24 replies to this topic

[spottedhaggis]

About 6 months ago my wife decided she had had enough of the corsa computer issues and wanted to go back to a mini. I looked around, and we had a very limited budget, found a Blue Mini Rio on this website for sale at £1400 - we offered £1350 (what we had) and took a trip up to view the car.

Everything looked ok, it had been sported up, Spax Shocks, Center exit exhaust, Bolt on air filter, and a load of stereo kit. We could not find any others so purchased it.

Unfortunately, when it went for the MOT about 2 weeks later, it failed, very badly (we purchased a dog with bad fleas)
Spax were all leaking badly so had to be replaced.
Exhaused was not bolted on correctly
Brakes were shot and the nuts would not come off the wheel so we had to replace nuts,
New front disks
someone had apparently removed the cone or something to lower it, this meant it was riding on the stop (no clue what this means) but as a consequence it has about an inch of clearance between the wheel and arch
Worse was £490 worth of welding was needed.

In the end we had to spend just over 700 on the car to get it through the MOT.

It has all the expected rust around all the places you would see it on a not very well looked after mini.
The spare is flat and cannot be repaired (needs a new wheel due to rust.

Car has new shocks, new back box on exhaust, services, welding to get through MOT, new battery, locking wheel nuts all round, leads and dist cap changed.

Car starts first time, drives very well, however the following do need done.

Front suspension needs sorting, its just too low
Spare needs replaced
Chrome arches need replaced or removed and fixed
Front grill does not have the surround
Rust around head lights, strip below windscreen etc.

IT does have an MOT for another 6 or 7 months, and the Welder assured us it would not fail with rust damage for a further 2-3 years.

We simply do not have the money to spend on fixing her up, so instead my wife is buying a mini cooper classic 1997 model on HP agreement, she will get a car in good condition (complete refurb) and it wont kill us money wise.

What would the mini we have be worth?

Have to say we made the mistake of simply trusting the owner of the mini, they seemed trustworthy, but feel we have been cheated, lack of information, possibly my fault, but like I say they seemed a nice family.

[Shifty]

Hmm, well there 2 prices here!!

If you insist on being as honest in an ebay ad as you've been above then £700-£800

If you write a much less damming advert then £1200.

To be able to help you properly though we do need some pictures

[spottedhaggis]

Sadly, I have morals that simply will force me to be 100% honest.

Your valueation of 700 is more than I expected, however since it doeshave an MOT then I assume this is the key factor in any valueation.
I will add some pics, who knows if anyone wants to make an offer please do it will be seriousley considered (can offers be made in this part of the forum)

[AVV IT]

I have to agree with shifty you can still be 100% honest without being so completely damning!! I read your post & initially thought "I wouldn't touch that with a barge pole!" but then when I re-read it and took out all the "tale of woe" and realised the amount of work that has been done & how much is left, then It doesn't seem a too bad buy at all.

Also there a few minor bits that you would be foolish not to sort before selling, spare steel wheel with tyre from a scrappy or ebay would be £10-£15, standard set of replacement arches £20 & complete grille surround £35 from minispares... so £70 in total and a couple of hours with a screwdriver and all that would be left to sell is a mini with the usual rust and a slightly saggy front suspension... big deal!!... it actually sounds like a half decent car to me! If you write a decent but honest ad, then I reckon you could get a thousand for it with out too much problem, Ive seen much worse go for a lot more on fleabay!!

Edited by AVV IT, 10 January 2011 - 04:57 PM.

[spottedhaggis]

I would agree, I took it to Folkestone the other day giving a friend a lift (my own car was in the garage) and we cruised down there at 80 no issue, and it would (did) do 90 to my surprise)

Yes, replace wheel arches (though its only the fronts, the rear ones are ok, and even then they are only needing something to stick the chrome to the plastic shell that they seem to come like.

I have cleanded the front grill and headlamp surrounds so they are much nicer looking.

I re-fitted the rear seat proiperly (it was not attached to anything)

I can sort a spare wheel, thats easy, surround for grill I could sort as well, though the screw holes for the main grill are so badly rusted that the screws no longer work so I put small bolts through instead, nut at the back but I guess these would be covered by the surround.

Thing is, time is an issue, I have no time whatsoever, my wife would not have a clue what to do and would likely not entertain trying either, so its a case of, whats easier.

Trade in (this is an easy and simple hassle free option)
or
Private sale

Private will offer us more money for sure, assuming we can even sell it, who would know, but trade in would give us a fast and simple method of removing it from the front of the house.

It has 6 mnths MOT and 3 mnths tax still to run.

