Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

(I GOT A SEMI)

That'll be the thought of Percy Pigs on tap.

Cool. 1.5 miles to Waitrose for me. And that's by road, not as the crow flies. I'm vibrating with exciting cultural edginess right now.

Hmm I'm still very much in the used rubbers, poo and crack vials in front of my garage. And yet anywhere nice within 5 blocks is like a gazillion dollar. Where's Travis Bickle when you need him....

Londis4lyf

You live in a garage?

Very hipster.

Take the wheel off and remove the wheel arch liner. You should be able to fix it from there. I also need to do mine. It's a They All Do That Sir kind of issue.

Quite effective at giving you a heart attack.

Replaced the battery in my key and have the remote locking working in the car for the first time since I have owned it. Bliss. BMW do not make that easy.

Can be immediately or next day for clamp, they might have just ran out by the time they got to you. Must have done about 30 cars in my endz last month, clamped all of them!

Audi A2. Bad idea?

Might need a second car and I'm looking for something small, efficient, quiet on motorways and comfortable for 3hr+ drives

I really like the A2
For petrol get the 1.4, the 1.6 fsi is a pain unless you like taking the head off just to clean the gunk out of the inlet manifold.
The diesel is very good*, just watch for camshaft wear (manifests itself in high oil consumption, just ask the seller how often they put oil in it in a matter of fact way, will get you the answer your looking for bluntly).

*though if a small super economical diesel is what you want, you need the fiat group 1.3 16v JTDm, prob in a panda or an alfa mito (Corsa)

Well my gear change buzz in into third has been diagnosed as a shot syncro. So box will have to come out. Only 80k on it too. Apparently not uncommon tho. #AudiWoes

Yeah man. £23 for week's parking def beats £300 for having a clamp removed. MOT tomorrow and i'll be legal again.

Still looking for a small estate btw. s/h Volvo V50's any good?

I bought a 1.4tdi about 6 months ago as I was doing a lot of miles for work and didn't want to put thousands of miles on my other car.

Small - tick, efficient - big tick, quiet on motorways - X, comfortable on long drives - tick.

The diesel unit is a rumbling grumbling old thing. Its very efficient but not the most refined unit. The suspension on them is pretty harsh but it is fine tackling big motorway miles. Even at faster than most traffic levels of speeds its fine.

Ive done about 7k miles and its been faultless bar one rather large hiccup. An engine mounting/stabilising (?) bolt went for a wander and as a result the engine got a bit 'mobile' in the engine bay and severed the oil filler pipe and a power steering pipe. It wasn't ruinously expensive to fix in the end.

They go forever if well looked after. Mine has done 167k

I also quite like that they were quite forward thinking for their time - first aluminium frame in a production car from memory. Audi lost money on every vehicle sold apparently.

I would definitely recommend a V50. I have a 2009 1.8 petrol R Design which I got with FSH with 70k on the clock for £6k. Seems to be the going rate - had been tracking this one on ebay recently...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142339311165?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Seem to be a fair amount of T5 examples available, but the insurance on those is a joke. Lots of bells and whistles on this 2.0 lower-mileage 2011 one:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2011-11-VOLVO-V50-2-0-R-DESIGN-5D-145-BHP-GREAT-SPEC-/272532770662?hash=item3f74380f66:g:yvMAAOSwc49Y6X07

The joys of ANPR; stopped by the Police for having no MOT.

Luckily I was on the way back from the MOT test centre (Wandsworth Council's own, so no chance of being ripped off for unnecessary repairs) and was able to show them the pass certificate, guess their databases take a bit to update.

Didn't get any reminder about the MOT expiring. Will add the dates for insurance, VED and parking permit to the calendar ASAP as any fine is likely to be more than the value of the car.

VED and insurance are the big ones, MOT they rarely bother stopping folk for, if its less than a month I wouldn't view it as 'grace period', more like too many of them expired by <1 month to bother chasing and the database is maybe not updated like the insurance/MID and VED/dvla database is.

V50 buy petrol or D5, really not a fan of the 1.6 or 2.0 diesels unless they are <60k or you have a real warranty on them. Seen first hand a few of them die early, one mate bought one a few months back in the 'it was cheap enough it'll be OK' bracket, yeah, it wasn't*

*Oil pressure/volume problem so all top end, turbo gone for sure, bottom end they'll only know when take sump off, but TBH think he's just gonna put a salvage engine in and push it on. 82k with main dealer volvo till 40k, then independent since, looked like a good one, rest of it is very tidy nothing going etc.

My 20 year old diesel brick just passed its MOT with zero advisories, weird as last 3 years same windscreen has had the same advisories for chips in it, and the SRS light is inoperative, yet today they noticed none of these things, same place and all. On the up side, not one but TWO mechanics come out to say how tidy car was underneath.

My 20 year old diesel brick just passed its MOT with zero advisories, weird as last 3 years same windscreen has had the same advisories for chips in it

Similar here.

16 year old Citroen, last 4 MOTs all had advisories for a chip in the windscreen (but in a non-critical portion), this one didn't spot it at all.

I always thought the old ones would come up on the system when they register it at beginning of slot, but maybe not.

Same here, the test certificate has the mileages for the last 4 years so I was surprised not to it on the final certificate. It was partially hidden under a fair layer of dirt.

If this sells it's proof they are going up https://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/volvo/850/volvo-850-r--manual--1996-p--super-rare-and-with-impeccable-service-history-23-stamps-nearly-all-with-volvo/6996603

I've gone the other way with my car now. It's too shiny.

My bonnet looks a great after a scratch restorer treatment.

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Nice.

Quite liked the firebird on the old Trans Am.

Not so sure about Dan Bilzerian.

if it goes for anything over 50% of the asking price? it's pistonheads - there are mad for asking prices.

btw - are you around on Saturday?