Well I've gone and brought a right lemon....

I've recently bought my first RS turbo and has turned out to be a right pain in the arse.

I bought the car with a full years MOT and a supposed distributor problem, the distributor problem turned out to be a air fuel meter problem so had to get a new one of those, I got the car al set up and thought the brakes were a bit shit so took it to a garage not far from mine who specialise in RS turbos and also brake them, they found that the ABS had been taken off and not done properly so booked it in with them to have them sorted. In the time I had to wait the car developed a electrical problem where my lights didnt work, the fans stopped working and the heater fans also stopped this was the result from the fuse box shorting out and catching fire. I got the car to the garage to get sorted they did the brakes and diagnose I need a new wiring loom because someone used speaker wire in the back of the fuse box hence why it caught fire and had removed all the relays from under the dash and hard wired it. Now they've stripped my car and found a load of rot that should never have passed a MOT so I'm very pised off.

I've reported the car to vosa and there coming out to assess the rot to see if it would pass a MOT then they wll take further action with the MOT tester.

I'm just really anoyed I'm £2800 out of pocket with a car that needs a shit load of work to be road worthy, I've tried to get some money back off the bloke I brought the car from and to start with he was co operating now he doesn't want to know I've even threatened to go to court about it but I dont no my chance of winning, what do you lot recon?

 

Hate hearing about this sort of thing TBH.

I suppose you don't want to hear about the old 'take someone along who knows what they are looking for' routine, but it does help at times, especially with old Fords!

 

thats a real shitter mate hope you get it sorted

 

Nightmare mate! Im not sure how you would get on in a court? probably not very well.

Just go down and give the boy a good hiding! tell him you'll be back down unless he coughs up

Thats what i'd do lol!

 

That's the problem with these cars have to tread very carefully especially if you do not know what your looking out for.

 

did you buy from a garage?

 

Get the report from vosa, and threaten him with it, post a copy off to him and tell him if he doesn't refund you, you will take him to small claims, was the car sold as seen or was it advertised somewhere, if his add was sold as seen you havnt really got a chance. It all depends on how it was sold

 

Sorry to hear it mate. As said though, you've got to be careful when buying old cars.

The rot is a big problem especially if it shouldn't have passed an mot. As for the other things, although they are annoying it's not suprising on a car like this unfortunately. They've often had a lot of bodges in the past and you just have to work through them.

Hope you get something sorted.

 

Sorry to hear you've been stung mate but like someone has allready said u need to no wot your looking at. It may have 12 months mot but that means diddly squatt if the tester is abit dodgy or couldn't be arsed. Personally I don't think uve got any chance at getting your money back unless it was from a dealer. Just my input though bud

 

Hope you get somewhere mate, but if it was a private sale (regardless of how the advert was worded), you're going to struggle I think... just hope it's not a total loss and can be worked on and made into the car you wanted in the beginning.


Cheers,
Grant

 

cheers for the quick replies people the only thing I was thinking with court is that all he has to say is he was selling it with a years MOT that he thought was legit and that he knows nothing about cars. The bloke I'm most pissed off with is the MOT tester if he didnt do a dodge MOT I would have known there was a problem. I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get the work done and try get a deal out of the bloke I brought it off to try help pay for some of the work. I was trying to weigh up I've already spent over £2500 but if i break it I wont get half my money back and if I get it sorted Ill have to spend about another £1500-£2000 having a new loom and all the rot sorted but atleast I can put it back to perfect along the way and know at the end of it ill have a sorted car.

 

go back and pay the fucker a visit, ask for the money or remove goods to the value of.

thing is though its easy to do these days, rust is easy to bodge and cover up so non genuine sellers do it to make there cars worth more, same as anything else on a car really. it does seem solveable, looms can be got for around £50 and aint that hard to fit, just the welding thats gonna be exspensive. best thing to do is keep you eye out for another good genuine shell, they come up quite often as alot of owners break cars as there worth more in bits, and then transfer all your bit across. thats what i'd do anyway.

 

thats what you get for brying a shitbox.

 

It's your own fault you should have checked the car before you bought it. When you buy a second hand car it's sold as seen 'buyer beware' a court would have the same response and would cost you a fortune

 

What an utter piss off!!

