JT’s fleet: Range Rover’s burst it’s bag

[J-T]

I only tried the corner where I’m getting the leak, I just poured it directly down that drain and it did run out from the wheelarch/end of the sill. If the sunroof drains to the same point as the inner wing, behind the small arch liner in the wheelarch, the drain was blocked solid but I only found this recently and I can’t remember if I unblocked it before or after pouring the water.

Dead good at diagnosing faults, I am!

[J-T]

Minor update...

I took the front headlining panel off the other day to reveal the front sunroof drains. It had rotted there, but someone’s already been at it and that area’s definitely watertight. I then tried pouring water down the gutter on the A pillar from the top of the roof, whilst sat inside the car. I could see water dripping down the bottom of the A pillar inside so I think this is the leak. It has a trim on it with a seal underneath, secured by 3 screws. I figured I’d take this off and apply sealant underneath. I got one screw out and thought I’d freed off the other (rusty) two but I’ve just snapped the little plastic captive threads holding them in. I’ve managed to find some of these online so I’ll get that off, have another sealing sesh and fingers crossed, that’ll be that. Oh, I’m still gonna have to go round the windscreen seal as well, I’m just waiting for dry weather.

Parts has come!

I’ll be doing bits as and when. Remember these?

Well I’ve done one side

To get them off, you have to prise up the chrome trim, then they are held on by the same clips. Luckily, because proper Mercedes, the clips are metal jobbies rather than the usual plastic shite so all survived and were reused. The hardest bit was extracting the clips from the old seals as they have a metal strip running through them which had corroded to around 5x it’s original width. The new ones didn’t fit particularly well, I knew I’d have to trim down the rear ones as I bought 4 front ones but even the fronts needed shortening with the dremel, but I can’t really moan for what they cost!

Oil level was low so I threw in a litre or so of ATF I had knocking about. I’ll leave it in a week or so then change it as a pikey engine flush.

Ive been unable to decide whether it has timing chain rattle or it’s the exhaust manifold leaking. Under load it makes a loud rattle/ticking noise from the engine which fades off once warm and doesn’t really do it at all at idle. I’m now fairly convinced it’s the manifold, as with the oil cap off you can both reach and see the chain and it doesn’t feel slack, you can’t lift it off the sprocket at all and after a proper listen today it doesn’t sound like it’s from the front of the engine. I’m guessing whoever fitted the new down pipe has managed to dislodge the manifold as there’s black stuff smeared around the port closest to the down pipe which looks to be a dire attempt to make it seal. I think I’m gonna start soaking the bolts in plusgas now in preparation as they clearly haven’t been off in a long while! Hopefully it’s not cracked, I certainly can’t see one whilst it’s on the car anyway.

[J-T]

Bit more done today.

Oil & filter change. The old stuff was black and the filter didn’t look too clever 

I must say I really am enjoying working on this thing, it’s as if the manufacturer considered that maintenance may need to carried out. Case in point, oil filter access...Germanic and logical 

Versus what I’m used to...Italian, just fucking shove it in that gap there...yes it’ll fit.

Got the transmission fluid changed. You know how most autos retain most of the fluid in the torque converter, meaning you need to drop the pan about 3 times for a complete change? We’ll enter stage left, a drain plug, accessible by a little service hatch in the torque converter. Simply turn the engine via the crank pulley to reveal 

The ATF didn’t seem that bad once it was out. Someone had re-used the transmission pan gasket last time and stuck a load of sealant underneath it to try and make it work (it didn’t) so most time was spent scraping that off. Pan was relatively clean 

Then it was re-filled via the dipstick tube. I also got the air filter & spark plugs changed. The air filter must have been proper clogged because it’s noticeably more sprightly now.

I’ve had a closer look at the exhaust manifold. This is the state of me nutz 

I mean I’ve seen worse but I’m not filled with enthusiasm at the thought of shifting them. Current thoughts are a blowtorch and get some of those bolt grips that grab harder as you undo them. I’m open to further suggestions, I’ve never removed an exhaust manifold before

[Peter C]

My nuts looked pretty much the same and all came off easily enough although I did give them multiple squirts of penetrating fluid before the main event.

Good luck!

