Cheap run abouts ?? worth it ??

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

I've owned quite a few Volvo's...they did get more complex over the years but they're very well built cars. Possibly one if the few used cars that people are willing to keep spending/running for a long time.

Always seems to be a market for v70s. Guess what I'm saying is if you specialise in something that people want then "maybe" it could work.

 

[Barking Mat]

I've owned quite a few Volvo's...they did get more complex over the years but they're very well built cars. Possibly one if the few used cars that people are willing to keep spending/running for a long time.

Always seems to be a market for v70s. Guess what I'm saying is if you specialise in something that people want then "maybe" it could work.

The price of 940 estates nowadays, wow.

 

[roofman]

Its never been easier to fix cars....diagnostic tells you whats broke and replace part,clear codes and go....Luckily still a dark art to most folk so bargings can be had if you can get there before the East Europeans to buy them...I myself is picking up a 07 vivaro with factory fitted rear seats and aircon,power windows, and mirrors tomorrow for £575 with an MOT ..diagnostics told me being a none starter is was the camshaft position sensor which is £23, i never told the seller what i knew. I plan to keep the van but i could bang it back out for £1750 no problem.

 

[8ob]

I tinker with older cars (putting older cars back on the road for fun / to use as my own transport).

With a cheap project it's very easy to spend more in parts than you paid for the car. Some of my projects: small Citroen, bought cheap then spent more again on driveshafts & tyres, VW Golf2 - needed special tools for the headbolts, Alfa - some parts are impossible to find, Peugeot 106 4 door with broken window - all in scrapyards were 2 doors so impossible to find new glass, my latest is a small Nissan - it has fueling problems and parts are difficult / impossible to find it then needs new tyres £££. Emissions are often a problem for a car that's been standing and are difficult to DIY test & fix. Add your time / labour and it's very easy to end up working for nothing or losing money...

Beware welding on modern cars. A friend has been running a small car repair workshop for many years, he now refuses to do welding (risk of destroying sensitive electronics, also high cost of insurance for "hot works").
He calls in a mobile electrician for anything more than simple electrical faults as modern cars are so complicated. My post-2000 BMW often had a warning on the dash computer saying rear foglight bulb had failed - bulb was always ok so it was a wiring fault or a bad contact in the bulb holder???

Better off tarting up small vans and pickups, always a market for anything thats got a years ticket on it.

Bob

 

[dobbslc]

The problem with older cars is the government don't want them on the road.
My Surf will cost me £12.50 if I dare to drive it into the forbidden zone (ulez) that's now only a few miles south of me.
I can't afford a compliant big 4x4 that'll do what it does and I definitely DON'T want anything else anyway. I've had this truck longer that Chairman Khan has been in power so I'm keeping it.
What I'm on about here in a rounderbout sort of way is older cars will be harder to sell near big cities.

 

[roofman]

The problem with older cars is the government don't want them on the road.
My Surf will cost me £12.50 if I dare to drive it into the forbidden zone (ulez) that's now only a few miles south of me.
I can't afford a compliant big 4x4 that'll do what it does and I definitely DON'T want anything else anyway. I've had this truck longer that Chairman Khan has been in power so I'm keeping it.
What I'm on about here in a rounderbout sort of way is older cars will be harder to sell near big cities.

Keep the truck until Farrage gets in, The Chairman will be working "just eats" on a moped within a week

 

[dobbslc]

I hope so, I'll run him down when his stazi protection squad get taken off him...

 

[Mick Annick]

Better off tarting up small vans and pickups, always a market for anything thats got a years ticket on it.

Bob

I started out doing that at 15 with ex-company Escort vans

 

[angellonewolf]

if you know some mot tester blokes might give you a heads up on some mot fail on 2010 cars there worth a 1000 with a 12 month mot by the time they need a couple tyres disks and pads a worn arm and a gator split theres a 600/800 bill all for 200 quids worth of parts buy it for scrap value £250 tthe car 200 parts and flog for a 1000 a bit of proffet

 

[MetalMonkey]

Unless you are doing it for yourself to keep and run, doing up old cars is a good way to turn money and time into bitterness and disappointment.

