Czech Wreck 2008: Cunning Stunts Presents; The Mary Hinge Shavers Society

So I changed the title; a little more catchy now? :)
Personally I was thinking the page could do with some photos so I’ll add some from the initial build.

The car of choice was a nice diesel with air-con, good fuel millage and a nice chugger for the long haul. Our budget to buy the car was just £100, yes just 100 English pounds! Thinking this would be easy we set about the internet and various other means to very quickly find that while you can buy a car for under £100 it would cost £500-1000 to make it road worthy again! All the time I had in the back of my mind the fact that I had brought a car for just £50 that was road worthy and came complete with an MOT.... We continued to look but everything we looked at either came with some known issues or we were simply outbid every time. Anyways, my car didn’t have a diesel engine and didn’t have air-con, despite this we were not perturbed. So without further ado let me introduce you to my old car. Here we have a stunning example of a car with 170000 miles on the clock, 1.8l petrol, Vauxhal Cavalier on an ‘L’ plate. Even though the car did come with an MOT it would run out before the event and it was clear we had some serious issues with the brakes, lol.

In any case this car was my daily driver and continues to be so. We took the ol’ girl down for the MOT after having done no work what-so-ever and knowing there was a good chance she would fail, but we could at the very least find out if the Cav would be a good idea...... You guessed it; MOT FAILED.

001 - Nearside front position lamp(s) not in good working order [1.1.4a]
002 - Offside outer front constant velocity joint gaiter split [2.5.C.1a]
003 - Offside rear brake recording little or no effort [3.7.A.4a]
004 - Offside rear parking brake recording little or no effort [3.7.A.7a]
005 - Parking brake efficiency below requirements [3.7.A.9/10]

Now we set about the repair...
We needed to replace the CV gaiter “easy” I said! (fool) CV gaiter about £4, so cheap too. At the first attempt we could not get the hub nut off because the thread was far too long for my puny sockets. Long reach socket £8.50ish. At the second attempt we got the little fella apart, (starting to sound like Steve Erwin now!) but the damn CV joint was not going to give up without a fight. After some time with all three of us taking turns with the hammer....................After much more time had passed the onset of darkness made us give up, however we had a new plan! Universal CV joint glue on gaiter, about £15 and comes complete with knife, glue, gloves and instructions. As you can see from the photo below it went quite well with three pairs of hands!

We also went on to replace the old front brake discs and pads, even though it passed the MOT on these worn out rusty old things. Was only £45ish for the parts and took 30 minutes per side.
Next up the rear brake, we replaced the leaking cylinder and cleaned up the shoes. Cylinder was less than £10 I think. Replaced bulb (50p) and job done!
Time for MOT number two....... PASSED with zero advisories :)