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

Anyone watch the tin foil hat man + friend drive diesel car vs electric taycan on a lejog?
Charging infrastructure that bad in England? In Scotland especially in rural areas where some eu money got spent is pretty good, no 150kw mad chargers around but loads of regular (22kw?) in basically every village hall.
Is it just that motorways don't have enough to be usable? A few family have ev's and loath going south of Preston, ques are usually 90 mins to get on a charger. Most have figured drive a few miles off the motorway to a garden centre with a cafe type of deal is much faster and less stressful and way way cheaper.

Any recommendation for getting the max from scrappers? I'm getting online quotes of ~£220 for a 2010 Golf, sound about right?

ah - the engine was toast, then? sorry to hear this.

I've no recent experience of scrapping a car, i've heard of people getting up to £300.

Apparently so, the diagnostic machine seems to show recent error messages that would indicate something going wrong around the cam/pistons, then he found all valves registering 0 compression, which seems fairly clear that it's borked. Sigh.

Now looking to buy from a reputable dealer with a decent warranty. Fucking cars.

I think I got about £100 for scrapping my Renault Clio.

On reflection I would have paid them £100 to get it off my drive lol.

This head unit is a direct replacement for the faulty one in my little Sirion. I went for a newer version as they have an AUX input as standard and I fancied being able to use Spotify in the car.

I swapped it over yesterday and plugged in an eBay AUX cable into the back of the unit, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get AUX as an input source using the available buttons.

I think I've tried every button an no joy 😞 Any ideas? If the eBay lead wasn't right is it possible that the source wouldn't show as even being an option?

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Might be worth putting it on eBay? Not quite the same thing but when the clutch went on my Volvo I put it up as a non runner and got loads of interest immediately. Worth a punt to see if you can get a bit over the scrap price.

I was just going to post a long piece about what yo look for...

Where are you in the country, if north London think redcorn are biggest but as other said stick it up on Facebook market place or gumtree. I take it the car still has MOT and decent nick inside and out?

Any recommendation for getting the max from scrappers? I'm getting online quotes of ~£220 for a 2010 Golf, sound about right?

Try listing the thing on a mk6 Facebook group, I'm sure there is someone with a spare engine who would pay more than £220 to drop it into something which is otherwise (I assume) perfect.

Thanks all - far from perfect, but was running well (to my uninformed view) and visually in pretty good nick for ~100k miles. I'm SE London. Have tried a FB group (hopeful to at least sell my android head unit there if not the car itself) and if no bites will try ebay. I'm in no rush, it currently provides a timely outdoor smoking area in this awful weather we're having.....

Timing chains are mean't to last forever but they rarely do. Because on most cars they aren't in the service book as an item that needs attention at a certain mileage or age, folk just ignore them. Main reason they fail is incorrect oil change spec and duration, or millions of stop start cycles due to S/S implented on engines. Timing chain gets a lot of stick as the engine starts obviously, so city cars with lower mileage tend to fail sooner than cars with higher main road mileage (less starts and stops).

THey will often give a small noise on cold start as a symptom that the tensioner or guide rails are nearing end of life, and I've heard that noise on loads of VAG cars with the 1.0 and 1.4 tsi engine in them. Neighbours seat ibiza with that engine failed at under 40k miles, despite perfect history and they'd owned it from new. Heard the noise a few months ago, warned them to get it looked at, they just looked at me like I'd shat in their cornflakes, unfortunately I was right and it failed a few weeks later when they tried to drive home from work. 2017 car though so worth putting another engine in it or rebuild*

*You will find the UK is now pretty much devoid of any proper vehicle engineering shops that undertake partial engine rebuilds following cam/chain timing failure or even cylinder head rebuilds. I tend to run older cars, and even 5 years ago you had a few places that would rebuild a cylinder head if you whipped it off and dropped it in with them along with the specs. But now, yeah hardly anywhere does it. Folk tend to just slot a scrap/used engine in, but even that style of repair is falling away now as real scrap yards that will sell you parts or an engine are very very rare.

You paid £3k for it and only got a few months, would unfortunately say you are just very unlucky, but yes your basically stuck with a rolling shell of a car that needs a scrap engine fitted. Say engine is £500-900 if you can even find one. Labour SHOULDN'T be that bad, its a days work so say £300-550 + VAT depending where you are at. But its also a days labour to remove the donor engine unless provided on a pallet. Carries risk that the replacement engine has issues though, or will experience same issue soon after.