Possibly if you can find something in good nick that has a load of electrical faults, and have the skills and equipment to diagnose and resolve the issue, then you might be able to make a few quid as few will have the specialist gear to do it.
Or at the other end of the spectrum, classic restorations, but you can get burned if not careful.

I doubt you will much money to be made in doing a few welding MOT patches and twirling some spanners.
Mechanically "old" cars are pretty reliable now, if they have gone mechanically wrong to the point of being sold cheap - its usually because it’s so expensive and time consuming to fix it is uneconomical to repair.

There is a chap on youtube that appears to makes a living doing mobile clutch changes on peoples driveways - something like that is still viable, but you really would have to be an utter masochist IMO.

 

[jmp49]

The problem with older cars is the government don't want them on the road.
My Surf will cost me £12.50 if I dare to drive it into the forbidden zone (ulez) that's now only a few miles south of me.
I can't afford a compliant big 4x4 that'll do what it does and I definitely DON'T want anything else anyway. I've had this truck longer that Chairman Khan has been in power so I'm keeping it.
What I'm on about here in a rounderbout sort of way is older cars will be harder to sell near big cities.

That's over here with the crit air zones too. Cars with a higher crit air rating are starting to be banned in cities that are implementing low emission zones (mandated by central gov).
The double horns of the dilema for people is that the people looking for cheap cars with lower insurance ratings to insure them are students, who have to attend uni etc in places getting a low emission zone, so they have to go for cars with a lower crit air rating on a tiny budget which means older petrol cars with starship mileage on them which are fetching insane money because all the buyers are suddenly chasing whatever they can find with a low enough crit air rating, and newer diesel engined versions are miles cheaper as a result because diesel automatically gets a higher (worse) crit air rating for newer cars than old petrol ones. Note the fine is a few hundred euros, you cant just pay a higher tariff, its either compliant or it gets a fine if its caught in the zones.

You want practical examples? I'm off to look at a 2006 1.6 petrol peugeot 308 tomorrow for someone, its 2800e and it has 160,000 on the odometer, and that is considered cheap and there's a long queue of people behind the person I'm looking at it for ready to step in. If it runs and drives, he'll probably buy it regardless of what I turn up on it because he can fit a offical e85 ethanol kit on it (another 850e because it has to be registered to go on the v5...) and change it to crit air 1 rating which will be allowed in all the low emission zones. I looked at a 2005 fiesta 1.3 with 130k on it for 2000e in the week, and it had major hail damage to the bodywork along with scratches and scuffs, a flat tyre with a screw in it, the interior was shabby and the aircon etc didnt work but it drove ok once the spare was inflated and put on, and a friend was happy to pay that because it was cheap compared to what they had found in the previous few months.
We went looking for a 1.6 ecotec powered Astra G to replace my lad's one that he wrote off into a motorway barrier on monday, and the only one we could find for under 4000e had 230000 km on it, and when we went to check the vin as it didnt smell right, it was missing and the dataplates too, and there was evidence of the paint colour changing, and no engine numbers, this was on a motor traders lot! I've also look at a petrol 1.2 clio3 with 280,000km on it, and a 2006 c30 volvo with a 1.6 petrol donk in it with only 160,000km on it for 3k that sold to the person who got there ahead of me within within 2 hours of the advert going on. All people buying a cheap car seem to care about is its crit air rating, and the prices reflect that.

On the plus side, I bought a '97 Merc SLK convertible for my mrs because nobody wanted it as it cant be insured by a young driver, and it cant get a crit air sticker at all because its 6 months too old even though its euro3 which should be rated crit air 3, so it fell into the bargain priced bucket compared to worn out tired peugeots and clios. I'll tart it up and she'll drive it round rural areas enjoying life for a couple of years, then it'll make classic and the crit air scheme doesnt apply at all to them, no restrictions apart from you cant use it as a commuter. I'm keeping my eyes out for a bmw e36 to abuse as a beater in a similar manner...

You'd think it would be worth buying cars with no mot (CT) and fixing them up given the above. But you can only buy and sell a car with a mot with less than 6 months on it unless your a official motor trader. And you can only sell a car without that requirement to a motor trader or a scrapyard for disposal, no selling a car for parts to private buyers. Your not even allowed to strip parts off the car before scrapping it, it has to arrive whole with its engine etc in to be end of lifed. So no, the only people getting work off this are official motor traders.

