Project Bargain Banger...

Here it is the ebay find that was £380 with 2 months mot and 5 months tax.



It has been looked after in the past as i can tell by the immense amount of paperwork to go with it.

Problem is the last few owners have really let her go and maybe to far gone for a keeper.

She got me back home 4 hours away from Bude so that was a great start.

My intentions are unclear yet but she is very rough but i may just run her on a shoe string until she becomes an organ donor to my red coupe and bros sprinty.

This thread i suppose my diary of keeping her on the road as long a possible.

First snags,oil everywhere. Cracked rocker cover.
Knocking driver wishbone#
Oil in intake..possible due to overfill or turbo
Headlights don't work
Rear fog light doesn't work

My short term plan is to get it to the meet on june 3rd without it spraying oil everywhere.


My progress so far
Rocker removed and some cleaning up started.


few more pics

Cheers ridderz!


Ok slight progress, i found that the project banger had been missing a few relays under the dash. Replaced a few from my red coupe and hey presto i have a rear fog light.

Next one is the headlights, swapped relay but still a no go. Unsure where to go now with this? Any advice etc?

Interior fan i am going to try a new resistor..

I have indeed outdone myself..I have now fixed two things in a coupe in one hour.

I would be impressed if it was two things in one month but no, i have gone above and beyond my usual call of duty..

Digging further from the rear fog light problem i looked at the relays to see if there was anything obvious.

Nothing spotted so thought id look at the cabling and found this..



I had both bonnets up on the coupe facing each other to aid and it was certainly a god send.

The cable had been cut and taped under the rubber sleeve to hide what was going on.

So next step was connecting these up,just twisted and taped the corresponding colours together and got this. Whoop



One major issue though. Even without the keys in the headlights stayed on.Nooo.
Next move was to pull all relays under the dash to see if one was sticking closed etc.
No such luck.

Knowing there was some in the dash end panel i then started pulling these.
Got to the third one in from the left and lights went off.
This is with the relay removed.


Great i thought,remove the one from the red coupe and test so i thought....

(anyone know why they went off when i pulled this relay????)

Checked the red one and there isn't even a relay fitted in that socket.
I then tested on ignition...yes my headlight worked exactly as they should!
To my awesome self there was a 80's hi five that i had figured out two huge niggles on the bargain banger costing me a whole value of nowt!!

Here is the offending relay fitted to that socket


I presume the last owner had tried to hide the fault by chopping the cables and stating the headlight were just faulty.

Thanks for assistance guys..I'm definitely getting there with the banger.

Slight progress today.Fitted replacement rocker cover as the other was cracked.
Also wired up a new clock connector as this has also been chopped behind the center console for the poorly fitted boost gauge.

Checked intake pipework and found in fairness no more than usual oil.

Reconnected ebv and cleaned some pipework out.

Just putting the whole car back to standard.

Removed the non return valve from the rear of the engine and yes it was faulty..Just allows air through all the while.

Next step is to refit standard dump valve and compression test as soon as i find my 1/2 socket wrench..

The verdict is in....

compression test.

170 psi
100 psi
165 psi
170 psi
170 psi

One cylinder has low compression unfortunately so maybe a cracked piston or ring as it is smoking through the oil cap and dipstick heavily still.

So all in all this looks like a breaker.. My red coupe needs some parts so looks like this one will donor my coupe with parts and hopefully others and pay for itself.

It does still run and will probably make its last appearance at culborough as a running coupe.

As said as it is if really is too far gone with its bodywork issues etc.

Locking this as this car was broken but did save a few by keeping other coupes on the road. RIP