[Carlos W]

Where are you?

You'll get next to nothing if you trade it in!

It looks like it has standard mini rust, but your description in my opinion is worse than the pics!

Put it on Ebay, plenty of pics and see what it does, you can always set a 600 quid reserve???

[AVV IT]

The chrome arches are just covers that go over the standard plastic arches, you just need some small screws to attach them to the plastic arch beneath on the underside, or alternatively just undo the screws and take them all off, a lot of people don't like them anyway.

As suggested, don't trade it in, you have lost enough cash without loosing any more! Sort the little problems, give it a wash, take some pics & stick it on Ebay with a 99p start (don't bother with a reserve price as it just puts people off and with 6 months MOT it will make more than £600 easily). Put an instruction on the Ad that you want cash on collection & you want it gone within 7 days of auction end... how "easy" is that?..... Oh & put a link to your ebay ad here on the miniforum to get the maximum amount of "mininuts" interested in it!

Edited by AVV IT, 10 January 2011 - 05:35 PM.

[spottedhaggis]

I have discussed this with my wife, and there are other reasons for going down the trade in route.

1. We do not have any spare cash for a deposit (and cant get any for a few weeks)
2. Assuming we did have some cash for a deposit on the new car, there is no where for the old car to live (we dont have any more parking spaces available)
3. My wife simply wants to get rid of it fast and get the newer one fast

I agree with everyone here, Fix it up and sell it, I did put this to her but she does not want the hassle.

If someone came up to me tomorow and offered me 7 or 800 for it I would probably say sure, take it, and just use that as a deposit on the new car, and my wife would live without a car for as many days as it takes to setup the finance, but thats not likely to happen.

She has spoken - Trade her in, get whatever we get and take the loss.

We do still have the twin carbs that came with the mini (not instaled) so I may try to make up some cash by putting them up for sale.

What are twin carbs worth anyway?

Edited by spottedhaggis, 10 January 2011 - 06:06 PM.

[Carlos W]

Can you not find out what you'd get as a trade in and chuck it on an ebay 3 day auction to see if you can get more?

[Jordie]

are you trading this into a main dealership or just a local garage etc?

One thing about the rust under the windscreen, ive seen a car fail on this due to the windscreen becoming insecure. You could move the windscreen with little force with one hand. The later MPI cars are the worst for this it would seem.

Such a shame to trade it in if you are going to loose alot of money on it. tried asking for swaps on here? or retro rides forum for example?

[AVV IT]

If someone came up to me tomorow and offered me 7 or 800 for it I would probably say sure, take it, and just use that as a deposit on the new car, and my wife would live without a car for as many days as it takes to setup the finance, but thats not likely to happen.

Here's an idea, why not put an advert on this forum right now?? (at £700 you might even find that it's gone by tomorrow!!) Failing that, tell us roughly where you are located on this thread and if you're local, one of us might even make you an offer!!)

Edited by AVV IT, 10 January 2011 - 07:22 PM.

[spottedhaggis]

ok well the plot thickens

It seems the finance company being used by the firm that had the mini will only finance half the value 2.5k I am going to talk to the bank in the morning (we are starting a mortgage move with a little equity release to consolidate) and see if they would add 2.5k to our release (they may offer the full 5k due to my resent large pay rise)

Assuming they say yes to the 2.5k, I have asked the dealer how long they would hold the car for, the mortgage could take anything from 1 week to 3 weeks, and we have no means to put a deposit down to hold it.

If he says ok he wil hold it, then we wont be trading the mini in we will simply sell it as is (get some return) if he says no then we will keep the mini to the end of the month, locate another suitable mini for my wife, do a 2.5k deposit and finance the rest and still sell the mini we have private.

I live in Maidstone, Kent. For anyone interested.

[spottedhaggis]

OMG women keep changing things around.

ok now she is thinking, get the front suspension sorted on the current mini, front grill and arches then sell it.

For the record the suspension is apparenlty ok, it is just too low, due to some plonker removing something to lower it, cone, or something. I would probably have the hi-lo suspension put on as they are cheap, and I assume not expensive to fit in terms of time.

ANYWAY it is very much the case that we will be selling the mini private now. Just not right now. few weeks month at the most.

[Jacko-lah]

If you are going to get less that a grand for it, why not just keep it and run it. In my oppinon it'll be worth £500 with no MOT, so just keep bodging it through the next few MOT's, until you can actually afford to buy a decent mini for cash.

In my oppinion : NEVER take out a loan to buy a car. Save up.

[spottedhaggis]

This is the mini my wife is considering, what are your thoughts on this one.

Mini Cooper