value?

One of them that used to come round here used a loud hailer shouting "bring out yer dead". Decent area, not a council estate. I've not seen him for years. They are handy though. My cheap lawn mower which was doing my back in but still worked was dumped at the end of the drive, it was gone the next day. If I had not got rid of it I'd be tempted to keep using it - getting no younger. I will now HAVE to get a new one. Been thinking of this: Two small lawns.

I favour a sort of cyborg-mower: it ambles around the grass by itself after the manner of a sheep, but programmed to avoid the flower beds; then at night it parks itself over a drain and quietly defecates into the sewer system where its faeces (along with waste from human sources) are converted to methane to be stored for useful purposes.

It ought to be possible to genetically engineer cattle in much the same way - it would save the farmers a lot of work. One can toilet-train dogs, so why not cattle?

My impression too. Last couple I have scrapped went straight to scrap metal merchant (of which there are several within 20 miles paying useful money). I occasionally get bits from a local breaker but these days more usually via ebay (typically when wife writes off wing mirrors and tail light clusters).

I guess there is a market for engines and gearbox from insurance write-offs, but these days the reliability of stuff is so much better. When I was running pretty marginal motors as a lad I'd be in the scrappie a few times a year for dynamos, wiper motors, drive shafts, speedos, stalks, doors, etc.

I remember that too, one of my mates at school had one.

Happened to my mum driving a mini many decades ago. Fortunately a quiet country road where you couldn't do more than about 20MPH up a windy steep hill, and it lurched off the road and drove up the trunk of a tree which was wider than the car. No damage done - just reversed back down the tree, and drove off up the road again. Apparently, it had been making a noise for a while and it could be felt through the steering, but that incident fixed it.

Later, it became part of the MoT test. My own mini used to fail on the rubber boot split. At the time, it was like 40p for a new boot, and £25 to fit it (a lot at the time). I remember saying, couldn't they find better quality boots for a quid?

A while ago my Volvo 240 reached 13 years and 199,880 miles when the diff overheated after running through floodwater (I thought I knew Loughborough Meadows better than I actually did). I sold it for £40 on ebay, and the enthusiast who bought it managed to drive it home OK, passing 200,000 on the way.

I checked some time later, and it was still taxed and presumably running.

Chris

Tim

So the engine sucks in a cylinder full of water in the flood, and stops dead from running speed, locking the transmission as it does so.

I'll be amazed if the starter could do any more damage. My car only cranks at about 120RPM.

Andy

My wife's old car (which was driven to the garage, with a leaking sump and some other expensive stuff coming) is currently acting as an advert for the garage's "scrappage scheme".

She's not pleased. Had that car for 17 years from new.

Andy

I would tend to agree with you. More conclusively, we are told the starter did not turn it over at all. I would very much doubt that the stationary torque of the starter, without any momentum of heavy parts to back it up, could actually bend anything important.

What was the scrappage value?

I was allowed £3,500 for a 10-year old car worth about £1,500 - for a new purchase at list price about £24,000. Admittedly I had the money to spend.

Not a lot.

We got a reduction on the S/H car she's got to replace it.

Doubtless we've been ripped off... used car salesmen are legendary.

Andy

That would be a trade in, worth whatever you can get, maybe a few quid more than webuyanycar price. Though some dealers are now offering to pay up to £1000 over as it gives them S/H stock without auction commission and VAT.

Scrappage either gov scheme or makers exists for purchase of new cars and not S/H. The gov scheme was to get people to keep the economy going by buying nice new clean diesels. The makers schemes are simply to shift new stock and they hope that once someone has moved from scrappage banger to a new car they are unlikely to go back to older vehicles. I suspect is used by a lot of people that have cashed the pension pot and are buying their "last car", 65>80ish should last out.

I don't think any of mine were old enough not to have the plastic shield - I think they were all 1970s vintage.

Indeed - an interesting approach to the problem, which could otherwise perhaps have been solved with a water-heated manifold (but the Mini so-called-heaters always put out a pitiful amount of heat, even when kept clean, so they'd have been even worse).

A Mini heater in good nick worked very well.

It's a common thing to blame a poorly maintained unit on bad design.

They worked, but "very well" is an exaggeration.

That's not what I did - an ineffectual Mini heater could be cleaned out and restored to functionality, but it would struggle to keep the windscreen clear in unfavourable conditions.

My very first Mini heater got the vehicle hot enough.

Early Minis had fug stirrers. You generally need a fresh air heater for best demisting.

But I assumed you were talking about heating the vehicle.