Discussion
TL:DR : Man buys sheddy Panda and attempts to make it less terrible for little money.
For the last 4 years I've ran an M140i as my daily covering around 20,000 miles a year, I've had it since new in 2017 and it's just about to tick over 80,000 miles. During that time it's got progressively sillier and it's currently sat at 630bhp, if you fancy a read I've got a thread on that here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
With the mileage I do, and 99RON fuel approaching 165.9 a litre near me, the stars have aligned a bit and I've decided to retire it from daily duties. My logic is that the fuel saved by shedding will happily contribute torwards the diff, suspension refresh and port meth I fancy next year to take the little 1 series to 700bhp.
I've got previous form for shedding, and I love a bargain, so I turned to gumtree and Facey Marketplace for the cheapest of the cheap ad cost free cars for sale near me.
I do like something a little oddball, so when I spotted a Fiat Panda I started to look at them and it all got steadily worse from there.
Here we have £400 of the sheddiest Panda for sale, a slightly less than pristine example of a 2007 1.1 Active model with a 5 speed manual box and MOT until June 2022.
Deliciously rancid.
One of the major upsides of Panda ownership appears to be that if there are no available parking spaces, it does fit handily into most UK trolley bays:
Because I'm basically terrible, I decided to try and make it a bit less terrible for a cheap as possible, so operation tart up began.
I've already got a fair bit of detailing gear so bringing it up a bit cosmetically seemed a no brainer, it was subsequently subjected to probably it's first ever snowfoam:
Things spiralled from there and as I clearly don't have enough going on in my life, I started a bit of very rough and ready paint correction:
It's a long way from showroom but an awful lot of the most obvious paint defects look a lot better now generally and it has come up a lovely shade of blue.
I also took a heat gun to the bumper plastics to try and rejuvenate those:
That made a huge difference to the overall look of the car.
A bit more aggression with the DA had it looking a bit better generally:
It was pretty much a rinse and repeat with the front end, including some sanding and polishing of faded clouding headlights:
Generally speaking it now looks fairly respectable, grabbed a few shots in an underground yesterday as it was chucking it down:
It's really quite fun to drive, in a terribly slow but comical way. Everything seems to work, keep fit windows in the rear, but electric in the front, nothing else really to go wrong, the thermostat appears to be knackered in the open position so it isn't properly warming up, however it appears to be a consumable looking at the owners groups and a replacement was a staggering £9 so I've got one on the way.
Bar that, I've chucked a set of fresh plates on it and it looks alright. It's kept me busy for a week. I'm trying not to spend anything on it but I have ordered a set of silver OE Fiat 13" wheel trims as the black ones are god awful, and I've ordered a £10 remote central locking kit off eBay as that's a bit of a must have.
Lets see how she goes! I've got the Road Trip app on my phone so I'll see what it can do fuel wise. 30mpg upwards would save me £200 a month easily so it should hopefully pay for itself in 2 months, the insurance was £160 for a year with business use
For the last 4 years I've ran an M140i as my daily covering around 20,000 miles a year, I've had it since new in 2017 and it's just about to tick over 80,000 miles. During that time it's got progressively sillier and it's currently sat at 630bhp, if you fancy a read I've got a thread on that here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
With the mileage I do, and 99RON fuel approaching 165.9 a litre near me, the stars have aligned a bit and I've decided to retire it from daily duties. My logic is that the fuel saved by shedding will happily contribute torwards the diff, suspension refresh and port meth I fancy next year to take the little 1 series to 700bhp.
I've got previous form for shedding, and I love a bargain, so I turned to gumtree and Facey Marketplace for the cheapest of the cheap ad cost free cars for sale near me.
I do like something a little oddball, so when I spotted a Fiat Panda I started to look at them and it all got steadily worse from there.
Here we have £400 of the sheddiest Panda for sale, a slightly less than pristine example of a 2007 1.1 Active model with a 5 speed manual box and MOT until June 2022.
Deliciously rancid.
One of the major upsides of Panda ownership appears to be that if there are no available parking spaces, it does fit handily into most UK trolley bays:
Because I'm basically terrible, I decided to try and make it a bit less terrible for a cheap as possible, so operation tart up began.
I've already got a fair bit of detailing gear so bringing it up a bit cosmetically seemed a no brainer, it was subsequently subjected to probably it's first ever snowfoam:
Things spiralled from there and as I clearly don't have enough going on in my life, I started a bit of very rough and ready paint correction:
It's a long way from showroom but an awful lot of the most obvious paint defects look a lot better now generally and it has come up a lovely shade of blue.
I also took a heat gun to the bumper plastics to try and rejuvenate those:
That made a huge difference to the overall look of the car.
A bit more aggression with the DA had it looking a bit better generally:
It was pretty much a rinse and repeat with the front end, including some sanding and polishing of faded clouding headlights:
Generally speaking it now looks fairly respectable, grabbed a few shots in an underground yesterday as it was chucking it down:
It's really quite fun to drive, in a terribly slow but comical way. Everything seems to work, keep fit windows in the rear, but electric in the front, nothing else really to go wrong, the thermostat appears to be knackered in the open position so it isn't properly warming up, however it appears to be a consumable looking at the owners groups and a replacement was a staggering £9 so I've got one on the way.
Bar that, I've chucked a set of fresh plates on it and it looks alright. It's kept me busy for a week. I'm trying not to spend anything on it but I have ordered a set of silver OE Fiat 13" wheel trims as the black ones are god awful, and I've ordered a £10 remote central locking kit off eBay as that's a bit of a must have.
