What would you buy & why?

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JPB
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Re: Yet another "what should I buy next?" type of thread..

#772 Post by JPB » Tue Jul 03, 2018 6:37 am

Just when you think you'd seen every way in which a Minor could be ruined sorry, I should say "personalised".. Still, I guess it's different. Shame about the radiator though, it would have been barely adequate for keeping the Reliant - to which it ought to be fitted - sufficiently cool and the Fiat twin cam in that Minor has rather more than 30 bhp and its associated amount of heat.

I like the garden implement though. Looks like a great alternative to a Harley Davidson trike for the biker on a budget! :thumbs:
:idea: Maybe that's a prototype for Harley's new, EU-built models. Good to see the local content used in the build!
:scared:
J
"Home is where you park it", so the saying goes. That may yet come true.. :oops:


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JPB
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Re: Yet another "what should I buy next?" type of thread..

#774 Post by JPB » Sun Jul 08, 2018 7:13 am

Hmm, as my own Kei truck (the little w4nk3r) is a hard top, I may try to turn it into an aquarium, which would suit it better than an open garden like those on the flatbed kei trucks in the linked page.
I noticed that - further down that page - there's a "Big wooden cat pile game" being offered at a mere $39.99. I think it may be worth the money to be the only person in my street to own a pile of big, wooden cats.
:thumbs:
J
"Home is where you park it", so the saying goes. That may yet come true.. :oops:



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JPB
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Re: Yet another "what should I buy next?" type of thread..

#777 Post by JPB » Sun Jul 29, 2018 1:00 am

Liking the small Honda :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: , as for that Datsun; I'm now wishing that I'd kept that Minor shell as [the Sunny's] engine and box would have been the ideal donor units for the once considered Minor auto conversion. Harsh? Well call me suspicious if you will, but give me a million mile ex-minicab without the thickly applied stonechip coat and the interestingly lashed together exhaust system, rather than that ostensibly tidy 10,700 mile specimen that probably has a good few Lb of Cataloy in the door skins, unless of course Nissan pressed those with the rippled finish and blisters as some form of special option back in the era of Duran Duran, big hair and Amstrad..
:scared:

BUT.. It is a very rare thing, having that coil spring suspension at the rear and the 1500cc engine in place of the earlier 1400 from the Violet. Gonorrhoea is pretty rare too, but I wouldn't want that either! OK, so I would have the Sunny at around £2k at most which would leave change for some welding consumables and other refinishing products. Concourse :roll: [sic] potential eh? A difficult claim to contradict as even the most horrid pile of shoite can be restored to that standard and the car is far from the worst example ever, but my bodge detecting sixth sense is saying that any potential buyer should take a very, very close look before handing over the asked £5,500 for that. Unless of course a genuinely perfect, not "got at" example of the same car is currently worth around £8k, in which case what are you all waiting for? Get the white one bought!
;)

And then I discovered what could be had for similar money: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Toyota-Coron ... SwywRaFuP1

Now that's more like five and a half grand's worth! Maybe it even deserves these: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool:

As is this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RETRO-JAPANE ... SwWxNauhHr - which ( :drool: x 10) is in fact cheaper than the Sunny, but - like the Corona - a rust free imported one with virtually as low a mileage and... Well I'm heading down to the 'boro some time soon to see whether I can squeeze into the Laurel, 'cos don't forget, I have two imports already, including the daily, but still need something a little older than my tiny Mitsubishi, little gem though it is.

Oh, and Rich, a BX fetish is healthy enough. They're a damned fine car and many of the surviving ones seem to be available in very straight condition. Get one while you can, I says. :)
J
"Home is where you park it", so the saying goes. That may yet come true.. :oops:

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Zelandeth
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Re: Yet another "what should I buy next?" type of thread..

#778 Post by Zelandeth » Sun Aug 05, 2018 11:00 pm

What to buy next?

My advice: Exactly what you *weren't* looking for!

I was thinking "small, economical, with character, easy to throw around town" ...Proper old Panda (late one with the 1L FIRE engine please), Metro or if I could find a nice unmolested one, 1.2 Nova (if I came across a white 3dr Antibes all sense would go out the window!), that sort of thing.

...so I went and bought a stinking great Mercedes van based camper instead! 2.8t, 78bhp, 2.4 m wide and nearly 5 metres long and totally lacking in power steering... perfect city runaround!

Okay... it's making me grin like a total idiot driving it, and I was staggered to discover that Mercedes seem to take heritage parts supply seriously...so exactly what I wasn't looking for has made me happy.

