What was the biggest pile of scrap car you ever owned and tell us a bit about it. ( Volvo content )

Corvus

Both belonged to my girlfriend, I came to cars quite late, but MG BGT and a Fiat Mirafiori.

MG was our first car buy, we knew feck all. Corroded brake lines you could snap in your fingers were sorted before disaster. Took a mate out for a spin and on a roundabout did quite a graceful 360 spin... axle u-bolts coming apart.
Drove to Cornwall. Snow. Wiper broke off - driver side. Points gap started to close up, made it to a petrol station at 10mph revving it's tits off, AA bloke sorted that.
Shot suspension. Me and the gf's brother did the fronts at the roadside using the trolley jack method on the springs - not without incident as one spring broke loose and shot past his ear...
Did have some great drives in it though once the neglect was gone through.

The Fiat was shit brown and a 1400.. fast it was not. But it was cheap and we needed a car. Driving along the A1 a strange pimple started appearing in the bonnet and the handling became a bit strange - strut tower had rusted through and only the bonnet was keeping the suspension in place...
Moving to London with g/f and the band, car fully loaded, on the M1, it started lurching on gear changes. Made it to a services - rear axle locating tube had rusted out. Finished the trip with the POS on the back of a low loader.
Also had a total brake failure another time on the M1.

My girlfriend and a 127 before this, which had total brake failure twice, once on the M6 with my Gran & Grandad in. My mate had a 126, brakes failed on that in the middle of Manchester, it sailed to a stop just at the junction of a busy main road. Once me and girlfriend hired a car, getting a sense of doom as it was a Fiat - sure enough on the way back to the airport it had an electric failure and wouldn't start.

Proper Ovlovs are good, I've had three '60s Amazons with no problems as dailies. Mostly I've driven 60s cars till now but a couple of yrs ago thought I'd go 'modern' this time with an '88 240 estate.. on the first bloody day three people came up to say "nice old car mate". Say what? And it keeps happening. It's 28 years younger than my last car! What's a bloke gotta do..

Telejester

Yeah cars from the 70s came in two shades, shit brown and beige.

Nitefly

Lovingly Laughingly referred to as "Harvest Gold".

Telejester

Nitefly said:

Lovingly Laughingly referred to as "Harvest Gold".

In the 70s my dad had a harvest gold mini clubman estate, what a heap of junk that thing was.

Telejester

In the 80s I was sitting scarlet faced behind the wheel of my dad's Lada riva on a busy road whilst my brother and his mate were out pushing it from the back, I still remember all the tooting horns and drivers laughing as they drove past.

boogieman

Telejester said:

Yeah cars from the 70s came in two shades, shit brown and beige.

That's unfair. They did shit white, shit blue, shit olive green and shit maroon too. Oh and Blaze Red, which faded to a kind of orangey pink after a couple of years. They all turned a fetching shade of rust eventually. 

Haych

My dad had a beige Morris Ital (with brown vinyl roof, no less) in the early 80s as a company car.  He hated it with a passion.  It twice threw all its oil on the street outside the house after starting up and dad was constantly taking it back to the dealership telling them it used a pint of oil every 500 miles.  They said it was normal!

My uncle was always very fond of British Leyland cars and had a bit of a penchant for Austin Maxis and Austin Maestros.  That's a mental illness if you ask me!  He had several of both and suffered the consequences many times.  They always succumbed very early to major tin worm.

My best friend had a thing for Rovers too.  He insisted on buying an 820 turbo shortly after he passed his test ('cos you could back then).  Nice looking and comfortable car in fairness but went through about three head gaskets for each oil change and the gearbox would turn all the machined parts inside to iron filings anytime you used the loud pedal.  

It also had a stupid engine design where some of the head bolts went right through the block and secured the main bearing caps.  See where I'm going with this?  Yeah, the head comes off and so do the bearing caps, so you'd have to drain the oil and remove the sump to recover the caps.

