London ULEZ.

You could aim for something even older.

I have a Triumph, 45 years old and surprisingly low mileage (65,000 from new). Spares are readily available from a mail order company in Lincoln.

I also have a 55 year old Morris Minor. Spares specific to the Minor are readily available from a company in Bristol, and the A-Series engine has spares easily available from other suppliers.

I chose both for spares availability. The Triumph (2.5PI) I bought in

2001. The only problem with the PI is that it uses the lead in leaded petrol to lubricate the injection system. There is a mail order service selling tetraethyl lead by the case which is enough to convert 100 gallons, and which I add to the tank then fill with super-unleaded. The similar Triumph 2.5 TC doesn't have that problem if you don't want to bother with adding lead.

The Morris I bought in 2008 (132,000 on the clock then and I have no idea if that is genuine, but with a recon engine fitted 4 years earlier), because the Triumph prefers long journeys and is happy at

70MPH on a motorway, but starts a bit reluctantly if only used for short trips too often. The Morris is quite happy with local shopping trips but isn't an ideal car for long journeys: not really suited to sustained speeds above 60MPH and the suspension is a bit harsh.

Food for thought.

Jim

As an afterthought - if you like your current car enough to want to keep it, it will be 40 years old in 5 years.

If you have somewhere to store it and SORN it, you are only looking for a "make do" for those 5 years rather than a long term replacement.

Jim

All valid points - plus you can wave goodbye to depreciation, along with Road Tax

A later observation - I tried putting the latest E10 petrol in the Morris, and it became a real pig to start from cold. It wasn't too bad if used every one or two days, but if I left it longer than that it didn't try to start for ages and when it did it lumped over on a couple of cylinders for a few seconds before the rest joined in. Once initially running it drove OK and it restarted on the first compression stroke, so it had to be the fuel and not the mechanics.

Whatever extra is in the E10 seems to sink to the bottom of the float chamber so the engine has to wind over long enough to clear that out before it gets a high enough input of burnable petrol to fire up. I have changed to using Super Unleaded (which is E5) just to fix the starting problem. That is quite a bit dearer though.

Jim

My SD1 seems OK on E10. Although it is injection.

Will wait until the spring proper to decide whether to keep it or not.

Injection systems are OK because the fuel circulates. It is the cars with carburettors where the fuel in the float chamber separates over time that have the problem with E10.

I found a list of vehicles which may have problems with E10, and all of them were carburettor models.

In your position, I would be inclined to put the SDI on SORN and get a cheap low emission runabout for a couple of years for use in the ULEZ. If you really like the SDI you will regret selling it and then finding how much more it would cost you to buy it back a few years later. (I sold a wonderful P5 Rover when a new wife and a big mortgage meant I couldn't afford 16mpg commuting to work daily in rush hour traffic. When such a car once more became a practical proposition, the price of one in the condition of the one I sold was nearly 50 times what I sold mine for.)

In London you won't need more than 1000cc and something like a Kia or Skoda or a small Renault Clio that is 5-10 years old should be quite cheap and reasonably sound mechanically provided you avoid rusty ones. You can always put the SDI back on the road occasionally for trips outside the ULEZ to keep it running nicely between now and 2025.

Jim

Yet we are told by the scare merchants it rots petrol tanks and steel fuel lines? As well as more susceptible flexible hoses and seals?

The SD1 is parked in the street. My daily driver is a two seater open top. They compliment each other.

Common sense indicates that nobody would be stupid enough to add anything to petrol that would attack steel in petrol tanks, because that would be a problem for nearly every car on the road. My injection system runs at 100psi and I can't see any flexible hoses anywhere from the tank to the injection unit. There might be an element of truth in the suggestion that seals might rot though.

My Triumph PI started guzzling fuel and an investigation revealed that it was squirting fuel to pairs of injectors instead of just the one that it was supposed to be selecting, so that half the fuel was squirted into a cylinder that couldn't use it. I had the injection unit overhauled and the people who did it blamed the additive in the super unleaded fuel that was intended to raise the octane rating. Apparently this was a known problem of the original rubber seals being rotted by it. I got a restored injection unit with polypropylene seals instead of the normal rubber and that has not had a problem since.

Jim

Ethanol absorbs water. Water causes steel to rust. Is the theory.

Ah, I see. The missing component though is oxygen, which combined with water creates rust. How much oxygen is there likely to be under the surface of the petrol in the tank?

Jim

I believe that most alcohols mix freely with water too ?