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Dodgy shit hidden by sellers


sierraman

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I used to hear about people quieting noisy gearboxes by adding a nylon shirt, but have never seen it done.  I can't even remember the last time I saw a nylon shirt, for that matter.

Lots of rwd gearboxes used to feature postcard-sized cover plates held down by half a dozen bolts. I'd imagine if you popped one of those off you could insert all kinds of nefarious temporary cures. Either that, or remove the gearshift assembly and stuff it in that way.

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11 minutes ago, Dead_E23 said:

I used to hear about people quieting noisy gearboxes by adding a nylon shirt, but have never seen it done.  I can't even remember the last time I saw a nylon shirt, for that matter.

Lots of rwd gearboxes used to feature postcard-sized cover plates held down by half a dozen bolts. I'd imagine if you popped one of those off you could insert all kinds of nefarious temporary cures. Either that, or remove the gearshift assembly and stuff it in that way.

I’d heard of sawdust. 

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Sawdust I sort of understand, but what kind of maniac sat down and said 'I've got a really noisy gearbox, I KNOW - I'll put a banana skin in there!'

I mean top marks for solutions-orientated thinking, but I wonder what else got put into gearboxes to 'see if it quietens it down'

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Remember reading BSH about a guy who bought a Suzuki Gt750. These 3 cylinder bikes had a reputation seizing up the middle cylinder. When this one was running rough the owner stripped head off and discovered that the middle piston had been replaced with a tennis ball cut and wedged over the end of the con rod.

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Just remembered another story about my pal the dodgy motor trader.  I was loitering outside another traders premises one morning when I spotted him in his smiley Transit beavertail and he pulled over for a chat. 

He had an absolutely hanging Maxi loaded on the back covered in moss with holes in the scuttle you could have put your hand through. I asked him if he was on his way to weigh it in and he laughed and told me it was going in that night's auction at Eastbourne and he'd pop back with it later to show me.

Sure enough, he reappeared that afternoon with the car sporting a fresh coat of paint concealing a ton of wag that he'd shovelled into the holey panels.  I'd watched him using body filler before, and he was so skilled with it that it only needed the smallest amount of sanding down.

Caveat emptor!

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12 minutes ago, Timewaster said:

Remember reading BSH about a guy who bought a Suzuki Gt750. These 3 cylinder bikes had a reputation seizing up the middle cylinder. When this one was running rough the owner stripped head off and discovered that the middle piston had been replaced with a tennis ball cut and wedged over the end of the con rod.

Blimey,  that story was doing the rounds when I got my GT380 in 1976

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A friend bought an 8 cylinder yank that was running a bit rough. When he checked under the bonnet he found that the back spark plug was missing and had been replaced with a wooden plug. Hoping to get some improvement in performance he removed the wooden plug and fitted a random spark plug. He tried to start the car which didn't go at all well and when he took the head off he found that there was no piston or con rod in the back bore.

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There used to be a fellow who went under the name Barry Cade who wrote a column in various car maintenance and classic car mags. He would endlessly repeat the tale of how someone would pump body filler into sloppy king pins with a grease gun to get through the Mot. 

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2 minutes ago, Dobloseven said:

There used to be a fellow who went under the name Barry Cade who wrote a column in various car maintenance and classic car mags. He would endlessly repeat the tale of how someone would pump body filler into sloppy king pins with a grease gun to get through the Mot. 

@Barry Cade

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2 minutes ago, Dobloseven said:

There used to be a fellow who went under the name Barry Cade who wrote a column in various car maintenance and classic car mags. He would endlessly repeat the tale of how someone would pump body filler into sloppy king pins with a grease gun to get through the Mot. 

But then your king pins would be immediately fucked... what would that solve? 🤣

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9 minutes ago, sierraman said:

But then your king pins would be immediately fucked... what would that solve? 🤣

Since he got paid for writing the columns, it must have solved the problem of his holiday money a few times! I don't think he's anything to do with our Barry. 

