The Car That Wouldn't Die
Discussion
Has anyone had one of those cars that just refuses to die? It just runs and runs...
You know the type of car. You top the oil off once in a while and that's it's maintenance for the year. It seems to be cars at the lower end of the market that last longest, old knackers.
A good Barge may run for ages but the fiddly bits start to fail after a while, simple cars have none of these problems. Cars from the late '80s and early '90s seem to run for ever.
What's your view?
You know the type of car. You top the oil off once in a while and that's it's maintenance for the year. It seems to be cars at the lower end of the market that last longest, old knackers.
A good Barge may run for ages but the fiddly bits start to fail after a while, simple cars have none of these problems. Cars from the late '80s and early '90s seem to run for ever.
What's your view?
I had a company 1.3 Astra, that got to 86k before it started running really badly. The compamy wanted shot of it, so sold it to me for 1k without even getting it looked at. A new set of spark plugs and it ran fine.
I'd bought it for my wife to use to lug stock from the wholesalers, to our retail business. At 100k we decided we would just run it into the ground. We stopped servicing it, and used it like a truck. It didn't fail us once in the next 50k miles, so we ended up selling it for £150.
The new owner serviced it and ran it for at least the next 3 years (he was local).
For such a small engine it was surprisingly strong.
I'd bought it for my wife to use to lug stock from the wholesalers, to our retail business. At 100k we decided we would just run it into the ground. We stopped servicing it, and used it like a truck. It didn't fail us once in the next 50k miles, so we ended up selling it for £150.
The new owner serviced it and ran it for at least the next 3 years (he was local).
For such a small engine it was surprisingly strong.
Ford Orion for me. It was my first "decent" car & I bought the 1-year old ex-demo with 6k on from a Ford dealer. We'd just bought a new house & had a daily commute of about 70 miles. After 3 years, we traded it in with 144k on as the gearbox had decided 2 4 R were the only gears we needed. It was still on its original clutch & exhaust. It had never broken down & the only things that went wrong with it were a couple of electric window switches and the alarm went funny when I drained the battery.
98elise said:
I had a company 1.3 Astra, that got to 86k before it started running really badly. The compamy wanted shot of it, so sold it to me for 1k without even getting it looked at. A new set of spark plugs and it ran fine.
I'd bought it for my wife to use to lug stock from the wholesalers, to our retail business. At 100k we decided we would just run it into the ground. We stopped servicing it, and used it like a truck. It didn't fail us once in the next 50k miles, so we ended up selling it for £150.
The new owner serviced it and ran it for at least the next 3 years (he was local).
For such a small engine it was surprisingly strong.
The 1.3 Astras are pretty much maintenance free. An ex neighbour of mine bought one new and ran it for over 100k without even topping the oil up. He put it in px for a new Aygo which was back unde warranty about half a dozen times. I'd bought it for my wife to use to lug stock from the wholesalers, to our retail business. At 100k we decided we would just run it into the ground. We stopped servicing it, and used it like a truck. It didn't fail us once in the next 50k miles, so we ended up selling it for £150.
The new owner serviced it and ran it for at least the next 3 years (he was local).
For such a small engine it was surprisingly strong.
We have a 55 plate Diesel Mondeo pool car at work. It's got 140k on the clock but apparently had a new set of clocks at 100k. Sounds like a tractor but it's been ragged mercilessly for it's entire life and refuses to die.
Having said that, I had a good go at it the other day with a trip from Tamworth to the O2, sat in traffic it started to make some interesting noises and started to engulf itself in smoke.
Thankfully I guessed it might be the A/C compressor, switched it off and everything was fine!
Having said that, I had a good go at it the other day with a trip from Tamworth to the O2, sat in traffic it started to make some interesting noises and started to engulf itself in smoke.
Thankfully I guessed it might be the A/C compressor, switched it off and everything was fine!
We had a K-reg Cavalier SRI 8-valve at a previous employer which was bought at the end of its 3yr lease and kept on as a general runabout / pool car. It had its last service just before coming off lease at 100,000 miles after which it was just abused by everyone. As nobody had overall responsibility for it, it never got serviced, and the fleet manager had a reminder in the diary when the MOT was due, when it went off to the indie next door but one and had the bare minimum done to get it through the test.
When I last drove it, it had just shy of 200,000 miles on it. The engine oil was opaque and in a blob just at the MIN level of the dipstick. It was filthy inside and out. I treated it to a litre of oil, and drove it from Middlesex to Lincolnshire and back where it performed smoothly and without a hitch. It had not had any form of servicing apart from MOT essentials, in nearly 100,000 miles. And by the look and smell of it, it hadn't been cleaned in that time either.
A couple of weeks after I had driven it, it was stolen from the office car park over a weekend, and then found burnt out in a local nature reserve. In between those times, it had been seen leaving the scene of a number of burglaries.
When I last drove it, it had just shy of 200,000 miles on it. The engine oil was opaque and in a blob just at the MIN level of the dipstick. It was filthy inside and out. I treated it to a litre of oil, and drove it from Middlesex to Lincolnshire and back where it performed smoothly and without a hitch. It had not had any form of servicing apart from MOT essentials, in nearly 100,000 miles. And by the look and smell of it, it hadn't been cleaned in that time either.
A couple of weeks after I had driven it, it was stolen from the office car park over a weekend, and then found burnt out in a local nature reserve. In between those times, it had been seen leaving the scene of a number of burglaries.
Carlton 2.0 CDi estate that I built out of two cars and made a small profit on selling the spares.
The only things that went wrong with it were...
Water pump - (which I knew needed doing anyway and swapped it with the one from the other engine)
Clutch cable - My own fault, I knew it needed doing but CBA so it popped when I was 200 miles away
Power steering fan belt. - Snapped on the A50 a temporary one and left it.
I must've put 50k on that thing and for all a couple of things broke on it, it never left me stranded even though I relentlessly abused it. It was big and comfy and you could fit a house in the boot.
Eventually sold it for £75 to a bloke from Lewisham. Wish I'd kept it.
It did look like s
t though!! LOL
The only things that went wrong with it were...
Water pump - (which I knew needed doing anyway and swapped it with the one from the other engine)
Clutch cable - My own fault, I knew it needed doing but CBA so it popped when I was 200 miles away
Power steering fan belt. - Snapped on the A50 a temporary one and left it.
I must've put 50k on that thing and for all a couple of things broke on it, it never left me stranded even though I relentlessly abused it. It was big and comfy and you could fit a house in the boot.
Eventually sold it for £75 to a bloke from Lewisham. Wish I'd kept it.
It did look like s
t though!! LOLThe wife's old Punto did 5 years and about 30k miles during which time the closest it had to maintenance was having the headlight alignment corrected. I serviced it before we got rid of it and now my parents have it and it's still running fine (except for the electric power steering system which is non-maintenance anyway).
I had a £200 B reg Polo Formel E breadvan as my first car. It was 18 when I got it, so as old if not older than me, it had a hard life. In the end it was still running perfectly but sicking up too much oil onto my parent's drive (in their opinion - harumph!), so they took it to the scrappy's. I went there a couple of months later to get some bits for its successor and saw it, completely cut off above the waistline with an angle grinder, no A/B/C pillars, roof, tailgate, only the drivers seat remaining. They were using it as a truck to shift bits about the yard! 11 years on I hope it still is 
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