Major rant/good news

[ionicle]

right, on sunday i bought a car, a L reg peugeot 306, which is nice, its a nice looking car that looks nice inside and out, and (first mistake) i went to see it on my own, looked it over, it looked reletively fine inside and out, ran well, engine was quiet, if it did run a little warm

so i bought it, paid for it, drove it home, and it overheated halfway home, but its okay, the guy who sold me it said the water pump was broken, gave me a new waterpump with it, and knocked 50 quid off the price..

so got it home, got a friends dad to look at it (fully trained and qualified mechanic)

started it up

opened the bonnet

first words out of his mouth were "head gaskets gone"

its done 135,000 miles, so i thought....bugger...

but the body work is perfect, the interior is perfect, etc etc, so what i've managed to do is get a spare engine from a scrap yard for 75 quid that has done 80,000 miles, comes complete with a clock saying 80,000 miles, and he is fitting it for me for a price of 75 quid...then giving it a full service for me

anyway, thats that done, so thats 450 + 150, so 600 for an L reg car with 80k on the clock...fair enough

so i got a quote online for insurance of 835...

rang them up asked em to drop it (am only 18, and been driving for 9 months on my grans polocy for her car) i figured they prolly wouldnt, and they didnt, they said i put in the details wrong (wtf) and quoted me 2200

so i told them where to shove it, and thanks for being not frigging helpful

so i went to another company, and for 1560.10 i have got a polocy that gives me two years no claims for one, and its full third party cover, with a 150 quid excess, fire and theft, and legal protection...it sounds good for me tbh...

here's some pics:

the only rust and damage, new headlamp is 10 quid from the scrap yard:

let me know what you think

 

[Youngie1337]

TBH you got quite a little bargain with that, nice one.

Let's hope you keep it looking that shiny on the paint work.

 

[nepas]

would it not have been easier to change the head gasket rather than a full engine swap?should only take a couple of hours to do a head gasket on one of those engines.Looks a nice little car mate

 

[ionicle]

new engine is cheeper to swap out than just fixing the head gasket lol

 

[°TheMadDutchDude°]

Nice lil car matey, pitty we don't talk much any more

Headgasket is a huge job AFAIK!

 

[nepas]

new engine is cheeper to swap out than just fixing the head gasket lol

yeah,having just done a quick look at prices I see what you mean....

 

[ionicle]

its harder work to completly disassemble the engine..

than it is to just disattach it and stick a new one in

 

[nepas]

errrr,thats not true,I would rather do a headgasket in a few hours compared to an engine swap which could take all day

 

[Diablo]

The problem is you don;t know what state the rest of the engine is in if the head gasket is gone. The insurance isn't too bad TBH. On my policy (I'm 18) fully comp with a £250 excess with Quinn on a 1.6 53 reg corolla it costs about £1700. Even so all insurance is ridiculous for under 21s. I mean we aren't all bad drivers who actively crash into things...I'm waiting for my no claims to kick in properly.

 

[HypoglossalXII]

Mate, what do you mean by L Reg? I assume it means your number plate carries the letter L but what does this mean and what are the other registration options?

Considering the prices, I think you've done pretty well for yourself

-HypoG

 

[nathan]

That looks like a nice clean car. i read somewhere that diesels dont really run in till about 80,000 miles.

 

[Diablo]

L reg represents how old the car is, the system going from A to Y with the letter changing once per year at the right of the number plate, then after 1984(ish) swapping to the other side and repeating A to Y, hence L reg is mid nineties.

 

[sammjj]

nice little car there :yumyum:

 

[Kerotan]

Nice motor, hasn't suffered from plastic fade too much considering it's age, but re-spraying the bumpers made my mate's corsa look about 5 years younger!

What sorta watts you getting through the parcel shelf? (Obv no head unit atm tho LOL)

 

[ionicle]

errrr,thats not true,I would rather do a headgasket in a few hours compared to an engine swap which could take all day

well the guy i know, said he prefers swaping the engine out, because he its less hastle *shrug*

The problem is you don;t know what state the rest of the engine is in if the head gasket is gone. The insurance isn't too bad TBH. On my policy (I'm 18) fully comp with a £250 excess with Quinn on a 1.6 53 reg corolla it costs about £1700. Even so all insurance is ridiculous for under 21s. I mean we aren't all bad drivers who actively crash into things...I'm waiting for my no claims to kick in properly.

we just chucked the old engine, my new one should be fine

Mate, what do you mean by L Reg? I assume it means your number plate carries the letter L but what does this mean and what are the other registration options?

Considering the prices, I think you've done pretty well for yourself

-HypoG

the reg, as is said above, L is 1994 aprox, R/S was like 1998, etc etc

we now have a system of 0x for the year

for example, the other car i drive is an 03 plate

YL03 V*P

(put the star in so no1 can use it )

which means YL means yorkshire, leeds, and 03 means the year, 2003

the last three letters are just random

before, it was Xxxx XXX

where X was a letter, that gave the rough year of the car

xxx was three random numbers

and XXX was three random letters

but for some reason i only have two numbers, but i dont mind

nice little car there

thanks

ooo, someone from neerby! makes a change!

Nice motor, hasn't suffered from plastic fade too much considering it's age, but re-spraying the bumpers made my mate's corsa look about 5 years younger!

What sorta watts you getting through the parcel shelf? (Obv no head unit atm tho LOL)

i back-to-black'ed it

and i have no idea, they're all stock speakers, i dunno if they even work tbqh

 

[SwaleSmith]

very clean car for the year

p.s L reg is the year eg. S Reg 1998 1999 T Reg 2000 V reg 2001 Y Reg and so on.

Howver the system has now changed from 2001 Y reg it stated as 51 reg as from march its 02 sept 52 march 03 sept 53 and so on

 

[B|oodThorn]

Its quicker to change the headgasket then out the engine if you know what your doing

 

[ionicle]

maybe, but the guy i knows would rather just out with the old and in with the new...

so i let him do that, i'd rather not cause him more hastle than i had to, cos he is doing me a favor..

 

[kataras]

To be hones it totally depends on how the gasket is blown. Mainly there are two ways it could go wrong.

1st one being worst. This is when the gasket is blown either between two cylinders or between cylinder and water channel or cylinder and oil channel. This requires a lot of work, head needs to be skimmed if not replaced with new all together, the whole cylinder block might need to be skimmed (depending on the material of the block), if it blows real bad between water channel and cylinder, not only skimming needs to be done but piston rings will need to be replaced, and that is for each cylinder since the compression has to be kept at the same level.

+ the usual gasket, oil, water or coolant

2nd one being the easiest to fix ie. quite literally just replace the gasket and maybe bolts. It usually happens when water pressure is too high or just due to not tightened enough head, or maybe oil pressure to high it just goes on and on and on.

so just replacing the usual is enough

 

[ionicle]

when we took that bit off, the gasket was falling apart, and oil was spilling out everywhere, as was coolant...

other than that, the block looked fine though..