheep >> not likely for sale tho (UPullit..mebbies)

 

TS

[AndyW201]

Aye, a lad off RR bought my previous brown 190 and it was one of the most pleasant hassle free selling experiences I've had. Plus he's had it nearly a year now, and he's done the car proud. Just the sort of new owner I could have hoped for for it. Despite being harangued by folk to 'weld the diff and drift it cos its a manual innit m8...'

Incidentally my last two 190s are about the only cars I've bought privately that have been washed and cleaned out before sale. The Astra I had was a disgrace. It was cheap but it was also full of dog hair, fossilised sweet remanants and McDonalds ketchup sachets etc. I couldnt let a car go to a buyer like that personally.

[hairnet]

trig get off the grass ffs man

[vulgalour]

I thought I had too many cars today.  Then I remembered Mr Bickle.

[dugong]

Very true but personally I couldn't sell a car that looked like it had been dragged though a hedge backwards and was full of Sheep dog hair.

 

 

I must tell the seller of my MX-3 that. Rotten Discos under the seat were pretty rank, to be fair. 

[Lord Sterling]

I thought I had too many cars today.  Then I remembered Mr Bickle.

It seems to be the norm around here to have too many cars. I thought I had too many - 7 cars, then I remembered Autoshite.

[vulgalour]

I've figured out I don't have too many cars, it's that I don't have enough money to do everything immediately.  But with more money comes more cars.  It's like some sort of perpetual motion engine.

[Inspector Morose]

I don't have enough. I like it that way. Ideal number of cars = N+1 where N= number of cars already owned.

[Sigmund Fraud]

I often think to myself that with the money I spend on old shitters, I could have actually bought a half-decent car and kept it in pristine condition.

 

But where's the fun* in that ?

[vulgalour]

What do you do when you finish a car?  What happens?

[hairnet]

[coalnotdole]

My new years resolution was to make 2015 a year with less fooked more money spent on making things presentable / improving the cosmetics. With that in mind I've bought some leather replacement seats for the GTE. The old ones are totally worn out, the seat frame on the passenger one cracked over a year ago so that was swapped over for a tan one, The mismatched interior has been annoying me ever since.

 

The new seats are aftermarket cobras (marketed as a scimitar upgrade since the 80's) They look a bit more modern than the origonals but they have the advantage of having headrests and are very comfortable to sit in. This set have never been fitted to a car having been dry stored since 1990. The previous owner paied £560 for them in 1990! They are unusual as due to a mistake at the factory the rear of the seats is leather covered rather than leathercloth.

 

Hopefully if the weather stays fine I'll get them fitted tomorrow.

[stuboy]

been watching a newish programme called turbo pickers... anyone else seen it?

http://www.discoveryuk.com/web/turbo-pickers/photos/turbo-pickers/

[Angrydicky]

While having loads of cars is undoubtedly awesome, the main problem I've found is that the more cars you have, the more your time and money has to be spread around the fleet, so maintenance and repairs get skimped on. Eventually, you get to the point where only one or two out of 5+ cars are working and reliable, in my experience anyway.

[Mr Lobster]

Loads of cars are great. So long as you have loads of spare time and spare cash to go with them I found.  I got up to 5 or something at one point and it was a PITA in the end. A couple always sat there waiting for time or money that would never come, couple of dailies and something for the weekend that got sporadic use. 

 

I'd rather stick to a number that I can keep on top of now although I am thinking we might have a slight expansion of the fleet this year....

[Craig the Princess]

Eventually, you get to the point where only one or two out of 19 cars are working and reliable, in my experience anyway.

EFA

[Mike D]

I had a day of butchery on the MX5 shell yesterday...

 

Started with this:

 

 

Then got happy with the plasma cutter and reciprocating saw...

 

 

 

 

 

And after 6 hours of noise and hacking (sorry neighbours!) I ended up with this:

 

 

Rolling MX5 running gear with a 2400mm wheelbase...

[drum]

Just saw a 59 plate fiesta lose one of its exhaust heat shields. I wonder what the youngest car to have done so is?

[Pillock]

Norris McSquirter will be right on that!!

 

What's the point of them heat shields anyway? I've binned loads off when they got rattly, never died a fiery death or had the carpet combust.

[HMC]

Rover p4 bonnets are bigger than you think, wider than the boot of a decent sized estate car, improvisation needed when I went on a parts collecting road trip to London today.......

Mr Viking looks a bit depressed after being attached to VAG shite

[Cavcraft]

Impromptu visit to a local car auction today (soz Mini Mad, it was very last minute) and if I ever suggest going there for a meet,  I'll have forgotten my Prozac. 

 

Must have watched 20-25 cars gone through all 'sold from the off' yet we reckoned maybe 2 tops had actually gone. It started off well with an 03 Laguna petrol which had a dodgy clutch and the bidding went to about £390. It started at £200 'because that's what the scrapmen will pay.'

CBA waiting for the 327,000 mile Citroen ZX diesel to go through, that was probably 'worth' £400 or something ridiculous. 

 

[Fat_Pirate]

I've got my caravan advertised on eBay ('cos no bugger here would buy it...).  It's the first thing I've ever tried to sell there, and it's getting quite a lot of interest.  I'm ignoring anybody asking stupid questions that are answered in the advert, and offers way below the asking price (it's a classified ad).  Time will tell if this policy is sensible.  

A couple of years back I sold a car to somebody who was clearly a pillock, and he crashed it within hours and caused me months of insurance aggravation (my policy was still active), so I'm trying to avoid any business with idiots from now on.  

