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The Car Thread


MadManMike

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On 17/07/2021 at 7:33 AM, Adam@TartyBikes said:

An interesting video, which I agree with entirely based upon my experience: 

 

I feel the sweetspot is late 90s/early 2000s.

Given this (which I agree with)

would you buy say a 66 plate with 100k on the clock or a 61 plate with say 60k on the clock? 
 

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Personally... Definitely the latter. Even older if I could. But definitely petrol non turbo if I wanted reliability.

I have a 2000 MR2 with 133k on it, faultless, and a 2001 Micra with 25k (!) on it, also faultless. Both been on track days and driven back home.

The 2009 VW Tarty van is currently on 130k and in for a turbo and manifold... the cost of that job will be more than double what I paid for both of the above cars combined :lol:

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My dad used to swear by older motors. 

Bus company he worked for had a 405 for odd jobs on 255k, he had a 405 estate on 155k when he sold it and he moved onto a 205 with a 405 engine with 135k :lol:

He bought a 60 plate Golf estate a couple of years ago and it's the first car he's bought with less than 100k on the clock in over 25 years! 

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2 hours ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

Personally... Definitely the latter. Even older if I could. But definitely petrol non turbo if I wanted reliability.

I have a 2000 MR2 with 133k on it, faultless, and a 2001 Micra with 25k (!) on it, also faultless. Both been on track days and driven back home.

The 2009 VW Tarty van is currently on 130k and in for a turbo and manifold... the cost of that job will be more than double what I paid for both of the above cars combined :lol:

Non turbo petrol is hard to find without going back a long way it seems! (I agree about best for reliability) 

so the civic is 07 and 215k. I’ve owned it nearly 3 years and done 12k. Brakes are knackered, clutch is proper knackered, but worst of all the ac has died. 

I’ve basically owned bangers forever, and now with a family and so little time of my own anyway, I just need something that works and is comfortable and doesn’t have bits falling off! Oh and fits all the bikes in/on 
 

I guess I need to find the sweet spot of new enough to not have age related issues, old enough not to waste money on year, and low enough miles to not fall foul of planned part failures. I guess if I ran this car for 10y I’d only add 40k miles! 
 

Newer civic estates are looking a decent option at the mo.

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

Volvo V70 / V50 Estate? 

We picked up a V50 2.0d when Ella arrived. It's a reasonably small estate (mk2 Focus underneath), which means it's ideal around the lanes etc here, yet we've still been able to piss off to Wales/Cornwall/etc for a week's holiday as a family of 4 laden up with stuff (including baby kit, which is exponentially larger than adult luggage of course...).

We had a starter motor go on it, which was an easy task and about £120 but otherwise it's been decent.

It's a 58 plate and at £2,600 a couple of years ago, comfortably the newest and most expensive car I've ever bought :lol:

 

12 hours ago, manuel said:

with a family and so little time of my own anyway, I just need something that works and is comfortable and doesn’t have bits falling off! Oh and fits all the bikes in/on

This was my thinking with it. I have my own cars which can go wrong and be tinkered with, family car needs to be reliable and easy with minimal downtime.

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6 hours ago, Luke Rainbird said:

We picked up a V50 2.0d when Ella arrived. It's a reasonably small estate (mk2 Focus underneath), which means it's ideal around the lanes etc here, yet we've still been able to piss off to Wales/Cornwall/etc for a week's holiday as a family of 4 laden up with stuff (including baby kit, which is exponentially larger than adult luggage of course...).

We had a starter motor go on it, which was an easy task and about £120 but otherwise it's been decent.

It's a 58 plate and at £2,600 a couple of years ago, comfortably the newest and most expensive car I've ever bought :lol:

 

This was my thinking with it. I have my own cars which can go wrong and be tinkered with, family car needs to be reliable and easy with minimal downtime.

