Nah, getting even a smaller diesel would at the very least triple my yearly tax, I don’t drive enough for the couple cents saved on diesel to offset the 600€+ increase in tax. Not sure why the 75 is so expensive to insure though.
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GASP! Not another near pointless post!
Situation update: July was even hotter than june and it was roughly +35 every day in my part of town so I just gave up driving near completely for the month unless I was going swimming and kept the windows open at 80km/h. However it is now end of august, the temperatures are at max +22 and it’s semi wet so no need for ac anymore.
However.
The boot leaks. I don’t know how. I don’t know where from. I scoured different forums looking for the same symptoms but even if I rip out the boot lining there are no wet spots or drip marks on walls that would indicate a leak. Water just appears on the driver side of the boot (never in the spare wheel well it’s pretty slight compared to some stories). Leaks seem to be a common issue but they also have common reasons, I can’t for the life of me find the leak. Current solution is switching towels whenever it rains.
I haven’t noticed it before because I used to live in a flat with a big ol gated garage before june, and it hasn’t rained pretty much at all for the whole of summer.
Added bonus: Decided not to sell the car for now, mainly because I’m honestly not bothered to go through the process of selling but I also like the car too much and know that selling the car now would mean the summer tyres were a complete loss. So stylish driving for the time being, time for an MOT.
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9 times out of 10 it’s the rear light seals, but I’m sure you’ve seen that. Occasionally it’s the boot seal itself but I’d redo the light seals as a matter of course.
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Well heck, at least you’ve still got a month (…ish…) until autumn and those leaks really matter 
Do you have the fuel cap on the driver side? I had boot infiltration from the seal between the “rubber” socket and the metal in my Opel Manta
Well… in like 1-1½ months the temperature will start to go below freezing and then it actually won’t be that much of an issue… it’s more like the constant rains of September now I have to worry about. Hopefully they’ll be easy on me or I’ll find the leak first.
@NormanVauxhall The fuel cap is on the passenger side so I highly doubt it’s that. I’ll just have to jump into the boot when it rains with a flashlight or something 
EDIT: Wow okay bigger problem than the boot leak:
Parking into spot easier than invading Iceland, leaving spot impossible. I just now tried to go for an early morning drive but just got frustrated when I couldn’t leave the spot and gave up. Imagine if I needed the car to go to work. I haven’t lived in London or something all my life so I genuinely have no clue how to leave this spot.
Only experience so far in parallel parking, just now got my own bayparking spot
Curvy sedan, no clue where the car starts or ends
No parking sensors or cameras cause classic model from '99
I mean the leak I can fix, this… how do I get parking experience if I can’t get out of the spot to practice, you’d think parallel parking would be harder but nah that’s child’s play
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Oh boy
I don’t have the list with me currently of everything wrong as I gave it to a friend since this autist doesn’t know how to talk to strangers to reserve a mechanic…
Anyway the 75 didn’t pass the MOT. Facque. It didn’t go into a driving ban, I have a month to fix the issues (if I don’t in that time and get it re-examined then it’ll go into a ban) which are a bunch of mechanical parts that I do not know the names of cause I’m not a mechanic and both skirts are completely rusted through under the paint. It’s body panels and not structural but… Finnish law.
Anyway I’ll take the lemons and turn it into a lemon meringue tart, I’ll get the car fixed up, get it looked at again and I’ll be able to sell it for more than I could’ve otherwise by advertising a long list of fresh parts, fresh tyres and a fresh MOT. Hopefully.
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Unfortunately, one of the downsides of the Cowley built 75s is the rust they suffer from on the sills. If it’s where I’m imagining it, it will be structural corrosion and will need a bit of welding.
In either case there’s gonna be a whole lot of metal to replace thanks to the place I got the car inspected at. Idk if anyone here is Finnish but go ahead and avoid K1-Katsastus. Surely you can see if the skirts are rusted through without crowbarring a fist sized hole into both skirts. Not so confident about taking it back there for the re-inspection. (One of the reasons they failed the Rover was because the turn signals were “too white”)
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Okay, so
Biggest issue on the car yet, unfortunately. Today while driving home after a day of picking mushrooms in the forest, about 300m away from home in a giant 4-6 lanes per direction intersection my gear stick disconnected from the gearbox itself. So the Rover is now stuck in 2nd.
