Hello? Anyone home?

Coolant cap?

Reply to
Tim S Kemp
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How do you rate the Delica, and how much chippy oil do you chuck in it?

Reply to
Elder

Oh! Oh!

Get a Delica.

They really don't come much sillier. They're also extremely good on and off road (at least the L400s like mine, the L300 looks even madder but the forward control aspect of them makes me think they'd be a bit wayward on the motorway - mine does 85 cruise happily). Big 2.8 four cylinder diesel (or make me jealous and get the 3.0 petrol).

They're very easy to live with. Also mad SUV-hating hippies don't plasted it in stickers, because it looks like it might be some sort of camper van.

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

Love it, and none, I like my engines to work all the time ;)

The 2.8 is a touch engine. The SS2 (IIRC) 4 wheel drive is brilliant; switch into 4x4 at up to 60. The gearbox is pretty good (auto, column shift) The seating is amazing; mine's the 8 seater with rotating central bench. The driving position is great, you look down on Transit drivers. It's refined on the motorway. It's narrow and fits in surprising places. It's walk-through from the cab to the back. It handles. As in "70 up the A7" handles. It's nothing like, say, a Discovery. It's easy to work on.

Mine hasn't got the glass roof, which I would very much like in another one. It does about 28mpg, but driving slowly does improve that - the laws of physics are against it.

And they can be had quite cheap, though you need to watch for chassis damage (and they do rust if they're not rustproofed on import - the car that proves the myth, sadly).

Downsides are: 28mpg is still pretty harsh, Mitsubishi are horrid for prices on parts, can be tricky to park due to the turning circle. Common faults are fuel pump failure (£250-400 for a professional rebuild), camchain failure (£50 kit to swap it or £200 fitted from a club member - or do the sensible thing, and change the oil - all 8.1 litres of it - regularly). Switches on the gearbox can play up, but overall they seem to be as reliable and tough as the Shogun they're based on.

I fitted the new exhaust myself, and so far I've only had to do routine servicing otherwise. Regularly drive 300-400 miles a day in it and it's extremely comfortable.

I recommend getting a late "Phase 1" L400 (pre '97 facelift) because they look even weirder without the bullbar/foglight arrangement. Also look for LWB ones just for sheer "OMG" comedy value. They're not that much longer, but the car is narrow and already looks a bit silly.

And don't be fooled by the comfy seats - check YouTube. These things really work off road. The L300s only have old-school 4x4 so no "AWD" type on road security but are even more versatile off road - and whilst they look like little toys scrambling on rocks, they're HUGE. I parked my L400 beside a LandRover and was somewhat surprised by how tiny the Landie looked.

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

Rubbish old kit cars being the "fun, lightweight" variety?

I've listed all the cars; the music equipment has just been somewhat trimmed so I no longer have MIDI guitars, but do have some newer synths (back to a Trinity Pro X as my main controller, and a Novation Supernova II and XV3080 along with random stuff); still can't play guitar.

Computers? I have lost count. Mostly I'm pleased to have an Enterprise

128 kicking about again, but Jen likes computers too, so between us we've got well over 100 "bits of random crap". We've lost a room in the house to them :( I'm still a filthy Mac user, though :D

Which Golf?

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

Oh! For the kilt? They made it, yes, though I think they planned on making it anyway. I'd planned on a tartan years ago using fibre-optics to make a sort of "sparkle" effect, but the firm making the fibre couldn't deliver :(

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

SD1? I know about the T5, sorry I couldn't help with the bits - I wanted mine to go away, sold it, then Siani needed it so I bought it back! Now it has thankfully gone for good.

Good cars, but horrid to run if you're remotely a perfectionist :(

I noticed a lot of tidy 300s for sale on the club sight. I wonder why they're never seen on the road...

How did you keep that going without the headgasket blowing?!

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

Heh, that's my car, but 22mpg average and 'Renault are horrid for prices on parts on the Clio V6'

Reply to
Iridium

Jen? It was Siani a few posts ago ;-) ?

