My first proper endevour in buying a car for a low price to fix up and sell on.
I originally found SYD for sale locally on Facebook. With limited space and resources, it turned out to be a bigger task than I initially had in mind.
This is the outline of the project from start to finish.
Purchased in November 2022.
Having been off the road for a couple years, there was a fair bit of neglect. The brakes were barely working, the exhaust had a major leak, the front bumber was missing the brackets for the indicators, the drivers door suffered a lot of rust at the bottom, and carburettors’ auto choke didn’t operate correctly.
Initially, I tried to bodge the exhaust leak (which failed badly) and send it straight into an MOT test. A poor decision as the garage it went to left it for months on end. Even after a few enquiries there didn’t seem to be any progress (I imagine they didn’t want to touch it considering the condition). So towards the end of January 2023 I sourced a replacement exhaust on Ebay and spent a few cold wet days rolling around under the car in their yard until it was fixed.
By February, SYD was back in my hands. I fixed the brakes by replacing the pads, a worn caliper, and bleeding the system. The auto-choke on the carburettor seemed to be sticking due to the rotating plastic components swelling with age. This was ammended by dismantling and sanding down the surfaces that intersect each other until the clearance was correct for free movement. This system is only operated by a thermostatic spring, so any resistance will cause issues.
A new bumper was sourced from a breakers yard in Swansea (a good excuse to visit South Wales), which only needed the number plate being transfered over and the indicators fitted.
I found a set of MK2 Golf steel wheels for sale on Ebay with a good set of tyres. This served as an inexpensive way of replacing the ugly mismatched wheels that were on the car.
I then took it into its second MOT, this time with a different garage. It failed, but only due to corrosion on the drivers door and sill. The fog light switch warning light was also too dim to be seen.
A new switch was ordered easily through ebay, and a replacement door sourced locally. I then got in contact with a local fabrication shop to enquire about the sill. We agreed on a price, and a week later SYD was retested.
SYD passed! However, there was still work to be done. I had the original door in my workshop ready for welding repairs.
Rust cut out, and patch panels welded in, I painted up the lower portion of the door with grey Raptor primer. This fortunately turned out to be a close match to the blue on the rest of the car.
By April 2023, SYD was completed as far as I was willing to take it. I put SYD up for sale and it sold within two weeks for a small profit.
I got lucky with this project. I learnt a lot, and realised that old cars often need a lot more TLC than meets the eye (especially when they’ve been off the road for a while!)
However, fixing old cars is extremely addictive, and SYD certainly didn’t end up being the last!
Boyd Morley 