Be Excellent To Each Other

I know. I have tried explaining this to mrsA, but she steadfastly refuses to consider driving it as "it has a manual choke and no power steering", so I've given up arguing for it.

That's probably only about 60 quids worth of parts though (and 54 quid for the MOT). If you're contemplating spending 3k on a new one...

It's not a manual choke, it's a handbag holder.

I know, I know....

You can have my Capri for £1000 if you want? Special beex price. Fuel injected so no bothersome choke thingies.

While we're on the subject of stupid interest deals, MyFinger received this junk mail addressed to a former resident of his house:

They send an agent round to your house to give you the money, then round every week to collect it? And what, they break your legs if you don't pay?

They clearly don't expect their customers to have bank accounts, is how I read that.

Bad credit ratings, so can't get credit else where, but want a new TV etc.

Or that. But it sounds like a loan shark.

Why wouldn't they save up? Or get one on freecycle?

People who have that mentality don't get bad credit in the first place.

I don't think our schools do a decent enough job of teaching people what APR means. I'm sure it'd help a bit if 16 year olds had to do this stuff as part of the Maths GCSEs.

It's not even that though, all these deals show the total amount payable quite prominently. People just think about the weekly amount.

If they did these shops would not exisit would they?

I think people want a new shiny TV that will cost £10 a week, which they can pay for out of benifits (stero typing).


Mods does this want breaking out to another thread or adding to bits and bobs?

I took the M3 round to my dad's last night and got it up on ramps (only possible because of the convenient 10% incline of the pavement and backwards rocking of 1.6 tonnes onto the back axle on hill launch!) to look at reattaching the brake duct and temperature sensor.

It looks like when I extended the lip over a kerb at work last week, pulling back tore the arch liner, corner under-tray and ducting to shit - I need 4 new bits of plastic and all associated fixings. Nice.

Still, it does feel good to be finally doing some bits to it myself, even if they're so trivial (although getting 12 year old bolts out of torn holes in awkward places didn't seem trivial at the time).

You're not selling the M3 as a practical, everyday motor here.

Hey, I left out the part where I looked down the length of the chassis and saw all the scrapes and dents gathered over 12 years of speed humps, including a lovely 6 inch tear in the sump cover (I hesitate to call it a "guard"), didn't I?

Actually, I did miss out that on closer inspection the loom-side part of the temperature sensor was fucked, one of the wires was snapped and the other gave as I pulled at it slightly. Fuck knows how that's going to be fixed, the breaks are right at the moulded piece, and there's no plug at the other end, the wire just disappears into the loom.

My dad has one of them. Griff, right?

Yeah, a 500 with Austec-tuned engine.

205 GTI? I have one!

Cool, my dad's is a 500. He also has one of these:

http://www.carspace.com/hudsonthedog/Al ... /photo.jpg

Not in yellow... He like his plastic cars.

Cut a sensor including the connector off a car at the scrapyard, and crimp or solder the wires to the existing ones.

Or, if the connector is still usable, hack away at the moulded plastic until there's enough metal showing to solder new wires on, and join those back to the loom.

1.4 XS.

Although fixing it has, once again been put to the sword as MrsA now "wouldn't feel safe" driving it as "it's too low".

Get a new one.

And then decide what to do with the car.

Hehe

Mine is completely and utterly fucked. It won't go into third gear (new/refurbed gearbox required), it needs new driveshafts, a completely new braking system, completely new front suspension on both sides, it's burning oil and the oil filler cap is full of mayo, the sunroof leaks and it needs a new set of tires. Looking at £1500 to £2000 to get it fixed at my local non-ripoff garage and I have no time to attempt the work myself. Anybody want to buy it off me?

I'm very tempted to spend the money I've been saving on something new, but I go back to uni in September and can't afford to

That's my plan, I think, if BMW won't sell me just that part of the loom (which I don't realistically expect). It's a 3-piece bit - a pair of wires with moulded ends, which fit into the connector, and then the sensor clips into that. Breakers/scrappers scare me.