[J-T]

I decided to have a go at tackling this manifold job, gulp. I thought I’d do it at a leisurely pace over 2 days so I didn’t stress myself the fuck out...

I bought new studs and nuts in preparation and a set of nut extractors. I was fairly dubious about the latter but I’d have really struggled without them and can see them becoming a favoured weapon in the old arsenal so wud rekkomend. I first set about heating me nutz with a blow torch, which generated a highly *amusing incident whereby I set the fucking thing on fire. Turns out it’s not a good idea to lather everything in Plusgas and then apply an open flame. Who knew ??‍♂️. I was actually rather lucky as there’s enough oil on that engine block to make OPEC do a stocktake, so I put the blowtorch away after that!

I somewhat sensibly changed tack and gently tried a  12mm ratcheting spanner, which immediately rounded it. So I tried the 12mm extractor which didnt break the rust seal on the nut but gripped it so hard that it just wound the stud out of the head. It did that  for about 6 of the 8 and a couple stayed in. This took a while as the bottom nuts are a bit tricky to access and needed various combinations of spanners, extractors etc. 
 

Got it off eventually but I couldn’t fully remove 2 of the studs from the manifold as the nut was stuck on and the casting didn’t allow enough room to extract them. Wasn’t too bothered as I had new studs so I could just cut these. This was the gasket that was leaking 

It was flat as a pancake and very clearly leaking. I then began to build it back up and realised my new studs were too short by about 5mm as the internet had lied to me. Sigh...that meant salvaging the old ones, which didn’t seem in a bad way but most of them had a nut stuck to them. I didn’t have a nut splitter so had to get a bit creative 

I actually got quite good at it by the 4th/5th one! System was, hold the stud with mole grips, cut a slit in each side of the nut until you could just see the threads, then lay it on the brick and twat it with a hammer and cold chisel until the nut broke off. I am genuinely proud to say, I managed to salvage them all. Even those two on the car that wouldn’t come out of the manifold. I had to do those in situ as I didn’t wanna remove the manifold from the down pipe and risk another leak, which was tricky as one was underneath, but I got there eventually.

Unfortunately it seems that gasket wasn’t sealing because the face of the manifold on that port has sort of eroded away 

You can see at the top of the port above, when you compare it to a “good” one below 

Annoying as that left very little chance of the new gasket sealing either. Then I remembered I had this in the shed 

So I got it all built back up, using the old studs with new nutz and gaskets and applied a smear of that stuff between the face of the problem port on the manifold and the gasket and tightened everything up

I started it up and...NO MORE NOISE!!! It only fupping worked. Now I’m not very hopeful that it will stay sealed, I’m 99% sure that as soon as I start razzing about in it, it’ll start blowing again as that stuff is meant for sealing holes back boxes and I don’t think it’ll stand the temperatures at the manifold. To fix it, I think I’m gonna have to get the face of the manifold skimmed. But for now I’ll celebrate a battle win, if not the war! And at least I know it’ll come apart next time.

Spurred on by that little victory, I changed out the rocker cover gasket as the old one seems to have been leaking for about two decades. Thankfully this was much easier. It gave me my first look at the valve train 

Grim! The oil in there is 1 week old and fully blackened again. I reckon it’s gonna need about 3 changes in quick succession to get it any better. It’s a bit sludgy in the crevices, I’ve heard putting oil formulated for diesels in is good at cleaning this, so I might try that next. I don’t fancy running engine flush through it in case it clogs the pickup or something. The rocker cover wasn’t much better 

So I gave that a clean before it went back on 

Need to do the rest of the block now. And change the coolant. And replace the driveshaft boots. And change the diff oil. And change the fuel filter and dodgy lines. And...

[J-T]

Coolant change and flush this morning. I was expecting worse than what came out 

All went smoothly apart from initially forgetting to reinstate  the drain plug in the block before filling up and wondering why I could hear trickling. DOH! I also gingerly tried the bolts on the thermostat housing but they all came out no bother, so I swapped the stat as well. All bled up and it sits dead on 90 now, where it used to waver about a bit.

The tailgate must have had a dent in it at some point which has been repaired with filler, that’s now cracked. I dunno why, when you consider the overall state of the thing but this kept bugging me 

Then I remembered seeing something stuffed in the side compartment of the boot that may work, although it was clearly ancient and had some mega creases in it so I wasn’t optimistic but guess what

There we go. A period reflection of continental sojourns past. I can’t actually recall seeing one of those GB stickers for ages!