Problem I've found with stuff you actually go out looking for is that you tend to wind up wearing blinders and locking on to the fact that you want it, and you want *that* one...and wind up spending over the odds on it. *Points at the Lada*

I've *wanted* an old T1 Mercedes since I was about 5...but never thought I'd actually own one, so wasn't looking for it.

She's in my drive now, and despite not having been on my planned shopping list, getting the keys off me now is a definite "keys from my cold dead hands" situation!

Well, unless you ask politely...if you just want a shot finding out what lovely old things to drive they are, that's fair enough.

What I'd recommend buying now, with my head actually screwed on?

Xantias. They were everywhere not long ago, but are fast disappearing now.

Few cars out there are such competently designed machines I think, and they're nowhere near as terrifying to maintain once you've learned your way around the hydraulic system. So there are a few more pipes than on most cars...that doesn't make them instantly explode when you look at them though.

The Activa that I have is terrifyingly capable to dispatching unreasonable amounts of mileage on motorways in utter comfort. Yet it's also capable of holding its own against far, far more exotic metal on a twisty road.

Best bit? They're right at the bottom of their depreciation curve now, and are worth pennies. Do a bit of patient shopping around and you should be able to bag a nice one with good spec for a grand. If you're not so picky and don't mind getting your hands dirty, projects aren't worth anything really. My first one, a miley but solid series 2 1.9TD cost me £295 with a year's MOT on. A decent service, replacement heater blower and a fresh set of spheres (£100 and an hour's work) had her driving like a brand new car, despite having north of 200K on the clock. They're cars that wear their miles VERY well. Cosmetically weak clear coat (particularly on red cars) and tendency for water to get into the brightwork strips on the bumpers are the main visual signs of aging.

I reckon that the clean lines penned by Bertone on the Xantia have aged very well too...They look really handsome cars I think, especially with how fussy a lot of the designs are these days.

Fine... I've been a fan of Citroens for many years, and coveted the Xantia from the day I first saw one...so wasn't going to pass up the chance to own one when I realised their values had fallen through the floor. I might be slightly biased, but still reckon they're really good cars, no matter which flavour, and are well worthy as a "modern classic" I think.

One gripe about the series 1 cars? Total and complete lack of oddment storage in the cabin! They sorted that on the S2 cars though.
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JPB
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Re: Yet another "what should I buy next?" type of thread..

#779 Post by JPB » Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:22 am

I'm very fond of the "traditional" (Hydropneumatic) Citroens. Like most folk with an engineering background; their apparent complexity intrigues, rather than scares me and besides, the hydraulics are so much more user friendly than BL's Hydragas which, IMHO, ought to have come from the factory with the Schrader valves that some owners of [BL's] Hydragas cars are fitting to the spherical end of each displacer unit now in order to allow for easy replenishment of the nitrogen that escaped over the years and allowed the diaphragms to stretch and split, wrecking the displacer and causing the car to fall to its bump stops on the affected side. Why [BL] ever thought that Hydrasag was an upgrade compared to the (more) reliable Hydrolastic system remains a mystery but Citroen got their suspension right from the start and even the very earliest implementation of Hydropneumatic, on the rear end only in late models of the car - in "Commerciale" spec - that predated the DS, can be overhauled using components that are available from specialists and require no drilling, grinding or otherwise modifying to use.

Some folk are simply scared of a function that is less easy to visualise, fluids moving through pipes are, for some reason, harder to understand than strips of flexible steel bending. The problem with Citroen's clever use of hydraulics was that, at the time of their system's ascent to (almost) commonly seen status, other manufacturers' vehicles stayed with steel springs, dampers and similarly well proven technology, the irony being that hydropneumatic / oleopneumatic systems are invariably extremely reliable in use and are rarely the cause of an otherwise viable older Citroen being scrapped. An older Citroen with an hydraulic fault is, again IMHO, potentially a wise choice as the parts can be purchased or, in some cases, overhauled and reused, their complexity is less worrying than the way in which BL's Hydragas units are thrown away and replaced when new old stock becomes available.

I have very rarely identified, searched for and then bought the car that I wanted after the first time of asking, but the little deviations that the search takes invariably lead me into a purchase that turns out to be every bit as satisfying, if somewhat distracting. I may yet accept that I'll never find my Fridolin and that the rare parts required to convert one of those to automatic transmission should probably stay with their original car, but some day, I shall have my Toyota engined MetroCab.
J
"Home is where you park it", so the saying goes. That may yet come true.. :oops:

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Zelandeth
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Re: Yet another "what should I buy next?" type of thread..

#780 Post by Zelandeth » Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:30 pm

There's a Metrocab slowly turning green in a car park not far from here...
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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