Dodgy shit hidden by sellers

[goosey]

23 hours ago, St.Jude said:

Anyone else reading these stories and thinking “I’d drive the fuck out of that until the next MOT”?

Back in the 90s my dad used to break Landrovers for spares, he once bought a series 3 landrover LWB to break as the chassis was rotten but had been repaired badly with Duckhams oil tins, when he got the paperwork from the owner my dad discovered it still had 7 months MOT so he taxed it and used it as a daily. I believe it passed another MOT once the oil tin chassis repairs were under sealed/covered up, Im pretty sure it was eventually broken up 

edit- it was used for 2 house moves so actually went on to last another 3 years at least, 

[MikeR]

I once heard of a chap redoing the floor of a car with floorboards many years ago up in Scotland !!

as for oil cans , I did find takeaway trays very good for repairing /covering up /keeping water out of the holes in the rear arches of the Focus , passed a couple of mots as well ...

I wont tell the scrap man about this bodge ...

[warch]

Just remembered my uncle apparently bought an old Landrover in the 60s which had had the firewall repaired. Using concrete.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

1 minute ago, warch said:

Just remembered my uncle apparently bought an old Landrover in the 60s which had had the firewall repaired. Using concrete.

Wouldn't have hurt the performance.

[Merryck]

30 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Wouldn't have hurt the performance.

Definitely would have helped the soundproofing!

[Boycie]

Not sellers but in car hire we have had customers try and hide damaging cars etc ......

No 1 , many years ago a customer rents a fiesta for a week , returns it no issues , it's checked and preepped and rented , next customer breaks down within 10 miles and it's rec to local ford dealer , fueling issue we are told once in the workshop ......after lots of head scratching it's realised the tank is empty ....guage shows full ....to save money the previous hirer had taken the dash apart to glue to the fuel gauge full .....to save £30 ....

No2 , again many years ago a orange marea is returned just before closing , I checked it over and all is good till I get to the back , I can smell paint and on close inspection ( It was getting dark ) there is ripples on the boot ....on closer inspection there,s putty in about 4 dents and the paint ( miles wrong shade ) is still wet .....I proceed to office where cust tells me " must have been like that when he got it " , I try not to laugh and point out both the putty and paint are still wet ........." Fuck it " he replied " it was worth a try " ......indeed it was not and I proceeded to charge his credit card the excess 

Ill try to remember some more .......there,s been a few in 23 years 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Timewaster]

I definitely never filled and rattle canned a dent in a hire van before returning it.

No. Not me.

 

As for putting one over on the trade?

My favourite one was a guy who took a scrap Mondeo over the bridge.

All the usual tricks to make it heavier, tank full of water, rubble in the boot, even soaked the back seat with a hose to try and eek out a few extra quid.

His cleverness was short lived when the scrap man said "Do I look like some sort of C**"? You think I sit here weighing scrap in all day and don't know how much a Mondeo weighs??"

[ProgRocker]

On 23/05/2022 at 22:02, Dan_ZTT said:

Was a passenger in my mother in law’s newish Bini not long ago, get on the motorway and she revs it up to about 75mph in 4th and just stays there, completely oblivious until I reminded her it had a 5th gear… 

My mate once had to remind me to change up to 5th gear on a dual carriageway when I was driving my 'stop gap' Escort diesel saloon. Probably distracted with the conversation. 

[Dobloseven]

2 hours ago, Timewaster said:

I definitely never filled and rattle canned a dent in a hire van before returning it.

No. Not me.

 

As for putting one over on the trade?

My favourite one was a guy who took a scrap Mondeo over the bridge.

All the usual tricks to make it heavier, tank full of water, rubble in the boot, even soaked the back seat with a hose to try and eek out a few extra quid.

His cleverness was short lived when the scrap man said "Do I look like some sort of C**"? You think I sit here weighing scrap in all day and don't know how much a Mondeo weighs??"

Larger ladies can be very attractive to scrap collectors. Make sure she's in the truck when it goes over the bridge. Quietly slips away to be met outside after the empty weighing. Worth her weight in light iron, if not gold! 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

8 minutes ago, ProgRocker said:

My mate once had to remind me to change up to 5th gear on a dual carriageway when I was driving my 'stop gap' Escort diesel saloon. Probably distracted with the conversation.

Not quite as bad as my other half trying to force her Focus into reverse on the motorway after driving my car, which has 6th in the same position...

[AnnoyingPentium]

2 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Not quite as bad as my other half trying to force her Focus into reverse on the motorway after driving my car, which has 6th in the same position...

My Mum kept doing this going from the Auris (6 gears) to the Duster (5, reverse is where 6 would be)

[ProgRocker]

25 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Not quite as bad as my other half trying to force her Focus into reverse on the motorway after driving my car, which has 6th in the same position...

 

22 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

My Mum kept doing this going from the Auris (6 gears) to the Duster (5, reverse is where 6 would be)

I almost did this nearly a year ago after I chopped in my 6 speed Almera for the Hyundai. 

[Timewaster]

For years I would drive a 6 speed van all day at work, get in my old 405 and  crunch reverse at the same point on my way home every single day.

I once put a new, demonstrator Courier van into first gear at about 40mph while going for third to overtake. It didn't like it one bit!

That Courier was bought by a local firm and I used to see it about all the time and I would wince every time.