Now this is what a fucked car looks like. Surely that's well and truly beyond economical repair?

ebay is new scrapyard:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BMW-E30-E34-E36-A ... 1|294%3A50

Is that a 1.6 or a 1.9?

eBay scares me more.

Also: £15 for a second-hand one? Yowser.

I've used this place before with much success:

http://www.partsgateway.co.uk/

If you get a few quotes and then leave it a while you usually get the individual dealers offering a much better deal if you give them a call.

Plan: sell the GTI badge to Mali, scrap the rest of it.

More shockingly, I think we're simply dealing with people who slipped so greasily through the education system that they can barely read, regardless of font size. I came across someone on a reception area at a college recently who had to pull out a calculator to work out the 10% discount on something. Not how much the new price would be, mind. What 10% of the original price was. I told him and he wouldn't believe me and then I had to show him how to do it on the calculator in such a way as it made sense to him. Yes, that's right, after I explained that the original price was 100% I had to make him divide it by 100 and multiply it by 10. I was impressed I managed to do this without a hint of sarcasm as well.

You what? Are you living in 1996?
eBay is the place to get car parts, and as long as you use Paypal, you're guaranteed not to get fucked with.

But it's 15 quid for all the bits you need (other than a crimping tool and two end-to-end joiners. Or would you rather pay 10x the amount to BMW?

I get all almost all my bits from ebay now, I'd swear by it, never had a bad deal.

Are you taking the piss? You are, right?

The foot high red letters saying XS would be the giveaway, though....

If you're buying things, ebay/PP is totally on your side. Only as a seller can you be ripped off.

I think that as a buyer, Paypal and eBay are extremely trustworthy. It's sellers that get dicked around.

When we needed some heater controls recently I kept drawing a complete blank on ebay. I asked for quotes on that service I linked to up there, uploaded a photo to make sure I was getting the right part and got quotes from 3 different places. I ended up getting them for £25 (£170 from Nissan).

Fair enough, if it's something that isn't usually subject to wear or damage, it's not something people will bother taking off the car and putting on ebay. Trim items especially you will need to call around for.

I'd far rather hit "buy it now" on ebay and have it delivered than have the hassle of phoning around scrapyards where you'll certainly have less comeback, or car dealerships where you'll pay 10x as much, and then wait for them to order it in, and then find out it's the wrong part, and blah blah.

http://www.breakeryard.com/ is also very good.

I have sidestepped the issue by having someone in the office buy it for me; at least that place has billions of 5 star ratings and that.

Thanks, kalmar. Thalmar.

Cool Hope it's actually the right bit...

Now, you'll also need some wire strippers, insulation tape and this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Ratchet-Crimp-Pli ... |294%3A100

Or a soldering iron and solder. Don't be tempted to use the cheaper pliers-type crimp tool that you'll find in halfords, they don't do the job properly.

And heatshrink, for a dazzling near-OEM veneer to the job.

Definitely! Bought it for £1500 nearly four years ago! The annoying thing is, it's a minter otherwise. Low mileage (just gone over 70k) for a 1990 car, and generally really clean all round, but mechanically a bit fucked! I think I actually buggered myself over by getting a mint low mileage example, because nothing had gone wrong with it yet and been fixed by the previous owner. They're all common faults, but on a 100k car, they would've been fixed before I'd got my hands on it.

If it's not, they're lying in the item description.

I will be using whatever my dad has in his garage.

An oil cap full of mayo is not "a bit fucked" or "a minter", it's something very serious, and it only gets more serious the longer you leave it.

It's a 1990 1.6 with 1.9 wheels . Graphite grey.

Yep. It's water in the eginez innit. Possibly HGF but probably to do with the leaking valve stem seals. I've kinda admitted defeat and I'm waiting for it to pack in. £1500 for nearly four years of extremely fun motoring is pretty good if you ask me.