[J-T]

Forgot to say in that last update, I changed all the coolant hoses as well for some Autodoc specials. 
 

I’ve had an annoying day today. Of my original list, all that’s left to do is change the oil in the diff, reseal the diff cover, replace the driveshaft boots and deal with the perished fuel hoses around the pump/filter oh, and change the filter. All stuff at the rear end, so I reversed it on to some ramps and got going.

Diff oil change went ok, the fill plug was hella tight but gave way after several wacks with a lump hammer. I used fluid extractor/syringe thing to fill it which is always messy but got the job done. When I properly inspected and cleaned the diff, I realised it wasn’t the diff cover that had been leaking, it looks like it’s the seals where the drive shafts enter. I cba taking the shafts out, so that’ll have to stay leaky. Have a pointless pic of the diff

I then started to poke around these fuel hoses. The main feed from the tank to the pump looked suspect and sure enough, with a slight squeeze...

Shit. I didn’t have any fuel hose in that size and it had now ruptured good and proper. I wanted to take it with me to the motor factors so I got the right stuff, so I planned to try and pull one end off, cut a bit off and quickly reattach it to stop me losing too much fuel. As I did this though it properly split, so I ended up having to drain the sodding tank. It had just under a quarter of a tank in it so I then had to race round looking for a suitable container. I couldn’t find one, so I turfed out the bedding that was sitting in this plastic box and used that.

I also had another 5l in an actual petrol can. I got fucking covered in it, then had to pour it into some old screenwash bottles to store it. I then spent about 90mins driving to 3 different motor factors, none of whom had the right size hose, so I’ve had to internet order it and the car is now laid up until at least Monday. SIGH. I did, however realise why I could never find a setup that looked like mine on any parts diagram...

That’s the tank outlet. It’s been fitted with a smaller diameter piece of hose, which the larger hose then fits over and goes to the pump. I’m guessing this happened to replace the proper setup when the noisy fuel pump was fitted, as the fuel pump probably has a larger inlet bore than it should have and so would have required a hose with a different diameter at each end. It didn’t leak before, so I’m hoping it won’t again, once the new hose is on. I changed the filter whilst I was in there 

And changed out all the 6mm diameter hoses as I had some of that. Once the main tank feed is in place, that’s all the dodgy hoses done.

This had now taken up most of the day but I wanted to have a go at sorting this 

An innovative use of sealant, I’ll agree but probably wants fixing. I’ve bought 4 universal split cv boots to do them all. I’ve never used these before and I’ve been dreading this a bit as I usually find this sort of time saving idea great in theory, but shit in practice when everything is in the way when doing it in situ. I wish I’d bought 5 now as I don’t think this one will stay on long

As you can see, I got it on, but I’ve cut the smaller end a bit short so there’s nothing to stop the clamp sliding off. I also ballsed up the other, larger clamp because I was trying to clamp the boot on in the wrong place and hadn’t cut it down enough, so that side is held on with cable ties. The actual glueing bit wasn’t too bad. I reckon I can do a decent job on the other 3 now.

Of my original list, there *shouldn’t be anything left to do now. I did manage to find a rear door actuator for the central locking to try and get that working properly but that’s coming from Eastern Europe so won’t be here for a while. I’ve been putting about 70/80 miles a week on it and it seems to be getting better with use. I’m enjoying using it, it’s just a shame the gearbox doesn’t have an overdrive on 4th because it’s doing about 3500rpm at 70 But other than that, I really like it. The brakes are really good for its age and it has enough power to get you out of trouble should you need, whilst being really very simply engineered; you can see why loads ended up in North Africa. Come September I start a new job and this is going to be taking me to the station every morning, hence the slight rush on to get it sorted over the past few weeks - it needs to be reliable.

