Sorry if you've seen the bare bones of my tale of woe on the vintage motorcycle thread, although it's not that popular TBH.
Bought an old, £800 motorbike off my cousin, I just fancied it and he was upgrading. Spent a bit on it, new tyres, service bits and such, I'm probably in it for about £1000 and it starts and runs, but not great at 'higher' (it's a 125, this is a relative term) speeds. I've ridden it probably 4 times.
So I pay a man £160 for a few of hours fettling, after which it won't start. He comes back and in the space of an hour has managed to seize the engine and smash the kickstart mechanism which I fear is the death knell for this bike.
TLDR - I paid a bloke £160 to write off my £1000 motorbike I've ridden 4 times.
Anyone else found a worse way to basically throw cash out the window?
That ^^^. The last one cost me all the money my dd left me and a lot more besides. The money literally bought her a house.
As an alternative view, you could say that the money bought me freedom from an abusive alcoholic and that would be fair.
I bought an iPhone. To manage music and videos, you had to use iTunes, which was the worst piece of shit software I've ever seen. Then it needed proprietary accessories that cost a fortune and used an Apple only plug. Then, Apple changed the plug to a different proprietary plug on later models, so any accessories would be useless if I bought a newer model. Then the battery shat itself so I bought an Android phone. Cheaper and much less restrictive.
After graduating, looking for work, I managed to get a start with a fabulous American franchise called Herbalife 🤣🤣
Thankfully, I had almost no money to throw away on it so it was very short lived.
More recently, I spent £3800 on the appreciating asset that is a Merc W123.
It was horrible to drive, and I sold it a year and a half later for £1700.
I see that one as an education tho, and good education always had a cost.
Bought a £2.50 sausage sandwich from a van by the road while on a road ride on Saturday. Still getting flashbacks.
Bought a £2.50 sausage sandwich from a van by the road while on a road ride on Saturday. Still getting flashbacks
Username checks out
I bought an iPhone.
Many years ago I bought one of the last G5 IMacs for mega money (for me) - 18 months after I bought it they ditched IBM and went with Intel and then almost immediately stopped supporting the old G5s with operating system updates which meant among many other things that Itunes stopped working with my Ipod rendering it unuseable as well. Thanks Apple. ****s.
Car for me too; my CLS was bought at the height of Covid pricing and must have been a Friday afternoon car. The cost to fix the list of faults when I ditched it earlier this year didn’t come to much less than the purchase price, of which I lost over 65% in just over two years, who says cars depreciate at the highest rate in the early years…
It did look bloody ace though and the Chinese Milkfloat definitely doesn’t have the same effect on me as I walk towards it.
Mate of mine said Falkland Oil and Gas was about to go big, so on his recommendation, I spent £1000 on shares. And then watched them drop, and then get sold off. In the end, I had to bin them off as they were worth less than the share dealing app wanted to charge for holding them.
I know, that was always the risk, but it was a very bad spend
Toyo proxies for my van. Lasted a few months before wearing to the wear markers.
Sorry if you've seen the bare bones of my tale of woe on the vintage motorcycle thread, although it's not that popular TBH.
Bought an old, £800 motorbike off my cousin, I just fancied it and he was upgrading. Spent a bit on it, new tyres, service bits and such, I'm probably in it for about £1000 and it starts and runs, but not great at 'higher' (it's a 125, this is a relative term) speeds. I've ridden it probably 4 times.
So I pay a man £160 for a few of hours fettling, after which it won't start. He comes back and in the space of an hour has managed to seize the engine and smash the kickstart mechanism which I fear is the death knell for this bike.
TLDR - I paid a bloke £160 to write off my £1000 motorbike I've ridden 4 times.
Anyone else found a worse way to basically throw cash out the window?
In the world of cars these numbers aren't touching the sides for these things
A colleague had a tricked out Subaru Imprezza (So useless it was cheaper to rent a car to drive to Newcastle than fuel the Subaru). He sold to get a Mitsubushi Evo. Flew to Scotland to pick up the new car. A week later the cam shaft failed. By then he decised he hated the Evo 8. So he sold it as non runner and bought another Imprezza, just with a much bigger loan
Anothe colleague just spent thousands on a new gear box for her Nissan Qashqai. A few weesks later the engine melted and the vehicle was beyond economic repair.
A colleagues daughter left her car unning to defrost the windows. She was inside the house so the insuarnce wouldn't pay out. So the lease company pointed outthat she now owed them £16,000 for their car....
I bought a Scorpion wooden sailing dinghy from an old colleague in Oban. It was taken to Loch Tay, parked up for the winter while we ordered all sorts of paint and fittings, and we booked a week of holiday at around. Easter to get the boat repainted and back on the water.
We were £300 boat purchase and £300 of paint and fittings in.
A tree fell over on the boat the week before Easter, nearly snapping hull, last and boom in half.... FFS.
i dont mind admitting that my worst purchase was a mountainbike. one i had lusted about for years. come retiring i bought it as a gift to myself.
it was a Ti Salsa fargo, fitted with a rohloff hub.
first 2 years were perfect. 10 000 miles, no issues.
then the hub started leaking, sorted no issues. then the rear rim delaminated, again sorted. then the frame cracked. again, sorted with a new frame, no issues.
new frame built up, out on first ride and i felt like i have lost all my love for it. worrying if it might crack, worrying if the gears might fail, worrying if it might get stolen when left anywhere.
stopped riding it, sold it. now riding a 9 spd steel gravel/tourer which i just love.
