I know this is a bike forum, but thought I would share with you guys anyway. We're all into all thing mechanical and thought you would appreciate a wee post on a bit of restoration work I have done on a 2004 MG ZR 105 for my daughters first car. She's no passed her test yet, but she's already driving at the Autotests and is a total petrolhead (has all tho's daft Fast & Furious on DVD). She found a crackining little MG on Facebook for £600 with less than 50k on the clock, so I went off to look at it not expecting much, had looked a few cars already and the were all shite. Got there to find an absolute belter of a wee car with a great book of reciepts and history, which was solid underneath. Have expierence with the Autotest we run with the school, being rotten around the arches and sills. The only downside, was some tosspot had gone round the car and keyed every panel and the NS door had a fair old whack on it. Looked a bit rough but was solid, so I offered him £400 and got it for £420. Did a bit of fettling, wheels off, de-rust and waxoyl on all the suspension and painted the calipers, new pads and disks fitted, happy days. Gave my pal who paints cars for a living, who is actually a forum member, a call for advice and he offered to give me a hand, if we did all the prep and paid for the materials. Name is Wullie and rides a Thunderbird, not active on here, can't even remember his forum name Spent a few days stripping it down and flattening all the panels to remove that lovely factory orange peel, cleaned up an patches of damge and a few bits of surface rust, mostly where it had been key'd. Then spent all last week helping paint it. 4 long days to get it painted. The longest was Friday where we put in 16 hours to get it sorted. Saturday night to past 7:00 fitting the bonnet, which was only just dry enough to handle. It is Pitch Black roof and Ford Frozen white (RS Focus, etc). My daughter was desperate to take it to Dumfries motor show today. Got it there, but still stuff to do, such as flat a few panels down, buffing and paint the alloys to match the roof.The bonnet was still soft as we fitted it last night.
Not going to be Autotested..........YET !!!!! No, too nice to do that. I am actually loving driving, not very fast, but you can thrash the arse off it and it goes around bends quite well Stands me at about £700 for all the car, materials, stainless fixings, etc, which is still an absolute bargain. The young lads at the show saying it could easily get £1200-1500 now, so am well pleased. Like a new car, looks it and actually drives it too! Jag is due MOT, which I was supposed to have done, but been too busy getting this sorted, so I'll just have to run this for a few weeks, oh shame
What a great way to assist in your daughters first car ownership. Bet she cherishes that car and drives with a lot more caution knowing what's gone into it.
Driving out of the showground yesterday, from the passenger seat, she's shouting at dozy drivers to watch what there doin and keep away from her car!!!! So I do think she'll be driving very carefully, once it's her driving.