[Bren]

£390 for a 12 year old laguna with a dodgy clutch? Somebody paid over the odds.

[Cavcraft]

£390 for a 12 year old laguna with a dodgy clutch? Somebody paid over the odds.

 

 

If someone really bought that I'll show my arse in Burton's window. I reckon the auction will have to get the builders in tomorrow, so many bids were being bounced off the walls that the place must be near collapse now.

[320touring]

If someone really bought that I'll show my arse in Burton's window. I reckon the auction will have to get the builders in tomorrow, so many bids were being bounced off the walls that the place must be near collapse now.

Did you not get a breach of the peace for that afore?

[drum]

We had blizzards on and off yesterday and I had to drive home with about an inch of snow on the road. That the A4's tyres are gubbed was demonstrated when it would spin up even in top gear, so the need to fit the newly acquired Goodyear ultragrips (at a bargainlicious £40) gained some urgency.

 

I couldn't face struggling with tyre irons this morning only to finish with unbalance tyres, so off to those Mandarin speaking kwikfit fitters I slithered.

 

 

And then off for a test drive with my new sticky rubber.

 

 

2015-01-11_03-48-20 by jboath1, on Flickr

[trigger]

You know that one car that you've always wish you bought, well mine was a Mk1 XR2 back in 1999/2000, a lad at work bought one from a garage we done bodywork for as a part exchange, I'm guessing it was cheap but i don't know what he paid for it.

 

Anyway it sat in his lock up for a while and one day he offered it to me, it was a 1 owner 40000 mile car in black and mint, he only wanted £500 for it but when i rang about insuring it i think it was something like £1000+ and i couldn't afford it, apparently he ended up selling it to a bad for £1200-1400.

 

Imagine my surprise when i see it pop up on KGF's facebook page tonight!.

 

http://retrorides.proboards.com/thread/173418/immaculate-ford-fiesta-65040-miles

 

Gutted!, would you believe that they had it up for £7495 ono!. Bloody hell!

[stuboy]

some may remember front bumper damage..

sourced some plastic to drill and screw into..

using countersunk stainless steel screws.. just need some p38 and paint..

till then mondeo standard issue repair tape

[Ghosty]

If someone really bought that I'll show my arse in Burton's window. I reckon the auction will have to get the builders in tomorrow, so many bids were being bounced off the walls that the place must be near collapse now.

 

How do you know where I live, and more importantly which window mine is?!

[wuvvum]

I spent most of this afternoon out in the wind fettling shite.  First job was to do something about the dampness in the Golf - I'd lifted the carpet in the rear footwell last weekend, pulled out the soggy soundproofing mat and unblocked the rubber drain bung, which had helped, but the front carpet was still a bit damp.  So I backed the Volvo out of the driveway and then wandered down to the car park to drive the Golf up to the house.

 

Except it wouldn't start.  It wasn't even trying.  Which was odd as I had it running yesterday evening and it was fine.  After much faffing about with Easystart and pulling out one of the plugs to see if it was sparking (it wasn't), I ascertained that the car had immobiised itself.  So I walked back to the house to grab the remote fob.  Which did absolutely no good at all.  The little LED lit up so I knew the fob itself was working, but the car wasn't responding.  In the end, out of desperation, I tried the old trick of disconnecting the battery for five minutes, and bugger me it worked!  The immobiliser recognised the fob and the car fired straight up.  No idea what had happened, but it's been fine since. 

 

A similar procedure with the front footwell carpet followed (removal of soundproofing, unblocking of drain bung); I'd also run an extension lead out and plugged in a fan heater pointing at the driver's seat, which was somewhat damp (the heated seat works on the passenger side so that had dried itself out).  Now that I've (fingers crossed) sealed all the gaps where water could get in, hopefully it'll stay dry in there from now on.

 

Next job was to look at the turbo hoses on the Mondeo, and what a bastard of a job that was.  The top hose came off fine - that had a tiny split in it, but not enough to make the car lose all its boost.  So the next hose down had to come out - this looked the most likely culprit anyway as it was quite oily.  Problem was the jubilee clips were almost impossible to get to due to the angle they'd been put on at.  I had to force my hand deep into the engine bay (taking several layers of skin off my forearms in the process) and painstakingly undo the screw 1/12 of a turn at a time with a 6mm ring spanner.  I got there in the end though, after much swearing and several fishing expeditions to retrieve the spanner from wherever I'd dropped it to this time, and sure enough the underside of the pipe was split wide open.  That'll be where the boost was going then.  New pipe ordered off eBay (£17.50 posted so not too bad) - it should be here by next weekend so weather permitting I'll wang it on and hopefully get some performance back.  I'll repair the little split in the top pipe with self-amalgamating tape for now.

 

Once that was done I fitted a set of air horns to the Rover of Doom.  No particular reason, I just fancied an angrier-sounding horn.  I've kept the original two windtone horns, so it now has a quad-tone (and quite loud) horn.  The wiring was easy enough, but fitting the horns was a pain - the hose they came with was such poor quality that if everything wasn't lined up right it would kink and stop the air getting through.  I got there in the end though - although not without the air horns going off at random for a bit, which I eventually realised was the relay going haywire as I hadn't tightened the earth connection up properly.

 

Next Sunday's jobs are to fix the Mondeo, fit an air horn to the van (which really does need it - the current horn is pathetic), and then have another bash at getting the Vel Satis' climate control unit out of the dash.  The fun never stops...