December 2003
It seems to be my month for buying old bangers, but would anyone care to hazard a guess as to what happened here (I've included no details which would enable anybody to identify anyone/thing).
Rang a man about a cheap 4x4 in the autotrader for my Father's use running around on some old land. Regrettably possibly sold, customer gone home to get money.
Get phone call back, car not in fact sold. I arranged to go and see it.
Go and see it. Not as per description, pretty awful actually, but still ok for the job except for broken rear window.
Story around broken window is a bit iffy.
V5 shows one owner from new. Clearly not accurate. Red section of V5 used for sale to trader or salvage is missing, but car has not been re-registered in any new name. Presumably was used for taxing car, but how come it didn't get into a new name ?
Vehicle has 11 months MOT and had been given 6 months tax at the same time, still got 5 months to run. Not unusual except the car would appear not to have been used for a couple of months.
Petrol cap flap has been prised open and bent back flat. Rear door lock has been hacked off the frame and welded back on as had one of the hinges. Ignition lock original and undamaged, ditto door locks. One key still fits all locks.
Car is not stolen, not subject to any known claim and unknown to police for any crime or tickets. Not a 100% certain answer, but probably correct since I have a useful uncle.
All engine numbers, chasis numbers, V5 etc. check out with no sign of tampering.
If car blows up tomorrow I'm not losing much money. So agree to buy if window is fixed. Man agrees window to be fixed (albeit with perspex) in 2 hours and recommends pub to wait in.
Hand over small deposit and take documents.
Arrive in pub maybe 1 mile away. While still in car park man rushes in and states not able to sell me the car since window will not be ready for 4 hours. I reply that I'll wait. Then man says not likely to be ready until tomorrow. I say I'll pick it up tomorrow. Man says not really going to be ready until Monday. I say I'll take it without glass. Man says no, he doesn't want to do that. Man hands back deposit, retreives documents and hands over further £20 "for my trouble" & leaves in cloud of dust with me left gobsmacked in the car park.
You can assume that nobody had given him an increased offer for the car (you had to see it to know). It was him who had advertised it in the autotrader. Advert gave his home number and mobile number and business address.
What happened ?? I have no idea and have thought of many alternatives, none of which seem to fit. But it was somewhat surreal. The seller didn't strike me as dishonest, although probably open to the odd "deal".
He didn't seem to be unwilling or nervous about selling the vehicle beforehand, but definitely did not want to sell it by the time we were in the pub car park.
He had already suggested I could take the car without the window when we were negotiating.
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You often see it in papers and mags and occasionally on the TV but never think it\'s going to happen to you - but last night some pink fluffy dice have come along and nicked the alloys on my Omega and left it on bricks or breeze blocks to be precise!!
First thing I knew about it was early this morning when a neighbour knocked on the door and said \"You\'re not going to believe this but all 4 wheels on your car have been nicked!\".
Went outside to check just in case it wasn\'t April fool come early, to see the Omega with a breeze block and a neat pile of wheel nuts at each corner (The car was parked overnight on the road directly outside the house). No other damage to the car that I can see, though dropping it onto the bricks may have caused some damage to the underside that I can\'t.
I duly phoned the police and went through the normal procedures, though in fairness there\'s probably not a lot they can do. Then phoned insurers, Direct Line, and have arranged for recovery to one of their local repair centres. In theory it shouldn\'t be a big job, just a new set of wheels and tyres and the car should be back on the road within the day (or so I hope).
Reporting the crime and dealing with the insurers was very hassle free as I would imagine commiting the crime would have been in the first place.
I suppose I\'ll have to resign myself to becoming just another car crime statistic.......
Chad.
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A couple of months ago I was out walking the dogs and found some youths driving a car round a field in a car-unfriendly fashion.
Phone plod and reported it and nothing happened.
Next day found the car dumped in the field and reported it again. Plod sent out a recovery vehicle. Nothing else heard.
If they's responded the previous day they could have saved some of the damage to the car and had a good chance of nicking the felons.
Please bear with me, as this is motoring related.