In Alfa news, it’s battery had been struggling to turn it over when left for a few days. I connected it up to my charger and it was only showing about 40% charged. I’ve had it on charge for 24hrs or so and it’s almost showing full now, so hopefully I’ve caught it in time. It’s also on a COVID MOT extension so I want to get that done before the end of August or it’ll run out in the middle of winter and there’s nowt worse than being forced to do a repair job in rain and sleet. I’ve just been holding off until I was further on with the Merc in case it failed and I ended up with both of the fleet off the road, 

[Six-cylinder]

Back a long time ago I worked for a small company who would provide me a car to visit clients in. Usually I was given the new Mercedes 230K manual, if you did not get wheel spin pulling away company policy was to stop and try again. If the boss needed it he would apologise and say I had to take the old W123 280TE, they were the good days I liked the wafty days of the 280TE just as much and really liked that car a lot. In the end my boss gave it to a contractor so he could finish his work for us.

The W114 280CE was my daily at the time.

[J-T]

Great pic, I’d like to try a 280 to compare.

[J-T]

Ok, I’m starting to get irritated now, albeit through my own actions! Ordered the fuel hose and it was the wrong size when it arrived. This was on Friday, so that put it out of action until Monday. It arrived Monday and I’d ordered completely the wrong size (read outer diameter as inside diameter). Ordered the right size for next day, that came today so that got cut to size and fitted. Other than fuel pissing out of the fuel filter when I first started it as the Union wasn’t quite nipped up enough, that is now all good.

I took it round the block to make sure all was ok and unfortunately the arse end is really not happy. Making some nasty noises above about 40mph. I can only guess this is the driveshafts. I found, when changing the boots, that instead of the usual CV grease, they were lubricated by oil, as did my drive. Each boot came with a sachet of grease so I just fired that in instead and hoped it would be ok. It clearly isn’t! I think to fill them properly, the driveshafts need removing, turning on their end, then the ‘can’ filling with oil, then the CV boot sealing. Otherwise the oil just runs back out. I really really really cba pulling the driveshafts off.

So my current plan is to undo the clamp on the small end of the boot, insert a syringe at the top of where the shaft passes through the boot, wrap a cable tie fairly tightly around the bottom so that it will hopefully stop the oil running back out, inject the oil with the syringe, then pull the cable tie tight. Will it work?...I highly doubt it, but I’ve ordered a syringe and I’m giving it a go. Tune in next time for the inevitable pics of the axle in bits. 

[J-T]

I mean, it was inevitable really, wasn’t it? FFS. I tried the syringe thing, which did work but the sticky boots were a shit seal so were leaking after a few days. The driveshafts were gonna have to come off. I looked at getting proper Mercedes boots and rebuilding them, but the CV joints don’t just knock off on these, you have to slice the can open and re-crimp them which is a massive faff and I don’t trust stretchy boots to seal either, so I looked for some new driveshafts. I found some decent branded ones for £111 the pair on amazon that were quite a bit dearer everywhere else so gave them a go, and ordered new driveshaft seals for the diff which took about 2 weeks to come. The shafts seem pretty good for the money.

The shafts are held in by a bolt through the hub and a little C clip inside the diff

To access those means dropping the diff slightly, removing the mount and removing the cover plate. This involves jacking it up and down several times to make enough room to get all the bolts out past the ARB and self levelling stuff. I got all that done, everything bolted back up and re-sealed the cover plate. Turned out the driveshaft seals were the wrong bloody ones anyway so I couldn’t use them, which was a little irritating after taking forever to arrive. After torquing down the diff bolts, the driveshafts didn’t feel quite right though. Then I saw them

Those shims are on the end of the old driveshafts, sat on the floor. They should be on the end of the new ones, on the car. FUUUUUUCK ?

Don’t you just love working on cars eh? The above had just taken me about 4hrs and I needed to re-do about 90% of it. I went in, sulked for a bit, had my tea, then plucked up the enthusiasm* to go back out. 2hrs later, the shims were fitted. I’ve just had to leave it all overnight to let the sealant set on the diff before I can refill it with oil. After which, I hope to be able to leave this alone for a while!

[J-T]

The Alfa’s had a little misbehave recently. We went to Southport in it the other week, and after paying the car park man (must be the only car park to still have one) I went to put the window back up, only for a large clunk and terrible noises to happen, when it was about 2” from closed. I left it alone and thankfully, it could be pulled up the rest of the way and stayed there. I made a note not to touch the switch until I’d checked it out. 

