Car Enthusiast Thread
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Speed3
Marked Wolf
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Wow she is clean. My 05 has had a much harder life.
Looks clean. If you saw up close, the paint has lived a hard life. Starting to peel off the hood scoop now and there's some dents here and there. However, the car does clean up well. I took these last summer. The 2 behind it in the driveway/garage are the really pristine cars.
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Corvette in the driveway, GTO in the garage?
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So, an update for those who were interested. The Bentley is all finished:
The good news:
I think she looks great. I lost the detailing, mainly the hand painted red line down the side of the car in the respray but it's not the end of the world. There's not a single scratch, mark or hint of rust anywhere to be seen now.
When everything is working as it should be it's a genuine joy to drive. It's fast too (relatively) for such a heavy car, I fucking love the purr.
The bad news:
It's been a fucking horrible mission to get here.
Bullshit 1 - gearbox actuator failed, parked outside the neighbour of my bodyshop who runs a window fitting business. It locked up completely in park and the neighbour couldn't get his van to his door to load his stock for the days work. He went nuts at my bodyshop guy, my bodyshop guy went nuts at me, I had to fork out ｣800 for it to be towed away to a specialist and the part replaced.
Bullshit 2 - Driving along and a whine starts to come from the engine bay. I'm a mile from home so I go for it, by the time I get home it's a scream. The power steering fluid is empty when I check, fill it up, scream goes away, drive half a mile and it's dropped the lot. Parts unavailable, had to have a new pipe machined, ｣350.
Bullshit 3 - 8mpg.
Bullshit 4 - 8mpg. Worth repeating.
Bullshit 5 - This is great, you might enjoy this. I'm driving along and everything's great, then it cuts out on me completely. The steering weighs a thousand tonnes, I wrestle the thing from 60 to zero into a layby outside someone's house and catch my breath, just happy nobody died.
Then the woman who owns the house comes out, I can't park there, she needs to go to the airport in half an hour. I apologised and explained and she's going nuts. Then a woman returns to the car in front of mine and gets in, drives away. Excellent, I can move my car forward to her space and be off this bitches drive.
It's downhill so no pushing required, I just drop the car into neutral and roll down, get close to the car in front and push my foot on the brake. No brakes. The engine dies, the brakes die with it, all pressure lost, I slam my foot on the handbrake pedal, this does nothing (they don't do anything on these cars apparently, never do), and plough right into the back of a tiny shitty little ford fiesta. It literally bounces off my stupidly big car about 3 metres in the air and lands at an odd angle as I think to put the car back into park which brings it to a slamming halt, me nearly putting my head through the windscreen.
Call up roadside assistance, long story short there's a bank of fuses I've never even seen before and here is the ignition fuse:
It's a bodge job from the past that has finally given up on life so not particularly surprising but still a bitch of a day. Good news was the front of the car was completely unscathed by the impact, and the other guys car was such a piece of old crap I could have shit on the windscreen and he wouldn't have noticed, so I promptly fucked off without saying anything.
All in all this car has given me about two hours worth of pure joy, a month of stress and hell and turned me into the kind of lowlife who flees a road traffic accident, so it's with mixed feelings that today, she went up for sale. Actually, they're not that mixed.
The good news:
I think she looks great. I lost the detailing, mainly the hand painted red line down the side of the car in the respray but it's not the end of the world. There's not a single scratch, mark or hint of rust anywhere to be seen now.
When everything is working as it should be it's a genuine joy to drive. It's fast too (relatively) for such a heavy car, I fucking love the purr.
The bad news:
It's been a fucking horrible mission to get here.
Bullshit 1 - gearbox actuator failed, parked outside the neighbour of my bodyshop who runs a window fitting business. It locked up completely in park and the neighbour couldn't get his van to his door to load his stock for the days work. He went nuts at my bodyshop guy, my bodyshop guy went nuts at me, I had to fork out ｣800 for it to be towed away to a specialist and the part replaced.
Bullshit 2 - Driving along and a whine starts to come from the engine bay. I'm a mile from home so I go for it, by the time I get home it's a scream. The power steering fluid is empty when I check, fill it up, scream goes away, drive half a mile and it's dropped the lot. Parts unavailable, had to have a new pipe machined, ｣350.
Bullshit 3 - 8mpg.
Bullshit 4 - 8mpg. Worth repeating.
Bullshit 5 - This is great, you might enjoy this. I'm driving along and everything's great, then it cuts out on me completely. The steering weighs a thousand tonnes, I wrestle the thing from 60 to zero into a layby outside someone's house and catch my breath, just happy nobody died.
Then the woman who owns the house comes out, I can't park there, she needs to go to the airport in half an hour. I apologised and explained and she's going nuts. Then a woman returns to the car in front of mine and gets in, drives away. Excellent, I can move my car forward to her space and be off this bitches drive.
