The grumpy thread

[dugong]

Whats wrong with this picture?

 

123.jpg

Weird porn

Weirder porn

How to delete search history. 

 

BD had potential. Never mind regulars, eh? Sent him packing, what? 

[beko1987]

Oooh I missed this fun earlier!

 

Sadly we can't all tool around in grade a rammel, so grades d to k will have to do...

 

I feel bad for buying a modern car earlier, I are sorry

[purplebargeken]

^^ Well just don't do it again!

[gordonbennet]

They aint modern, they're potentially going to be the oldest decent chod on the road in about 20 years and well bought before the penny drops with every other bugger.

 

90's designs (made up to about 2004/5 in mass produced stuff) were the pinnacle IMHO, everything came together, build quality, rust resistance, reliability and long life, economy performance safety and handling.

All whilst still reasonably fixable by either the competent home mechanic or a decent indy, and devoid of the cost a fuckin fortune and regular with it DPF  electric parking brakes and later German engines with timing chains of cheese and egr's that last 5 minutes but require half the car to be dismantled...oh by the way you do know that VW are going to put exhaust filters on their petrol cars starting imminently with the 1.4 super/turbocharged thingy i believe...i'm going to borrow a fortune i can't afford to buy one to show my green credentials er no i'm not they stick that crap where the sun don't shine.

 

Half the new shit they sell now, and getting worse, isn't going to be around in 10 years time.

[dollywobbler]

When I was a child in the 1980s, my Aunt had a Farina. It was 20 years old and laughed at for being an old banger. 20 year old stuff really isn't modern! I love even older stuff, but Autoshite is always going to be a moving target.

[Louise2cv]

True but I thought Autoshite was less about the age and more about the quirky or (lack of) desirability or something. That's not the correct term but I don't really know how to put it.

 

This wadn't just another old car forum really was it. It's more about the rarities, rare because they were unloved and forgotten about rather than being classics. Sort of throwaway cars that most people wouldn't fix up or have saved searches on eBay for.

 

But that's just my take on it.

[Captain Furious]

I've gone and allowed myself to get sunburnt for about the first time in 10 years. I'm usually pretty responsible with wearing sun cream but didn't even consider it today for a couple of hours tooling round Newark auto jumble. Mistake now being paid for

 

(Which was shite btw and full of old motor bicycle tut as predicted by this great parish, but it was a trip out)

[michael1703]

I just came home from 37deg heat in Italy and was fine, went to Helmingham hall classic car show and got burnt to shite

[Captain Furious]

I think I've escaped with a *reasonably* minor case, it's not full on Belisha beacon levels like air shows in the 90’s..

 

Hopefully it'll just go brown overnight and I won't have to go through the indignity of shedding my skin like a snake

[Lankytim]

It's a tongue-in-cheek forum about crap old cars. Too old to be current but too new to be classics, just old bangers. That's my take on it. Stuff like concours MK3 Cortinas or Allegros are great to read about but where else can I ask about PT cruisers or discuss the woe of buying an 03 place Focus from a mate?

[trigger]

Sorry to hear about your Sapphire pervy.

[castros_bro]

A forum which if you define it then you don't understand it.  Maybe the "Mornington Crescent" of forumz.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Just went to put some stuff in the wheelie bin and saw an upside down birds nest in the road. Assumed it was empty, but when I flipped it over there were two dead birds inside. Long fall from the tree.

 

Couldn't leave them in the road to be run over, so got to stand on the street at 2am trying to scoop them with two dustpans without looking directly at them and going "ew ew ew". 

 

Poor birds. 

[BorniteIdentity]

Why don't the police sit outside Santa Pod on a Sunday afternoon and get the Christmas party paid for all in one hit?

 

Endless amounts of 'drivers' whose number plates had fallen from undrilled bumpers so had to be displayed in the windscreen, speeding, anti-social use of dump valves, dangerous overtaking, wheel spinning, you name it.

 

Much easier to just send someone a bill in the post from a fixed camera I guess - regardless of context.

[andy18s]

Because they then get accused of "picking on a certain age group/type of car owner"

Or get told to "go catch real criminals:...

