I know a lot of you are going to think "OhmyGod.. Shed alert" but bear with me cos the old gal's been through a lot and she is a taxi after all
I had my pride and joy written off in an RTA last year, I was done over by the insurers and was struggling. A colleague offered to bail me out with an old and battered passat that had seen better days. I had driven her a few times and although she was a bit more unpredictable to drive than my previous car, had to snatch his hand off.
However, the bodge job mechanic that had been working on it for a few years left a LOT to be desired, and I inherited a car with more faults and problems than you can shake a stick at.
The original driver HATED her with a passion and had been petitioning the owner to scrap her, the interior was a state and the car had no power, so obviously these were the first things I corrected, along with two new front shocks to replace the ones that had failed light years before I ever drove it, causing another problem as "come and go" newbie drivers had sumped the car over speedhumps, causing a nasty crack.
So the first thing was to test the MAF by pulling the plug on it.. Holy cow I got a wheelspin out of the old bird at last, so changed the MAF and all of a sudden the slowest taxi on the fleet became one of the nippiest.. She only has 100bhp but leaves the 130s standing
(Am wondering seriously if she's had a remap).Then the clonking on the NSF had to be fixed.. Found the source - idiot backyard mechanic had stripped the top arm threads going into the bulkhead and the bolt was just dangling in the hole
So we put a bolt in from the other side and secured it on top with a Nylock. Job done.
I got lucky on eBay and managed velour seats and doorcards for £30, and a donor carpet for £10 from a local scrappy
New seats went in (notice the old door cards lol), connections were completely different, so I had to chop and solder the old ones on.
Funnily enough, somebody didn't like all the attention the old girl was getting (and we know who it was) and a few hours after the last of the seats went in, this is what happened....
(There are some very twisted individuals out there)
I touched it up with a Halfraud's pen for the time being, as I was pretty sure if I had her resprayed it would happen again
Anyway, on to the other problems I inherited, firstly a PAS leak. Found the source (pipe had been chafing behind the grille), so I chopped it off at the bend and put a length of flexi there instead. A year later and still no leaks
Then onto the headlamps. The original owner had replaced them, but again back yard mechanic strikes again, and as well as them not being bolted in at the bottom, the wires going to the bulbs looked like this;-
One side was welded to the bulb, so chopped the connections and soldered spade end connectors on.
Now for that damn oil leak!!!
(Why do it yourself when you can cajole your boss to do it with the offer of a free cuppa and 10 fags??!!)
Anyway, now the car was running a lot better and looked cleaner, so I had new arms, track rod ends and bushes changed on the front - which took away any remaining clonking and improved handling slightly.
Then two wheel bearings on the front after one failed.
By this time I was thinking "I'm starting to see daylight at the end of the tunnel" lol, only the ABS mess to sort out and I can remove the electrical tape on the dash hiding the faults!!!
Never EVER get complacent.. Cos that's when the next thing to go was the turbo
I can laugh now.. Honest!!
I heard an odd noise after dropping a passenger off and knew something wasn't right, so gently nursed her to base, whereupon the original owner (base op) came out, checked the oil and gave me a filthy look and a lot of abuse about not checking the oil cos there was none in it. I protested loads.. at this point the car was belching out so much smoke that you couldn't see oncoming traffic. So he decided to boot the throttle to clear the smoke.. that was when the engine took off on a redline rant and he couldn't stop it.. It eventually coughed and died when it ran out of the engine oil it was sucking up through the bores. But we didn't know that at the time (I've never had a tubby go) and so when his mate the backyard mechanic rang up from the pub wanting a taxi, he jumped back in the car and attempted to drive her down to his house, a mile away. He got a street away before she redlined out again and he left her there. I at that point decided that she was going to MY mechanic and had her towed to the yard, where he told me it was lucky she hadn't been started again as the blades were just starting to break up. Got a recon for £320 (was £350ish incl. vat but at the sight of me pulling £60 in pound coins out of my pockets, the guy took pity on me. But it could have been the lowcut top as well
Had a bump in a carpark, took pics to prove no damage, other party then whack in a whiplash claim for a 5mph bump in reverse and my insurer's say there's TWO huge dents in both driver's door and back quarter. Passat was unscathed (built like tanks, aren't they)
Notice the back lamps are odd, the original driver smashed covers off the lenses, so the owner removed the covers
So then I had the ABS replaced, two sensors causing the trouble but the whole thing had to be rewired where the original mechanic had chopped it
Luckily there was a donor car in a scrappers around the corner (though the sensors themselves were bought brand new).
Then the car started hunting (yes, I know it's a diesel, but that's an apt description of what it was doing). A fault code threw up a fault on injector 4 wiring, so the harness was replaced (again lucky that there was a complete head sat in the mechanic's loft, so only £80 including fitting, which was a pig).
It still occasionally does this so in the near future we are going to change injector 4 to see if it fixes it.
Finally I had a car that did not look like Blackpool illuminations or beep half a dozen times when I turned the key.. I have never seen a mechanic so chuffed when he showed me, so sometimes I send it in with the fuel light on just to annoy him
Then the flat tyre fiasco.. got a flat, couldn't get the wheel off, base op couldn't get the wheel off, one of my regulars couldn't either, RAC came out, rounded the bolts off to 14mm and eventually we had to do this to a perfectly good alloy, all because the bolts had got so old they had stretched. When you see her mileage in a minute you will understand why, as these were the original bolts. Luckily a spare alloy came along for £25 including continental tyre
Then finally last month I had a bit of a shock. Running late for the school run, bleary eyed, jumped in and fired her up. Drove 1/4 of a mile and she same to an abrupt halt. Tried to start her, no joy, when I was cranking white smoke appeared out of the exhaust, so I stopped and rang the RAC. Got out of the car to lock her up and saw this..
As you can imagine, I was livid (and on my Birthday as well).
My immediate thought was that someone had nicked the fuel, so to check I put the key back in to check how much fuel was in her. I knew when I'd parked her up the night before that there had been 50 miles left before running out, when I looked again there was 150...
When the RAC guy arrived, I asked him to siphon some off the feed to the filter and sure enough there was water in the tank, so we towed her down to my long suffering mechanic, who removed almost 3 gallons of water/diesel, flushed it, put a new filter in and thankfully she started up as normal with no trouble.
Whilst paying him he pointed out this;-
So at the moment when not working the old girl is hidden. We have a good idea who it was but proving it is another matter...
Anyway, the reason I went to the trouble to share is this... In about 14 weeks I will be celebrating a milestone (if she doesn't get vandalised again). So far, what was once the laughing stock of the fleet has done this..
and in doing so I think worthy of a mention here.
Soops.
Edited to add, the engine, box and axles are all original