Telejester

Who had a car or had a dad whose car flunked the MOT year after year ?

boogieman

Telejester said:

Who had a car or had a dad whose car flunked the MOT year after year ?

I had a 1962 MG Midget that failed its MOT on 19 different things once. It would have been a death trap, but that would assume that the thing actually started. 

Haych

Telejester said:

Who had a car or had a dad whose car flunked the MOT year after year ?

My first car was a 1981 VW Scirocco GTi that I bought off a mate's mum as an MoT fail for £60.00.  It took me 18 months to put it back on the road, it had so much rust in it.

It was such a fun car to drive though so I didn't complain.  Every year the MoT tester would get out his prodding thing and find many, many, many bits of chassis to weld.

Wish I'd kept it, they're worth a fortune in good nick now - not that mine was in good nick but back then I was always broke and didn't have the money to have it repaired properly.  Now I'm older and earning a nice wage it would have made a decent project and maybe a nice investment.

Telejester

Funny how cars can have sentimental value, I sold my 2001 mk1 focus to a guy living 500 yards from my home about 1 month ago and each time I drive past it I think there's my car. Fix Or Repair Daily my arse, that mk1 focus was as bulletproof as I've ever owned, great car.

exocet

TheBlueWolf said:

My first, which was a sky blue Mk 2 Ford Escort.

It allegedly came with an MOT etc but after a couple of months I'd realized it was literally stuck together with spit and sawdust, which was terrifying as I was a 20 year old boy racer. It had a manual choke too.

Yes, but in those days the alternative was an auto choke that invariably got stuck - either on or off. I recall my 1982 Fiesta 1.3 featured a twin choke weber carb. It had a temperature dependant intake valve that sucked air in over the exhaust manifold in winter. Of course that got stuck too which meant that in cold weather, the carb iced up when travelling at speed. Oh how cars used to be.

strtdv

Dad had an Astra Belmont (which was basically a horrible saloon version of the Astra) in the early 90s which died of rust after a few years.
In fairness, he had a late 80s Opel Kadett before that which he gave to someone when we moved from Austria and it kept going into the 2000s with little maintenance. It moved to Ukraine and got run on kerosene in the winter as they didn't have winter diesel in the early 90's

The Astra was replaced by a Laguna that had at least 8 separate things wrong with it when he sold it.
That was then replaced by a new Megane 1.4 (not exactly speedy after the 2.2 Laguna), which had an oxygen sensor fault which was never really solved (brand new car that one too).
He then changed to Hyundai/Kia and has never had any significant issues since other than one or 2 minor electrical gremlins.


My first car was a 2004 Clio which had all sorts of electrical problems. It would randomly run on 3 cylinders, the electric windows would get stuck down, it was just generally awful. It is still taxed though!

After that I've not really had any issues, I bought a new Hyundai i30, wrote it off after 10 months, got another new one on the insurance, kept it for 4 years with no problems, then had a BMW 125d which I ran for only 2 years before changing for my current car which is a Golf GTD (no issues so far but still under warranty).
The GTD is the nicest car I've owned @Garthy everything is just so well thought out. Not as much fun as the BMW but much more practical.

hywelg

Austin 1100. Happy memories............. not

Drive shaft snapped in the middle of nowhere.
Passenger door hinge snapped. 
Rot under the rear bumper sucked exhaust fumes in
Continual starting problems. 
Used oil like it had shares in Castrol 

Datsun 120Y dreadful rot box

Triumph 1500HL and Dolomite Sprint. Nice cars but very unreliable.

My car woes only stopped when I bought a Mk3 Cortina Estate. In Beige of course. 

ronnyb

boogieman said:

Telejester said:

Yeah cars from the 70s came in two shades, shit brown and beige.

That's unfair. They did shit white, shit blue, shit olive green and shit maroon too. Oh and Blaze Red, which faded to a kind of orangey pink after a couple of years. They all turned a fetching shade of rust eventually. 

