Red flag

[UncleIan]

Looking in autotrader for a a new motor as a nipper has passed their test. Looking at small cars about 6-8 years old, less than £5k. Came across a Corsa, looked pretty tidy, inoffensive colour, one owner from new, 9600 miles on the clock. And then it said...

First service due soon

Wait! What? Are they saying it's never been serviced? It's got six year old oil in it? And the oil filter etc is six years old? I mean, it was fairly cheap, but was I right to give it a barge pole? I mean, apart from being a Corsa.

[DrFfybes]

Corsa service intervals are annually or 20,000 miles on the 2015 onward, might be the same for the older ones.

They have an "oil life indicator" which is supposed to tell the driver how much "life" the oil has in it. If the owner is only looking at that then they might have missed the "Annually" bit!

Best thing is to ring and ask if it has been done. Manual for one of that age (probably!) is here..
https://www.vauxhall.co.uk/content/dam/ ... e-2012.pdf

Paul

[bungeejumper]

Hmmm, if it had been a Ferrari I could have accepted that mileage. But on a Corsa it just ain't natural. It might have been a Motability car, I suppose, except that they usually organise the servicing schedule?

Reminds me of my own cautionary tale, though. Four decades ago, I bought a Morris 1300 automatic from my parents, because my disabled mother couldn't drive it any more and I needed some wheels. They'd bought it from somebody elderly who'd given it the one careful owner treatment, and at eight years old the car still had only 14,000 miles on the clock.

It looked fine. I had it serviced and changed the brake fluid and checked the tyres for signs of antiquity, and then I drove it. It refused to go over 60 mph. It just hadn't ever been properly run in. So I persevered, and before long it was making it past 75 with no problems.

Until the day, that was, when I was in the outside lane of the M4, overtaking some lorries, and my attention was caught by the movement in the temperature gauge. It was heading for the red zone at a highly respectable rate of knots. I dived between two lorries and got it onto the hard shoulder just as the engine seized up solid, and I stopped in a huge cloud of steam and blue smoke, feeling lucky to be alive. Yikes.

It turned out that the water pump had dumped its entire contents because of a blockage in the cooling system. Caused by an eight year build-up of semi-solid sludge that had been dislodged by my normal driving. The head was warped, a couple of head studs had broken, and I had to have the top end completely rebuilt. But the engine was never the same again.

I drove it for another twelve months before the auto gearbox started screaming at me. This time there was no repair to be done, and I had to have the whole engine and transmission replaced with a s/h lump from a scrapyard. At which point I sold the car!

BJ

[Watis]

The concern over the state of the engine oil is justifiied more by the use the car is likely to have had rather than the age of the oil alone. 9,600 miles in six years is only 1,600 miles per year, which points to the car being used for lots of short journeys, likely with a cold engine.

The last car I bought had done a similar mileage in about three and a half years, and a diesel at that. After five and a half years of ownership I can confirm that the car has sufferred no ill effects from the light use it got in its early years. But - I'm pretty sure it received annual services in that time.

Which brings me to the main point i want to make. No-one has mentioned the state of the brake fluid. These days it is meant to be changed every two or three years due to its hygroscopic nature - it absorbs water from the atmosphere, so there is a risk that, after six years, it is rusting the brake calipers and servo from the inside.

HTH,

Watis

[bungeejumper]

Which brings me to the main point i want to make. No-one has mentioned the state of the brake fluid. These days it is meant to be changed every two or three years due to its hygroscopic nature - it absorbs water from the atmosphere, so there is a risk that, after six years, it is rusting the brake calipers and servo from the inside.

The bigger danger with old brake fluid is that when you hit the anchors hard, the heat will turn some of the water in the fluid instantaneously into steam.

Which can be compressed. Which is what you don't want in a hydraulic brake line. Your foot goes to the floor, and the brakes don't come on. Lovely. It always amazes me how people overlook their fluid changes.

BJ