Cars Bought And Sold in 2006 ?

A Tipo sized car with an I5 engine is the work of beelzebub himself. Been there Done that. Got the T shirt Invoked the voluntary termination clause to get shot of it.

No way will I make that particular mistake ever again. You should have to remove inlet manifolds and engine mounts to replace a thermostat housing. And you definitely shouldn't have to remove and engine and gearbox to change a timing belt. (I know - it can be done without this, but only by certain gurus).

In news:pqadnW3PcPq snipped-for-privacy@bt.com, Bob Sherunckle wittered on forthwith;

I can't even begin to list the stuff I've bought and sold over the last 12 months...

Can't wait to get the Golf GTi on the road next couple of weeks though.

Humm... sitting comfortably?

Sold the 218 VVC Coupe I'd bought just before Xmas to help fund the

216GTI VTEC conversion I wanted to do, and took a 1.1 106 in PX which became my runabout.

Sold the 216 GTi TC with the ill fated VTEC conversion due to it, in all honesty being a pile of s**te - made notes never to attempt such a thing again, especially when the running gear concerned is of an unknown quantity - when I say sold, I actually mean I broke it up and got back what I could for it.

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The one you tried to flog here as 'just needs a little finishing' ?

;-)

Well a Cambelt is the first reason.

Different front wings, front panel and bonnet as well. IIRC the "Mk3" was really the "Capri 78". I have some original brochures somewhere.

Depends on how you view the whole Mk3/4/5/6/7 Escort thing. The original FWD Escort is the Mk3 - I think that's established, the Mk4 (86-90) is a facelifted Mk3 with more pliant suspension and a couple of other bits, the Mk5 (90-93) is an abortion bar the RS2000, they then facelifted that (93-96) with stuff like an airbag, side impact bars and a few other changes, they then re-engineered most of the Escort to make the Mk6 (96-00) (or Mk7 if you call the Mk5 facelift a Mk6). This was vastly improved over earlier efforts with lots of detail changes to actually make it ok to drive, stuff like PAS rack mount changes, different geometry etc.

The MkV Cortina was a MkIV facelift which was a rebodied MKIII. The MkV was really the "Cortina 80", Ford never called it the MkV. You can fit virtually all the running gear from an 82 MkV to a 72 MkIII with no modifications. Stuff like the Sierra 5 speed box goes in as well. It's very easy indeed to make a 1.6 Mk3 into a 2.8.

What's a MkIII 5 Fiesta?

If you mean the Fiesta Mk3 (89-93ish) that was always awful, but when they re-engineered them and fitted PAS along with the 16v engines they weren't bad at all. The Mk4 with the 1.25 lump is a great little car, and the current shape ones (Mk5) are really rather good and pretty much unrelated to the Mk3/4.

Mk4 Fiestas drive better than Puntos, and the Mk5 is a much better handling car than something like a new Polo.

In news: snipped-for-privacy@bt.com, Bob Sherunckle wittered on forthwith;

I'm a mega-anorak on old Fords. Enough of an anorak to be able to remember parts codes etc.

The one with a fuel flap instead of a cap..... Mk 3 1/2 ;-)

*Another quality load of Bollocks from Steve H*

I've had plenty of Range Rovers / Land Rovers and the bits are spectacularly cheap. Full exhaust for a non-cat V8 Rangie classic - £110. Brake discs are around a tenner each, service items are Übercheap, headlamps are less than a tenner, everything is available on ebay for silly cheap money apart from engines, tailgates and gearboxes.

If you buy a £1000 Rangie you'll more likely than not get a decent one. £1500 will get a pretty much perfect Vogue SE with LPG.

It's a new VW, and therefore soggy, underdamped, unreliable and all the engineering has gone into damping the grab handles instead of making them nice to drive. The Skodas to seem to be the best of the bunch though. I like the Seat Leon, but it's nowhere near as good as a Focus.

My old Vogue SE used to cost the same to fuel as a decent diesel, was reliable, and insurance was

Now, do you mean the one with the oval headlamps, or the later one with the more square headlamps?

Alfa do it, VW also do it.....

No, I mean the one that was still a proper MkIII shape, but had the screw in petrol cap replaced by a flap, often badged as a 'Fiesta Classic' and also available as an Si with a factory fitted chav bumper kit.

And the 24v Alfas are known to be a complete pig to work on.

VR6 I can sort of accept. Mainly because they're chain driven. But I probably still wouldn't.

"Pete M" wrote in message news:emrjed$5sb$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.org...

:-)

With the 1.6 Si engine they weren't actually that bad, the 16v ones were loads better than the 8v ones though.

I suspect they were a stop-gap though, like the Mk3.5 Golf cabrio mentioned elsewhere. Too much money to make a new one, but the old one was too crap to go on. Like a Cinquecento!.

Pete M admits to drving 1.2 Corsa.

In news: snipped-for-privacy@bt.com, Bob Sherunckle wittered on forthwith;

It's a fair cop, guv.

And have a reputation for stretching / snapping if not changed at the right intervals.

HTH

You appear to be thinking of inline six pots - if anything a V6 should be as, (if not more), compact than the equivalent four pot, between the turrets.

Yup, this is true.

However, ISTR, the interval is something like 120k miles, which is a tad better than the recommended 36-48k miles (depending on how lucky you feel) for the Alfa V6.