Morning all - thought I'd drop a quick introduction in.
I'm from Wolsingham, County Durham, like my B-Road blasts, and have always liked smaller / older cars as a rule of thumb.
After the gearbox went on our (deep breath) Diahatsu Cuore Avanzato TR-XX R4, leaving us semi stranded a couple of weeks back, I promised the wife we could get some more modern machinery in the garage.
The first attempt was a 2010 Panda 4x4 Cross which we bought from Keighley Trade Centre near leeds - turned out to have a knackered propshaft and the garage turned out to be total cowboys. This left our fmaily of 4 with only a 1972 camper van, and my 2 seater Eunos running, which was no good prompting me to sell the Eunos for something with 4 seats.
https://www.mx5nutz.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=134499
After trying and failing to find another Avanzato I decided that my half of the changes was going to be an RS Twingo.
Long story short, after having a good look around I had only a couple of options in the North East where I live, which boiled down to a Silver Silverstone going for a pretty hearty £10k, and a black non-cup car for £7k at a local franshise. I was struggling to find the information that justified the extra money for the silverstone, so kind of ruled that out.
Then I spotted what came to be the car I went for on Gumtree - only catch was that it was down in Devon. That's 5hrs on the train southwest, and a 6hr return drive, which just seemed plain silly. Which was half the reason I liked the idea if i'm honest with myself. Add in the fact it was a 23k miles 2010 plate and it looked like a bit of a bargain.
Anyway while I was mulling this over I ended up getting some meetings scheduled down in Oldbury for the day, so it all became a bit of a lock in for me.
Headed down last Wednesday on the train and met up with a young lad named Jordan, who showed me his car. It's seemed tidy enough for the money, and generally solid enough so decided I'd take the punt on it.
Snapped here in carpark after work:
I suspect some of you may already know this car, because while young master Jordan claimed not to be on this forum, he's blatantly trading as Jordysportracing on here. In fact he seems to have edited out pictures of the car from this post of his judging by some of the comments in reply:
https://www.twingo133.net/jordysportracing/jsr-personal-project-t6252.html?hilit=jordysportracing
I'm hoping that the motivation for lying doesn't prove to be anything too sinister.
Anyway, I generally expect there to be something somewhere up with a used car (everyone hate's paying for maintenance right?), so as I was looking for the problems as i started to drive it to local garage, then post office for tax.
The obvious one was a crappy flip front stereo which was extremely badly fitted not connected up to the radio aerial etc. Jordi claimed he only every listed to music from an mp3 stick, but I was assuming he'd just whipped out a nicer radio before selling the car - he gave me the car's original, which was one of the Aux in models, so I figured I'd either use that or find a bluetooth head unit.
Then when I locked the car heading to pick up tax, the car gave a long alarm whine (for about a minute) - another worry, although I got another unconvincing answer from Jordan "some of them just do that for some reason". Mentally added that to the list, and have spotted an internal sensor clip which was knocked off it's housing that's a possible cause, though the alarm manual suggests the error code cold be more related to it thinking a door / bonnet / boot is open - going to try and get this to a local dealer to get sorted as soon as I have the time to get it booked in.
Anyway the last one I spotted was that the screw which holds the release cable on the passenger seat is missing - another thing I'll have to investigate / repair.
That aside the car seems sound enough, it's responsive rather than quick, but in an odd way having to work an under-powered car for your progress is often more fun than tickling something quick in 80% of your driving situations.
So that's me - I'm not totally comfortable there's not some nasty surprise lurking that I've not found yet, which is taking the shine of my purchase a little, but I'm generally looking forward to spanking this around my local back roads, and am already loving getting 350+ miles out of a tank.
Oh - and after trying 2 Halfords who were not able to just fit me a radio on the way home, I put the original back in, then realised the reason Jordan didn't put it back in because the code wasn't in the documentation. On googling for reault code reset services though, I found a free Android app that did the job for me on the spot for free - result!
Anyway, a bit more speculaton and I'm wondering whether the commonality between the passenger seat problem, the radio problem and the fact that the centre console trim being ever so slightly adrift is that this car has been used as a donor for the Driver Information Module for another project - it's not something I'd have ever made serious use of in my b-road blasting, so not really a concern for me.
Would be generally interested in working out a bit of the cars history - whatever that may be - if anyone on here knows is
Looking forward to getting to know the car properly, and while my firm plan at the moment is to leave the car standard, I'll be keeping a casual eye on the for sale threads for any odds and ends that catch my eye.
Also up for the occasional run out when I can spare the time should any of the local owners have anything panned.
