Cheap MX-5: 2 weeks in......

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 16:52
Cheap MX-5: 2 weeks in...... - johnnyrev
The eagle eyed among you will remember my recent purchase of.a £1200 MX-5. I was feeling very smug at my canny purchase, but it's not been a good week!

Straight after I bought it I took it for a full service, as it had a history of services at a main dealer, but no stamps for a couple of years. The service was all fine, I kept expecting a phone call to say they had found something terminal, or it had fallen apart when up on the lift. But no, all fine and they even complimented the car on its good condition.

You can probably sense a but coming, and you'd be right! At the start of this week I got a puncture AND a chipped windscreen. I didn't notice when either happened, just a flat tyre in the morning and a big chip which my son spotted on the way home from school.

New tyre sorted (I used Tyres on the Drive who were quick and cheap) and new windscreen booked with Autoglass. And here's the but, because on taking the screen out they discovered rust which was not visible from the outside. It seems that the screen has been replaced before and the paintwork scratched but not repainted or primed, so rust got in.

Now I need to have the rust and the frame sorted before a new screen can be fitted! Oh well, at least I've budgeted for a few small jobs, I just hope it is a small job!
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Fri 27 Jan 2017 17:08
Cheap MX-5: 2 weeks in...... - SLO76
That was unfortunate but hopefully you've got all of your bad luck out the way early on. My wee MX5 wasn't completely flawless either, needing a window regulator and a sticky real calipper replaced (both common faults on these) in the two years I had it but I kept it nice, sold it for more than I paid for it and had mucho fun driving it.

Rust after a heavy handed windscreen replacement is another fairly common complaint on many cars. Worth watching if you ever have it done so the fitter is less inclined to bodge.

Edited by SLO76 on 27/01/2017 at 17:12

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Mon 30 Jan 2017 14:07
Cheap MX-5: 2 weeks in...... - Gibbo_Wirral

Take photos of the work done, it will look good when you come to sell it on.

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Tue 31 Jan 2017 06:40
Cheap MX-5: 2 weeks in...... - johnnyrev
Thank you, that's a good idea, I will do that! And as a friend has rightly pointed out, I've probably got lucky with the rust being discovered now, as it's only surface rust at the moment and would have got much worse had it stayed hidden and undiscovered.

It's off to the local body shop on Thursday and the whole frame is being stripped, treated and resprayed.
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