It's downhill so no pushing required, I just drop the car into neutral and roll down, get close to the car in front and push my foot on the brake. No brakes. The engine dies, the brakes die with it, all pressure lost, I slam my foot on the handbrake pedal, this does nothing (they don't do anything on these cars apparently, never do), and plough right into the back of a tiny shitty little ford fiesta. It literally bounces off my stupidly big car about 3 metres in the air and lands at an odd angle as I think to put the car back into park which brings it to a slamming halt, me nearly putting my head through the windscreen.
Call up roadside assistance, long story short there's a bank of fuses I've never even seen before and here is the ignition fuse:
It's a bodge job from the past that has finally given up on life so not particularly surprising but still a bitch of a day. Good news was the front of the car was completely unscathed by the impact, and the other guys car was such a piece of old crap I could have shit on the windscreen and he wouldn't have noticed, so I promptly fucked off without saying anything.
All in all this car has given me about two hours worth of pure joy, a month of stress and hell and turned me into the kind of lowlife who flees a road traffic accident, so it's with mixed feelings that today, she went up for sale. Actually, they're not that mixed.
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Sorry about the Flying B troubles.
The post had me lulzing though.
You're not a pleb like the Fiesta driver. You're in a damn Bentley. The Queen grants not only the authority, but the obligation to peers of the realm to engage in the hit and run of lesser vehicles.
The image of a Fiesta bouncing off of an out of control 6000 pound luxo-barge was pretty great though.
If you want to feel better, my water pump belt shredded on the highway last Thursday. I had just done the water pump itself about 6 months ago so I should have just replaced the belt then but I didn't think to do it and just threw the old one back on. Car was running hot so I pulled to the side of the road, shut it down, opened the hood, and immediately saw belt bits all chewed up and everywhere.
If you don't want to feel better, I was able to limp it home since my water pump belt drives off the cam and not the accessory serpentine belt, so I would run it a couple minutes until it was too warm, coast it to a stop, let it cool, and repeat. Took 1.5 hours to go 10 miles but I got home without paying for a tow, the part was in stock at the parts store for 16 dollars and it took a 10mm socket to remove two nuts from a plastic cover and about 5 minutes to replace the belt.
213,000 miles and counting. I do fully expect to just leave this car on the side of the road someday. Maybe I can hit 300k miles first though, that'd be neat.
The post had me lulzing though.
You're not a pleb like the Fiesta driver. You're in a damn Bentley. The Queen grants not only the authority, but the obligation to peers of the realm to engage in the hit and run of lesser vehicles.
The image of a Fiesta bouncing off of an out of control 6000 pound luxo-barge was pretty great though.
If you want to feel better, my water pump belt shredded on the highway last Thursday. I had just done the water pump itself about 6 months ago so I should have just replaced the belt then but I didn't think to do it and just threw the old one back on. Car was running hot so I pulled to the side of the road, shut it down, opened the hood, and immediately saw belt bits all chewed up and everywhere.
If you don't want to feel better, I was able to limp it home since my water pump belt drives off the cam and not the accessory serpentine belt, so I would run it a couple minutes until it was too warm, coast it to a stop, let it cool, and repeat. Took 1.5 hours to go 10 miles but I got home without paying for a tow, the part was in stock at the parts store for 16 dollars and it took a 10mm socket to remove two nuts from a plastic cover and about 5 minutes to replace the belt.
213,000 miles and counting. I do fully expect to just leave this car on the side of the road someday. Maybe I can hit 300k miles first though, that'd be neat.
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To be fair to the Bentley that was with me thrashing it about the way you drive a new car for the first couple of months. I suspect with normal driving you might get closer to 12mpg, and if you drove it as efficiently as you possibly could perhaps 15mpg. Of course Bentley never released official bhp figures ("sufficient") or mpg figures - too crude don't you know what what.
There's a lot of that with bentleys and rolls. I found it quite charming reading through the manuals at first, but I think it would start to get on my nerves after a while. For instance a bentley never breaks down, it "fails to proceed".
I almost went to an owners club meet up a couple of weeks back but I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into all that kind of twattery. In the end it was out of my hands anyway, as the car had failed to proceed.
Lithy - agreed. That fiesta should rightly have been tried for treason or impeding Her Majesty's passage or something.
8mpg on that beast sounds about right. I recently got a Discovery Sport, it has a 4 turbo about 240HP, and am averaging 12.7mpg,, how is this possible am driving on ECO mode too. Only Land Rover can make a 4 turbo burn gas like a V8.
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It's a shame the Bentley turned out to be a habitat for British gremlins. We always hear about those stories, but you never want them to be true. It just scares me away from ever owning one of those regal machines....
the MPG isn't really a concern with a hobby purchase for me, but we're paying $2 a gallon right now. Now sure what the price per liter is over there.
the MPG isn't really a concern with a hobby purchase for me, but we're paying $2 a gallon right now. Now sure what the price per liter is over there.
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Equivalent of about $7 a gallon over here at the moment, and everyone's jumping around excited at how cheap that is, believe it or not. All of Europe seems to be a hotbed of fuel buttfuckery.
