The day after i brought it home the pilgrimages began. Friends visited me to see the car, I had to start it and rev it a little each time and show everyone the glorious hole in the rear fender (that was clogged with ex-owner's hoodie). The rust needed to be fixed asap however i decided to do some other little issues first (diff oil, fixing the head light). So two days later i started it up in the morning, drove to pay the buyers tax, came back home and when i wanted to drive to my friend's garage to fix these small issues it started for a split second and died. What's worse it wouldn't start again too. Lets just say february isn't the best month to try to start the dead car outside. I couldn't find the issue so i called a trailer to body work garage (it later turned out to be the dumbest reason, so dumb I didn't even think about it - spark plugs were old; I also cleaned them like five times in the process).
After closer examination and some wire brush work the body turned out to be more rusted than it previously seemed, especially the rails and the work would cost twice as much. Also they had no time and will to repair the car for me as it was more profitable to do little repairs. The biggest problem now was to find someone who would take on such time consuming work (welding it with a friend was not an option as I live in a block of flats and at the time none of my friends had a mig).
Finally my uncle told me his mate does this kind of thing. We talked to him and he agreed to do it, however he told me he wouldn't start working on my car before the second half of march as he has other work to do. As if I had a choice. I transported the car to his shop so it would wait for its turn to be rescued (the pic above).
Lessons learned:
- Don't buy a car that requires work unless you've got what it takes (or know someone who has) to fix it
- It's always darkest before dawn, so check the dumbest things first.
That would be it for this post. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments. Peace!