I have never done any work on cars myself before. I got my first car in my univ time when I was totally broke, I bought Austin Princess for £200. It had large dent on the front wing and at back somewhere. I think it had 70k miles on the clock, but not sure if it were genuine. The car ran very nice, but it had this hydraulic suspension like Citroens. One side had leak, and it sagged badly.
I took it to garage to fix, but it was just way too expensive for what the car was worth, and still I was totally broke. So I had to keep driving like that, and sold it someone for £150 as my finance got worse.
I gone through some old cheap cars like the Mini 1000, Datsun Bluebird. First decent car we bought was a brand new Nissan Micra, as I got my first job after univ.
It was great. We got it from Paisley, and drove home in it brand spanking new Micra with only 10 miles on the clock, and was exciting I still remember.
I was getting paid more, and got some extra cash with me, so got a Fiat Uno brand new. It was a good car too, but it had habit of cutting out on hills, and then I started hating it, so part exchanged for a new Ford Escort.
Ford Escort was a great car. I gave it to wife, and got Vauxhall Astra. Fantastic car it was too. But I got a job with company car, so sold it to a guy who came from Edinburgh with £5000 cash. He gave me the cash, and drove the Astra back home looking over the Moon.
From then on I was on company car all the time, and never had to worry about service or insurance. Every 3 years I got new cars from the company fleet cars. I had Renault Laguna, Honda Accord, VW Passat, Ford Cougar ... these cars. When I stopped working for the company, I had gone through some old Mercedes Benz cars of my own, and they were good fun. One of them was from 1970, and it was fantastic car. Should have kept it. And the 190D from 1980s was a good car too.
A 2 year old C CLass C230 was a great car to drive, very smooth and fast, but then bodywork started rusting out, and it got very bad. Had to sell it for £600 due to bad rust. That was not good, because I paid over 12k for it and have had it about 4-5 years with very low mileage.
Now I am semi retired, and working from home running small business, so share the Fiat Panda with wife, as we don't do much mileage at all. I started doing more on DIY around the house - electric lights installation, plumbing, plastering, painting, cutting hedges grass and just general maintenance. I began to decide to do some works on cars DIY too only from this January.
The 2nd pair of axle stands arrived, and they seem quite sturdy. Also spring compressor for suspension arrived from eBay. It was £7 inc. delivery, and seem good too.
Still waiting the coolant hose pipe to replace the rusty pipe. That has not arrived yet. I think I will replace the rusty coolant pipe first and refill the coolant.
And then work on the o2 sensors. These will be all fun and games
