Have you ever bought a lemon?

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Dup

Dup

Dup

Soldato
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So, 18 months after buying my car I am well and truly feeling buyers remorse.

Car in question is a 57 Civic Type-S GT 1.8 for which I handed over £6k to a private seller many miles away.

Now I'm an eagle eyed car person I can spot a repainted panel in moments usually however on the day I bought my car I must have seriously been head in the clouds somewhere.

2 days after I bought it I hit a rather large badger. Not at any great speed, but enough to pop the clips on the wheel arch trims and pop the bumper off a little. Or so I thought. Turns out the arch trims were held on by silicon as all the clips were broken. This was the point I should have been on the phone, but I decided it was only minor. They are now currently held on with tape :( They cost £70 each new from Honda.

Then I got round to giving it an up close clean. Sadly this was when I realised that one side didn't look quite right, the body line on the passenger rear quarter was wobbly. Upon close inspection it's full of filler! I thought oh well, it's not too obvious. 12 months later... it's cracking inside the shut line and now you can see on the panel where the edges of this horrible slab of filler are starting to work loose cracking the paint.

On top of that the wheels have had a very cleap blow over as a refurb which comes off when srubbing the wheels, but not veyr nicely.

I'm gutted. I don't have the money to repair the arch trims never mind the fact there's gonna be a huge mess of filler about to fall off and I cannot imagine the true cost of fixing that. Would it even be worth fixing? On paper this was a clean turstworthy car from a private seller that lived many miles away.

I actually feel like crying. In fact that's a lie it has made me cry. On top of other money oriented issues and trying to sort other things I now get in my car and just feel terrible. I hate it. I wish I could just magic it fixed, or magic it gone and a nicer car replace it. No idea what I'm going to do. I cant even bring myself to clean it or anything now. I totally give up with it :'(

Anyone else been in this rubbish position?
 
Dup said:
Car in question is a 57 Civic Type-S GT 1.8 for which I handed over £6k to a private seller many miles away.

This was the point I should have been on the phone, but I decided it was only minor.
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On the phone to who? The seller is hardly going to care that your arches have fallen off :p

Chin up, there is no point worrying about something as inconsequential in life as a car :)
 
None of those things actually affect the mechanics of the car though, do they? So just keep driving it and get it repaired properly at a decent bodyshop once your finances are in better shape.
 
As said above, chin up, it's not the end of the world. If it is bothering you that much, tidy it up and sell it on. Otherwise, chin up and get on with it. There are more troubling things to worry about.
 
Yeah I think you're over-reacting a bit. It's hardly a cut and shut.

Get another EP3, that'll cheer you up.
 
Yes, the last car i bought was a lemon. 2.2 direct vectra. all looked ok but few weeks after i bought it it dropped its coolant, water pump failure. front nearside spring snapped at the same time, taking a tyre out with it.

I hate cars.
 
Not sure if mine is a lemon. Its needed a new clutch, new water pump, a few ignition coils to fix a misfire (hopefully this month), will probably need bushes in all corners. These things all have a limited life i suppose, and It is a 2003 330ci that I got for £3100, so whilst it certainly isn't a peach, it's not completely lemony.

Edit- forgot it needed a new handbrake dusk / drum... Thing within one week of owning it, my fault for not testing it on any hills I suppose. Also should have takenn the MOT done by dealer's mate with a piunch of salt :/
 
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Yep my Honda DC5 was a bit of lemon to be honest, the LSD broke which must have knackered the gearbox a bit due to all the swarf the garaged cleaned off it when fitting the new diff.. it never really felt right really. One of the engine mounts randomly had a stripped thread, had issues with the coolant system, handbrake seizing up. Think there was more but i've kind of blanked it all out now! So much for Honda reliability.. that car cost me more in 15 months than my subaru has cost in almost 4 years!
 
It doesn't sound all that bad to me at all to be honest?

Arch clips are easily fixable if you take a bit of time to get rid of all the snapped clips and look out for replacement arch covers on a car being broken or the likes.

Filler obviously hasn't been done very well - there's no reason it should ever start to seperate like that but ultimately getting it stripped and one side of the car repainted at some point won't be all that expensive really.

I do worry about the rear quarter of mine where it was repaired mind, it looks perfect and only has a little bit of filler just after the door but I still don't like it!
 
if this makes you feel better...

I brought my mr2 thinking it was in good shape, took it to a top name garage in my town (did have a good name) told it was it good shape for it age (didnt have time to check my self due to working 72+ hours a week) took if for a mot came back with 22 faults saying basically it would fall apart next year! due to rust! what make it worse is i also had the garage that checked it to do the cambelt seeing as they had been a good garage in the past.

lesson has been learnt get a garage,mot test and me to check before buying.
 
One of my Alfa 156's turned out to have a hidden past. Bought the car from a reputable dealer with warranty etc.

