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Ex Private Hire Taxi... Would you?


sierraman

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1 hour ago, cobblers said:

A mate of mine takes care of loads of taxis in Rotherham/Sheffield and they are all modern VAG stuff and given haircuts every few months to keep the miles down. It's so easy to do nowadays all the cabbies have a mate who does the rounds with his Quentin Willson machine, or TBH nowadays most have got a £50 CAN filter fitted behind the dash so they only clock up 20% of the real mileage.

He usually gets asked to put cambelts on them at an indicated 20k, 40k, 60k, miles or so (but don't stamp the book!!!!!!!!) so you can imagine what sort of mileage they're really doing. They also go for normal MOTs as well as taxi ones, then at 4 or 5 years old end up covered in flash dash and sold on your usual "We can get anyone finance" car lot, usually with prestige in the name and faded clip art of a 2002 Audi A6 in the logo. 

I reckon for every genuine mega mileage ex taxi sold with 300k on the clock there's half a dozen sold as 75K miles FSH "average condition" motors to an unsuspecting guy who sorted by price on Autotrader.

What do they do when/if it goes back to the dealer? I would have thought they’d know straight away if it had been fucked about with. 

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Yeah the mileage is stored in a few ECUs,  so with the CAN filter you can probably tell it's been fannied about with if you start looking into things, as the dash wouldn't match with the stored miles/hours in the engine ECU etc.

When the miles are wound off manually via OBD on many cars it's fairly well undetectable even when prying. There's money to be made in making software that will edit the mileage in every ECU that stores it so every time VAG make it more tricky, some dude will find a way round it.

These cars don't get sold to the sort of person who would generally go back to the dealers, and TBH if it's out of warranty the dealers aren't really going to be looking balls deep into the eeprom of all the ECUs anyway, nobody has time to fuck about like that.

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Think it should be easy enough to avoid, steer clear of low mileage VAG diesels. Especially 4-5 year old ones sold by some driveway trader type. 

I did spot a 61 Mondeo a while back, 253k, recent engine and clutch, out of curiosity I asked if it had been cabbed (the advert didn’t say). Only on being quizzed did the seller declare it had been a taxi. Then you start to think what else has he been dishonest about. 

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6 minutes ago, warch said:

Although it is completely true* that you can attach a drill to the speedo drive into your gearbox and use to move your car with electricity.

Unless you’ve an Escort with the speedo drive chewed up by the diff bearings being fucked. 🤣

Going off topic slightly but wasn’t the old Nova able to be started with some fucking trickery with the hazard switch? Or was that bullshit as well?

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22 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Going off topic slightly but wasn’t the old Nova able to be started with some fucking trickery with the hazard switch? Or was that bullshit as well?

Nah - turn the hazard switch the wrong way round on the contacts and it supplied live to the ignition so you can start the car with a bump

 

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The controversial Sandero I had earlier in the year was a pretty decent car, much better than I expected. It had only been a taxi for 2 years, but the owner managed to pop about 70k on it in that time and it still drove very well.

The only complaint I had about it was someone had previously smoked in it on a regular basis, which was a surprise for a taxi, but a very thorough clean later and it was as right as rain. I'd definitely buy another taxi again if the price was right, but have now got into an ex-police car to see how shit they are in comparison.

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Ex Police, there’s another ‘would you/wouldn’t you?’

I’ve no experience directly but the ex Panda cars always look very ropey, they seem to get kept a long time as well now, our local has only just got rid of the Mk2 Focus. The big response/motorway cars used to be silly cheap but now they seem quite expensive for something that’s had a life of bouncing up kerbs chasing folks or doing 0-100 down a slip road to catch a speeding motorist. Seen a few that get sold off early with engine problems which makes me think maybe they’ve had a bloody hard life despite being serviced on the dot.

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The forum bike Vel Satis that I had for a bit was definitely an ex-taxi, unusual choice for the time but it's ideal for it really, spacious and comfortable. Still had a 'no smoking' sticker in one of the rear windows.

Was on 273,000 I think when I sold it and it's still going strong. I wouldn't be put off any car for that reason as long as it seems like it's been looked after, and the price was right of course...

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at one time the ph game in glasgow and west of scotland was run by gangsters, the type that wore expensive suits, some o the motors were dodgy but as they also owned mot stations in a clean person's name they appeared totally legit. very few normals ran octavias, mondeos or audi a4's as they walked in the night or day, some rann scrap yards and had crushers so cars literally vanished. was a dirty game for these legitimate men and women.  

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My VW Transporter was an ex-taxi.  It was a Shuttle, with 8 seats and had been converted to 'conference seating' when new which meant the seats in the back faced each other.