Yesterday I watched a recording of a BBC program, Bodsnatchers, which was broadcast last Wednesday. It\'s a program about parasites. Towards the end of the program they mentioned Toxoplasmosis. Cats are a natural host to Toxoplasma, and they expel it\'s eggs in their faeces. The eggs then form into larvae and need to find their way back into a cat. They do this by hitching a ride with rats, and they very cleverly alter a rats behaviour, by making it less risk adverse, inorder to get the rat caught by a cat. They showed a laboratory experiement which demonstrated this.
They then went on to say that we humans very easily get toxoplasmosis from under cooked red meat. 50% or Americans, 33% of Britons, and a massive 80% of French have toxoplasm. Experiments have shown that reaction times are impeded, and that 2 in 3 people involved in road accidents have toxoplasma.
{tongue in cheek mode on}Isn\'t it time that this government started to legislate against red meat, rather than speeding and mobile phones, as it\'s involved in 66% of all road accidents{tic mode off}
There are 2 BBC news items here :
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2176548.stm
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/850556.stm
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Dear Mod.
Where is the car connection (however vague) ?
I thought I'd wandered into www.butcher'sblock.co.uk
Yes, I think this has gone quite far enough. Thread now Read only, not deleted.
No Dosh
mailto:Alan_moderator@honestjohn.co.uk
I took a test drive in the manual version last Saturday, boy am I glad I did. This car has bags of grip and power. Even in the high gears, 4,5 and 6 you can still get plenty of power down. The grip is also stunning. It was wet roads on Saturday and this car stuck to the road like ???? to a blanket. I only had my A3 since September but already thinking of trading it in. What a car at only 24,000. Read more
It will have the badges, still very stealth though. Make sure you go through a broker or haggle as that grand off might make it more tempting.
....and having discovered the joys of bangernomics with a £100 88 Nova I find myself with a situation that I haven\'t come across before. All the cars I\'ve owned previously have never had frozen door locks, but this one is so bad I couldn\'t even get the key into the lock of the tailgate. Any favourite cures from the backroomers for home and on the road? Read more
The oil method seems to be the best but, If you are accidently stck at home, get out a hairdryer and heat it that way. If away from home try leaning your bum against the lock for a while. Lift your coat first, of course.
Hi all,
My 'new' M reg 1.6 LX Escort has a heated rear windscreen which doesnt seem to be doing anything.
Looking at the Haynes manual i have deduced that;
There is a fuse in the fusebox, but it is 10A rather than the specified 25A, however it hasn't blown, which makes me think that the current isnt even getting that far.
I can hear the relay click when i switch the dashboard switch on, which according to Haynes means that's ok?
The next step is the main fuses in the engine compartment. It says there are 5 in my car, but only three are present in mine, each with a cable running off it to somewhereorother. The one involved with the heated rear windscreen doesnt seem to be present, and even if i put it in its slot there is no cable obvious to take the current away!
Is the Haynes manual wrong about this, or is it possible that the fuse is somehow linked to one of the cables on the other fuses?
This is the first problem i have found with my Escort and so a swift and easy solution would be a confidence boost for inevitable future niggles! Read more
I cannot thank you enough- I had been scouring the internet for answers to my Escorts rear window wiper not working. I read your post and found and cleaned these contacts and hey ho! the wiper works again. I had just picked up a motor from the scrappy so you've saved me replacing it. I must say this made my day as I am a total novice who usually only gets as far as oil, water, tyres.....thanks again.
...
All,
I\'ve just posted in another thread and reminded myself of something I was wondering a while back. I\'ve got an old (1970 - worst year for rust apparently) Volkswagen Beetle sitting on my parent\'s driveway and rusting away. I\'d like to restore it but I haven\'t the first clue how to go about it. In the meantime I\'d like to make sure it has the best possible chance of survival - does anyone have any tips to belatedly prolong its life?
It\'s been sat in one place for several years now, on its wheels. The tyres are completely flat, the exhaust has pretty much disintegrated, and the body work is coated in green scum. Am I too late to save it do you think? How much would it cost me to get it restored to driveable condition at a guess, assuming all that was really wrong with it was some body rust that could be filled out and some exhaust etc rusting? I know that\'s an impossible question without examining the car, but has anyone seen a similar case and know what that cost?