Reply to
Iridium

Nono. There's horrid, and there's OMG WHY DON'T YOU JUST TAKE MY INTERNAL ORGANS.

Which is what it sounds like the Clio is.

However.

Can I have a go? :D

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

"It's complicated".

Actually, it's not. I still live with Siani - we've got a stupidly big house that needs finishing and selling, and we're housemates and getting on fine, and Jen is girlfriend.

Jen is like a red-haired, italian, female me; she's the one who went from owning a Golf for two years, to buying an MX5 on impulse and wanting an A-class (then getting one) and now owns three cars since we've still got the Golf. She's also responsible for the purchase of the Delica after seeing how much we spent on the 850...

It's also terrifyingly geeky in our house. The console-count has reaching critical mass and the floors are bending under the weight of boxes of Spectrums and so forth.

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

What kind? Jen can only drive autos, so we've got a 1.6 Auto. Very pretty, handles well, will NEVER go fast enough to challenge the chassis or driver ;)

Come to Hawick! Make sure I'm actually here, though, as I'm often in Sutton Coldfield (it's NOT Birmingham!).

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

Cat is £2,400.

Maybe ;-)

Reply to
Iridium

WOW I bet that was frosty to start with :-p

I only have (relatively) modern ones these days heh. Gameboy, Gameboy Pocket, SNES, N64, Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2, PSP, Xbox 360.

Reply to
Iridium

Not at all, actually. Jen's unrelated to anything there, and it's basically been an adjustment; we've not stopped being friends at any point!

Hmmm...

We've got...

ColecoVision with Atari module Dreamcast NES X360 Elite PS3 60GB Wii GameBoy, GB Pockets, DS Lites GP2X GameGear (broken, though) Multimega (I should rig that up in the Delica!) PS1s by the boxload for some reason Various joystick things (my Delica has a C64 DTV in the glovebox) Atari Flashback 2.0 I intend to mod for real carts PSPs (hers is white, hacked, mine is black, unmodified) A "Hydra" console development toy thing Atari XE VGS and a lot of 8/16 bit computers.

I like PS3 for most games, but hate the controllers for driving games. As such, I have no friends to play GHIII with, as I got the PS3 one ;)

(Bioshock was fantastic, though. If I'd got the 360 first I might not have bothered with PS3).

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

I went in one that had either a body or suspension lift. It was about 8 foot tall, and every time we went round a roundabout I was convinced it was going to topple over. Horrendous.

Reply to
Doki

And it was an L300, not an L400.

Reply to
Doki

Accompanied by the sound of a chisel on slate Doki, managed to produce the following words of wisdom

My Rangie has amusing handling. People expect it to lean like a Buckfast drinker - but it doesn't lean much at all.

Reply to
Pete M

No worries about the bits. I got some of it sorted, but I'm selling it now so don't really care :)

Yep, got an early S2 (1982) 3500SE in Spring last year. It's silver with a pimping blue interior. It's lowered, polybushed and has a big stainless steel exhaust which sounds amazing. Love it! :D

Bit like any old car really!!

I see a few round here. They're also getting to the status where some people have them as second cars, either for good weather use or for sport (mostly drifting, but some rallying too). There's some pretty highly modified examples about too.

Shhhhhhhhh, we don't mention that word!! We've only done about 5% of those miles though.

A quick Google reveals it could have made it to the moon and a fair bit of the way back with those miles. Cool!! Assuming of course there was a road to the moon.

Reply to
Carl Gibbs

Yeah, a lifted L300 would scare the crap out of me... but if you look at YouTube you'll find a video of someone doing an emergency stop in a regular L300 and it lifts the back wheels. Not, perhaps, the most stable of cars.

I'm not a fan of lifted L400s - not only do they look a bit silly, they also tend to crack the chassis.

Standard L400 height is 2.1 meters for the typical SWB high/crystal-lite roof models. I think L300s are in fact taller, despite looking like they should be smaller.

RichardK

Reply to
Richard Kilpatrick

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