Your Bangernomics successes

first issue with the megane lol

a little knocking when turning right.. so suspecting cv joint.. nothing major maybe £50 for a shaft hehe "shaft"

gonna check tyre pressures and wheel nuts as you never know..

ArnoldRimmer wrote: »

I'm looking for my first car and wanna go for a banger. Looking to spend around £500-600 to get something with 12 months MOT then re-evaluate in a year. Needs to be decent MPG and low insurance class.

Thoughts on a 206 vs a fiesta? Would love to hear any other suggestions people have.

Im based in Hertfordshire/London area if anyone has seen anything pop up.

What is your annual mileage? By insurance class I presume you mean a low 1-50 group. This bears little relation to the cost of insurance anymore - larger granddad type cars are often cheaper to insure as has been done to death here many times before. Such cars are also often cheaper to buy than a fiesta or something. Rover 75 diesel is a current good bet, although you might struggle for a decent one at that price.

I have three consecutive success stories. I've only owned bangers, so to speak, since I passed my test.

First car was a manky (on first viewing) 106 that was owned by an old man. It was recommended by a friend because it had low mileage (35,000 miles) and he had stopped driving recently... That was the description anyway. Turns out recently was actually over 12 months ago. We arrived and the vehicle was sat under some trees, covered in moss, algae, leaves, mud, just filth in general. Not a single panel was distinguishable on the car and the windscreen was completely covered. Unsurprisingly, the battery was completely flat, to the point that the internal clock had stopped ticking. We checked the fluids, oil and coolant etc, and whipped the fuse to the fuel pump out so we could get a bit of oil around the engine before starting it. We hooked it up to my dads car battery (a banger Cinquecento funnily enough) and give it a few minutes of charging before turning the key to get some oil through the engine. It turned over okay, so we put the fuse back in and fired her up. Started perfectly. Sounded a bit rough, but we put that down to the fact it had been sitting for a long time. We decided to buy it (not knowing the condition of the panels) and took her home, after having a bit of trouble getting her free from the seized brakes. The brakes quickly un-seized but the main issue was the bodywork and whether it was okay or not. We washed her several times over the next week and my word, what a score. Not a single bit of bodywork damage. All the panels were beautiful and when washed it looked lovely. Moon silver it was, basically silver with a slight blue tinge. We whacked over 60,000 miles on that car without a problem, never failed an MOT and super easy to work on. The clutch did wear out but I was a young driver and I put it down to my ropey driving skills. With it costing so little to buy, it was a perfect car for a young driver and I did clip the curb a few times and scratch the wing mirrors on a few walls. Unfortunately, the car was eventually written off when I was whacked in the back by someone not quite concentrating enough. Such was the damage, it was a Cat B write-off, but I hilariously got more from the insurance payout (After haggling the negotiator) than I originally paid in the first place. I bought the car for £1,500 and was paid out £1,900. Win.

Second car was a VW Lupo petrol. This one doesn't have quite as good a back-story, other than I got it at a great price. It was £1,300 because the bonnet cable had snapped and the MOT was due, which left me with a few quid to get those issues sorted. It did pass the MOT though which was a relief and they fixed the bonnet release cable which didn't cost much. It had 50,000 miles on which I was happy with. It failed just one MOT while I owned it due to the headlight bracket cracking, simply due to age of the car / wear and tear. A new headlight (which did cost a whopping £80 from VW) and the car passed with flying colours. Again, with the car being cheap, it was perfect for me to drive to work and back (80 mile round trip) and run into the ground without really worrying. I had no major issues with the car while I owned it:- the backbox fell off at about 80,000 miles due to just standard wear and tear, the HT leads packed up but they hadn't been changed in a long time and the brake light switch packed up which cost £15 to fix. All in all, the car was a cheap good quality runabout. At just over 99,000 miles, I had my own lapse in concentration earlier this year in the ice and skidded into the back of a car that had braked hard at a pedestrian crossing. Despite me pricing up the damage at just under £300 for second-hand parts, I knew I wouldn't have the time to do it myself so let the insurance take it away. They wrote the car off unsurprisingly and gave me £950 - £500 excess (ouch), so unfortunately my final payout was just shy of £500. Still, if you don't include wear and tear, I paid just over £700 for 49,000 miles motoring over a 3-4 year period which I was very satisfied with!!

I'm now on my third banger, a different Lupo, a diesel one. This is the infamous SDI model, which has limited performance but unbelievable fuel economy. The only model with better economy is the Guinness World Record setting 3L model which successfully achieved 99MPG. It's quite easy to beat VW's official economy figures for the SDI model by driving carefully and following the tips of hyper-miling and being as it's an old fashioned diesel engine, you can run it on just about anything, SVO, WVO etc. It's a popular car for veggie oil users. I got the car in January, two days after my accident, and paid £1000 for it. The seller was reasonable with the price due to it needing a service and not having proof of the cambelt being done. You'd usually pay in the region of £1500 for one this age, so the full service+cambelt bill which came to about £500 was fair enough. I'd normally do the servicing myself but I needed it done a.s.a.p and with me not able to do my own cambelt I didn't mind paying. It's also an S model, so comes with central locking, electric windows and a nicer interior than my previous Lupo which was the base model. I bought it with 92,000 miles on and I'm now up to 112,000 miles and the only issue I had was the wiper linkage failed due to the rubber ball wearing out. If I'd known you can buy clips for £5 off eBay which supposedly fix them, I wouldn't have paid 50 odd quid for a new linkage from VW. Other than that, super reliable and super cheap to run. I've done a few little mods on this one too including installing remote central locking and a new double din head unit with active TMC, plus a few others.

There's my three Bangernomics success stories. My old man could give you more as he's only recently bought himself what I'd consider a nice new car. For a long time he used bangers mainly because he had to travel 300 miles every weekend driving to London and back.

ArnoldRimmer wrote: »

Probably looking at around 3000 miles a year I'm car tops. I use my motorbike for most of the year, need the car for when the weather is poor.

At that mileage MPG shouldn't be a consideration really (unless its something ridiculously low!). Get something that's cheap to insure of course but don't worry so much about mpg!