I've been looking at a first car for my daughter's fiance and have seen a clean looking Vauxhall Cavalier 1.8i LS for £950 on an L plate with a full service history and 83K on the clock. Grateful for any advice the Back Roomers can give me on what to watch out for. There's nothing in the service book about cambelt changes so should I do one early and, if so, is it an easy job? The engine is pre-electronic, so what's the 'i' for? Many thanks in anticipation.
Mike
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this is probably an 8 valve engine with single point fuel injection(thus the "i").these engines are bullet proof & provided the oil& filter are changed at regular intervals ,they do warp factor mileage.Cam belt change is recommended at 40k ,but I think this is a no-damage engine if it breaks.Everything else on the car is pretty robust &parts are cheap new & s/hand plentiful.Just watch for any body rot (esp rear wheel arches)
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Mike, the cavalier will be injected, more than likely it will have single point injection. At first glance it looks like a carb, but it's far more sophisticated than that because of the cat fitted.
Cambelts, every 4 yrs or 40,000 miles (whichever comes sooner) Not forgetting to change the belt tensioner as well.
Check the rear wheel arches for rust - especially down by the rear doors.
Check the front wishbones for damage. Some dodgy tyre fitter may have used these as jacking points in the car's history instead of the subframe or proper jacking locations. The wishbones are easily bent.
There's a previous thread that *might* be of some help, although it was posted quite some time ago:-
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=8696
Also, don't forget HJ's Car By Car Breakdown.
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Elekie and DD: Many thanks for your comments. And many thanks for that thread, DD - a veritable gold mine of info! We're off for a test drive today and I'll check those problem areas you mentioned. Just 2 quick questions, DD. The aerial is broken and the temperature display above the clock is reading "-- --". Are these easy to fix?
Mike
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The temp display is most likely the sensor, They dont like getting water in them, they sometimes come back to life after being removed & left in the airing cupboard for a few days.
Thats at the bottom left hand corner of the front bumper, Have a look for a little black button sticking out of bottom the bumper. Cheap as chips to fix too.
Aerials are cheap to replace too.
If this is all thats wrong with it, haggle the price down, & then pay a visit to a scrapyard for the replacment sensor & aerial.
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Mike,
The temp sensor is where LeePower mentions.
If the car has an electric aerial then you can replace the mast in situ. Vauxhall sell them, but I can only find manual mast replacements on the www.autovaux.co.uk website (£14.04 inc)
To change an auto one, undo the bottom nut and get someone to switch on the radio to extract the old one. Fitting the new mast back in can be slightly more tricky. Drop the nylon wire down the hole and get someone to turn off the radio. The ball on the end of the nylon needs to catch on the aerial mechanism. It will either go easy, or a pig of a job. Hope you like fishing ;o) Once it's caught on the mechanism just feed the rest of it down the hole. Finally do up the bottom nut.
I guess the fitting of a manual one is similar.
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Well i'm no expert but i just bought a car for a less than that, 3 years newer and less miles on the clock and its a TD, and in excellent condtion. I spent about 3 weeks looking through the local ads paper and saw just a few at less than that with better specs.
Diesels are nice cars, save on fuel ecomony, they don't have the power of petrols unless its a turbo though and hence accidents are less likely due to lack of power. They are a bit nosier though but their engines are built to last.
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Thanks everyone for your help. We bought the car this afternoon. We tried to bring the price down, but he wouldn't budge. However, we settled for a full service, 12 months MOT and everything fixed. It may have been over the odds, but my future son-in-law is over the moon with the car and was happy to pay the asking price for a car in good condition and a full service history. Let's hope his faith in my car-finding abilities is well founded! Thanks, once again.
johnmac - Glad you found such a bargain. Much as I would have liked to follow your route, a replacement car was needed in rather a hurry.
Mike
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