I'm from Wolsingham, County Durham, like my B-Road blasts, and have always liked smaller / older cars as a rule of thumb.
After the gearbox went on our (deep breath) Diahatsu Cuore Avanzato TR-XX R4, leaving us semi stranded a couple of weeks back, I promised the wife we could get some more modern machinery in the garage.
The first attempt was a 2010 Panda 4x4 Cross which we bought from Keighley Trade Centre near leeds - turned out to have a knackered propshaft and the garage turned out to be total cowboys. This left our fmaily of 4 with only a 1972 camper van, and my 2 seater Eunos running, which was no good prompting me to sell the Eunos for something with 4 seats.
https://www.mx5nutz.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=134499
After trying and failing to find another Avanzato I decided that my half of the changes was going to be an RS Twingo.
Long story short, after having a good look around I had only a couple of options in the North East where I live, which boiled down to a Silver Silverstone going for a pretty hearty £10k, and a black non-cup car for £7k at a local franshise. I was struggling to find the information that justified the extra money for the silverstone, so kind of ruled that out.
Then I spotted what came to be the car I went for on Gumtree - only catch was that it was down in Devon. That's 5hrs on the train southwest, and a 6hr return drive, which just seemed plain silly. Which was half the reason I liked the idea if i'm honest with myself. Add in the fact it was a 23k miles 2010 plate and it looked like a bit of a bargain.
Anyway while I was mulling this over I ended up getting some meetings scheduled down in Oldbury for the day, so it all became a bit of a lock in for me.
Headed down last Wednesday on the train and met up with a young lad named Jordan, who showed me his car. It's seemed tidy enough for the money, and generally solid enough so decided I'd take the punt on it.
Snapped here in carpark after work:
I suspect some of you may already know this car, because while young master Jordan claimed not to be on this forum, he's blatantly trading as Jordysportracing on here. In fact he seems to have edited out pictures of the car from this post of his judging by some of the comments in reply:
https://www.twingo133.net/jordysportracing/jsr-personal-project-t6252.html?hilit=jordysportracing
I'm hoping that the motivation for lying doesn't prove to be anything too sinister.
Anyway, I generally expect there to be something somewhere up with a used car (everyone hate's paying for maintenance right?), so as I was looking for the problems as i started to drive it to local garage, then post office for tax.
The obvious one was a crappy flip front stereo which was extremely badly fitted not connected up to the radio aerial etc. Jordi claimed he only every listed to music from an mp3 stick, but I was assuming he'd just whipped out a nicer radio before selling the car - he gave me the car's original, which was one of the Aux in models, so I figured I'd either use that or find a bluetooth head unit.
Then when I locked the car heading to pick up tax, the car gave a long alarm whine (for about a minute) - another worry, although I got another unconvincing answer from Jordan "some of them just do that for some reason". Mentally added that to the list, and have spotted an internal sensor clip which was knocked off it's housing that's a possible cause, though the alarm manual suggests the error code cold be more related to it thinking a door / bonnet / boot is open - going to try and get this to a local dealer to get sorted as soon as I have the time to get it booked in.
Anyway the last one I spotted was that the screw which holds the release cable on the passenger seat is missing - another thing I'll have to investigate / repair.
That aside the car seems sound enough, it's responsive rather than quick, but in an odd way having to work an under-powered car for your progress is often more fun than tickling something quick in 80% of your driving situations.
So that's me - I'm not totally comfortable there's not some nasty surprise lurking that I've not found yet, which is taking the shine of my purchase a little, but I'm generally looking forward to spanking this around my local back roads, and am already loving getting 350+ miles out of a tank.
Oh - and after trying 2 Halfords who were not able to just fit me a radio on the way home, I put the original back in, then realised the reason Jordan didn't put it back in because the code wasn't in the documentation. On googling for reault code reset services though, I found a free Android app that did the job for me on the spot for free - result!
Anyway, a bit more speculaton and I'm wondering whether the commonality between the passenger seat problem, the radio problem and the fact that the centre console trim being ever so slightly adrift is that this car has been used as a donor for the Driver Information Module for another project - it's not something I'd have ever made serious use of in my b-road blasting, so not really a concern for me.
Would be generally interested in working out a bit of the cars history - whatever that may be - if anyone on here knows is
Looking forward to getting to know the car properly, and while my firm plan at the moment is to leave the car standard, I'll be keeping a casual eye on the for sale threads for any odds and ends that catch my eye.
Also up for the occasional run out when I can spare the time should any of the local owners have anything panned.