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Looked at a new(ish) Civic a couple of years ago, pics looked good, spotlessly clean outside, low miles, FSH, all good. Rang the dealer "I'm driving an hour to see this thing... anything you want to tell me?".... "Nah, it's immaculate".... get there to see spotless car with windows down. Hot day, fair enough. Take it for a drive, put the windows up and am immediately overcome with the stench of dog. Rear seats still damp with dog piss. Boot and seatbacks covered in dog hair. Took it back... "how was the car?" - "Fucking stinks of piss you bullshitting wanker"... saw the same car doing the rounds on eBay for quite some time after. Dogs stink almost as bad as 2nd hand car salesmen. 

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How about sticking new shells in a fucked DCi and then flogging it. Meaning the buyer (me) had to spend £550 on a replacement engine. This still burns me to today, after always running shitters a family member gave us £3K to buy a car and my OH had always wanted a convertible. We had two weeks of top down motoring until it shat itself. The bolts holding the sump on weren’t even tightened properly. Ended up selling it with the replacement  engine, new clutch and timing belt for £300 less than we paid for it. 054C71AC-4A54-44E2-A136-03027C038324.thumb.jpeg.aae56b1a126b78d307cdbc0a7140db07.jpeg

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2 hours ago, Dobloseven said:

There's another version of that, where a fellow lets his young son drive his new Golf on a disused airfield. The revs drop and the car starts shuddering as the lad changes into the fifth gear his dad didn't know he'd got. 

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… some people just have zero awareness and drive basically on autopilot 

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My dad once bought a second-hand Cavalier from a trader which was tickety boo inside and out and served us well as a family car.  The hidden bit was said Cavalier wasn't actually the trader's to sell.  Things got interesting when a debt recovery agent turned up to repossess it.  In fairness it was carelessness on the trader's part rather than dishonesty, so he said, and he ended up paying off the lender and the agent so that he could gain title to the goods.  Complicated business.  

And the opposite: in the seventies or eighties my mum, then living in North London, telephoned a private seller about a car to be informed that it was a good runner and immaculate bar a bullet hole in one of the panels.  The seller, who sounded on the wide side, informed her that a rival had taken a pot shot at the car the previous day.  She, my mum, didn't bother to go and look at it...

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A few years ago, one of the Practical Classics team, might well have been Danny Hopkins, bought a Vauxhall Victor FB from a Jaguar specialist. Apparently it had been taken in part exchange against an E Type. It was soon discovered the sills were crafted artisan style from a layer of finest body filler nestling on a bed of crumpled newspaper. The sellers insisted they had bought it in like that in good faith, but the date on the newspapers proved otherwise.... 

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1 hour ago, Bren said:

Quite a few SD1 owners caught out by that one.....

Wasn’t there a thing back in the early eighties of Sierras being hired and gearboxes swapped by folks wanting 5 speed Cortinas. Four speed Sierras being returned to the hire company who were none the wiser for a while until a customer reported a problem with the lack of fifth? 

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8 hours ago, JimH said:

IME the most common is sellers being completely and totally and absolutely unaware that the car had ever been in an accident ever. In one particularly memorable case the pretence was maintained even when it was suggested that the paint on the front end was still reeking of solvent. 

This is very common, I went to see a K reg Sapphire in the mid nineties, it was cheap and I called the seller as soon as the paper came out hoping to get a bargain. I asked if it had been accident damaged and the seller said no, it is very good condition. When I got to his house you could see immediately that it was not sitting straight and the shell was clearly not straight. I asked again if it had been in an accident and he was adamant it hadn’t. I called HPI and checked it in front of him and surprisingly* it was a write off! The seller was in a wheel chair and in traction, I suspect from a previous satisfied customer.

When I bought my TVR I saw a very cheap one on Autotrader, I called the seller as soon as the advert came out and was told it was in good condition and never crashed. I drove straight to Nottingham to view it (3 hours each way) pulled up out side his house with a very strong smell of fibreglass resin coming from the garage and filler dust everywhere, the car stank and looked terrible, I didn’t hang around long, no need to waste money on a HPI check there.

Blatant lies about mileage are very common now. As has been mentioned sawdust in the gearbox and axle were common ‘repairs’.

On the positive side the TVR I did buy turned out to be excellent and cheap as the seller was moving to Barbados and wanted cash. I also bought a Mini Cub ( Moke kit car) very cheap at Cardiff auction when it was pushed through the ring as the last car of the day because they couldn’t start it. I had it for half the reserve price and drove it home after tightening the battery leads!