Car was fine until the warranty ran out. Driving home suddenly a loud banging sound came from the engine. I could tell it was bottom end and serious.

Taken to a specialist my worse fears came true, big end bearings shot. On dismantling the engine it was clear it had been apart before, probably due to a cam belt failure. Engine rebuild was £2500 with new clutch etc.

Nothing showed in the cars history so it had been hidden. Sad thing is changing the shell bearings (about £100) when the belt snapped would have avoided this expensive repair.

Lost faith in the car after and sold it for a massive loss.
 
james.miller said:
Yes, the last car i bought was a lemon. 2.2 direct vectra. all looked ok but few weeks after i bought it it dropped its coolant, water pump failure. front nearside spring snapped at the same time, taking a tyre out with it.

I hate cars.
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Vectra springs always snap, i have had 2 Vectra C's now and i have had to replace all of the springs on both of them. They are so cheap though its hardly something to worry about :) Water pump failure can happen on any car, it doesnt make that one a lemon.
 
I buy British cars, so you'd think I'd have loads of stories. :p
In fact I only have one - my first Rover 620ti. Granted it's a 90s performance saloon, so things are going to break - but it was literally every week. Rear brakes seized, clutch release arm snapped, front wheel bearing imploded, CV joints failed, the list goes on.

Since then I've been really lucky - I tend to 'save' cars from being scrapped and run around in them while sorting the issues, then pass them on to another enthusiast (while using pictures of the repairs to drive traffic to my site via Facebook and forums).
Just had the usual things you'd expect on older cars - the odd exhaust and clutch change, and many tyres.
 
i have bought 6 cars in the past year and each one of them has had some sort of paint in its time. I now hold the opinion its its over 5 years old then chances are its had paint.
 
I've not got a great history in buying cars if it makes you feel any better, the last one was an Audi TT from a trader which seemed ok from the outside but I only had a short test drive and needed a new car fairly soon to replace my existing car so put aside any doubts. I then took it for a service which identified numerous issues which totalled more than the value of the car and included some things which would have been MOT failures that should have been picked up by the trader prior to sale. I then had a rather protracted wrangle with the trader where I initially tried to reject it until eventually accepting a repair after I'd had to say I would take them to court as the car wasn't in satisfactory condition or fit for purpose. Eventually the trader did arrange for most of the repairs and a fresh MOT while I sorted out a few more repairs to try and get it to a state I'd be happy with - these were done but I realised rapidly that I wouldn't ever feel entirely comfortable with it so I sold to one of those places which buy any car for a loss. Irritating but no real harm done apart from financial.

Another car I had which went fairly catastrophically wrong was an old BMW 525 when I again needed a car in a hurry to drive up the country - it seemed reasonable but had no service history and apparently should have had a cambelt change as I discovered. I managed to get almost all the way up and down the country with it and it was lovely to drive until I got to about 12 miles from home and the engine started thumping, it limped on for another few miles until it completely expired and I had to get towed home. I was annoyed but mainly grateful that it got me close enough so that I was within the range for the recovery company to take me straight home.

If there's a lesson in there apart from the fact that I just shouldn't buy cars it's that I definitely shouldn't buy them when I'm in a rush.
 
semi-pro waster said:
old BMW 525 when I again needed a car in a hurry to drive up the country - it seemed reasonable but had no service history and apparently should have had a cambelt change as I discovered.
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Someone may have been having you on! (although it does depend quite how old it was)
 
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rodenal said:
Someone may have been having you on! (although it does depend quite how old it was)
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F reg so 1989? There seemed to some confusion about what belt had gone but the only consensus was that at least one belt in the engine had given up which had ruined the rest of it. I did have it taken to a chap who rebuilds engines but after identifying that it was going to cost well in excess of £1k to fix I decided to cut my losses so I may well have got it wrong in saying cambelt.
 
I think that's an M20 engine, so would indeed be a cambelt and as far as I know an interference engine so it'd have made a good old mess
 
I was worried my Octy VRS was a lemon when i bought it. Had to get a few minor bits done (thermostat, new front bushes) to fix a few issues and to be fair to the car, it has treated me well ever since. It does use a lot of oil, but that appears to be luck of the draw with these cars and as long as you keep an eye on it it isnt really an issue. Had it for 26 months now and its sailed through two mot's with no issues or advisories so it cant have been that bad. I think mainly i hated the dealer i bought it from. Bought it from Carworld Peterborough and they were utterly useless and it was miles away from where i lived. Never again.

I know how you feel though OP. I felt sick for a few months after i bought it as i thought it was going to end up being an absolute money pit.

It could be a lot worse OP. At least mechanically it is sound right?
 
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Both of those two issues are just superficial? You've mentioned no mechanical demons at all, which is what I would categorise as lemons.
 
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