The radio question only applies in the sense of specifying a new car. A prospect that seems inconcevable!If you’re looking at Clios and want basic, why not have a look at the Dacia Sandero. Might find one of those without a radio!
Not any more. Post Covid the "under £1000" car is now an utter dog, dragged out from a garage and tarted up to run for as long as it needs to to get out of the street. It used to be a good source of decent cars that had another year or two left, maybe more.£400!!!!
I'd forgotten how cheap old cars are in the UK.
Pushrods are really not "just as functional" if your idea of function extends beyond simply making the engine run. They will do that, but their performance (and I don't just mean speed) is a mile behind an OHC design. A magneto or points and a coil will run an engine, a carburettor will too, but both are significantly lower in engineering performance than the modern alternatives. They are not "more reliable" either, they break down all the time, the only difference being that they are easy to fix at the side of the road. The only reason why repairing motorists of the 60s, 70s and 80s were so adept at repairing cars at the side of the road was because they had to do so every few months.Thus I prefer push-rod overheard valves to over-head camshafts. So simple to adjust and just as functional.
[SNIP].
Pushrods are really not "just as functional" if your idea of function extends beyond simply making the engine run. They will do that, but their performance (and I don't just mean speed) is a mile behind an OHC design. A magneto or points and a coil will run an engine, a carburettor will too, but both are significantly lower in engineering performance than the modern alternatives. They are not "more reliable" either, they break down all the time, the only difference being that they are easy to fix at the side of the road. The only reason why repairing motorists of the 60s, 70s and 80s were so adept at repairing cars at the side of the road was because they had to do so every few months.
As in, it will run. Well, easy done. Your pre war Royal Enfield did that.Dear Steve,
By functional I mean the engine will run to its original design parameters ...
Jesus Christ. Have you considered buying a steam engine? Or maybe a horse, how about that? It only needs a bag of oats.I am adept with simple engines as I used to use them at a time when a damp distributor cap meant a non-start or a hard start, and so on. You soon got used to running an absorbent cloth round on foggy mornings. No problem in my book.
They really weren't. Cars of the 70s were indeed in for service every 6 months and cost a good deal in consumables. My modern car has done 40k miles in 3 years, it has cost me 2 services, a set of brakes all round and a heater motor. It has 200k miles on the clock and returns over 40 mpg. Find me a car with points and a carb that gets anywhere close to that. You won't.In reality, for reliable performance a car probably needed a service every six months. But you did not have to take it to a garage most of the time, and even if you did, the costs were relatively much lower than modern computer controlled electronic ignition and fuel injection cars are now,
Oh yes it does. On 10k miles a year the difference between 30 mpg (typical for say a Mk2 Escort) and 45mpg (current Focus) is 333 gallons of fuel plays 222 gallons. At 1.50/L that's £755 saved a year. You don't need to do that for very many years before an electronic repair becomes a drop in the ocean. In my entire motoring career of 35 years and over half a million miles I've had 1 ECU fault, which turned out to be a dicky connection.The tying in of setting up of a new computer module to the original manufacture [via main dealerships or good independent garages] is simply an added layer of expense that does not benefit the car owner one jot ...
Well, if you will drive a Triumph Dollopo'Sh*te, you deserve what you get! Mind you, I can't talk. I owned a Triumph Spitfire (could have been worse, I actually looked at a Triumph Snag) and the experience cured me of classic cars for the next 10 years. I then had a 2CV, which was fun but I don't have a desire to go back there, especially at current prices.I’ve been driving cars with injection/ECU since 1994. So, about 750,000 miles I’d guess. In that time, a coil pack died on our Mk4 Golf GTI 1.8T, known issue, all four replaced by VW, no charge. And that’s it.
Before 1994… 12 years of driving, carb diaphragms split, condenser in distributer died, twin carb linkage on Triumph Dolomite Badley worn… I’m sure there’s more.
And my current petrol-engined, 1.5 litre turbo, large estate car does 46mpg average, and that’s with air conditioning on all the time, and at consistently higher average speeds. My 1976 1.8 Dolomite did 28mpg, maybe 30 if I really nursed it.
Dear Steve,
!
In 1950 one of the leading car magazines reported that it had achieved 100 mpg in a Morris Eight. Of course this hardly represented daily driving or typical use, but it shows that smaller old style engine could achieve impressive result in the decades before I was born. I myself have achieved 63 mph in a Mini pick-up in 1979 between Hereford and Shap. Not bad for a seven year old car going a steady 55 to 60 most of the way.
