Impulse buy mx5 - sorry Natwest
Discussion
Right... I'm still trying to explain this one to myself if I'm being honest. I've been after a half decent mx5 for a while now. I haven't really been in a rush as we already have one too many cars at our flat. However following a few bored eBay searches I came across a black 89/90 mx5 not too far from home. I exchanged a couple of emails and decided to pop round after work. £550 delivered later I will be the proud owner sometime tomorrow morning.
£550 you say? Bargain!
Kinda no. The cars not been on the road since 2008 and being honest it's ropey at best.
They guy I brought it off seemed a decent bloke and he's provided a whole heap of spares such as a new tombstone, new front wings and window mechanisms. He's known the cars history for a fair few years and has been pretty honest about the state it's in.
In order to get it roadworthy I'm looking at a bit of welding to the sills and a small bubble on the rear arch. More than likely new brakes and any other bits and dabs. From inspection I've seen a lot worse saved.
I've had the car running as a new battery and such has been sorted but at the moment it's far from perfect.
The plan is to dump it on my parents drive just down the road. Stick it in for an MOT and assess from there. Hopefully get all the important bits sorted and take my time over the cosmetics once it starts, stops and drives as it should.
The good points are the car currently has 75k kilometres on it and a good hood. Being honest considering it's been sat for soo long all the moving bits seem ok.
At £550, worst case scenario is I break it for spares.
I'll update with pictures and a full assessment of my potentially ruinous little project once it's delivered.
£550 you say? Bargain!
Kinda no. The cars not been on the road since 2008 and being honest it's ropey at best.
They guy I brought it off seemed a decent bloke and he's provided a whole heap of spares such as a new tombstone, new front wings and window mechanisms. He's known the cars history for a fair few years and has been pretty honest about the state it's in.
In order to get it roadworthy I'm looking at a bit of welding to the sills and a small bubble on the rear arch. More than likely new brakes and any other bits and dabs. From inspection I've seen a lot worse saved.
I've had the car running as a new battery and such has been sorted but at the moment it's far from perfect.
The plan is to dump it on my parents drive just down the road. Stick it in for an MOT and assess from there. Hopefully get all the important bits sorted and take my time over the cosmetics once it starts, stops and drives as it should.
The good points are the car currently has 75k kilometres on it and a good hood. Being honest considering it's been sat for soo long all the moving bits seem ok.
At £550, worst case scenario is I break it for spares.
I'll update with pictures and a full assessment of my potentially ruinous little project once it's delivered.
Today the car got delivered at about 10am. First thing was to get it placed on the drive and sort out the docs.
Money was handed over and I got to work.
Having looked about it some more it's probably not as bad as I think. I reckon in order to have it road worthy it'll need new sills and new brakes. Obviously this will cost about the same as the car again but I know it'll be solid then.
Secondly I went at the smashed tombstone and decided to pull the original stereo out whilst I was there. Little bit of fiddling later and a few other trim bits stuck back on and it looked like a car again.
I gave the interior a quick wipe down as it was a tad nasty and thought I'd get the thing running a bit better. It seemed to be on 3 and wasn't at all great. A new set of spark plugs and a bit of fresh fuel chucked in it and it certainly ran better.
I've never really had a car that I can do so much work on myself so it'll be a real learning curve. Next up is chucking a new set of window mechanisms in as the passenger side is really show and the driver side is non existent. All this so far has been done with the spares provided with the car.
I'll pop some pics up later.
Money was handed over and I got to work.
Having looked about it some more it's probably not as bad as I think. I reckon in order to have it road worthy it'll need new sills and new brakes. Obviously this will cost about the same as the car again but I know it'll be solid then.
Secondly I went at the smashed tombstone and decided to pull the original stereo out whilst I was there. Little bit of fiddling later and a few other trim bits stuck back on and it looked like a car again.
I gave the interior a quick wipe down as it was a tad nasty and thought I'd get the thing running a bit better. It seemed to be on 3 and wasn't at all great. A new set of spark plugs and a bit of fresh fuel chucked in it and it certainly ran better.
I've never really had a car that I can do so much work on myself so it'll be a real learning curve. Next up is chucking a new set of window mechanisms in as the passenger side is really show and the driver side is non existent. All this so far has been done with the spares provided with the car.
I'll pop some pics up later.
Edited by megatron on Sunday 4th May 16:41
Good to hear of another being saved but surprised the price was so high for a project. (Normally Mot fails needing sills are just a couple of hundred) £400 upwards normally gets you something use able with MOT on mx5nutz. My last 1.8 mk1 import track car came with 12mths Mot and no rust for £600. Having said that for some half the fun is in the restoring so good luck to you.
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