After he was kind enough to show me his cars, he handed over the keys and the extensive paperwork for his old car. It was dark so other than seeing all the paperwork I couldn't see much of the car, but it drove home very well indeed. It has done a shade over 173,000 miles but has been extremely well maintained mechanically. It was obvious from the drive that there's something not quite right with the clutch as the pedal occasionally stays on the floor when changing gear. Anyway it rained all the way home and so I parked it up in the dark and left it for the evening.
Of course, I got up Friday hoping to be able to have a closer look and an inspection, but it was of course still raining, during a short interlude in the rain I popped out and took these snaps and was surprised to see how well it actually looked and how well it has stood up to being a daily driver for the last 12 years..........
I finally got to have a closer look today and the opportunity to give it a good clean. It does have some dash lift of course, slightly sagging headlining and all of the wheel arches are a starting to resemble a crumbling digestive (albeit Arthur had treated the affected areas with Waxoyl which is most certainly preventing any further issues.) Other than that it really has kept well. There's a blow on the exhaust and I'm sure the clutch slave cylinder is failing and of course there's some slight water ingress into the boot from the O/S/R light cluster. Here's some pics of during and after the clean....
So, there we go, given its high mileage I think it scrubbed up quite nicely! I was going to use this as a spares car, but I'm not ready to start breaking it just yet as it's actually a bit too nice to do that for now!
