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High mileage snotters.


Pete-M

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I did a bit of cabbing back in 1986, and the company I worked for ran Ford Orion (non turbo) diesels as their fleet.

Two had over 350,000 recorded miles, one 450,000 and a few approaching 100,000

I know the majority of the cars were running from 06.00 to at least 02.00 the following day

The cars were shite to drive, with knackered seats and no performance.

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1 minute ago, Supernaut said:

So they were factory fresh then?

Because I was part time, I was alway allocated one of the three high mileage ones. They were "B" and "C" registration 1.6 L's and the red ones had paint as flat as a witches tit as they were put through the car wash every day.

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35 minutes ago, Jerzy Woking said:

Ford Orion (non turbo) diesels

The slowest car I have ever driven was an Orion 1.6D.  absolutely glacial performance and a nasty rattly old pile of shit too.  Also not that economic I found, as you had to drive it with your foot welded to the floor at all times.

It was affectionately known as the Bunion.  A truly awful heap of vehicle.

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The highest mileage car I ever drove was a peugeot 806 2.0hdi which was a taxi from new to 10 years old. When I left the taxi firm that owned it it was one 500000 miles, on its 2nd engine original gearbox and a replacement interior out of another which was written off at a mere 4 years old and 220000 miles

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

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Isn't taxi-ing the best way to appreciate a modern diseasel? Sits at 1700rpm for weeks on end and hardly ever gets cold started because it hardly ever gets shut down for more than an hour.
A good cabbie has sussed how to drive with minimal impact on his car so he's not shelling out for repairs. Gentle acceleration, never braking unless absolutely necessary and looking far enough ahead to pick out gaps and lane swaps so they don't get caught out and have to slow down. Taxi drivers drive like no-one else.

Up here the private hire chariot of choice is the Skoda Octavia. 400k miles not uncommon before the council's 7 year old maximum comes into effect at which point they end up on Gumtree for a few hundred quid.
 

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5 hours ago, Spiny Norman said:


A good cabbie has sussed how to drive with minimal impact on his car so he's not shelling out for repairs. Gentle acceleration, never braking unless absolutely necessary and looking far enough ahead to pick out gaps and lane swaps so they don't get caught out and have to slow down. Taxi drivers drive like no-one else.

 

Guess all the cabbies up here are shit cabbies then, ragging it off the lights because the 4 gps's havent warned them they are in the wrong lane so they have to cut someone up, slamming on and swerving to the side of the road to drop off/pick up punters. Never braking is fair, especially as they cut across traffic in manoeuvres that should see anyone elses licence revoked.

Looking just far enough ahead to see the GPS screen in front of them, whilst treating the car as a rental, because most of them are driving for a cabbie firm and it's not their car so they don't give a shit.

I agree they drive like no one else though ?

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Repair costs are less an issue than the average man in the street, if it costs £400 for a turbo swapping then so be it as it’ll earn that back over a good weekend. They’ll also have a stash of bits from the dead ones, some near me have their own garage as well. You’ve also to remember these cars are usually run round the clock, no cold starts, just drivers swapping shifts. 

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4 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

What is the council licencing dept obsession with vehicle age? Condition is all.

I got an email from my licensing authority yesterday, saying they are temporarily lifting the age requirement due to the Covid situation . I can’t be the only one who’s car hasn’t turned a wheel in 3 months. My plate is due in July and I probably won’t renew, first time that’s happened in 27 years, although maybe I should plate my 23 year old E430, mmmm...

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My friends dad runs a cab company so his first car was a cast off - a six year old Mk2 Mondeo 1.6 Aspen (yeah, petrol) in Leeds taxi colours. It had done 320,000 miles and it was absolutely hanging - my main memory was that it had no second gear so you had to rev the tits off it in first and go straight into third. Eventually third went as well and it got replaced by a K11 Micra, which felt like luxury... 

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7 hours ago, Spiny Norman said:

Isn't taxi-ing the best way to appreciate a modern diseasel? Sits at 1700rpm for weeks on end and hardly ever gets cold started because it hardly ever gets shut down for more than an hour.
A good cabbie has sussed how to drive with minimal impact on his car so he's not shelling out for repairs. Gentle acceleration, never braking unless absolutely necessary and looking far enough ahead to pick out gaps and lane swaps so they don't get caught out and have to slow down. Taxi drivers drive like no-one else.

Up here the private hire chariot of choice is the Skoda Octavia. 400k miles not uncommon before the council's 7 year old maximum comes into effect at which point they end up on Gumtree for a few hundred quid.
 

That really doesn't happen in Bristol with most of the private hire cabs! Especially on the night shift shuttling people back from the centre to suburbs. 

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5 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

What is the council licencing dept obsession with vehicle age? Condition is all.

Easier to arbitrarily enforce, I suppose. I've never had a car with properly decent mileage in it - I feel like that makes me less of A MAN.

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Highest mileage car I've driven was an Octavia 2.0 TDi L&K. A cab in Shropshire from new it had 740k at 10 years old on the original engine and box. It had the cams replaced at 400k miles. 

Turned out the driver used to shuttle airline pilots around the UK, normally doing Telford, Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester, Telford most days of the week. 

It drove really well, was clean and tidy other than a massive stonechip collection and the coating on the window and light switches having worn off. It had the big elbow blister all taxi Octavias get on the driver's door trim, but the leather seats weren't even that saggy in it. 

Genuinely drove like a sub 80k mile car.

The owner was fanatical about servicing it, every two months it had a full service and anything that needed doing was done. I've driven 30k mile ones that felt worse.

The owner lived in a huge house, but doubt he spent much time there. 

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2 hours ago, chaseracer said:

Try a 'tired' 435cc 2CV!  Next on our list after the racer and the Dyane...

I'm not sure if it was a 435cc model, but I have driven a 2cv with very low compression and almost no grunt.  It would probably be a close-run thing between that and the Bunion mentioned above.  It simply didn't accelerate.  At all.

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