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        General >> Cars for Sale >> My P-reg 2.3 saloon has to go. Advice? Offers?
        
(Message started by: DavidBE on Sep 25^th, 2020, 10:15pm)

Title: My P-reg 2.3 saloon has to go. Advice? Offers?
Post by DavidBE on Sep 25^th, 2020, 10:15pm

P468UAB, my 2.3 16V Ultima 'Dark Aubergine' Scorpio saloon of the last 13 years, failed its MOT badly on Wednesday and has to go. I'm looking at another Scorpio tomorrow, but if it's not suitable I'll sadly have to move on to something else (though i have no idea what that would be). I have nowhere to park a vehicle except in the street, where it is hard enough to find the space for one car, so keeping my poor old Scorpio is out of the question even if I do get this new Scorpio and it would be nice to have the other for spares. So, P468UAB has to go, and soon, to whatever fate. After 13 years I'd prefer it went either to someone who could restore it, or who would make good use it as a source of parts to keep another Scorpio going so I'd like to ask if anyone here could give it a good home, and also for any opinions how much I could reasonably ask for it. I have had someone vaguely local (but not from this village) ask for it via notes through the letterbox and on the windscreen and shouted questions from his work van driving past when I happened to be by the car, several times over several years .... but I have no idea if he is a genuine Scorpio lover or someone who just wants it for banger racing ... so if he IS genuine and reads and posts to this forum and realises this is the Scorpio in Downton High Street he's been enquiring about over the last few years, please message me as that would reassure me about offering it to him.

So, the car is an early 1997 reg. When I bought it in 2007 it had done 124,917 miles. Since then, with me, that has only gone up to 143,502 miles. That is genuine, less than 1500 miles a year on average. I bought the car because in 2007 i suddenly became disabled by a back problem causing me a great deal of back pain and leg pain and weakness. and I found I couldn't bear to sit in most car seats for more than a couple of minutes, even as a passenger. This Scorpio was the ONLY car my back could put up with (in fact sitting in it actually eases my back), and that's still true as the few other cars I've had (mercifully) short lifts in since 2007 have left me in agony just going from one end of the Village to the other. I had to give up work almost immediately, and became mostly housebound. So most weeks the Scorpio has been driven once only, half a mile to the village Co-op and back. The odd five mile-each way trip to Salisbury and eleven each way to Ringwood and very occasional couple of hundred yards taking my now 92 y.o. mother to the Doctor's surgery, and that is pretty much it. So, not much in the way of wear added over 13 years ... but sadly a lot of effect from spending most of the time parked in the street.

The car has benefited from the help of people on these forums (mostly quite a few years ago). A headlight posted from Scotland, a replacement engine wiring loom personally driven here from .... Devon, was it? A door motor, I think, and a steering column audio remote control (that was missing when I got the car). Probably other things I can't remember, but thanks for all.

I'll try to go through the good and the bad. The very bad is mostly bodywork and some interior trim. I'll come back to that.

The good is that, aside from bodywork and interior trim, almost everything works, even down to the little things. It would be quicker to list what doesn't. The cruise control doesnt work now, although it did when I got it - but I never used it so never looked into why it stopped, could even just be a blown fuse. The sunroof doesn't work, but I never used that, and it has been roughly sealed up as i was getting bad leaking around it into the headlining. The nearside mirror will adjust up, left and right but not down (so doesn't go down for kerb view when reversing, though it used to). And there are some dodgy electrical contacts so (i) the rear passenger window sometimes responds to the buttons and sometimes doesn't (but always responds to the global open and close); (ii) two of the doors kerb and warning lights sometimes come on and sometimes don't (the other door lights all work); and (iii) the button to change the units miles/km on the trip computer mostly doesn't work but will eventually if you just keep clicking it. The boot lid (which i seldom use) often sticks and needs a thump to get it to open. There's no 6 disc CD player (wasn't there when I got it), and the radio is the 5000 rather than the 7000 it ought to have as an Ultima (and it tends to go off if you poke the front).

Cont.

Title: Re: My P-reg 2.3 saloon has to go. Advice? Offers?
Post by DavidBE on Sep 25^th, 2020, 10:17pm

Cont.

Oh yes, just two months ago the auto-dipping rearview mirror died - not the 'Aliens acid blood' I've read about here (yet) but the top half is now not dipped while the bottom half is permanently dipped (and not a neat dividing line - the line waves down and up and over all it's probably 2/3 not dipped and 1/3 dipped). And both front tyres currently have slow leaks.

Other than that, pretty much everything works (at least that I can remember in my permanent brain-fuzzed goldfish-memory state from the side effects of prescription pain medication).

And it had new rear brake disks early this year, so they have very little wear on them. AND (mutters darkly) a brand new battery TWO DAYS AGO. With my once or twice a week short trips only this year, the battery went flat months ago, and I've just been starting it each way with one of those neat mini-boosters - I had a bad feeling about the MOT and didn't want to buy a new battery if the car was just going to end up being disposed off (for years my only income has been ESA benefits, so I have to be a miser). Thinking they'd need to keep starting and stopping during the MOT I went for a 40 mile circuit last Sunday, thinking that would charge it enough (once upon a time I'd have had the battery out of the car and into the house to charge it, but my back has me struggling just to take the cover off - no way I cna lift one now), but when I tried to start on Monday it was completely dead, not even the trip computer LCD came on. Called the MOT place on Tuesday, and they said the car had to start 'on the key' for them to do the test. Complete Catch-22 - needed the MOT to decide if it was worth getting a new battery, but needed a new battery to have the MOT. Our local battery place opposite the MOT place tested the battery on Tuesday and said it was completely dead and gone. I gave in and got a new battery, only for the car to fatally fail the MOT on Wednesday. So the car comes with a fresh, very new battery (but the ordinary cheap one from the village battery place, not the heavy duty one I used to get).