Cars are a mindf**k for me it seems. I’m crap at decisions, and spending money. Luke your car sounds perfect (apart from diesel) but my brain is shouting at me - only a year newer than your current car and that’s totally fooked :lol: 

 

might just go impulsive and spend a rediculous amount on something silly that I just like :lol:

my budget currently falls into civic tourer approved used territory, which ticks a lot of boxes, but seems a waste. I can think of so much more fun things to spend money on than a car…

thnx everyone for advice and suggestions! It’s all helping.

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On 23/07/2021 at 9:32 AM, Luke Rainbird said:

I have my own cars which can go wrong and be tinkered with, family car needs to be reliable and easy with minimal downtime.

f**king jinxed it. In the garage today for a set of wheel bearings, new coil spring and some bushes. They're kindly fitting the discs and pads I picked up for it at the weekend too though, which saves me getting the jack out I suppose :lol:

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Forgot to update this, but I have a giant silver limo on my drive now... Picked up that Passat that I linked to in this thread earlier on. The bodywork had a few scuffs here and there, but it's a well used 10 year old car so not entirely surprising. Everything else felt fine on it, and it had a few bonus features as a result of the previous owner installing an aftermarket Android setup instead of the standard VW console.

I put about £35 or so of diesel in it in Preston, then drove back to Caerphilly. Did a bunch of random trips down here (shopping, runs to the tip, living the dream) as well as a couple of drives to nearby trail centres, and it was only after I'd had the car for a week I realised I hadn't had to put any more fuel in. Slight contrast to my MX5.

This is the most I've spent on a car, and although it's relatively basic compared to a lot of cars out there it is nice to have a 'nice' car. Those VW peeps definitely put a lot of handy features into them. Fair play to the previous owners too, the interior was mint!

It's just had the cambelt and water pump done which removes some concerns about it, and has just been serviced and MOTd so hopefully I won't have to do much to it over the next year or so at least. It's got a 15 month warranty on it which provides surprisingly decent cover (at least in print), so if there is anything major that pops up at least I may be covered for it to some extent.

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Cheers dude (Y) Have been impressed by it. Have to follow the upshift hints to get it to around that level which feels weird to do. It's super quiet in the cabin, and they want you to upshift it pretty early - always think it's bogging down, but it seems pretty happy to trundle along at low revs.

Totally unrelated, but been listening to a bunch of different podcasts from different providers recently about autonomous cars. I'm not that interested in the technological side of it, the philosophical side has always been interesting, but a few I've listened to recently have been more about the practicalities of it. For example one was where someone hired a Waymo (Google's autonomous vehicle platform) to see what it was like. They decided to do some rudimentary tests in a car park to see how sensitive the sensors were to things being in its way on the road, like throwing a beach ball in front of it. The ultimate test was having someone step out in front of it. He initially ran along side the car and was able to make it alter its speed/course to give him a wide berth, and then naturally, when he stepped out in front of it, it did an emergency stop. Thing is, if they're programmed to stop instantly if someone steps out of it, that means that if you had a fairly high percentage of cars in a city being autonomous, it would be super easy for people to cause gridlock. If you know that cars around are always going to defer to pedestrians out of fear of knocking someone over, there's less incentive to play by the rules. The sensors/radars on cars will obviously be set to be pretty sensitive so if you're in the middle of London (so fairly slow moving traffic anyway), you could just walk out and not really give a shit because if you can see it's an autonomous car, it'll stop for you to avoid an accident. As soon as one person does that then traffic will either stop or significantly slow, meaning more people can then do the same because it effectively becomes safe to do so. It also suggests that it would be super easy to f**k with autonomous vehicles from doing their thing if you were so inclined.

An extreme example obviously, but it did make me think about how things will actually play out. Going back to the philosophical side of it, even down to the decision of "who should the car sacrifice" people can't agree. I heard about a study where they polled people about whether an autonomous car should always protect the driver, even if it means sacrificing more people outside of the car, or sacrifice the driver if it protects the greater number of people. The majority said that it should be the latter. However, when asked whether they'd buy a car that sacrificed others to save the driver, or sacrifice the driver to save more lives, they all said the former. Is it up to car makers to decide, or should it be government level?   