Intended on leaving it on a street near home so it’d be easier reachable to tow and my insurance won’t cover a tow from home but there wasn’t space so I had to park it. It’s kinda stuck there now.
Wat do
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A little update on the 75, it’s been doing a lot of this recently:
It’s a good thing I’m close with a tow business owner because otherwise this would get expensive. This winter has been particularly unkind and it’s had mysterious fluid leakages that we’ve had a nigh impossible time figuring out. There hasn’t been any signs of leaks. All tubing completely dry and healthy, all cylinders whole etc etc and yet one night I crashed into a curb hard at a McDonald’s parking lot as I lost aaalllll braking. Pedal straight to the floor. The brake tank was empty, but where did the fuel go then?
Now the hydraulic fluids have also run out about completely to the point the clutch is unusable and I couldn’t go to gear. We filled it up though, it works now but it was nearly impossible to notice driving every day since it leaked so slowly that I got used to the lower and lower feel. Again, no signs of leaks anywhere until we discovered that it was the cylinder in the pedal itself leaking the clutch fluids aallll over the sound deadening above the pedal box and that had sucked it all in, saturated and dripping in clutch fluids once out.
I’m too attached to this Rover to let it go but I’m trying to figure out if I can afford to keep it in warm storage somewhere and occasionally restore it slowly to a better condition. I’ll have to get a newer car though, since this car is too driven in this condition to be a reliable daily driver. Nothing expensive or major, but constant crippling common wearing parts. Engine’s been more reliable than rain in western Europe though.
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There are not as many Rover 75s of all variants left on our roads compared to 10 or even 20 years ago - fingers crossed that your restoration attempt is successful, so that there will be one more example still in service.
That’s weird, doesn’t sound like a Rover at all!
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Alright, so
The end of an era.
4 good years, long comfy road trips, warm winters, engine never giving up on me. But unfortunately I’m too busy paying for ads for my business to pay for all the small old age/long mileage worn parts (we’re nearing 350k kms) I need for it to be fully roadworthy again, and I couldn’t legally keep it on the road. So since I can’t store it anywhere, it only made sense for me to sell even if it hurts.
Rest assured I will own another one again some day, another '99 with a cream interior and a 1.8… But until then this is good bye for the Rover and I’m a pensioner no more.
Now onto other dead brands. Perhaps an Alero next. Who knows.
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Hmm, mabye Xedos? An alero would be pretty bland and shitty…
Sad to see, but what a machine, 350kkm on a K series is what we like to see.
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I can’t take too many pics rn because I just got it and I don’t have the interior detailed
But I suddenly needed a replacement for the now months gone Rover and outside a couple fully rusted through mk.1 focuses there was nothing anywhere nearby in my immediate budget. But I did find first gen A-Class with absolutely zero rust and an all bright orange interior.
So this is my temp car for the next maybe 6 months or so. I’m planning on maybe moving onto something newer than the 90s but for now I’m gonna get the interior cleaned up a bit for pics and get the exterior thawed. Also daylight would be nice.
First impressions are that it’s basically the spiritual predecessor to the BMW i3. Short, tall, all mechanicals are in a separate layer under the cabin so the seating position isn’t like a small hatchback at all. Surprisingly comfortable and stable on the highway for such a small car. The interior is superb quality for the size and has held up incredibly well. The stability control is panicking all the time because of the terrible road conditions this winter.
Will do a more extensive update for fun soon.
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And no rollovers yet? 
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Mercedes A140 (MercEGGes) update, May 2022 - Warning: long
I’ve lived with the MercEGGes for a good while now, and I’m still very satisfied with this car I got for 900€. I’ve driven it plenty on highways and backroads, holy body lean when I’m blasting through a tight on ramp but otherwise the stability is surprisingly good, lmfao. It’s actually quieter and more refined than some ‘premium’ hatchbacks two decades newer, how much it’s a ‘real mercedes’ has surprised me definitely with the amount of shit it gets from the car community.
Besides the driving experience, what I’m most happy with thus far is definitely interior space, luggage space and fuel economy. The fuel economy on the A140 in real life gets to around 6l/100km for me and city driving doesn’t raise consumption as much as it does with many other cars. Which definitely makes me very happy in the current situation where 95-petrol is 2,40€/l. If I have any clear complaints, wind noise could be a bit better, but physics isn’t on it’s side to be fair.