I sold it on 345,000 miles.  Nothing untoward went wrong with it for the couple of years I had it.  I think the engine and gearbox were original items, but it was on its third clutch and DMF.  No major issues with it during my tenure; it had the usual mid-2000s VAG bs, like failing door actuators/ handles, remote key problems etc.  You get that with 50k Golfs.

I only bought it because it was a top-spec, fully trimmed vehicle that I could afford!  It used a fair bit of oil, but that's par for the course with the 2.5 5-cyl coffee grinder engines!  I'd buy another.

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Father in law owned a Taxi spec mk2 Granada in white with vinyl seats, Peugeot Diesel engine etc. He got it cheap as it was a cancelled order destined for the local taxi company. Only lasted 3 years before it was written off after an uninsured pisshead crashed into the back of it 

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9 hours ago, sierraman said:

Ex Police, there’s another ‘would you/wouldn’t you?’

One of the day engineers has an ex-plod E61, and he loves it.

Odd spec as it has the flappy paddles, larger screen and few other bits. It's on megga miles now, but still plods on.

Is it true that some of them wouldn't physically be switched off for a good few days ? (Only from what he says, as all the computers etc took ages to boot up ?)

 

@warren t claim - What other cars are on the local fleet?

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22 minutes ago, Minimad5 said:

One of the day engineers has an ex-plod E61, and he loves it.

Odd spec as it has the flappy paddles, larger screen and few other bits. It's on megga miles now, but still plods on.

Is it true that some of them wouldn't physically be switched off for a good few days ? (Only from what he says, as all the computers etc took ages to boot up ?)

 

@warren t claim - What other cars are on the local fleet?

They are fitted for the police with a Run Lock, so when the copper jumps out to give chase it’ll keep running but cut out if you touch the pedals. 

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4 hours ago, goosey said:

Father in law owned a Taxi spec mk2 Granada in white with vinyl seats, Peugeot Diesel engine etc. He got it cheap as it was a cancelled order destined for the local taxi company. Only lasted 3 years before it was written off after an uninsured pisshead crashed into the back of it 

Didn't know they made a Mk2 Granny in taxi spec. 

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50 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Looks utterly miserable.

1069523749_Screenshot_20211124-0142362.thumb.png.c756f337cc011e03ae387fddca951d0a.png

I'd love one.

Memories. Actually, some of my earliest memories of cars as these were regular experiences of car travel; the parents didn't have a car. 

Stale smoke, body odour and vinyl. Oh, and really soft; wallowy suspension! 

I must say I preferred travelling by bus; at that time a Bristol VR or Leyland Fleetline... 🤓

 

Edited by Leyland Worldmaster
Spalling
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On 11/23/2021 at 11:40 AM, sierraman said:

Ex Police, there’s another ‘would you/wouldn’t you?’.....

In 1977, the oul man bought an ex-Met unmarked car, a 1973 Cortina 1600 L Decor "TMC 371M". The seller was a serving Detective Inspector who in turn had bought it from the Met.

There were a few mysterious holes in the dash, plus a series of switches hidden beside the steering column. We never did find out what they were originally used for.

It had been quite well cared-for during its police service. 

The black vinyl seats were lethal in summer. I remember the oul man replacing the nearside wing once due to rot.

By 1985 it had developed a severe reluctance to start in cold weather, so it was flogged off to a Spanish restaurant owner for £150. Since then, all of the oul fella's cars have been German. 

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A couple of giveaways (no smoking sign, dashcam etc.) make me think that my Merc was used as an airport car - between 2018 and 2019, it suddenly did 45k. At which point it would have been retired at 8 years old.

In the last 2 years, it's only done around 4k a year. It could indeed be clocked, although I'm not sure it would be worth the hassle for a £3k car.

It's the kind of car that would be used for that (C Class estate). No signs of abuse except the drivers seat.

 

That's an interesting one in itself. In the same way, a 200k car that's spent its life on a motorway, is generally going to cause much less problems than a 150k car that's only ever been ragged around the local town (I see how our local drivers drive - I won't get in them now and only use Uber, even though they're sometimes more expensive).

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Many people have bought ex-PH cars off me , quite happily. Of course, they didn’t necessarily know…

This E Class was a funny one, I sold it in 2013 with 300,000 miles on it. Spotless and apart from a vague feeling from all of the major controls it drove great. Original clutch and injectors too, it had some seals at various times , but no major work. I sold it to a Russian bouncer from a posh West End nightclub who wanted to make a few quid as an illegal mini cab driver when his club had closed.

The MOT history after I sold it is very weird, it lost 20/30k the first year then almost a 100the second! Presume it went for export after that.

5DC9B6A4-8A98-4EDC-A242-F68C908ABC30.thumb.jpeg.3c83efc97e6b6e374cdd7f3bf103ff19.jpeg

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