[maxxo]

my XM

was told it was solid, wouldn't need much to get a test etc

i finally got it through the test today

i was given my sills in a plastic bag

[FakeConcern]

4 hours ago, Timewaster said:

For years I would drive a 6 speed van all day at work, get in my old 405 and  crunch reverse at the same point on my way home every single day.

I once put a new, demonstrator Courier van into first gear at about 40mph while going for third to overtake. It didn't like it one bit!

That Courier was bought by a local firm and I used to see it about all the time and I would wince every time.

Obviously off topic but Mrs Concern driving my 1st car a Mini 1000, pulling off a motorway  onto a sliproad changed to what she intended to be 3rd at about 50mph. It was actually 1st. We nearly went through the fucking windscreen!

The car survived though...

1 hour ago, maxxo said:

my XM

was told it was solid, wouldn't need much to get a test etc

i finally got it through the test today

i was given my sills in a plastic bag

When I bought my XM V6, I checked the MOT history...

2015 Pass with no advisories...

I bought the thing.

MOT next year when I took it in...

[maxxo]

9 minutes ago, FakeConcern said:

When I bought my XM V6, I checked the MOT history...

2015 Pass with no advisories...

I bought the thing.

MOT next year when I took it in...

Makes you wonder doesn't it........

[FakeConcern]

22 minutes ago, maxxo said:

Makes you wonder doesn't it........

It certainly did...

[wuvvum]

14 hours ago, ProgRocker said:

My mate once had to remind me to change up to 5th gear on a dual carriageway when I was driving my 'stop gap' Escort diesel saloon. Probably distracted with the conversation. 

My dad did that when I were a nipper in his diesel Montego.  He'd just hired a Renault Master (first generation) and driven 300 miles in it to haul a load of tat to our holiday house, so he'd got used to listening to a diesel engine screaming its tits off at 70...

[Dead_E23]

My brother once bought a Hillman Avenger from a bombsite car trader known as 'OneEye' only to discover the front wings had been repaired with asphalt.

It was a 1500HL and for some reason went like the fucking wind.   

[artdjones]

One of my early cars was a Vauxhall Magnum, which had had the tops of the inner wings repaired with corrugated cardboard and underseal. I was so naive I thought that the owner might be honest, as he was a copper!

[Richard_FM]

I also read about the sawdust trick from Matilda.

Ground cork was similar dodge used by spivs on cars just after the war, along with patching up rusted out floors with biscuit tins.

I've heard of removing air filters to keep the smoke levels on diesel down.

Many years ago someone on Watchdog bought a Capri 2.8 only to find it had a 2.3 V6 in it!  It turned out it was stolen & recovered at some point.

It also featured a garage that reconditioned Land Rovers that often seemed to create more problems as the solved by bodging things.

[Boycie]

We received a load of cars from our Stansted branch last summer , on it was a 18 plate Fiat 500 with alloy wheels off a 08 plate 500 ........rattle canned silver with 4 Chinese death rings on them .....took over a week to get a refurb set , Stansted manager struggled for an explanation .....still got the old sitting in our garage at the yard 

[DodgyBastard]

I bought a Citroen bx estate last year that the seller had bodged the rear arches with a wire mesh and expanding foam, a sheet of wood screwed inside the arch then plastered with filler.

I had great fun hacking it apart with a pick axe...

 

 

[Dobloseven]

7 minutes ago, DodgyBastard said:

I bought a Citroen bx estate last year that the seller had bodged the rear arches with a wire mesh and expanding foam, a sheet of wood screwed inside the arch then plastered with filler.

I had great fun hacking it apart with a pick axe...

 

https://youtu.be/fcI8h-m_5YA

I used to like the thin aluminum sheet from behind gas fires. Very easy to cut and shape for body repairs. Nice to see the old "skills" are still alive though. Us old uns can remember the AA Book of the Car, where we were shown how to repair the sills  on a Mk2 Jaguar with chicken wire. 

[sierraman]

I recall reading a sixties copy of Car Mechanics a while ago and a guy wrote in to say he had replaced the rusty sills on his Consul with a length of 3x2 timber, he’d chiseled all the swage lines in and painted it. Then used some brass screws to hold it to the floors and the pillars. 

[sierraman]

29 minutes ago, Dobloseven said:

I used to like the thin aluminum sheet from behind gas fires. Very easy to cut and shape for body repairs. Nice to see the old "skills" are still alive though. Us old uns can remember the AA Book of the Car, where we were shown how to repair the sills  on a Mk2 Jaguar with chicken wire. 

The ‘old skills’ ha ha! There could be a shite version of Beamish somewhere and you could watch a bloke dressing in a uniform of his old job, wobbing up the sills on a Picasso. Like one of those real working blacksmiths shops. 

[Richard_FM]

I've heard of a Vauxhall Victor FA which had a railway sleeper bodged in under the rear seat to try to hold it in place after the usual rot in the rear floor caught hold.

[Wibble]

11 hours ago, Dobloseven said:

I used to like the thin aluminum sheet from behind gas fires. Very easy to cut and shape for body repairs. Nice to see the old "skills" are still alive though. Us old uns can remember the AA Book of the Car, where we were shown how to repair the sills  on a Mk2 Jaguar with chicken wire. 

Yes! I’ve got that book🤣🤣

[wuvvum]

I have discovered this weekend that the rearmost 2' or so of my LDV's offside sill is made primarily of concrete.

[JJ0063]

11 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

I have discovered this weekend that the rearmost 2' or so of my LDV's offside sill is made primarily of concrete.

I shouldn’t laugh but wow! Pics?