And the engine's still smooth, as is the gearbox, at least as far as I know hardly ever pushing it.

OK, bad stuff.

The interior is mostly fine (like the leather seats and all) but the head-lining is badly stained where the water used to pour in round the sunroof and filled the space between actual roof and lining before swooshing out each time I started out and went round the first right hand bend. And I've had a mysterious leak into the passenger footwell for quite awhile in wet weather, so part of that carpet there looks bad (though is possibly cleanable). And the driver's door pocket-thing broke off (the plastic that one of the screws goes through went brittle and shattered, and my bodged fix gave way after a year).

The really bad stuff is the bodywork. Starting with the visible, the top lacquer(?) coat has come off the offside wing in a large patch, as well as the door mirrors, and the paint on the roof is faded. There are odd spots of rust on the roof, bonnet and boot, and rust round the (sealed up) sunroof. There's BAD rust along the tops of the door frames, and rust round the rear wheel arches. Parts of the outer sills have been welded on an least two occasions years apart. The offside of the rear bumper is smashed (hit and run on the parked car one night, I replaced the offside rear light cluster with one from Ebay), but I've been driving it for years with that end of the bumper covered in gaffer tape. And both bumpers are scuffed. All of which I've put up with and would have gone on putting up with, but the fatal is underneath. Per the MOT fail 'Suspension component mounting prescribed area excessively corroded' over the full set, N/F, O/F, N/R, O/R, and the inner sills and driver's footwell. The inspector, who's actually a skilled welder who does welding for classic car restoration amongst other things, really really didn't want me to ask him to fix it - or give an estimate - as he said it was so bad it was the kind of job he couldn't even be sure they'd be able to finish successfully if they started. Pushed, he said it could end up anywhere from £500-700 (which I might have gone for) to £3000-5000 without any guarantee they could finish and no way to know until they tried. Oh, and while it wasn't a fail just now, apparently the cat section of the exhaust is well on the way out.

So, if one of you is an expert welder with a large garage you can lay the car up in and work on it over a year or three of Sunday afternoons as a long term restoration project, I'd love you to have it. Otherwise, anyone who can keep it as a source of parts for yourself and preferably to sell needed parts on to other forum members in need, that would be a worthy fate for the car that's kept me minimally but very, very importantly mobile for the last 13 years.

Cont.

Title: Re: My P-reg 2.3 saloon has to go. Advice? Offers?
Post by DavidBE on Sep 25^th, 2020, 10:18pm

Cont.

What I really have no idea about is how much I can reasonably ask for this Scorpio. The old MOT actually doesn't run out until October 17th, but I don't think I can legally drive it after next Wednesday, as that's when the road tax runs out, and even if I wanted to I don't think I can re-tax when there's an MOT fail on the system.

And if one of the contributors here IS the fellow with the gardening business who drives through Downton and has left notes and shouted enquiries about this car in the High Sreet over the last several years, then do message me. Sorry to be suspicious, but after reading on here about the bangers after Scorpios and their tendency to lie, I'd like to know you really are a Scorpio owner who wants it for parts, as per our brief shouted conversation through your truck window when you drove past a few weeks ago!

---------

Title: Re: My P-reg 2.3 saloon has to go. Advice? Offers?
Post by Simmo on Sep 27^th, 2020, 8:57am

David, a sad tale indeed. The most important thing is that if the car is on the road and will be untaxed by Wednesday you have no option but to have it gone or risk being prosecuted. You clearly can't tax it again, not that you'd want to. I'm afraid unless you get an immediate offer you need to ring a 'breaker'. Time is of the essence for your own sake. :(

Title: Re: My P-reg 2.3 saloon has to go. Advice? Offers?
Post by Torbayboy on Sep 27^th, 2020, 7:40pm

You may be able to tax it online but the fail may inhibit this, try and see what happens

Title: Re: My P-reg 2.3 saloon has to go. Advice? Offers?
Post by DavidBE on Sep 28^th, 2020, 10:46pm

Sorry for disappearing. Going to see the other Scorpio on Saturday just had me collapsing in a fog of pain after getting back, and I've only surfaced today.

So, thanks for the advice. As nobody here wants it, tomorrow I guess I'll try phoning the guy who's been leaving odd notes and calling out when driving past in his work van for the last few years. And if he now doesn't want it or can't arrange to fetch it quickly I'll have to call a breakers on Wednesday.

I'm not going to try to tax it, even if the website would let me, because I can't afford to tax two cars, and .... MY NEW (to me) SCORPIO IS COMING TOMORROW AFTERNOON!

Yes, despite the demise of my P-reg 2.3 Ultima saloon P468UAB, I will be remaining a Scorpio owner and driver but from now on with an R-reg facelift 2.9 24V Cosworth Ghia X Estate. :)