Where the physics are on it’s side is size/weight vs the engine, yeah it’s not super powerful but the engine is much better at moving the body here than the Rover ever was and it’s surprisingly fast at low speed acceleration, clearly designed for city driving off the lights. The steering feel is very good for electric steering, I assumed a car from 1998 would still have hydraulic but nope, went to check the car out at a mechanic and electric it is. And thankfully all the electrics work.
I’m planning on restoring it a bit slowly, since it’s already in pretty good shape for it’s age. There are a couple plastic trim pieces that could do with replacing and should be easy to source (pics below) and I’ve already started by buying new plastic tabs to keep interior trim better in place, I’ve already bought new bolts and centre caps for the alloys as well. At some point I may get a replacement tail light for the cracked one.
The interior is in pretty nice shape too. I love the clay brick colour it has, I assume it could look even better if I got the seats and the door trim textiles washed with a seat washer/vacuum thing, whatever you call it. I was surprised to find side airbags in a car this old. I’ve replaced the headunit that came with the car as it was some bright blue light pioneer unit from the early 2000’s it was faulty and ugly. Bought a cleaner looking bluetooth unit from Ali with warm backlighting to fit the car better, works just fine with the 8-speaker system in the car. I might replace the leather on the shifter boot, looks a bit ugly.
Sidenote, I absolutely adore the visibility out of this car. After driving an almost 5m long luxury sedan around for the past four years, driving this tiny thing where the car ends at the windows is so easy and parking is an absolute doddle. Particularly I love this little peekthrough window in the front doors, helps a lot.
I’m really happy with the trunk space, I can fit a whole set of tires in a row in the trunk without putting seats down or moving them at all even. It’s quite big for the external size of the car, and much bigger than many C-segment hatchbacks. But if you need more space, you can move the rear seats forward for more trunk space. If that’s not enough, you can fold them forward. If that’s not enough, you can tumble the bases forwards too. If that’s still not enough you can take the rear seats out completely. The middle headrest can be conveniently stored under the rear bench in a designated slot too which is handy.
All in all, I am very happy with the A140. I originally bought this for 900€ just because I needed something, and I thought an a-class would be a fun meme. But how good of a car it is in most ways has really surprised me positively. It’s very well built, it has plenty of equipment (I thought it didn’t have fog lamps cause of the blanks in the bumper, nope they’re in the main unit), it’s in great shape and extremely practical for everyday use from space to maneuverability to fuel economy. And I’m glad I got these alloys with the car instead of the ugly six or three spokes this car had available, heh.
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I wish I had more photos to share, or something like that, but I have to share something. Turns out a W168 Mercedes is fantastic for camping if you remove the back seat and move the front passenger seat as forward as it’ll go.
I spread out a mattress (multiple yoga mats and a rolled out sleeping bag) and brought in pillows and blankets and I was shockingly comfortable. I just had a few days of sleeping around Finland, approximately 900km of driving around and sleeping in service station parking lots (that didn’t have timed parking) and waking up to go inside for the fresh coffee at 6 am.
Ever since taking the seats out for moving stuff I’ve dreamed of doing this and I finally went and did it. I’ve now fallen in love with this form of camping, especially because my back and joints are rather poorly so it’s fantastic to not have to set up a tent, or travel to accommodation to rest. However, there is an unfortunate reason for doing this trip now…
Right after leaving storage
See, for the aforementioned back and joints thing I’m unable to work and have been for a while now, without delving too much into a pity party that and living now in a city with functional public transit, I reasonably cannot afford to keep a car. Not even one as cheap to keep as this.
Now kiss
I’ve fallen so deeply in love with this silly little thing during this time too and it just passed inspection with no notes after 6 months in winter storage. That’s why I’m giving it to a close friend, so that I don’t lose it forever and I have a chance to buy it back if I ever in the future stop living month to month again.
The easiest ever to parallel park first try, any spot
So here we are. Just a couple years later and I say good bye to another car in this thread, at least for now. See you when I see you, MercEGGes. You’ve served me well, I’ll miss you.
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