Best of the Bargain Basement (Vol.3)

[Haddock82]

Emeye said:

oOJamesOo said:

Haddock82 said:

Yes!

My £650 Mondeo has one of these :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bluetooth-Car-FM-Transm...

I love splashing the cash on it!

£4.10 delivered, works perfectly.

Connect your phone via bluetooth, can take & make calls, plays BBC sounds App, ACast, Spotify etc. off the phone with no probs.

I did have a DAB radio thing that plugged in to the cigarette lighter but it was not that good and eventually fell apart.

That’s a bargain! How does the voice chat work for the phone call. Has it got a built in mic or something? I assume you just plug it in and then set your radio to the same frequency and it picks it up. Are there plenty of unused ones?

Can that really be any good for £4.10?! How the hell can a company manufacture that, make a profit and it actually work? There is the possibility that having 8 year old making them for 12 hours per day and earning $1 per week might have helped?

It is surprisingly good! If you forget about the child/slave labour... But then if you did that you'd probably never buy any consumer products again...!

Have taken a few calls through it and asked if the sound was OK with the caller and all said they could hear me fine.

Making calls... Well you'd have to use the phone to find the contact etc... and that's illegal, so I haven't tried it. Unless you can do some sort of voice activation on your mobile?

Sound quality is fine, car is on stock stereo so it's never going to be Bose or HK levels but its pretty good none the less,

you can set it to the FM frequency of your choice and just tune your radio to that frequency.

Obviously best to choose a frequency not already used by a radio station....

For £4 and it arrived prety quickly too, it was worth a punt :-)

[oOJamesOo]

Haddock82 said:

It is surprisingly good! If you forget about the child/slave labour... But then if you did that you'd probably never buy any consumer products again...!

Have taken a few calls through it and asked if the sound was OK with the caller and all said they could hear me fine.

Making calls... Well you'd have to use the phone to find the contact etc... and that's illegal, so I haven't tried it. Unless you can do some sort of voice activation on your mobile?

Sound quality is fine, car is on stock stereo so it's never going to be Bose or HK levels but its pretty good none the less,

you can set it to the FM frequency of your choice and just tune your radio to that frequency.

Obviously best to choose a frequency not already used by a radio station....

For £4 and it arrived prety quickly too, it was worth a punt :-)

Yeah I’m sure you’d be able set up Siri so you could call out. Tempted to look at proper head units but the problem with that is it may not be compatible with a different car should one fail.

Just starting to look at bangers now as I’m due to sell my current car in March.

[anonymous-user]

misfire but seems cheap, maybe too cheap.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/mini-cooper-s-superchar...

mini cooper s supercharge

[Emeye]

Thesprucegoose said:

misfire but seems cheap, maybe too cheap.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/mini-cooper-s-superchar...

mini cooper s supercharge

Already sold, but could have been an easy fix...

Back in the day when they were current, I had one of these, but the non supercharged version. BMW spent days struggling to find the misfire under warranty - they replaced loads of parts. Still couldn’t solve it.

I took it back off them and an old skool BMW mechanic found one of the HT leads to be faulty. £10 lead fixed it and red faces all around at the BMW main dealer. All he did was pull off and look at the leads. Burnt looking one was the problem.

[Blown2CV]

never ever take things to a dealer. They use young cheap low experience workers, and push all the expertise into computers and manuals... they have no real internalised knowledge... plug the diagnostic in, what does it say, go to page in workshop manuals, follow instructions. If it falls outside that, then they are fked, and £100 per hour scratching their head and then balls alternately whilst they stand there stumped. Full disclosure: My family used to run a chain of main dealers!!

[Jimmy Recard]

Blown2CV said:

never ever take things to a dealer. They use young cheap low experience workers, and push all the expertise into computers and manuals... they have no real internalised knowledge... plug the diagnostic in, what does it say, go to page in workshop manuals, follow instructions. If it falls outside that, then they are fked, and £100 per hour scratching their head and then balls alternately whilst they stand there stumped. Full disclosure: My family used to run a chain of main dealers!!

It sounds to me like his car could have been in warranty at the time though

[Krikkit]

Blown2CV said:

never ever take things to a dealer. They use young cheap low experience workers, and push all the expertise into computers and manuals... they have no real internalised knowledge... plug the diagnostic in, what does it say, go to page in workshop manuals, follow instructions. If it falls outside that, then they are fked, and £100 per hour scratching their head and then balls alternately whilst they stand there stumped. Full disclosure: My family used to run a chain of main dealers!!

On the other hand, the most talented mechanic I know started out as an Audi tech... He now runs his own specialist garage, and works on various racers etc too.

You might get the good ones.