Getting the door card off on these isn’t too bad, but for the sealing strip running along the top edge. They get stuck after a few years and it turned out someone had already had fun with that, and broken the handle mount from the back of the door card by trying to yank it upwards. Great.

I had a root round the bottom of the door and found these 

The broken bits were from this clip

And the grommet from this hole in the glass that the clip should pass through to raise and lower the window

The broken bits were what held the clip to guide rail so it was just working in free space. As I was manoeuvring the regulator assembly out of the door, I inadvertently released the white clip from the cables. It turned out you can buy a replacement clip, which I intended to do as the rest of the regulator was fine. However I started reading tales of woe on the internet about getting the clip on as the cables come pre-tensioned, so thought I’d have a go with the broken one first. Yeah, they weren’t wrong! It’s virtually impossible without a vice which I don’t have and even then it would be a world of pain. I wedged a block of wood under the glass so I could still use the car and priced up a new regulator. A genuine one was about £115 which I thought was pretty salty so I ordered a pattern part of eBay for about £40. What arrived was the biggest pile of shit I’ve ever bought. Utter Chinese shite. It didn’t even have a frigging plug on it, just some crimped bullet connectors and two awful pin adapters to shove into the female end of the plug on the car! These adaptors didn’t even fit the connectors so I had to chop them off and modify it with some stuff I had in the shed. I forgot to take any pics unfortunately but I’ll probably be seeing it again fairly soon as I’d be surprised if I get 6 months out of it! I should have just sent it back.

Oh and once I’d got it all back together, I realised I’d fitted the pins the wrong way round, so it lowers when you pull the switch up and raises when you push it down. Dickhead. It can stay like that now until it breaks again.

Whilst I had everything off the door, I did a job I’ve been meaning to do for ages. The soft touch coating on the window switches turns to a horrible sticky goo and mine were particularly bad 

I’d read a few methods for removing it on the internet including pure alcohol, anti-bac wipes, baby wipes, none of which seemed to have any effect on mine. There’s a video of a guy taking a heat gun to it and rubbing it off but that seemed a bit overkill. I tried some meths on a cloth, which did the trick very nicely and got them looking presentable again.

So there’s my top tip. Meths!

I need to get this MOT’d, hopefully next week, as it’s on a COVID extension and I don’t wanna be testing it in the middle of winter in case it fails and I have to fix it. Wish me luck!

[GMcD]

What a transformation of the door switches. Great job!

[J-T]

Alfa had its first MOT in my tenure the other day. I was a bit apprehensive about the emissions as it now only has 1 cat, rather than the 3 it should have and a look at the MOT history revealed it initially failed on emissions last year. In anticipation I gave it a good spanking and didn’t really change up above 3rd before driving it straight into the MOT bay to get the remaining cat as hot as possible. Anyway, I needn’t have worried, it was fine.

Merc has been proving very useful moving some stuff I had stored at my dad’s

Thats a camphor wood chest, side table, 4 x 18” alloys, some tools, a piano stool and a few other bits and bats all in one go!

Pedro the cat approves.

[J-T]

If you often frequent the for sale section, you may have noticed that changes have been afoot

Mercedes has gone off to live with FOAD. I’m a bit disappointed that I’ve had to sell it (especially after all the work it’s had) as I’ve enjoyed having it, but it’s really not the car I need; what I thought would be a very short commute to the station each day for my new job is actually a fair amount of travel all over the country on a pretty regular basis. Still, it is what it is - it does mean I’m on the lookout for a new car, as subjecting the Alfa to long distance travel on a regular basis is just going to ruin it. I try really hard to keep it well, but it takes a lot of work. I’ve put 7000 miles on it since I’ve bought it, this was it after a clean last week

But 15k + miles a year is going to take a hell of a lot more upkeep - too much to be viable, so I need a daily.

Wants are as follows: auto, powerful (ideally 200bhp min), relatively economical. So far, contenders are as follows (not exactly shite, admittedly but some potential low cost big liability contenders!):

BMW 325/330/335d touring

Alfa Brera/159 Sportwagon Ti 2.4 diesel

Mercedes CLK 320 CDI Sport

Audi A6 Allroad

Ive also been looking at big petrols with LPG conversions but they’re few and far between. I thought I’d found an ideal candidate in a Lexus IS300 Sportcross but some questioning revealed the garage selling it have fixed it up after HGF. A bit of research suggests that to run on LPG, Lexus are meant to have a flashlube system fitted to prevent valve seat recession and this one doesn’t have it and I reckon it’s probably been running hot, hence HGF, so I’ve swerved that. I’d also really like a Subaru Outback 3.0 but can’t find an LPG’d jobby. If anyone can think of anything similar, suggest away (read on to next week, when I’ve bought a frigging mx5 or something!)

