Fun car for 1500 ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter P.B
  • Start date Start date
Howard said:
MX5 if you can find one that isn't rotten to the core
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This. MK1's suffer from bad rot to the inner and outer sills (as well as in the usual places on the bodywork) and MK2's are even worse with the same rot issue on the sills, as well as the front chassis legs rotting out! (moisture gets in between the two layers of metal)

They say quite rightly that they have either been welded up or had new sills, or they will need welding up or new sills.
 
The_Dark_Side said:
What is it with Mazda and rust?
Even stuff built relatively recently seems to be tin worm fodder.
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They don't seem to rust proof them very well. It's even worse on imported cars.

I bought a new MX-5 in 2007. By the time I sold it in 2011 the rust on the underside was shocking. After just a couple of years many of the bolts were rusted on so badly they had to be drilled out and replaced just to do a wheel alignment :/
 
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Nasher said:
I bought a new MX-5 in 2007. By the time I sold it in 2011 the rust on the underside was shocking. After just a couple of years many of the bolts were rusted on so badly they had to be drilled out and replaced just to do a wheel alignment :/
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Had no problems with rust on my 2005 RX8


But loads of the bolts seem to been made out of cheese as they would round off from just the sight of a spanner or a 12 point socket..:(
 
Nasher said:
They don't seem to rust proof them very well. It's even worse on imported cars.

I bought a new MX-5 in 2007. By the time I sold it in 2011 the rust on the underside was shocking. After just a couple of years many of the bolts were rusted on so badly they had to be drilled out and replaced just to do a wheel alignment :/
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Aparrantly, you simply do not get old cars in Japan so building them to last is not an issue.

Most modern vehicles seem to be very poor in the rustproofing dept.

I have said before, it is almost "Back to the Future, 1970" when the manufacturers only painted the bits you can see.

I blame the CO2 obsessed.

Manufacturers are shaving off every "Unnecessary" gram, hence no spare wheel, cooling systems with only 4L of water, sumps with only 3L of oil, windscreen wash bottles that only hold 1L of water so you are always having to top them up, and so on.

And of course, No underseal! :rolleyes:

(Underseal is thick and heavy, not using it probably shaves as much as 10Kg off the cars weight)
 
A lot of cars don't even have trays under the engine bay any more either, which means the engine bay collects loads of crap :/
 
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Orionaut said:
Aparrantly, you simply do not get old cars in Japan so building them to last is not an issue.
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I don't see why though. The foreign and domestic are built on different lines or at the very least in different runs. Various foreign markets have different requirements and those are addressed on the build so why not proper rustproofing for cars bound for more moist climates? I know they Japanese don't underseal domestic vehicles as they don't use salt on their roads and as you say they tend to be crushed/written off/exported by a certain age anyway. Besides Mazda seem to be a lot worse than the other Jap car companies so there's cost cutting of some description going on somewhere.
 
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