.About 6 months ago I picked up an excellent BB9 for a bargain £750. I had only had my license for about 6 months however so the agonising wait for March came as I was pottering around in this:
106 1.1, ex Cat C, cost my dad £300. I did a tonne of mechanical work but in the end it had a lot of knocks (inlcuding where I hit the passenger door at 2mph against a small wooden post and it looked like it'd been t boned!) and a misfire so it went to the great scrapheap in the sky. Local scrappy gave me £55 for it as well!
So onto better things we went. Here is the car in it's current loveliness to make up for what you saw before:
BB9, 2.0 F20A4, 78,500 miles
All standard apart from a brake upgrade to 282mm which was a nightmare and took months to get sorted properly.
Lovely accessories list:
This car was an adventure before I even drove it! First nice thing I noticed whilst working on the brakes was this lovely surprise:
Had an advisory for the rubber being perished the year before but it'd snapped so that was a gonner. Couldn't get it off so had to get the garage to do it on top of the MOT.
Night before the MoT was a marathon session to get the brakes finished, me and my Dad were still bleeding the brakes at 10PM, finished up at 10:30PM - I suspect there's a Dad of the year award due for that!
Next morning, the battery was flat again, jumped it, got half way off the drive and stalled it
. Got it going again and proceeded to the jerkiest drive of my life down to the garage. Reached the garage, gave it some revs to clear it out for a few minutes, before having to call it quits and get to work.It passed emissions almost perfectly
. It failed on the ARB Linkage as suspected but apart from that passed with only a single advisory of "heavy brake noise under braking" which they suggested could be fixed by swapping my grooved discs around. I think the fact the discs and pads had done three miles might have had something to do with it. Either way I've only heard it once since so I'm not really worried.All in all £54 later for the MoT, £235 of roadtax and an ungodly amount of money (plus a black box
) for the insurance and the Lude was on the road.Two days later I drove to Cornwall to see a friend from Uni, then Nottingham a few days after and finally home again. Around an 800 mile trip that put more miles on the car in a week than it did all of last year! It didn't miss a beat, I've had it for about 3 and a half weeks now and I have to say that I love my Lude, puts a smile on my face every time I drive it
I have a few complaints, I miss having an indicator on the dash to tell me the headlights are on and the power steering is a little light for me but both things I'll get used to. There's also a noise that comes from the brakes just under 30mph, doesn't matter what gear or how hard you put the brakes on it's usually there. I'm currently having a full set of calipers rebuilt so I'll investigate it when I get those back on. Torque is non existent when the car sees a hill on the dual carriageway so think a service might be in order!
As with all cars though, ideas start going through the head
Current plans are replace the wood trim with carbon wrapped standard stuff.
Would love to put in the SiR red interior if I can find one.
Change the steering wheel for one of the more modern ones.
Maybe get the alloys refurbished, depends how long I keep the car - I'd like to go to a 2.2 eventually.
I have bought some fantastic headlights, originally belonged to someone on here, but I'm pretty sure my insurance would count it as a modification so I'm not sure I want to risk putting them on. If not they will be going on next year or on my dad's.
Here's hoping to a long and happy Lude!
