Flight booked to Exeter on Saturday morning, 500 and some mile drive back to Fife. Sub £2k, 16 year Discovery Td5 with 200,000 miles on the clock.

AA membership checked and app installed on my phone.

What’s the worst that could happen?

take your bike with you….just in case. 😀

Well….

My guess would be electrical failure, possibly something dodgy with the loom causing the TD5 lump to cut out on the motorway.

Take a warm jacket, food and water with you.

Plane crash would be a bad start.

It’ll be fine. It’ll lull you into a false sense of security by working really surprisingly well. It’ll then breakdown the day after your AA cover lapses, when you’re other car is in for a service and when you need it to go for an interview for the job of your dreams.

Get there and find out it’s burgundy?

proper lol at @orange…man – I would imagine most folk would consider mcmoonter to have the job of their dreams 🙂

Sounds like a…..shed!

Could you not have found a crap car locally mcmoonter? 😉

500 miles , 3 full tanks should do it .

Hit by a car on the way to airport ?

Saw the thread title, didn’t even need to look to know who posted it

And lols @ burgundy

Certainly not “wreckless” – you seem to have bought a perfectly adequate wreck.

Now reckless…. that’s another matter.

Hmm, half the distance to the garage down the road from me and you could have had an ex-MOD 1980s serviced and checked with 100000K for a few more. I’d have one like a shot but they keep getting nicked round North Yorkshire 🙁

Home

Get there and find out it’s burgundy?

Googled Td5 Adventurer interior and gasps in horror!

It had been listed as having an engine and chassis rebuild, the suspension airbags and a shed load of other stuff. MOT history looked consistent with a car that had been serviced well.

I like a Top Gear style road trip into the unknown.

Think of it as an adventure – it might well become one.

🙂

Corrr, that’s going to be a severe case of new car paranoia on the way back. Every smell, knock, rumble and squeak is going to be with a puckered hole is anticipation of a breakdown.

Good luck.

Depending on your route back. Im in north Hampshire if you need tools 🙂

Good Luck!

I took a punt on a T4 Caravelle in Paignton – paid 2K for it ‘accidentally’ (put my max I was willing to throw down a toilet based on the pictures alone) and so far so good. Body work excellent, engine the non turbo 2.4 thats as nippy as a glacier but does the job .. apparently it didn’t start from cold (told me that when I arrived!) but a glow plug relay wiggle has fixed that.

Every smell, knock, rumble and squeak is going to be with a puckered hole is anticipation of a breakdown

LoL it really was like that. Starting to calm down a bit now. Strange smel in the cab .. turned out to be pollen filters I suspect are original from 20 years and 165K ago.

I too am NW Hampshire should you decide to take the scenic route back (it is scenic, you always get a good long look at Stonehenge) and need a tow.

I’m just off junction 11 of the M5, If you breakdown nearby your welcome for coffee and biscuits.

And I’m near Paris if you get lost 😆

Nrth Hants is not on the way from Exeter to Scotland!

Depends if the M5 is screwed. You never know, he may decided to checkout Stonehenge and farnborough airport on the way back 🙂

P, I’m at home all day Sat 15mins from Js 8, 7 or 6 of the M5.
My number is on my email signature if you can find it.
You are of course welcome to stop by, planned or un-planned! Good trip!
M

You’ll be fine. I drove my P1800 back from London and my Smart from Oxford.

Both waited politely for several months before breaking down.

No one can call you wreckless anymore. Reckless maybe, but now you have a new wreck.

No one can call you wreckless anymore. Reckless maybe, but now you have a new wreck.

wzzzz – not living up to your name. 42 minutes late by my reckoning. 8)

cynic-al – Member

You’ll be fine. I drove my P1800 back from London and my Smart from Oxford.

Both waited politely for several months before breaking down.

I bought my Alfa, unseen, and drove it back from Somerset to Suffolk. Surely that has to rank quite high on the reckless scale…

Heater not working would be nasty

Good luck.
In Lancaster if you need a push.
Email in profile.

APF

I bought a 110 on ebay, in Doncaster IIRC. Train from Reading, seller picked me up from the station and drove me out to a farm, that puts you in a very weak bargaining position if it turns out to be a shed ! It was winter, dark, and possibly raining. It made the journey back home OK but I did not trust it in the slightest.

It turned out to be horrible to drive. Non-turbo, non-PAS, 110 van. Very big and very slow and very noisy. Leaked diesel from somewhere. Handbrake would would jam on when reversing, that was quite inconvenient.

Sold it six months later for a small profit. Never even met the buyer – he transferred the money into my bank account, I left the docs in the car and the key under a rock in the front garden while I went to work !

So that was a happy ending.

I would not buy another.

This was it:

Edit – PMSL – I’ve just looked up the MOT history. I sold it in 2007, the MOT in July ’07 must have been the new owner. There’s then a gap until 2011 when it has an absolutely MASSIVE fail list for being a big pile of rust 😀 Then a pass four months later with the advisory “underside of vehicle heavily coated in underseal”. Hmmm, I bet that was some quality repair work under the gloop….. not. It’s not been MOT’d since.

If the windows won’t de-mist and you take a wrong turn, i’m North Norfolk!!

If you take a a wrong turn in Dover I am in The Hague and have a full Deafener toolkit.

500 miles , 3 full tanks should do it .

That’ll be oil he’s talking about.

Even vehicles that have been ‘professionally’ inspected can come to grief on trip home.
Before Ebay existed, I bought a Citroen BX16v through auto trader. i drove it, I then decided to buy it provided the RAC inspection was OK. The report said essentially it was in excellent nick so i turned up at 5pm on a Friday night and after the deal was done drove home. 25 minutes later, in a stream of stop start traffic suddenly the dash lit up like a christmas tree and smoke started pouring from under the bonnet. It is true that there is a hierarchy in Citroen hydro-pneumatic systems, first the power steering went, then the suspenion lowered and finally the brakes failed as I pulled over. A high pressure pipe had fractured spraying hydraulic oil over the exhaust manifold. Three hours later the car was left at the local Citroen garage.A large bill followed, actually the first of many for that car
The RAC said that’it was fine when inspected”

I’ve bought a couple of £1300 cars from STWers in the past. A Citroen C5 from Milton Keynes and a Passat estate from London, train down and drove back with no issues whatsoever. The Citroen I sold 70,000 miles later and is still going somewhere up near Spean Bridge. The Passat, I bought for my sister. I drove it down to France where it’s still going with well over 200,000 miles on the clock.

I bought an ebay Passat in Exeter from a gynecologist which I drove back and it’s done another 50,000 miles. It think I bought it with 150,000 miles.

Worst initial buy was a Volvo V70 from an ebay trader in Colchester. It came with a fresh MOT that must have come out of a lucky bag. It got me home but not without a limp home heartstopper. A local independent specialist got everything sorted and fifteen thousand miles on it seems unstoppable.

I much prefer the randomness of these purchases than buying something from a garage or a dealership.

mcmoonter
I bought an ebay Passat in Exeter from a gynecologist

– there has to be a punchline for that comment!

^ ..it was fitted with a heat device.

Even vehicles that have been ‘professionally’ inspected can come to grief on trip home

Possibly not even that far! Some cars that I and my team collect have been inspected by an independent inspector and a written report prepared, so all we’re supposed to do is check mileage, make sure all the necessary documents are present and drive it away.
Until one of my team decided to check the tyres out of habit and discovered to his horror that both front tyres were illegal!
Now we check the tyres as a matter of course, just in case…

Big box of Land Rover spares here in the FoD if you need a transplant on the way.