[dollywobbler]

True but I thought Autoshite was less about the age and more about the quirky or (lack of) desirability or something. That's not the correct term but I don't really know how to put it.

 

This wadn't just another old car forum really was it. It's more about the rarities, rare because they were unloved and forgotten about rather than being classics. Sort of throwaway cars that most people wouldn't fix up or have saved searches on eBay for.

 

But that's just my take on it.

 

I don't disagree, but lots of that mid-1990s stuff is now falling into that category, while the earlier stuff is being lifted out of 'shite' and into 'actually quite popular now and bloody expensive to buy.' Like rear-engined Skodas and even such mundane stuff as Ford Fiestas. 

 

Actually amused me to look through some auction results recently and see a really tidy Subaru Impreza sell for two grand less than a Ford Fiesta Mk1 L. That sort of thing just addles my brain!

[plasticvandan]

Autoshite defies all logic by moving with the times,yesterdays £200 snotter is now the doctors £8000 holiday fund,so focus turns to todays £200 snotter

[oldcars]

A bit like this.

 

 

Somebody has dumped a caravan full of rubbish, a burnt out Shogun and a shitty old Volvo at the side of the road. Apparently there's at least two skips worth of stuff dumped along this road every month.

That van looks ok.

[Louise2cv]

I guess so. I think that nineties and noughties cars have never been on my radar.

 

To counter I actually think there are some great threads at the moment. I was going to sign out after selling the astra but I can't leave the mk1 cav thread. Or the renna 6. Or the base. And now the rekord. The Datsun. A flipping rancho! Etc!

 

I haven't got time to look at the less interesting (to me) threads, so I just focus on the ones that grab me.

 

The only grump about my way of browsing here is cryptic txt speak gobbledygook thread titles. I'm sure I have missed some good threads because the thread name was too funny*.

[John F]

^ OK Louise, I'll summarise them for you...  Savvy has just bought a Toyota

 

Re. "this site isn't what it used to be", etc, it's a simple fact of life that many unpopular / unloved cars become cheap old snotters, and that's where bangernomics meets Autoshite. And even the bangernomics roadwhores will eventually disappear - when's the last time anyone saw a Mk 1 Mondeo or a Calibra in the wild? - whereupon all of a sudden they're Autoshite.

 

That guest chappy was wrong to just whine about the state of the site though, if he didn't like the state of things in here at the moment he should have taken the initiative & posted up some quality content instead.

[Captain Furious]

I actually spotted a Mk1 Mondeo yesterday for sale at Newark.  I never imagined that one day my attention would be drawn to a car like that because "you don't see them much any more"  Was a very nice one too, for sale for £700-odd if I recall.

 

A lot of cars from my era seemed to become extinct almost overnight, no doubt in part because of the scrappage scheme, but also because the easy availability of lease and finance deals mean just about anyone can have a new car, and fewer seem to be interested in old ones.  Even without the scrappage scheme they'd rather chop in perfectly good cars for next to nothing and drive away in a new or nearly new car, and not always without good reason.

 

A guy I know who drinks in my local had a beautiful MGZT in metallic blue.  It was an 02, he'd owned it from 12 months old and it was immaculate.  One day I noticed it had disappeared and a Focus 1.0 ecoboost appeared in its place, the Rover never re-appeared so I asked him about it, he'd chopped it in for £200 against the Focus!  Why?  Because it was coming up on needing a cam belt. 

 

And this is the other problem I think, people either aren't interested in working on their own cars any more (which causes them to buy new ones) or modern cars are now so complex that what would previously have been a DIY fix is now too much to for your average DIY mechanic to take on, meaning enormous garage labour costs that make it prohibitively expensive to keep them on the road (so they go and buy new cars)  Hell, many people get rid as soon as its due its first MOT

 

So if you're smart\brave\stupid enough you can pick these cast-off cars up and either fearlessly wring the last throws of life from them - I mean, they say  it needs a cambelt, but that's not to say it might carry on for another 80,000 miles right?  - Or you crack open the Halfords professional socket set and have a go yourself.