Just don't buy a GM/Vauxhall astra/corsa or similar with the 1.0, 1.2 or I think even the 1.4 petrol engine? Not a single one of them still works after about 6 years old, they ALL die from timing chain failure in one mode or another, zero available in scrap because thats why they are all there. Shame as the older version of that engine from years before was totally fine and known to be crazy reliable.

Have you considered buying a track car/ drift car/ time attack car/ racing kart/ motorbike and just doing trackdays for your sped fix while you're there? The 911 just seems like it would be hard to enjoy given the costs...

Alternatively do they have some sort of Classic Car Hire club there where you can just shell out a day rate to zip around in someone else's motor? I appreciate your perfectionism would balk at the shortcomings of other peoples cars but imagine how much worse that 911 will be by the time it gets the Dammit treatment?

One other question... if you export the 911 after the eight years and brought it home to UK would you get a big tax rebate from SG government or no?

Thanks for this mate, really appreciate the detailed reply! And yep, thinking back there was the tiniest noise on cold start every now and then, basically since I owned it, and an engine warning light on the dash for the last couple weeks. It was booked in for a full service last friday, and I think my (misplaced) confidence in its ability to make it to the service was because I had a mechanic come to look at it when I bought it and he did all the electrical diagnostics and had no worrying messages in the car's log etc. But, it's a lesson, and at least it happened on a £3k car rather than a more expensive one. Living and learning.

I need to buy a car. Within the next week. £5k max, plus it needs to be for sale in Reading as I have no way to get further afield. So, Autotrader it is.

Will be a little one, aygo, i10, up etc.

Would you prioritise number of owners over milage?

I think I would probably prioritise a decent MOT history (i.e. ideally first time passes every year, not many advisories)

^this and well spaced/timed services and record of any work done.

For under £5k I’d also try and find a private sale as you can tell a lot from the previous owner

The holy grail is someone you know. There's a Jazz for sale in the classifieds if I recall

Edit: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/391473/#comment17182288 no connection to me but seems a reasonable deal

Think you meant to reply to @moocher

Thanks for this ^ ^^ I've reached out

The nearest place with motorsport facilities (if we ignore the F1 street circuit) is Malaysia. I have not yet investigated what I could hire or even buy over the border.

One wrinkle about Singapore is the idea of a non-road licenced vehicle really doesn’t exist, unless you are so wealthy that normal concerns cease to apply.

Motorcycles have COE applied as well- not to the same degree as cars, but also non-trivial. I’d also have to wait significant number of years before I could ride a big bike- although that’s no bad thing in my view.

I could certainly export a vehicle when it hits 10 years old, the question would be where too.

I also wonder about importing something interesting from Japan- another RHD market. However- for a full road licence it has to be under 3 years old, and then you need to buy it 10 years of COE, so still significant money.

I should probably put a spreadsheet together but my hand wavey view is that for my usage pattern a couple of vintage cars would work better than one modern one as the overall running costs are so much lower- and two vintage cars would provide motoring for 90 days per year, which is likely to be fine.

I suppose it largely boils down to how long you're planning to stay in SG? If it's only a few years I'd consider doing the aforementioned spreadsheet, working out the cost of car ownership over that period, and then having a look at what excellent motoring experiences you could spend that money on over the time instead? Do a bunch of trackdays and maybe even look into race school/ racing in Malaysia?

It just seems like an awful lot of money to be able to pootle around Singapore on (almost) every Sunday for a year? That being said if you've moved to SG for a job that's paying big and that cost of ownership doesn't bother you then I suppose fire on! That impact-911 is very nice indeed! Here's a nice Elise at half the money too...

Would you prioritise number of owners over milage?

What everyone else said, but on your specific question....

Probably milage over owners. However, look at the timings. E.g. A first owner for a very short period of time could well be some sort of corporate entity. Likewise on say a 10yr car an owner for the first 2-3yrs will probably be someone on finance selling it, possibly even to themselves, so 2 owners would be = to 1 owner imo.

Hopefully in Reading you can find something that's done more motorway miles. Although I your budget and shortest, probably not.

Good luck.

@moocher, have reached back out via the email you sent me. I have not done anything about the Jazz, but it is immediately available, and we can easily sort the Reading thing out. Thank you @el_presidente for the joined up thinking, excellent.

Petrol hybrid engines. Looking to buy the sensible estate from a reputable dealer we should probably have bought in the first place. Interested by a couple of Toyota Auris's from the perspective of space, mileage, fuel economy and price, but should I be avoiding hybrids for reliability/cost of repair or is that not something you'd worry about? Would be servicing regularly at accredited garage etc. If best avoided will mostly be looking at Skodas, Seats or Hondas.

Just get a Honda