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December 09, 2003
Chris
I do understand.
It's just that I'm trying to get you to avoid the pitfall I fell into! I wa
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s much the
same as you, did lots of research, got itchy feet, looked at loads of cars,
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finally
fell in love with one, nice colour, wire wheels, looked pretty good, had, h
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ad
lots of work done to it by the previous owners (mechanical) took the plunge
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and bought it.
It wasn't till later when I started looking deeper into the bodywork that I
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realised that whilst it wasnt a 'rust bucket' it was going to need a full b
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ody
rebuild. I was concerned about the 'spring hanger' area as some small rust
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holes had begun to appear - I took it to an MG specialist for a price on
repairing the 'spring hanger' areas after poking around in that area for a
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while he finally said, 'yeah, gonna cost about =A31,500' I thought to myse
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thats
not too bad, until he said 'per side'! There was no way I could afford that
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, so
decided the only way was to do the work myself. My earlier thoughts were
confirmed when I took the sills off and discovered that outer cover sills h
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ad
been hastily welded up over the existing ones.
I did start to feel 'unhappy' driving the car knowing how much rot there wa
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s
in the bodywork and so finally took it off the road.
The most important point to note here Chris is that my car was very much in
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the price range you're looking at! Rotten bodywork is very easy to disguise
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,
I'm not saying that, that was the case with my car, as it genuinely looked
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ok
when I examined it, its just that sometimes its very hard to spot a 'rotten
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'
body. With loads of black gunky underseal on the underneath - how on earth
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can you see the rot? And without stripping out all the carpets and trim, ho
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w
can you see the rot on the inside?
And no, I'm not on commision for that car on ebay LOL, I just happen to thi
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nk
that its going to be a damned good deal for some lucky buyer! =A35k with no
work to do? BARGAIN!
Chris you've never really said what age car you're interested in, if you do
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n't
mind the rubber bumpers of the 1500's theres some nice ones of those about.
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The purists tend not to like them due to the higher road height, preferring
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the
chrome bumper cars, which means on average they cost less than the
chrome bumper cars. I spotted this one on ebay, although sold now, it looke
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d
good, take a look at it, even though its also got a problem with the rear s
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eam!
Interestingly, its a 1980 car, and in black which suggests to me it was
probably one of the last 200 made.
http://tinyurl.com/yexd
Nigel
"amukdigiphoto" < amukdigiphoto@... > 27378
Posted on December 9, 2003 02:56 PM
Posted to category(s) Body | Electrical System | Exterior | Interior | Miscellaneous | Restoration | Suspension & Steering | US States | Wheels