Somewhere in London, there are politicians looking at this mess in France and wondering how they can engineer the same situation in the UK in future. Be on your toes.

 

[dobbslc]

Jeez!

 

[Trevorleach]

Some money in working on boats, not so much the the posh ones, just peoples old toys as there are very few people who will entertain them.
I ahae done a little bit over the years and the lack of knowledge is scary even by the owners.

 

[northwest]

My run about cost me 1k. Spent another £300 getting it through its mot, if I went to sell it I might get my money back.

Mine cost me about the same six years ago. If I scrapped it today I would still be well ahead of the game. I am seriously considering buying a spare engine and box for it and just stashing it because I cannot see any future in looking for a cheap runabout any more. Not one that you don't have to sink a good lump into to get it up to scratch.

 

[skotl]

To continue the tale of woe, I agree! We went looking for a banger for my son to learn to drive in, and my wife to use as a second car.
It has to be an auto for reasons with my son not worth going into here.

Anyways, ended up spending £6k on a 2013 Fiesta - I was astonished at how expensive "cheap cars" have become. Anything we looked at priced less than that, even at 7-10 years old, were rust buckets.

 

[Mikes]

To continue the tale of woe, I agree! We went looking for a banger for my son to learn to drive in, and my wife to use as a second car.
It has to be an auto for reasons with my son not worth going into here.

Anyways, ended up spending £6k on a 2013 Fiesta - I was astonished at how expensive "cheap cars" have become. Anything we looked at priced less than that, even at 7-10 years old, were rust buckets.

There's a breakers yard who have a Utube prescence and if you look at the cars that they crush you would wonder why until they tell you that it's nearly always due to a single expensive component that makes them unviable to repair. They say the average age of these scrapped cars is 10 years. I think they call it progress!

 

[Morris]

... was astonished at how expensive "cheap cars" have become. Anything we looked at priced less than that, even at 7-10 years old, were rust buckets.

This is why I spent a lot of time welding my Sorento back together. It cost £1200 3 years ago and has had oil changes and filters, that's it until the weldathon. With luck I'll keep it going for a good few years yet.

 

[bricol]

I bought a cheap Lancia integrale 21 yrs ago for £8500.

Been used as a commuting car, tow-car, holiday car, van (take all but the drivers seat out – you can get a lot of stuff in one) many times.

Current auto-trader:

Buy right . . .

 

[arther dailey]

I do the same and have done for thirty plus years , differance is only vans or trucks , do the work ,run for anything between 3 or four years and get back what I spent in total plus a little for labour if my lucks in , but with parts being soo spendy..head gasket £80 odd pound ! those days are all but over , now you have to trawl for months to find a viable candidate and then beat all the others doing the same/ to buy for export. the only stuff you can earn on now is old pre lez(exempt) type stuff if you can find it as anything with a ticket is gold dust. if you are close to town..........

 

[minimutly]

I was looking at like 08 plate VW`s and the likes for around £500 with welding needed and bits.

You need to know your marque, use eBay or arsebook to find them. I made what could have been a good living out of Rover k series egined cars - mostly 200 series cars. Usually a headskim, gasket and most times the real cause of the issue - knackered radiator would be needed. People generally were frightened away by horror stories, but knowing the marque made me a bit of an expert. Other failures were gearbox first motion shaft bearing (Peugeot gearbox), very simple to rebuild,I always had one here to drop in, sometimes the pressed on crownwheel would come off the diff.
There were also variations on this - an 8 valve 200 that had been towed after a cam belt breakage, it was carnage in the engine, but a replaceable sleeve, piston and cylinder head saw it repaired.
A mini with a 1600 k series, on Del orto carbs had a failed piston - the cobbled together air filter had lost a piece of overcentre clip into the engine - I saved the head, some valves, sleeve and a used piston had it running like new (and crikey it was quick, would go up through the gears as fast as you could change them, real hooligan machine).
So my advice is get to know your marque and stick to it.