They were well easy to work on, that's for sure, and parts were piss-cheap. Thing is (for me, anyway), they were so easy to maintain that you could avoid most of the worst faults just by spending a couple of hours under the bonnet once a week (preferably before going to the pub, rather than after ). Then again, some people hate tinkering, even when the engine is dead simple. I ended up stripping and rebuilding a Morris 1000 engine after the owner (an old boy) had pretty much driven it into the ground. Worst part of the whole thing was putting in new rings, and grinding down the (extremely manky) valves so that they actually sat in the seat, not on a 16th of an inch of carbon. Just pulled the gearbox and clutch, and replaced them entirely (transmission fluid reservoir was dry). I can't imagine doing that with a modern car the management system would probably administer a fatal electric shock to you unless you plugged in a probe and gave the correct password!
I've always wondered how easy it would be to force manufacturers to state what the error codes correspond to, so your average bloke could stand a chance of fixing the car. Error messages are driven simply by a sensor or reader throwing an exception, and knowing what the exception is is half the battle. The refinements in modern car design mean that its much more difficult to diagnose a problem by visual inspection, but the solutions themselves haven't changed a huge amount. In mitigation, I think the use of error codes has dumbed down car maintenance, as modular design means garages may just replace an assembly that the ECU says is faulty. It might be easily repairable - my old Audi ABS controller had a sticking valve, Audi just want to fit a new master uni at a cost of over a grand - but there seems excessive reliance upon the digital display. Basically your home mechanic has not enough digital info, your main-stealer mechanic too much!
depending on the car, its relatrively easy to get a pirated copy of the dealer software and a suitabile jack to pull the codes and find out whats going on. If you can be arsed with maintaining a modern car, these are as important as a snap on socket set
you can find them advertised in any car maintenance mag..there's a couple in the current issue 'practical performance car'
I was struck by the thought 'Why?' when I saw one of these go by few days ago. It wasn't anything like that one, it was fucked including the paint job and sounded like a soon to die wounded animal. Seriously why own one of those? Its not and never will be tax exempt, its not a classic, it was shit back then and never ever got better and it was clapped out???
When I was small a family in our village had a Rancho: which seemed extremely exotic when compared to the Renaults and Volvos that my family had and maybe started the trend for cars that looked like they could go offroad. I havent seen one for years now. interesting information on the rancho at http://petrolblog.com/2010/03/16/whatever-happened-to-the-talbot-matra-rancho/ and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/classiccars/6906281/Classic-Matra-Rancho-buying-guide.html
Citroen CX 2.5i GT Turbo2 Probably the coolest car I ever owned. http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/7564/citroencx25gti1.jpg It looked faster when the suspension was down - a Porshe beater !! I haven't seen another one for years. V v fast
The mighty Nissan Prairie. I once had the privilege of being in one of these when it rolled over. Amazing that something so heavy and unwieldy should be capable of such acrobatics. The car was fine afterwards, or at least it hadn't got any worse.
As mentioned on Top Gear on Sunday, How Many Left? It gives you the figures for how many of a particular model of car have been registered in each year since 1994. Apparently there are just 590 of those Nissan Prairies on the road, with another couple of hundred on SORN. In 1994 there were more than 12,000... Meanwhile, I saw one of these a couple of days ago: Time was when rusty old Chevettes were everywhere, but when was the last time you saw one...? Probably not for a while, since apparently only 276 are still licensed.
on motors tv yesterday i saw one being drifted in greece, with a 2 litre turbo lump. it actually looked the nuts, and wasn't even brown (anymore)
I too have been playing about with http://howmanyleft.co.uk/ and I have discovered that there are only 1043 of my car left which probably explains why I so rarely see even variants of it. My dad once had an MG Maestro Turbo. There are now only 15 left. For some reason that is three MORE than there were a year ago.
mmm, Eriba puck...or very similar...I want one to tow behind my Mk1 Golf, but I'd need to sell the campervan to justify buying it!
Saw one of these in Llandrindod Wells just over a month ago. Insanely rare nowadays! The Morris Oxford Traveller. Once available in wood trim .... Models like that were vey rare indeed even when I was a bit of a car spotter at about 10-12 years old But the Mark V saloon versions, and their Austin variants, were still quite common on the roads in the 60s and 70s and even 80s :
There's one Alfa 90 on the road. Six SORN'd. The only car ever to come with an integrated briefcase? So cool.
Saw a dozen or so over a fortnight in Berlin in 2008, so they've not all reduced to their constituent elements.
But has the one left on the road still got the original briefcase with it ? I now wanna know the answer to that question !
It does, I saw pics! Was for sale a little while ago, also featured here I think: http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=21941