Best wishes from George
Dear Steve,
In general old cars could be easily fixed at the roadside
George, you're dreaming if you think a wartime or postwar 350 motorcycle with a carb and points made 120 mpg, ever, unless it was on a track at a steady 30 mph. They just didn't. 50-60mpg, sure, by the 50s and 60s, but twice that, during WW2? Come on. Little 125 singles do now, driven carefully, and at 12 bhp have similar power to a 350 of the 40s and 50s, but that's called 80 years of progress. Still, if you want to buy something old and pretend that 50 years of progress has all been backwards, be my guest. I've been there and tried it. Old stuff is fine if you want to spend more time mending it than driving it. Fine if you drive like a nun and do 5000 miles a year to and from church, and you're happy to put a new piston and barrel on after 20k miles. Otherwise? No. Old cars and motorbikes are great fun, but don't kid yourself that they present an alternative to modern transport.Dear Steve,
In general old cars could be easily fixed at the roadside unless you ran the big ends or jiggered the clutch or other major workshop mechanical repairs. The same applies today. Ruining a clutch is just as easy today as it was sixty or a hundred years ago.
I have never broken a car mechanically in all my time driving since 1979. Sympathy for the machine and all that. Also I have never broken down in a car with carburettor and tradition ignition with points, coil and condenser. The reason is that these thing tend to give warning that some work needs doing before they give up completely. Arguably the computer based things are far less good in that they tend to work till the stop often without any warning at all.
The idea that servicing a traditional set-up engine is more expensive compared to a modern [computer-based] one is laughable as the service parts were cheap and widely available at almost every garage and petrol station four decades ago. These days all you need is to keep a few crucial spares in the car with the suitable spanners and screw drivers, and feeler gauges of course. Fixing at the roadside is a lot cheaper and faster than getting towed away to some unknown garage with your modern car!
I have risen horses back in the 1970s and '80s, and I have a feeling that their range is limited, and their fuel requirements, let alone parking facilities are hardly catered for nowadays! And they do need more than a few scoops of oats a day to be well cared for!
As for steam, it is even less efficient at converting the energy of the fuel into useful work done than internal combustion powered cars.
So neither steam nor horse transportation will fill the bill in the twenty-first century!
People do go on about the increased fuel efficiency of modern complex tech internal combustion engines. I am sure this is true as far as this gives a somewhat incomplete picture of the costs involved. My Royal Enfield workshop manual states that if the m/c is doing less than 120 mpg, it needs a tune up or engine rebuild. To rebuild the engine is rather easy as the big end bearing is part of a multi-part crank that allows for the fitting of factory matched big end soft-metal bush [not shells] and the actual replacement crank pin. No machining required and serviceable indefinitely by the owner or mechanic, quite literally so long as spares are made. You could buy a rebored [at the factory. ie. service reconditioned] cylinder that bolts to the crank case, and matched to a factory matched piston. Really simple and within the ability of anyone handy with spanners! So an easily serviced engine of 350 cc that will do an easy 120 mpg. Show me a modern m/c that is so easy. Okay the brakes were terrible, but there has been progress in some areas for sure, not the least of which is brake lining materials!
In 1950 one of the leading car magazines reported that it had achieved 100 mpg in a Morris Eight. Of course this hardly represented daily driving or typical use, but it shows that smaller old style engine could achieve impressive result in the decades before I was born. I myself have achieved 63 mph in a Mini pick-up in 1979 between Hereford and Shap. Not bad for a seven year old car going a steady 55 to 60 most of the way.
And it did not miss a beat either.
Enjoy driving a modern [in my view] over sophisticated car that will bite you in expensive fashion eventually. I'll try to get hold of something simpler, but not necessarily worse overall for myself even if it might appear somewhat old fashioned.
Best wishes from George
To be fair if you have had 18 months for £400 in the current market you have done OK. The thing is that at £400 you are into something at the end of its life. As far as economic repair goes, I remember £400 cars from the 80s, they were end of life and you were into engine rebuilds and welding up large sections of rotten bodywork. Can you do it? Sure, if you're a halfway decent mechanic. What's it cost? Rather a lot, for a big box of engine parts. A sheet of steel and some hammers, less so.Someone said earlier that my Mini One was not so good, but I refuse to complain. I paid £400 for a car that has run well for eighteen months, and only costs have been an oil change and three worn out tyres. Not a bad buy, but simply impossible to repair economically if one takes the utilitarian view.