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Holy Christ. I paid $1.89/gal for mid grade last night. A complete fill-up of my Ram was $37.
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You have to look at the taxes though.
Just like how I get upset that we are still hovering around $2.10/gal while every neighboring state is between $1.80 and $1.90.
Then I look at this list and find out exactly why.
For the most part the fuel cost isn't different, the taxes are.
Total State Taxes/Fees
Pennsylvania - $0.504/gal
Ohio - $0.280/gal
West Virginia - $0.332/gal
Maryland - $0.326/gal
PA gas taxes are the highest in the country by at least a nickel.
Just like how I get upset that we are still hovering around $2.10/gal while every neighboring state is between $1.80 and $1.90.
Then I look at this list and find out exactly why.
For the most part the fuel cost isn't different, the taxes are.
Total State Taxes/Fees
Pennsylvania - $0.504/gal
Ohio - $0.280/gal
West Virginia - $0.332/gal
Maryland - $0.326/gal
PA gas taxes are the highest in the country by at least a nickel.
Westcb
Give an Azn, A Break Here!,
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I'm in TN and I paid 1.61 this morning :-/ I'm guessing are taxes are some of them cheapest then?
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Yes, Midwest is some of the best gas prices in the country for this reason. as of 2014 MO had 45th lowest in the country. IL and IN are exclusions to that rule.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/Gas Taxes Apr 2014.png
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Thinking about it this gets more complicated when you consider a US gallon is the equivalent of only 0.83 UK gallons, which means fuel is a bit less expensive per US gallon than I quoted above - more like $6 a US gallon than $7.
But either way, it's still expensive.
The US dollar equivalent in taxes on a US gallon of fuel in the UK is $3.14.
But either way, it's still expensive.
The US dollar equivalent in taxes on a US gallon of fuel in the UK is $3.14.
Nice paintwork Steven, that looks mint after the respray. Sounds like Bentley ownership should come with a health warning
lol. shame it turned out to be bit of a pig 
Nice motors though cant believe someone would bodge the electics like that on a car like that.. but hey its Britain and its generally full of idiots. Sounds like you've had never a dull moment though with the car
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Nice paintwork Steven, that looks mint after the respray. Sounds like Bentley ownership should come with a health warning
Sounds like you've had never a dull moment though with the car
Absolutely - dull is something you could never level at it.
It has given me the taste for cars that are a bit out of the norm though. With that in mind I've had a few insurance quotes on import cars, namely some tasty americana, and it's far cheaper than I was expecting it to be.
A couple of months back you all tried to put me off a C3 Corvette. As much as I wanted to follow your advice I just can't get them out of my head. What's the best year for the C3 and are there any years that are still good but people don't seem to know it (i.e. price is fair)?
Edit - just noticed that there are cars you can import for only 5% VAT to the UK if they are over 30 years old, no other charges other than shipping to pay. This could be a game changer for getting hold of an American car, going to do some reading.
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Well this thread has been pretty dead...
So, I've been looking for a while for a fun second car. Something that doesn't have to work all the time. Something I can mess around with and maybe do an autocross day or some sort of closed track event every so often. Something that is a convertible with a manual transmission. I looked at MR2 Spyders, I looked for Lotus Sevens and a total basketcase Europa (luckily the non-convertible part of that one saved me from considering it). I wanted a Kappa platform particularly the GXP/Red Line but they just aren't cheap enough. I looked at old Fiats, MGs, Alfas, and Triumphs. Probably others that I'm forgetting. Ultimately, I realized that I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a toy and that really just left the Miata.
I finally found a cheap 1994 Miata. I believe if Luke Skywalker were to see it he would proclaim, "What a piece of junk!". I can admit that "she may not look like much", and hopefully soon I can also say that "she has it where it counts".
Picking it up Monday night and I'll snap some pics.
So, I've been looking for a while for a fun second car. Something that doesn't have to work all the time. Something I can mess around with and maybe do an autocross day or some sort of closed track event every so often. Something that is a convertible with a manual transmission. I looked at MR2 Spyders, I looked for Lotus Sevens and a total basketcase Europa (luckily the non-convertible part of that one saved me from considering it). I wanted a Kappa platform particularly the GXP/Red Line but they just aren't cheap enough. I looked at old Fiats, MGs, Alfas, and Triumphs. Probably others that I'm forgetting. Ultimately, I realized that I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a toy and that really just left the Miata.
I finally found a cheap 1994 Miata. I believe if Luke Skywalker were to see it he would proclaim, "What a piece of junk!". I can admit that "she may not look like much", and hopefully soon I can also say that "she has it where it counts".
Picking it up Monday night and I'll snap some pics.
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miata. fuck the haters, they are fun to drive. The styling has held up well after the pop-up lights were ditched. You can make them look more aggressive with just a few body pieces
Perfect for autocross and cheap as hell. Parts are super cheap, and super easy to find.
I concur