Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

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ed
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#16 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by ed »

my first was a garelli capri but i forget the reg...
then
xnk 47j
and
384 ljh
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Paul Barker
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#17 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by Paul Barker »

Dave the bass wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 9:12 pm
pre65 wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 8:30 pm I thought it might be the XJ6 you had, but it's a Puch. :)

According to the recall history the seat had a fault that changed the riders perception on what constitutes good music. There is no cure. :lol:
^^^Oooh ya brute!

Yup, a silver Puch Maxi moped. My 1st legal on-the-road vehicle, I shared it with my Mum! Rock n Roll lifestyle :)

The Jag was HAY 941V. Its dead :( I knew the 2 owners who had it after me, last time I saw the car it was just rotting away into a big pile of metallic BRG dust.
British steel sold to car industry then was mainly where the blame for Jags of that era going rusty. A friends Dad got a new one every couple of years, you had to put youre name down for the next one as soon as you bought one to get it in two years. When you lifted the boot and found a pond in it, the dealer drilled a hole in the boot, to let it drain. That was the fix! The ‘70’s werent British i dustries finest hour, fuel crisis, sugar crisis, 3 day week.

But Id swap the ‘70’s all the live long day for the state of things today. And Id buy as many Mullard EL34’s and ECC83’s as I could afford. And Id ask my Dad if I could have his stereo PYE radiogram with PX25’s instead of what happened I got home from uni to find it gone and some diabolical “hifi, solid state offensive thing instead”!
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#18 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by Paul Barker »

First car: split windscrean moggy minor. That Id have kept if Id known. 6v beetle, Id have kept that if Id known. 2CV Id have kept that if Id known. Anglebox, Id have kept that if Id known. The list is endless. Most were driven to end of life, Ive mostly only ever had bangers, never could afford anything more, serial car manogamist. All bangers. Dinks in London area couldnt afford good cars. Todays dinks cant either and all their money goes into their ? £1300 a month for a two room top floor flat nearish to clapham common. (my daughter and partner). What goes around comes around.
"Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe." – Albert Einstein
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#19 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by vinylnvalves »

First car was a Citroen DS, we bought as a house car at uni, cost us £300, to allow us to go to the cash and carry amongst other things. It was an absolute nightmare the suspension had bladders, when one went we replaced it with a football. Failed it’s MOT and was scrapped... with hindsight that Maserati engine would probably be worth a bit now.
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#20 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by steve s »

ed wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:01 am my first was a garelli capri but i forget the reg...
I too has a (agrati) capri scooter it was the the 90 again with a garelli engine.. and it was my 1st bike.
It was replaced by a honda 90 that just ran and ran with virtually no mantainance for 3 years.
From that I got a job with a company van.. that turned into a company car 18 months later.
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#21 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by ed »

steve s wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 9:08 am
ed wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:01 am my first was a garelli capri but i forget the reg...
I too has a (agrati) capri scooter it was the the 90 again with a garelli engine.. and it was my 1st bike.
It was replaced by a honda 90 that just ran and ran with virtually no mantainance for 3 years.
From that I got a job with a company van.. that turned into a company car 18 months later.
ha! parallel lives eh...I replaced the garelli with a nifty fifty(xnk 47J) that was brand new at £105 17s 6d...it too ran for a couple of years with absolutely no probs....it got side tracked in 1971 when I passed my test and grandad sold me his old morris oxford(384 LJH) for £65.....that was also ditched for a company van(ford escort 6 cwt), which in turn led to a succession of mk2 cortinas.
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#22 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by jack »

First car was a Renault 16 TS cast-off from my brother.

Eventually it melted.

Then a rusty Cortina Ghia 2.0ltr (SKP 400R - took it to France where I was working for a year), followed by a Capri Ghia 3.0ltr

Then my first new car, an RS 1600i (PRP 244Y - black, of course). Boy racer car. Huge fun.

Then a variety of short-lived (briefly-owned) exotics including a s/h Ferrari 308GTB which I only had for a few weeks as it's so small I couldn't really fit into it and drive safely or comfortably.