In other Alfa news, I was poking about it’s nether regions today, nipping up the oil filter which was dripping oil as I’d left it a bit too loose, and noticed by other driveshaft has a split boot. Good thing I bought 2, but I’m really not looking forward to round two of changing that!

[Dave_Q]

From your list I have briefly owned an allroad.
Must say I did like it, a decent steer with plenty of power (for me), mine was a C5 shape 2.5tdi (180). Not amazing on fuel, I got low 30s but all my driving is local and in a hilly area.

Air suspension is leaky but not hard/expensive to fix any more, auto boxes are generally not good. Don't think it's specific to the allroad but you see lots for sale spears or reapers with borked gearboxes.

Obviously lots of allroads get abused for towing too, I would suggest that maybe a non-allroad A6 quattro would be as good, especially if it has recent history for a new/recon autobox and no towbar.

[Dave_Q]

Should add I would happily have another if I had less children and shite to haul around, would probably go pez though as I reckon you wouldn't be far off the mpg in reality particularly if your commute is fairly long.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124346758821

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/193655168982

[J-T]

41 minutes ago, Dave_Q said:

From your list I have briefly owned an allroad.
Must say I did like it, a decent steer with plenty of power (for me), mine was a C5 shape 2.5tdi (180). Not amazing on fuel, I got low 30s but all my driving is local and in a hilly area.

Air suspension is leaky but not hard/expensive to fix any more, auto boxes are generally not good. Don't think it's specific to the allroad but you see lots for sale spears or reapers with borked gearboxes.

Obviously lots of allroads get abused for towing too, I would suggest that maybe a non-allroad A6 quattro would be as good, especially if it has recent history for a new/recon autobox and no towbar.
 

Yeh, virtually all of them seem to have some kind of suspension fault or borked autobox - I think it was the CVT one that went in the A4 as well? They seem quite rare as a manual. I suppose they’re getting on a bit now.

I did look into the petrols, but they’re either a V8 or a 2.7 turbo (poss twin turbo, can’t remember). I can see those dropping to near single figures if in traffic/round town.

[Dave_Q]

Yes the C5 allroad pez options are either a 2.7 twin turbo which is basically the same lump as a B5 S4 or the 4.2 V8.

Manuals are out there, mine was a manual. The lowest liability option would probably be a PD130 in 2wd manual flava, there seem to be quite a few of those about and may be fast enough with a remap?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/324280225578

[J-T]

I’m nothing if not brave. 335d

So, that’s an entire fleet of low cost, big liability. Gulp, wish me luck!

[J-T]

*Disclaimer - this ain’t really autoshite, so don’t read on if musings on a modern (by this site’s standards!) BMW are unlikely to entertain.

I’ve had this bimmer a few weeks now and I really like it. I bought it sight unseen off eBay via a second chance offer, for a frankly quite insulting bid, but the guy was moving house that weekend and needed it shifting. So ensued a trip down near Bristol somewhere to collect. I was more than a bit wary, but the advert was well written and speaking to the guy on the phone put my mind at rest - he was a 68 year old serial BMW botherer, had just spent over £700 on a service and fitting 4x new Sachs shocks and was only moving it on as he’s bought a newer one. He was most pleased that I had an Alfa as it turned out he worked for Alfa when the GTA was launched! Anyway, needless to say the car seemed good when we got there as it’s sat here now.

It’s a 335d, which is the 3 litre, 6 cyl N57 diesel with two turbos strapped on. Standard, they make about 280bhp but the guy I bought it from had it remapped at Celtic tuning so it purports to have about 360bhp now and some unfathomable torque figure. All 335ds were 6 speed autos as presumably it’s the only box that could handle the torque. It’s an interesting spec as it’s an SE, but has the M sport seats, steering wheel and shadow line trim which sort of offers the best of both. Even more unusual, it’s on the standard 17” wheels (on 4 Michelin Pilot Sports, no less) so it’s a BMW that still has some semblance of ride quality! It’s done 111k (or it had when I first got) and has a big wadge of bills including 13 services so I’m hoping I’ve mitigated the chances of major borkage but you never really know with something like this.