A colleagues daughter left her car unning to defrost the windows. She was inside the house so the insuarnce wouldn't pay out. So the lease company pointed outthat she now owed them £16,000 for their car....
Presumably it got pinched off the drive? (Slightly off topic) I've never understood why people do this. Just throw a kitchen jug of lukewarm water over the screen, flipflop with the wipers, drive away. Much cheaper and doesn't fill your road with rich-mixture fumes 🤷
I see that one as an education tho, and good education always had a cost.
I'm actually wondering if I should just get on and fix it because I'll learn something even if it costs a bit.
My first house. Bought in 1990 for £36k, using £6k sabings as deposit. Sold it in 1995 for £30k.
Should have gone with Plan B and bought that £6k MR2
Today,Middlesbrough town centre.I spent £9.00 on a posh breakfast bun and Coffee.I really must be stupid.
Bought a 1987 reg Montego off a forecourt in 1997 for £1000, worse car ever 😭, I should have kept the 1984 Vauxhall Astra estate which it replaced. Cars are such money pits 😞
^I know mate.My usual greasy spoon was closed due to an emergency!
Taco Bell. Absolute dog shit, I can't believe they peddle it as food
Bought a house in the 80s, before Thatcher wrecked the housing market. Got over it now though.
Around £150 on some super light carbon brake lever/shifter mounts. Lasted about half of the Whinlatter Red route.
Paid $43k for a 2nd hand car.
After a timing belt change (that cost a fortune) had endless oil pressure issues... eventually fixed.
Less than 2 years in the turbo munched itself without warning. Due to needing to drive it and not having access to any parts, secondhand engine, turbo, dpf bought and installed at a cost of ~$15k.
A year later timing belt change scheduled early ... to be safe. Cost a fortune. Mechanic noticed signs of wear on turbo vanes.
Sent car to auction. Four auctions later now bids. Car now for sale at a special discount price of $16,500 and still no real interest.
I wished I lived near some really big cliffs I could push it off.
Today,Middlesbrough town centre.I spent £9.00 on a posh breakfast bun and Coffee.I really must be stupid.
Username checks out... on multiple levels 🤣
Crashed a car (2 cars pulled out onto a dual carriageway one into each lane, I was admittedly going a little quick, but they formed a rolling roadblock as if I wasn't there, had to pick one to hit to stop!
Rebuilt the front end of the car at approx the value of the car, 6 months later got it serviced, filled up with fuel and minutes later misjudged the driver in front of me and their decision to cross a bus-lane and enter a car-park, there was plenty of time for them to, but they didn't, clearly my fault. Wrote that car off for a second time - decided it was game over for that car having recently spent £2.5k on it.
Family friend bought a Lotus Esprit, lasted less than 5 days before he went over a bridge in Wales and the front-end kept going upwards, he and his brother walked away, the car was done though.
Bought a Moto-Guzzi 1100 sport, I owned it for 9 days before it caught fire.
However it was in my lounge as it was winter and the shed had my ZXR in it. Luckily nothing much got destroyed totally, as it was all smoke damage. Being out of the house for ages meant my ZXR got nicked. But on the plus side my sister got to sit in the fire engine and the insurance man was pleased it wasn't the usual drunk people making chips fire.
I won't buy anything made in Italy that uses electricity.
£12,000 on a horse for our daughter. Three months later, he got sepsis after a small and seemingly innocuous field injury, had three emergency surgeries and we nearly lost him each time. We hit the insurance claim limit plus another £9,000 on top.
The good news is that he pulled through. The bad news is that he is unrideable so has been retired. He is seven years old and horses can comfortably live into their twenties (some into their forties), so we are in for £225 a month for the rest of his life paying for the retirement field – conservatively that's another £20,000 plus inflation.
Do I win?
Sausage roll, cafe top of Box Hill. Bit into it, just warm enough to melt the fat, but not enough to soften what my mouth told me were solid lumps of gristle. Autonomous reaction to projectile vomit it out. Complained - turned out to be apple bits. Not been able to eat a sausage roll from anywhere since, and this has now been ten years. £3 that.
Do I win?
Ouch.
Yes.
£3.00 for a sausage roll in £2016!Was it gold plated?
A subscription for here so I don't have to look at ads, apparently I have to remove my ad blocker even as a paying customer!
Oh god, I was going to complain about some flash brake levers I bought for £200 which were awful, but in comparison!
I don't suppose the prize for winning is £40,000 is it? 😂😂😂
I was coming here to confess about a saga with a 15 years old Alfa Romeo, but it sort of pails into insigificance.
Here's a picture anyway
I think the horse wins
But on a similar level
A friends dad spent £50k on this dream yacht for retirement, this was when that was proper money. He spent £3k a year for at least 10 years on moorings. I’ll health meant he never sailed it. I mean not even once. She eventually managed to give it away
@oldtennisshoes, oh do spill. Had a 147 Selespeed company car when they were first released. Fun, but problematic. Love the Berera