First step (obviously) clean it up and treat the visible rust - Would it live longer on axle stands? Or will any suspension damage already have been done?
It was really annoying having to stop driving it. A woman in a rover pulled out in front of me and I slid into the side of her car. My car was pretty much undamaged but hers was big time dented and she was making out it was as much my fault as hers. Cue forms to the insurers to try to sort it out, and the temporary loss of my NCD pending investigation. Of course I was third party insurance tho so my insurers didn\'t have anything to gain by chasing it if the other woman wasn\'t bothered and hence they didn\'t give a toss about whether I could afford to run it at the higher rate (which I couldn\'t). The woman never bothered filling in a form and sending it back (must have decided to get the work done herself) so I had to wait a full year while my insurers tried to get her insurers to send them a form. By the time they said \'OK you can have your no claims back\' the car had been sitting for a year and wasn\'t (at the time) possible to bring back to drivability.
It was just lucky that I had the accident in April and then my insurance renewed in May - otherwise I wouldn\'t have been able to cancel the insurance until the claim was resolved. They tried to stop me anyway. There\'s an insurer I wouldn\'t go to again.
-- Kev Read more
Cheers.
Might finally get round to cleaning the paintwork and putting it on eBay unless someone on here shows an interest.
-- Kev
Well, i\'ve been well and truly convinced by the Toyota Hilux on Top Gear, to the extent that last friday i went out and bought one - a 1986, 2 litre petrol 4WD.
A couple of bits and pieces need seeing to, first of all the engine runs fine, but as you come to a standstill the revs seem to drop very low, and occasionally it stalls. It starts up again fine, but it\'s quite inconvenient having to start it again at every junction! Any ideas? I\'m planning to change plugs, points rotor arm and distributor cap - any other things which are likely to be causing this?
Also, anybody out there with any experience of these? What other things do i need to keep an eye on?
TIA. Read more
Just an update on my knackered old truck, if anyone's interested...
Couldn't get the engine to idle steadily enough to make any carb adjustments, so decided in my "wisdom" that i should strip the carb down. Did so, put it back together, and it didn't work at all, so bought a weber replacement carb (£225!!) Fitted that, and it now runs fine!
Saw on last weeks 5th Gear a shot of a newspaper article about a Royal Mail van that had been wheel clamped, and it included a photo too.
I was under the belief that it is an offence to interfere with the delivery of Royal Mail, and I think I got that impression from a thread of a few months ago about Royal Mail vans being able to go through red lights, for exact same reason.
Or am I just making all of this up in my own mind? Read more
Topaktas.. I can only presume they are not Government vehicles or things have changed. I worked 30 odd years in Government service and we were informed that insurance was not carried.
The reason given was with scores of thousands including military the Crown carried responsibility to deal with any claims and dealt with it themselves.
Also any claims under any other circumstances such as third party accidents were dealt with by the Home OFfice solicitors themselves. Maybe our friendly legal eagles know more on this.
A non-technical friend of mine here in Jordan has had a persistent problem with his 2.4i petrol Terrano. Only in damp weather and typically driving around town the car will get an intermittent misfire, hesitation, flat spot and even occasionally stall.
As we have 300 days of sunshine annually and Jordan is one of the 10 most water-poor countries in the world he has not done much to get this fixed as it only happens on a few days a year.
However he will soon be moving to a much wetter country in Eastern Europe and is now anxious to get it fixed.
Does anyone know if there is a specific problem with this engine that might be causing this?
What should he be getting the garage to check? I would be grateful for a back-to-basics check list I could give to him.
(It sounds to me like HT leads or damp getting into the distributor cap).
The car, he tells me, is a 1997 (German-spec) model with the KA24E engine.
Thanks from me (and him) in advance. Read more
I'd concur with you. An HT system overhaul is called for - and it needn't cost a fortune.
Spark Plugs and HT leads are the most likely culprits followed by the distributor cap & rotor arm.
--
groups.msn.com/honestjohn - Pictures say a thousand words.....
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>>as no doubt you know all too well in your line of work
CIO of a telecommunications company. Insurance was a while ago.