earlofsodbury
Wastrel.
Thanks to a working-lifetime of poor career choices and resulting poverty, my list of OK cars is by far the shorter vs. the Shed List...
Some of the stinkers, in the harsh light of hindsight:
1987 Mk2 Vauxhall Cavalier LX - suspiciously cheap, bloke lived in a caravan, only a total idiot wouldn't have walked away... So I bought it...
~6 months in, the odd handling and crashy suspension were explained as the black paint in the engine bay started to unfurl to reveal the red underneath: cut'n'shut of two wrecks, badly bodged-together. To my perennial shame, I sold it to some other mug, even more cheaply, with the red in the engine bay clearly showing; I honestly feel bad about it to this day. Overlapped with:
1983 ex-hire Landrover 110 N/A 2.25 diesel (early car) - rusted-out chassis, lethally slow - I was routinely overtaken by HGVs on slight inclines - leaked copiously in wet weather (normal for LR). A bit of research revealed it had done somewhere in excess of 400,000 miles, and not the 91K showing on the odo, and had had several recon engines, gearboxes, transfer boxes, diffs etc. It was actually reliable aside from the diesel turning to jelly in properly cold weather. Oh, and the throttle cable snapped - but I was able to drive it home in low box just using tickover: what it lacked in HP it made-up for in torque. Eventually engine wear took the compression down to the point it couldn't start, but by then I lived in London and it was a liability, so sold stupid-cheap as a fixer-upper. Still on the road in Ireland, apparently.
1994 Peugeot 306GL turbodiesel - another suspiciously-cheap car; drove fine on test - after ~1K miles started smoking like a frightened squid, very lumpy, turned out to have a bent crankshaft! How? Cost me nearly as much as I paid to fix, and was never really 100%...
2016 Toyota Hilux 3.0L Invincible. Turns out the clutch is VERY much vincible! Just 25K on the clock and I'm having to fit a replacement! In all my patchy history of car-ownershit [sic] I have never had to replace a clutch! Exedy Safari kit going in, since Toyota OEM is notoriously garbage. Aside from this, it's as hyper-reliable as the Hilux name suggests.
Some of the stinkers, in the harsh light of hindsight:
1987 Mk2 Vauxhall Cavalier LX - suspiciously cheap, bloke lived in a caravan, only a total idiot wouldn't have walked away... So I bought it...
~6 months in, the odd handling and crashy suspension were explained as the black paint in the engine bay started to unfurl to reveal the red underneath: cut'n'shut of two wrecks, badly bodged-together. To my perennial shame, I sold it to some other mug, even more cheaply, with the red in the engine bay clearly showing; I honestly feel bad about it to this day. Overlapped with:
1983 ex-hire Landrover 110 N/A 2.25 diesel (early car) - rusted-out chassis, lethally slow - I was routinely overtaken by HGVs on slight inclines - leaked copiously in wet weather (normal for LR). A bit of research revealed it had done somewhere in excess of 400,000 miles, and not the 91K showing on the odo, and had had several recon engines, gearboxes, transfer boxes, diffs etc. It was actually reliable aside from the diesel turning to jelly in properly cold weather. Oh, and the throttle cable snapped - but I was able to drive it home in low box just using tickover: what it lacked in HP it made-up for in torque. Eventually engine wear took the compression down to the point it couldn't start, but by then I lived in London and it was a liability, so sold stupid-cheap as a fixer-upper. Still on the road in Ireland, apparently.
1994 Peugeot 306GL turbodiesel - another suspiciously-cheap car; drove fine on test - after ~1K miles started smoking like a frightened squid, very lumpy, turned out to have a bent crankshaft! How? Cost me nearly as much as I paid to fix, and was never really 100%...
2016 Toyota Hilux 3.0L Invincible. Turns out the clutch is VERY much vincible! Just 25K on the clock and I'm having to fit a replacement! In all my patchy history of car-ownershit [sic] I have never had to replace a clutch! Exedy Safari kit going in, since Toyota OEM is notoriously garbage. Aside from this, it's as hyper-reliable as the Hilux name suggests.