Lets see how she goes! I've got the Road Trip app on my phone so I'll see what it can do fuel wise. 30mpg upwards would save me £200 a month easily so it should hopefully pay for itself in 2 months, the insurance was £160 for a year with business use
I like these and having owned Fiats before I know I could get by having one of these.
There was one in Scotland on gumtree a few months ago where the seller was into cars and had other cars and they've fitted 100HP springs and shocks and a Sumota/Sumoto Airbox.
Great work with the polishing and bumper rejuvenation.
There was one in Scotland on gumtree a few months ago where the seller was into cars and had other cars and they've fitted 100HP springs and shocks and a Sumota/Sumoto Airbox.
Great work with the polishing and bumper rejuvenation.
I've got an 04 pale yellow 1.1 active. It is a hoot to drive, does at least 40mpg no matter where or how I drive it, easily over 50 on a run.
Few common faults, but nothing terrible.
My only worry with mine is leaving it for longer than a week. I've got a brand new battery in mine and even so, on the first drive after it standing for a week, the EPAS went and wouldn't come back on until restarted. Took a good drive to sort it out/charging the battery. Common fault on Pandas! They are VERY sensitive to even slightly low battery voltage.
So if the steering light ever comes on and the steering completely goes, it is 99% likely that the battery is to blame, not the motor in the steering column.
Mine has started leaking a bit of oil from just about everywhere, but not enough to need topping up, so I ignore that. Always starts, always gets me where I am going. Rarely gives us any grief.
Few common faults, but nothing terrible.
My only worry with mine is leaving it for longer than a week. I've got a brand new battery in mine and even so, on the first drive after it standing for a week, the EPAS went and wouldn't come back on until restarted. Took a good drive to sort it out/charging the battery. Common fault on Pandas! They are VERY sensitive to even slightly low battery voltage.
So if the steering light ever comes on and the steering completely goes, it is 99% likely that the battery is to blame, not the motor in the steering column.
Mine has started leaking a bit of oil from just about everywhere, but not enough to need topping up, so I ignore that. Always starts, always gets me where I am going. Rarely gives us any grief.
Well, this escalated badly.
I covered 6,000 miles in the mighty Panda for work, and generally it was very cheap. The downside was the tax was £15 a month and it pretty much settled out at 45mpg, which was decent but nothing mental to write home about.
However it was disgusting reliable, and bizarrely endearing. If I had to compare it to something else, I would suggest that driving a Panda 169 is roughly a modern ish day equivalent to cutting about in a Citroen AX. Your arm fits perfectly on the door aperture with the window down, and you can tootle around at 40-50 to your hearts content.
I actually grew very attached to it fairly quickly, which was unexpected as I've never lusted after anything vaguely italian let alone a Panda.
Before I knew it, MOT time was around the corner. I knew from having had a poke about that it would need a little bit of welding to the rear sills, however generally it felt a bit tired, so I decided to price up a full suspension refresh. This was staggeringly cheap, coming in at sub £250 for all the parts for a full suspension refresh. I ordered everything and set to.
Thankfully everything came off like butter and I didn't need a chisel, hammer, grinder or anything else to butcher the old parts off:
Ah.
The old parts had definitely earned their keep.
And the new ones made a massive difference:
I changed the track rod ends after this photo also, then stuck it in for an MOT after a couple of nights of fairly honest spannering.
At which point obviously..... a MultiJet diesel Panda came up for sale on the street behind me
So I definitely didn't buy that as I definitely don't have a problem.
I've now performed an elaborate array or parts swapping to move all my nice new stuff onto the new diesel Panda, and I then sold on the original petrol Panda, with a full years MOT for £875. It cost me £200 to get it through a test with the welding and a few little bits, so I'm roughly up £250 for 6k miles motoring.
And ready to start again with the diesel one.
Which has been an utter farce so far
I'll start a new readers car's thread for that shortly, it deserves it's own...
I covered 6,000 miles in the mighty Panda for work, and generally it was very cheap. The downside was the tax was £15 a month and it pretty much settled out at 45mpg, which was decent but nothing mental to write home about.
However it was disgusting reliable, and bizarrely endearing. If I had to compare it to something else, I would suggest that driving a Panda 169 is roughly a modern ish day equivalent to cutting about in a Citroen AX. Your arm fits perfectly on the door aperture with the window down, and you can tootle around at 40-50 to your hearts content.
I actually grew very attached to it fairly quickly, which was unexpected as I've never lusted after anything vaguely italian let alone a Panda.
Before I knew it, MOT time was around the corner. I knew from having had a poke about that it would need a little bit of welding to the rear sills, however generally it felt a bit tired, so I decided to price up a full suspension refresh. This was staggeringly cheap, coming in at sub £250 for all the parts for a full suspension refresh. I ordered everything and set to.
Thankfully everything came off like butter and I didn't need a chisel, hammer, grinder or anything else to butcher the old parts off:
Ah.
The old parts had definitely earned their keep.
And the new ones made a massive difference:
I changed the track rod ends after this photo also, then stuck it in for an MOT after a couple of nights of fairly honest spannering.
At which point obviously..... a MultiJet diesel Panda came up for sale on the street behind me
So I definitely didn't buy that as I definitely don't have a problem.
I've now performed an elaborate array or parts swapping to move all my nice new stuff onto the new diesel Panda, and I then sold on the original petrol Panda, with a full years MOT for £875. It cost me £200 to get it through a test with the welding and a few little bits, so I'm roughly up £250 for 6k miles motoring.
And ready to start again with the diesel one.
Which has been an utter farce so far
I'll start a new readers car's thread for that shortly, it deserves it's own...
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