Funny but bathroom suites from the 70's were very similar colours. Shit brown, a horrible light blue, a sort of mustardy yellow and that awful purple / maroon. I think every house I've ever owned and done up had one of those colours in it. What was it about the poor quality of a lot of things in the 70's. Houses that were built in that period were the worst I've come across and we all know that Gibson and Fender were at their lowest point quality wise with Norlin and CBS.   

boogieman

ronnyb said:

boogieman said:

Telejester said:

Yeah cars from the 70s came in two shades, shit brown and beige.

That's unfair. They did shit white, shit blue, shit olive green and shit maroon too. Oh and Blaze Red, which faded to a kind of orangey pink after a couple of years. They all turned a fetching shade of rust eventually. 

Funny but bathroom suites from the 70's were very similar colours. Shit brown, a horrible light blue, a sort of mustardy yellow and that awful purple / maroon. I think every house I've ever owned and done up had one of those colours in it. What was it about the poor quality of a lot of things in the 70's. Houses that were built in that period were the worst I've come across and we all know that Gibson and Fender were at their lowest point quality wise with Norlin and CBS.   

And things were bloody expensive too! I've got a Selmers Music catalogue from the early 70s. A Les Paul was nearly £400 back then, that's equivalent to over £6000 now. 

Sambostar

Unrelated but talking to a 69 year old mate about the price of beer.  Roughly half an hour's salary when you're 18 on minimum wage now.  Back then worked out at exactly half an hour's salary as well.  Obviously the main difference is that real ale and it's production must of gotten cheaper with smaller margins, but is now taxed to the hilt.  Incidentally , a non radial car tyre, made locally cost a week's wages back then, now they are a day or two's.

I actually have a collection of old porcelain bathroom suites, one is shit brown, the the other slime beige.  Had a faded purple one as well but that went, wish I'd kept it now. I like the slime beige one because it's the same colour as in the Royal residence up in Northern Thailand somewhere so it makes me feel special.  I think we had a Maxi in the same colour when we were kids, good car, couldn't stop though and the gear stick used to fall out all the time.

olafgarten

I've only owned one car, and haven't owned it long enough to find out if it's crap, but my Dad's friend's 2008 6 Series is a contender.

He bought it for £2000 in Malaysia where he lives which is a very good price, the only obvious damage was a 4cm dent on the front wing. He repaired that but things started to go wrong very quickly.

First the battery would die every 10 miles, even when it was replaced with a fresh one, turns out it was a dodgy alternator, so that was replaced.

Next one of the tyres burst while driving, apparently when the dent on the front was made it caused a bit of metal to break and come loose and it protruded out towards the wheel hitting the tyre.

After that he had to replace Spark Plugs, Engine Belts, Suspension Parts, the Starter Motor, the Radiator and parts of the exhaust system.

After spending almost £5000 on repairs he thought he had finally got to the end of the problems until one day he was started the engine and pulled out of his office car park and the car told him there was a transmission failure and that acceleration was reduced (This means it accelerates like it's in 4th gear and you can't go faster than about 40).

He has now replaced the Clutch, and most of the gearbox and hasn't had problems for around 2 years now.

dern

Deadman said:

1984 Citroen BX 1.9 diesel.

Horrible car that broke down constantly even after throwing lots of money at it. The hydraulic system failed when I was going some on the motorway; no power steering, no brakes, no suspension. It had a good engine though in fairness.

I had one of those and the suspension pipe wore through on the suspension leg and promptly emptied all over the floor.

My engine was so good that when one of the pistons stuck in the head it snapped the con-rod and continued to run to get me home.

Constantly got the 'STOP' sign lighting up with no apparent reason behind it. Then, when it did leak all of its oil all over the floor just before the engine failure not a warning light was seen.

Loved citroen because of my 2CV, would never buy one again because of the BX.

mike_l

hywelg said:

Datsun 120Y dreadful rot box

My neighbour has told me this story.
When he was working at a Trailer refrigerator installer he took his boss' daughters car to a bodyshop to get some welding done. As the car went up on the 4-poster the front end gave way and was dangling by the wiring loom. Datsun 120.......