[Captain Furious]

Also, a proportion of Mk1 Mondeo's probably fell victim to classic Ford owners looking to stuff a pre-pats zetec into every Mk1\2 Escort in the land

[cort16]

I like cars. Old ones, new ones, shite ones, shiney ones. One's built this century, ones built last century. I find the cars and stories attached to them interesting. 

 

It's not like the site is filled with 900 page threads on someone detailing their Mondeo it's all pretty on topic. If it was someone battling to fit a 2nd hand Turbo to it then I'd be interested.

In fact the bleating on about it gets a bit Zzzz to be honest.

[Captain Furious]

YES!  Exactly that, cars are a bit like music, I can't pigeon hole my taste in music to a particular genre, because I like such a massive variety of stuff - same with cars.   And this is the only place I know of that you can read about 2CV's and Rolls Royces on the same page. 

 

Plus I can live out my V12 owning fantasies through other people and maybe try to talk myself out of doing it one day. 

[fordperv]

I just hate how the cars I love have become scene so command much more money than they are actually worth because people want to look cool, the same people would have slated you 8 years back for driving the same car, who's cool now dimwits

[gordonbennet]

Christ yes, this a broad church, lets be honest half of us are borderline bloody bonkers, the other half completely gaga.

 

Some of us spend and have spent fortunes on cars that maybe deserved it maybe didn't.

Some run almost exotic and stupidly wallet draining real cars that would put the fear of God up most, but our heroes here just go and do it.

Some run any old bloody cheap chod that keeps going.

Some change cars more often than i do me socks.

Some are cantakerous buggers whom would argue the world is flat.

 

We all like different aspects of owning older cars, some things we agree on some we don't, we all get teased now and again about our chod, either its not old enough or it's been too well cared for, and Heaven forbid someone actually restores a car or they'll never hear the end of it.

 

Long may at all continue.

 

However all moderns are shit.

[John F]

None of this really matters.

 

Most people that own a true AS icon are likely to have at least one newer car as well, and this is likely to be a 12-year old bangernomics snotter that may well end up being one of the few survivors of its ilk thanks to any support found on this site.

 

Personally, I'm trying to gather up enough mojo to fettle my LT camper to a level where I'm happy to sell it, and then have another go at finishing the welding on my bloody Maserati. Or fit the 3.0 V6 to my Calibra. But other life stuff gets in the way, it's not always possible for people to keep supplying a regular input of interesting* threads.

[Richard]

That van looks ok.

There's not a single fixture inside it, I think it's been a donor for a camper conversion. Even the skylight and vent grilles have gone.

[mercrocker]

I actually spotted a Mk1 Mondeo yesterday for sale at Newark.  I never imagined that one day my attention would be drawn to a car like that because "you don't see them much any more"  Was a very nice one too, for sale for £700-odd if I recall.

 

 

This pretty much sums up where I am heading to when it comes to shite cars...

 

Never would in a million years have wanted a Mondy, but a giffer-gaffer taped doom blue Mk1  for the right money could just find its way into my parking space as a winter shitter. 

 

As alluded to in various other threads the "scene Tax" or whatever you choose to call it that blights anything 25 years old means that I am not going to shit a grand or more on a fucked 80s car just to keep myself dry in the winter.   Far better to spend half that on an X reg FWD nightmare and hope to get  a bit back at the end without getting all emotionally entangled with it.

[Captain Furious]

I just hate how the cars I love have become scene so command much more money than they are actually worth because people want to look cool, the same people would have slated you 8 years back for driving the same car, who's cool now dimwits

I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but it seems to be fairly recently that the concept of "only going up in value these" and "investment opportunity" entered the collective conscious of every car owners club in the land and otherwise perfectly ordinary cars began being marketed as such. So before cars have finished their death spiral into worthlessness, owners get it into their heads that by virtue of nothing more than the fact it's 10+ years old, it's now on its way to becoming the next Mk1 RS1600. Before you know it everything is a future classic and scene taxed accordingly.

 

Luckily a lot of the old mainly ford chod that piques my interest seems thus far to have escaped their attention.