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In the 90s I'm sure there was a trick played by second hand car dealers who would have a full page in Autotrader or the local papers listing 30 nice sounding cars.

I was after a 205XS (never actually got one) and would get to the dealer, look at the 15 cars they actually had and ask about the XS.

"Oh, that's gone but we have this lovely 205"

*Points to a doom blue diesel.

This happened a few times so I'm sure it was a thing.

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Just now, Timewaster said:

In the 90s I'm sure there was a trick played by second hand car dealers who would have a full page in Autotrader or the local papers listing 30 nice sounding cars.

I was after a 205XS (never actually got one) and would get to the dealer, look at the 15 cars they actually had and ask about the XS.

"Oh, that's gone but we have this lovely 205"

*Points to a doom blue diesel.

This happened a few times so I'm sure it was a thing.

Empress car sales did this regularly, I took the newspaper with me and asked about every car in the advert. Surprisingly I had just missed each of them, but they had similar ones for around a grand more in each case.

The last time I went they had a manual 3.6 XJS, I called and asked if it was really there and what condition it was in. I was assured it was there and immaculate! When I got there it was actually there in the showroom with a huge pool of oil underneath on the showroom floor! I pointed it out to the salesman and he said our workshop will sort that, I also pointed out the large lump of filler in the rear quarter panel! It was far from immaculate, needless to say I didn’t buy it.

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Once I drove a long way to see a "great" honda prelude Mk4, when I turned up the windscreen was smashed, the bonnet had not been latched shut and had swung open, bent the hinges, bodywork and wings and smashed the windscreen. He offered me £100 off because of that... Wish he had told me before I left so I did not need to waste my time. 

The car had failed it's mot then a month later passed with no advisories. It was clearly a dodgy mot as the battery was still insecure like in the older mot... I don't understand why people don't just put a big cable tie around it (at the very least). 

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When I bought my Discovery there were thin bits of tin Sicoflexed over the non existant inner and outer sills then covered in thick bitumen. Should have looked harder when buying it after opening a rear door and peeling one of these tin plates off a hole near the seatbelt anchor right infront of the seller. But £700 for a 300TDi  was cheap then.

In the 6 years of ownership I realised a 300TDi registered in 1999 has all the body rot of a Discovery1 and all the chassis rot of a Discovery 2... 

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Went to look at an MGF once. It'd been on Autotrader for a few weeks, gradually getting a little cheaper. I'd asked if all was well head gasket wise before setting off and told it was. "Everything is perfect, I've never had any trouble with the car"

Drove 90 mins to the location. Nice area, expensive houses, seemed ideal. Looked around the car, it seemed fine, seller was well dressed, could string a sentence together, he was chatting away, saying he'd always wanted one and had owned it a few years. He pointed out a few things he'd had done that showed a good knowledge of the cars and their quirks. I mentioned that I was surprised it hadn't sold yet and he quickly tried to change the subject.

I asked for the key to open the boot and he seemed a bit reluctant but handed it over. There was a 5 litre coolant bottle in the boot.

"You can have that, only bought it last week so there's quite a bit left."

Not a good sign.

I pulled the inspection flap back and reached for the expansion tank. Seller goes quiet.

I unscrew the cap and am greeted with overflowing contents that Hellmann's could have bottled and passed off as their own.

"Errmmm, you told me there were no issues, that's head gasket failure." I said curtly.

"Err, ummmm, what do you mean?" he responded, now visibly trembling, glancing nervously about the street.

"You clearly know about these cars, head gasket issues aren't exactly a secret are they?!" I reply, wife sensing a situation brewing, begins to pull my arm away.

"There isn't a problem, it's fine, it's always been like that, it's never bothered me."

I shook my head in disbelief, handed him the cap, wiped the residue from my fingers on the boot seal, got back in my car and drove away with him stood staring after me, cap still in hand.

It stayed on Autotrader for a few more weeks before "NEW HEAD GASKET" being added to the description.

I could tell by his demeanor that I wasn't the first and probably wasn't the last that he'd tried it on with, before finally giving in and getting it done. Maybe the embarrassment of the curtain twitching neighbours seeing his best bullshitting skills played a part too.

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