The concept of insurance also changes pretty significantly too. If you're not actually driving the car, who should insure it for accidents? The company who sells the car? The company who made the software? The company who made the sensors? The owner? 

There was an interesting interview I heard with the CEO of Ford where he was saying that they are looking at it being a fundamental shift in the concept of car ownership, where most people in built up areas will never need to own a car again and that instead it'll be like a subscription service where you can just use any car you find, or more akin to the rental scooters that are in a lot of cities now. I can see that happening, but again it poses a lot more questions too... 

I guess I'd always assumed that autonomous cars would basically like-for-like replace cars in our lives as they do now (to an extent), but I can't really see how that would be possible, or even if that's really practical.

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23 hours ago, Mark W said:

Forgot to update this, but I have a giant silver limo on my drive now... Picked up that Passat that I linked to in this thread earlier on

Nice one Mark, glad your happy with it! We looked at a 2017 golf alltrack at the weekend, but not really sure wether to go for it as there is no situation where we'd ever need the all wheel drive, just like the look of them :lol: 

Carpeted the back of the caddy, made and fitted a new headliner and boot liner over the last few evenings, made a huge difference and looks really smart. Just rear seatbelts to fit and it's done.

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Not a particularly interesting car but we recently picked up a discovery 5. Wouldn’t have been my first choice but for what we need it’s ideals  5 hours back from Cornwall yesterday and it was so comfy on the motorway. some of the lanes were a bit tight but it was nice to get it muddy. 
 

B667319B-F678-4C35-B6C3-41EC61FBCFC3.jpeg

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Intrigued to see what you guys might make of this as asking on a farming forum has been pointless...

I have a combine harvester with a manual gearbox, everything about it works just like any other hydraulic clutch system, it's just like a car one on steroids.

I had an incident yesterday where I pressed the clutch pedal and it didn't disengage the clutch, it felt like the pedal was light and not connected anymore. This happened a few times and unfortunately I was at the edge of a field and hit a tree before I could get the engine turned off, not great!

The clutch now works as normal, there isn't any sign of leaks, the reservoir has not needed topping up in the 15 years I've owned it, the oil has not been replaced in my ownership, the brakes use the same oil and function perfectly. The linkages are all fine, there isn't any play in anything.

What the heck happened? What could possibly cause this situation? i know the system should have been re-bled twice during ownership but regardless the oil is there and it's functioning again as if there wasn't a problem.

 

 

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I've decided to just replace the master and slave as well as a rebleed for both the clutch and brakes of course, I really don't want this problem again! The parts are only £500 so it's a no brainer just for that reassurance that they are good. We had it valued and even with the faults it has currently it's worth more than we paid for it 14 years ago so once I've finished repairing and finished harvest I think we will look at moving her on for something with more paint than rust

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  • 1 month later...

Some of you will know from FB, but my Tiger was finally ready to go for MOT after a bit of tinkering. I took it out of the garage, rolled it 200m down my road and a young chap reversed into the front passenger side wheel.

Currently arguing with the insurance company as they're refusing to come and inspect it, despite me saying it's not safe to drive. The rack / column squeaks very loudly when I turn the wheel, so I suspect one of both are knackered. The front wing is broken and the wheels needs a refurb. There could be other stuff I can't see, but the chassis looks OK I think.

This happened a week ago, I'm making no progress with them at all. I was so excited to get it over to Cardiff for an MOT and catch the last of summer, but it looks like it's going to be a while longer yet... I bought it in June and haven't managed a proper drive in it yet!

Good things come to those who wait, etc..............

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1 hour ago, monkeyseemonkeydo said:

So were you 'driving it' on a road without an MOT when he reversed into you? That could suck balls for you... Or was it still in MOT from last year?

Doesn't matter, as long as it has an appointment you're allowed to drive it to a MOT test centre without a valid test

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