PIG!

To be fair, the cambelt on a CVH lump would break before the warranty ran out, never mind before the car began to rust.

I know someone who's Ka failed an MOT on rust - about 2 years ago... So it can't have been more than about 6 years old.

Not quite that bad, Vauxhalls. I've I'd bought Fords I would have probably had broken belts but just had head gaskets instead. 3 of 3 all at about 115k.

CVH cambelts have been known to fail at around 20k miles. Not great if it was in your 6 month old company Escort.

The rust took a tad longer to set in.

I also new someone with a V plate Escort, which had rust on the boot at 4 years old - that was impressive. How pissed off would you be though if your company car was an Escort....

I also new someone with a V plate Escort, which had rust on the boot at 4 years old - that was impressive. How pissed off would you be though if your company car was an Escort....

I know someone who had the engine fall out of a brand new Lancia Beta.

You wouldn't have it at 4 years old.

Some poor private buyer would be left with the bill for that.

"Pete M" wrote in message news:eh3n2d$i28$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.org...

That'd be even more annoying heh. Now, WTF is a Lancia Beta...

Yea his wasn't a company car, bad wording.

Him :-)

I bought a Haynes for the 306; it was the first one I've had in years (since I had the Nova SR in fact, that's going back some) and I was well shocked with the quality. The paper is horrible school jotter paper and the instructions don't seem as good as they used to e.g. 'remove trim xxx to do yyy'; ok, how do you remove trim xxx???

No more or less pissed off than if my company car was a Focus

Good point, well made.

I remember, many years ago ("doing the math" makes it around 1998), my mate's Dad was welding up a J reg Calibra that was only 6 years old.

Aye. I only buy second hand ones now because they're better (printed before the s**te paper came in). All the modern manuals seem s**te though...

Only to people like those in here, who know what to look for, a good chunk of the people buying 2nd hand cars will never have even heard of a cambelt.

True, but a lot of the less clued up people will see one car priced at £200 that's the same age as another similar model car for £400 as the better buy, and go for that. Then again, an equal amount of people will pay £500-600 from a small-time back-yard car dealer for a similar car "because it's from a dealer, and must be better", where the dealer hasn't got much a clue about the history of the car, and almost certainly wouldn't know when the cambelt was last done....