It’s quite nicely specced so has elec memory seats with 3 stage heating (oops, have I pissed myself through to inferno), cream interior with wood trim instead of the usual dismal black/silver BMW fayre , a useless but addictive pop up rear sunblind and an even more useless rear view mirror which tells you in which direction you are pointing at any given time. 

Obviously it’s knocking on now so it’s not all sweetness and light. There’s a rust bleb on the boot lid, which appears to be going all along that seam 

but overall that’s the worst mark on it. The inner rear lights had gone milky in the way that headlights often do and someone had stuck a stupid badge on the back (why?!), so that was jettisoned and I polished up the lights earlier today. Before:

After:

I’ve also stuck a private plate on that I’ve had lying on retention for years as I reckon it does quite a good job of looking less than it’s 14 years and why not let people think I’m a second division footballer.

It drives really well. So far, it’s only issue is a judder through the wheel under certain braking conditions. Naturally I immediately thought ‘warped discs’ but when I looked, the front discs are virtually new and if it was that it would do it all the time. Some internet reading suggests these E9X bimmers are notorious for this issue with owners throwing all kinds of parts at it and getting nowhere. A common diagnosis seemed to be worn thrust control arm bushings and a cursory wiggle of mine would appear to confirm that they are probably passed their best. They’re not too spendy via Autodoc so I’ll probably do all 4. 

It’s returning around 40mpg in mixed driving, though I’ve been doing quite a bit of motorway work. Clearly, it’s very quick (it will light up the rear tyres at 70mph in the wet) but I’d describe it as impressive rather than exciting. Speed is built in a totally effortless, missile like manner which is highly effective but very undramatic - great for a daily but not if you want to feel involved. Still, I’ve got the Alfa for that ( even if this is probably quicker in almost any given situation).

So yes...please do keep saying a prayer for me as although all is rosy so far, it certainly has the potential to get very expensive very quickly!

[J-T]

Not updated this for ages as there’s been nowt to say. The bimmer has taken over daily duties and is just about all you could ever need aside from having a fairly small boot.

This means the Alfa is just getting left and I’ve no garage, so I’m thinking of moving it on. I think I’ve more chance of receiving a full order of correctly specified parts from ECP than selling it through this website, but I suppose you never know. If you’re interested get in touch, it would be a non-negotiable 9 grand. Spec/photos are earlier in the thread.

[Floatylight]

1 hour ago, J-T said:

Not updated this for ages as there’s been nowt to say. The bimmer has taken over daily duties and is just about all you could ever need aside from having a fairly small boot.

This means the Alfa is just getting left and I’ve no garage, so I’m thinking of moving it on. I think I’ve more chance of receiving a full order of correctly specified parts from ECP than selling it through this website, but I suppose you never know. If you’re interested get in touch, it would be a non-negotiable 9 grand. Spec/photos are earlier in the thread.

9 large for a 2004 147??? Am I missing something?

[J-T]

The plot?

[Andyrew]

21 minutes ago, J-T said:

The plot?

I thought the same tbh but a quick ebay browse suggests 9k is somewhere in the reasonable price ball park. 

Honestly Had no idea these held such a value. 

It is however rather lush. 

[crapcarcollector]

9 large for a 2004 147??? Am I missing something?

Cheap that is for a GTA. Have a google...


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[Floatylight]

2 hours ago, crapcarcollector said:

Cheap that is for a GTA. Have a google...


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So it is! They hold their money well!

[J-T]

It’s not so much that they held their money, they just bottomed out about 5/6 years ago and they’ve gradually increased again.

Compared to an equivalent condition Mk1 Focus RS which are the same age, they’re still ‘value’.

[J-T]

Advertised it on Mon. The first person to see it drove it away earlier today.

I then spent an hour pacing about the garden wondering what I’d done. That is definitely one I’m going to miss!

[Dave_Q]

Good/sad news.

I guess you could reinvest* the funds in like 3 2010ish grenadey BMWs to keep you occupied?