[Blown2CV]

Krikkit said:

Blown2CV said:

never ever take things to a dealer. They use young cheap low experience workers, and push all the expertise into computers and manuals... they have no real internalised knowledge... plug the diagnostic in, what does it say, go to page in workshop manuals, follow instructions. If it falls outside that, then they are fked, and £100 per hour scratching their head and then balls alternately whilst they stand there stumped. Full disclosure: My family used to run a chain of main dealers!!

On the other hand, the most talented mechanic I know started out as an Audi tech... He now runs his own specialist garage, and works on various racers etc too.

You might get the good ones.

yea absolutely, i mean they all have to start somewhere. I think they do have to do all this formal training to become a master tech and it's worth getting it formally paid for and then buggering off and setting up a indy. It's more the wider tech team i was meaning, as many of those do not have ability or skills to become 'proper' mechanics.

[andburg]

Shame it’s an auto

These are great fun

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

noticed this is n longer there.. for posterity a Subaru Forester 2.5 XT for £995 with MOT

Edited by andburg on Monday 27th January 11:14

[Emeye]

Jimmy Recard said:

Blown2CV said:

never ever take things to a dealer. They use young cheap low experience workers, and push all the expertise into computers and manuals... they have no real internalised knowledge... plug the diagnostic in, what does it say, go to page in workshop manuals, follow instructions. If it falls outside that, then they are fked, and £100 per hour scratching their head and then balls alternately whilst they stand there stumped. Full disclosure: My family used to run a chain of main dealers!!

It sounds to me like his car could have been in warranty at the time though

Yes, the only reason I took it to the main stealer was because it was still in Warranty - you’d think it would be silly to take it elsewhere, as if there was a big fault found I wouldn’t want to foot the bill!

[V8mate]

What a glorious way to spend a few hundred quid!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312965695230

[W00DY]

V8mate said:

What a glorious way to spend a few hundred quid!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312965695230

Such a lovely thing. There must be so few XM estates left in the UK.

[funkyrobot]

W00DY said:

V8mate said:

What a glorious way to spend a few hundred quid!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312965695230

Such a lovely thing. There must be so few XM estates left in the UK.

'Rear Vehicle structure is corroded but structural rigidity is not significantly reduced (6.1.1 (c) (i))'

Bad news, or just the signs of an old vehicle?

[M1C]

After being a committed 'shedder' for years and years (most of my then 25 car history were purchased for under £1k (the vast majority under £500)..moved away from it for a while and ended up recently in a Nissan Leaf! (which i liked BTW)

Anyway, due to a....re-evaluation of my personal and family circumstances..and needs.....i found myself with the Leaf sold and me without a car at the start of the week.....

I needed something...and quick...Looking around at anyting at £500 or under....time have changed. Very very hard to find ANYTHING that has any MOT on it and/or without a list of fixes.

I had resigned myself to having to get something pretty nasty for a while...just to get around.

But then up popped a new FB marketplace advert ....and it was only 2 miles from work. Just out of MOT....but worth a look, at least......once i'd managed to get it started and un-seized up (it had been standing for 6 weeks)..i knew i was having it. Put the offer in, she accepted as she just wanted the car gone as she'd already bought a new one.....

I have returned to shedding.....and for only.... £250 (PLUS - took it sraight for it's MOT and it passed! Double bonus!)

Edited by M1C on Thursday 30th January 15:45

Edited by M1C on Thursday 30th January 15:48

[phil_cardiff]

Ridiculous value. For one month's lease on an Octavia VRS you get a whole mk2 Focus.

Mileage and engine?

[carinaman]

Excellent work on a £250 Focus M1C.

[V8mate]

M1C said:

After being a committed 'shedder' for years and years (most of my then 25 car history were purchased for under £1k (the vast majority under £500)..moved away from it for a while and ended up recently in a Nissan Leaf! (which i liked BTW)

Anyway, due to a....re-evaluation of my personal and family circumstances..and needs.....i found myself with the Leaf sold and me without a car at the start of the week.....

I needed something...and quick...Looking around at anyting at £500 or under....time have changed. Very very hard to find ANYTHING that has any MOT on it and/or without a list of fixes.

I had resigned myself to having to get something pretty nasty for a while...just to get around.

But then up popped a new FB marketplace advert ....and it was only 2 miles from work. Just out of MOT....but worth a look, at least......once i'd managed to get it started and un-seized up (it had been standing for 6 weeks)..i knew i was having it. Put the offer in, she accepted as she just wanted the car gone as she'd already bought a new one.....

I have returned to shedding.....and for only.... £250 (PLUS - took it sraight for it's MOT and it passed! Double bonus!)

Fantastic! Looks like it's worth 10x that!

[M1C]

carinaman said:

Excellent work on a £250 Focus M1C.

Thanks, i'm chuffed

[M1C]

phil_cardiff said:

Ridiculous value. For one month's lease on an Octavia VRS you get a whole mk2 Focus.

Mileage and engine?

It's 105k and just the normal 1.6. Drives very nicely though.

[V8mate]

What was 'seized up'? The brakes?