second car.. techinally

[Jamesbcd]

hello all

having passed my test last november, i dare say i brought a corsa for £400.. an m reg with about 110k miles on the clock. i didn't actually drive it much, about 5 or so times up till now. during late december/early jan, it just wouldn't start.. i thought it was just the cold weather as well as it being an old car so i left it at that. a few weeks later, i got someone to check it out and he told me two of the four pistons had very low compression and that when the engine did start, it was mis-firing. he advised me to pay a bit more and get a decent car, than spend a lot of money fixing the corsa engine.. so here i am

i have a budget of £800 sadly.. £1000 at the very most

unfortunately, i don't know much about cars.. i've been looking at several 5 door renault clio grande's. i really like the look of them and any information on them would be brilliant..

if the clio's are poop, what other cars should i be looking at? bearing in mind, lowish insurance would be a plus (was £1350 fully comp on the corsa)

thanks in advance

 

[Jamesbcd]

Did you ever bother finding out what was actually wrong with the Corsa?

the mechanic told me the engine needs fixing, said i'd be lucky to get £50 from scrapyard

 

[Jamesbcd]

The "engine needs fixing" eh? Common fault that one, well known in the trade

You mention they told you it had no compression in 2 cylinders - did the investigate potential cause? Loss of compression (if it really was loss of compression) can be caused by a number of things but you need to whip the head off to have a look really.

yeh, he used this gauge type thing on the engine and two of the pistons had very low readings. he said i'd need to take take it down a garage to identify the problem but would cost a bit of money..