Then the E30 M3 LHD homologation series (E802 DRS) - almost from new. Best car. Skittish in the wet. Brute of a car. Fabulous to drive - did my IAM Advanced Drivers Test as I was starting to realise that my driving wasn't nearly as good as the cars. More training was very very useful - the instructors were all police drivers - recommended.

Then... children...

Then variety of VW Golf & Polos with a new LR Discovery 1 (awful car), then boring Volvos V70s etc.

Only two recent fun cars were my tubocharged desert Jeep Wrangler JK in the UAE and my current '93 LR Defender 90 200TDi.
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#23 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by pre65 »

vinylnvalves wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 9:00 am First car was a Citroen DS, with hindsight that Maserati engine would probably be worth a bit now.
The only Citroen to have the Maserati V6 engine was the SM, a much rarer beast than the DS.

Citroen did own Maserati for a short time.

I worked for a Citroen dealership for several years so had a BX, then ZX and ended up with a Xsara.
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#24 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by vinylnvalves »

Maybe your right maybe I remember wrongly... it wasn’t as SM as ours had a bench seat in the back so all 7 house mates could fit in. It was a mid 70’s car that we bought in the mid eighties. The only other car we could afford at the time was a Humber, which some other students bought which lasted a term longer than ours. I had a BX for a short time... bloody awful car, but not as bad as the Rover 218 diesel I had as a company car. Couldn’t get above 30 on the 3 mile drive to work as it took such a long time to warm up. That had the fun of the security system where you rotate the key so many times to the left and right if the immobiliser failed.
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#25 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by shane »

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The world looks so different after learning science. For example, trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in their flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the Sun which was bound in to convert air into tree.
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#26 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by IslandPink »

The only special one I had was this - still miss it.

Image
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#27 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by jack »

IslandPink wrote: Tue Mar 08, 2022 6:13 pm The only special one I had was this - still miss it.

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Nice. That's the E30 body too, but it has a BMW Motorsport badge, but not an M3... What was it?
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#28 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by IslandPink »

E30 325iS
Those are the Alpina 19-spoke wheels too .
So, it has the 2.5L straight six as per the 4-door 325i , I think it gets the 'M' because of the body kit and some minor mods to the suspension.
I had the engine rebuilt shortly after I bought it, since it already had 105,000 on the clock and was oiling one of the plugs ( hey 'thanks' on that to the guy who sold it ! ). I spent a few quid on that, all new Mahle pistons and had the head skimmed to give about 10.4:1 compression.
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#29 Re: Cars / Bikes I've had that are worth remembering.

Post by jack »

IslandPink wrote: Tue Mar 08, 2022 7:58 pm E30 325iS
Those are the Alpina 19-spoke wheels too .
So, it has the 2.5L straight six as per the 4-door 325i , I think it gets the 'M' because of the body kit and some minor mods to the suspension.
I had the engine rebuilt shortly after I bought it, since it already had 105,000 on the clock and was oiling one of the plugs ( hey 'thanks' on that to the guy who sold it ! ). I spent a few quid on that, all new Mahle pistons and had the head skimmed to give about 10.4:1 compression.
They were nice cars - very twitchy in the wet ISTR due to the light backend and unforgiving rear axel. The E30 M3 I had was a 4 cylinder 2.5ltr with stupid torque and really wide tyres that made it extremely tricky in the wet - it would aquaplane in heavy rain and it spun on more than one occasion in the wet.

Consequently, I did the RoSPA advanced driving course and a load of skid-pan lessons which helped me understand the car better. In the early '80s I lived in Newfoundland so drove a lot on snow & ice in the winter (-40C - proper cold, that is) so thought I could handle sliding around the place. However, the M3 on water was not a good combo and my previous life on ice didn't help at all. On one occasion I drove it to St. Anton in the winter. That was not a great idea and was probably the worst car to do that with, even though we had winter tyres and chains.

A friend had an E30 325i and I drove it a bit, including at Goodwood & Silverstone on BMW open days. It was fun, though I preferred the M3.

Being 6' 4" tall, having to wear a crash helmet even in an E30 was a bit cramped.
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