top 10 motors for under £1k

Pete, you crack me up :)

Now that you've posted that, we just *know* you'll be driving a different car next week :)

Ebay yourself a nice Saab 900 T16S convertable. Still too early in the year for them to be making silly money. If you get a good one, when you get bored it can join the hire fleet. Thiunk of it as a sort of long term "Seal of approval" test. If you approve, when it needs taxing, sell it to the hire firm, if it don't sell it on.

that way, you stop getting bored with cars, and do something useful.

s/next week/this afternoon

Not sure mate. He sold it on ebay for more than he paid for the car and the parts. His missus never liked the looks, but loved the speed. He went through a=20 couple of Celicas, then the stupid bastard bought a Rover 200 Si from=20 Yes car credit, that blew it's headgasket 3 times, must have been=20 properly "Stevie Wondered". In the end, they swapped it for a Rover 400,=20 but not before he had cut a huge hole in the dash to fit a TFT panel.

--=20 "Sorry Sir, the meatballs are Orf" The poster formerly known as Skodapilot.

600 quid? That could buy you a lovely old BMW 730i, with tax 'til the end of January 2006. YKIMS. :-)

I wouldn't - since I've got a Merc 300TE which is on the list. Except it's a bit rustier than the one in the photo.

145mph performance, 7 seats and 0-60 in under 8 seconds.

Not bad.

The only problem is the fuel consumption - sometimes I get all of 10mpg !

David

Not really. I loved the Saab, I think the Celica is the nuts, but even though it has more power, it feels slower because everything is tamed by the 4wd, and the smaller turbo making peak power higher up the rev range too. No lag, boom.

I'm playing with the Celica in ways I couldn't with the Saab though. The tune up parts take a bit of hunting, but they are there. Something that wasn't generally the case with the Saab. Maybe 2 manufacturers, 3 tuners, and only ex-franchise and current dealer mechanics. With the Celica, most mechanics have worked succesfully on something jap, and the more common parts are straight off the shelf, even tuning stuff.

I know have shit hot brakes thanks to DBA discs, and especialy those brake pads. And they were the bargain of the year, costing just $100 for the fronts and rears.

It's going to stay looking standard apart from maybe wheels and tyres, everything is going to be undercover. MBC, and Decat pipe to lower the spool up point, keep max boost from tailing off higher up, and raise max boost: Cost, if I play my cards right, about £120+ fitting if I don't do it myself.

Also think the exhaust is blowing somewhere. Can't find where but definatly noisier, but less power. Saving money on that too, Toyota standard system, over £500, no pattern parts available, but an exhaust place on ebay is doing a Mongoose system for £265 (not a buy now but most go for that) or if you don't want the bid risk, £300 from their own website in full stainless, that's £150 cheaper than Mongoose themselves sell them for, and even £30 cheaper than Blueflame who make for Mongoose put them out direct at.

You mean it doesn't scrabble?

My old Saab would jump and scrabble in 2nd on dry roads and 3rd on damp coming out of corners.

I've only once got the Celica to even whiff of wheel spinning. Unless you rev the nuts at every start it just crawls of the line. Toyota limit the boost in 1st and second to 6psi and 8psi in the rest of the gears.

Will be getting a manual boost controller fitted as soon as I've sorted out the zorst and decat pipe. Will set to 10psi in all gears. The staock ECU has fuel maps upto about 14psi and fuel cut is between 12 and 14psi depending on conditions. Maybe even going to megasquirt it, and see how that does.

Boost comes in so smoothly with such a flat build there is absolutley no kick in the back just picks up a lot better once full boost is achieved. Oh and for an engine that revs to 7k redline, boost drops off at 5.5k and they all do that with the CAT inplace.