Hope everything works out, thing is your get it done and wont want it then sell it

 

Not true.

 

Gutted for you matey.You will be wasting your time trying to take him to court cause of the age of the car.

 

Good luck with it.

 

if the mot tester carnt see the root they carnt fail it as im pretty sure some the root will be under dash if they had fuse box out

 

its you own fault if your not intelligent enough to know what to look for, you shouldnt have bought an rs the fact you have it in a garage having all the work done says it all

you should have taken a competent person or had an rac inspection, you have no come back on the guy

as for the heroes saying show up on the guys door step if someone did that to me id pull them in the house and beat them into a coma and just tell the police that they forced there way in lol

with buying any 2nd hand car you cant trust anyone and the cars are sold as seen just bite the bullet spend the cash or break it but stop squinnying about it

having said all that im not being a c**t welcome to rs ownership be prepared to throw all you money in the money pit, there is a wealth of knowledge here and alot of parts in the forsale section

 

Nail on head I afraid mate!

 

Sold as seen means fuck all! If the car was not fit for purpose, ie. in this case sold as road worthy when in fact it isn't you have a case for getting your money back. I've bought a car as a trade sale, sold as seen etc. and 10 days later the engine went. Took it to an independent garage and they said it is due to a problem the seller would have known about. After a few phone calls I got my money back.

Having said it all that it pays to do a THOROUGH inspection or use someone who knows what they're looking at, especialy on things like RSTs, but hey, hindsight is a wonderful thing lol

 

from a private seller this would not work dont get his hopes up just as he said the guy sold it with mot and a known running issue

 

Can still be done with a private sale, just more difficult to prove the seller knew about all the issues.

In this case it might not work but anyone else buying something s.a.s. or trade sale should know there still is some cover. As I said though, much easier to do a proper inspection first and save a lot of hassle.

 

Get your self down to CAB mate.

 

"If you have bought the car from a private seller, who does not normally trade in cars, then there is no legal obligation on the seller to provide a car of satisfactory quality, and it is therefore a much riskier purchase. For this reason, there are more consumer complaints about the purchase of second hand cars than any other, so exercise significant caution – buyer beware!"

http://whatconsumer.co.uk/buying-a-car/

 

Gutted to hear mate but if I was you I'd just get on with rebuilding it to the perfect car for you.... Good luck.

 

It never ceases to amaze me that people buy a car where the seller says it has a particular problem and then it turns out that isnt true.

If the seller really knew what the problem was and it was a simple fix, they'd do it.

See SO many cars on ebay and forums where it says "all it needs is an XYZ costing 20 quid" and yet the seller hasnt done so!

As you freely admit to having had lots of work done on the car since it was submitted for testing, I dont really see what VOSA can do anymore as the vehicle is no longer as tested.


Sorry to hear you are having problems though, hope you get it all sorted.

 

Chip has said it all really, i went to test drive a mint working bora 150tdi last year, it drove like shit when i planted my foot. the owner claimed it needed EGR sorting which would be about £100, if it was that i'd have had a bargain, but so easily could have been a number of other things too.
on the other hand i bought my tt xr2 for cheap as it had a fault he thought was gearbox or clutch, i had spares so bought it, got it home and turned out to be clutch pedal ratchet and an engine mount, £10 later all was good.
moral of the story, if it's not right then pay spares or repairs money.
its tough out there with old cars, you can pump thousands in to see a return of only a few quid, MOT tester may not give a shit to be honest, i know some i have been too are too obsessed with how much work is done to it, they forget the basics which i point out afterwards if i thought it was borderline.
just get it sorted and enjoy it, it's not the end of the world afterall.

 

No offence but as an owner of these cars (Or any old car), you HAVE to be mechanically minded and be able to do jobs yourself, in these case of performance cars the problem is extended as nearly all have been subject to ill informed meddling/bodging in there life's hence the problems!

Electrical problems for example are just typical problems on most of these cars due to old wiring so in a lot of cases they need rewiring etc in order to keep them running and be safe! In your case it's due to someone incorrectly fitting audio equipment!

I wish you all the best with it, but if you are not prepared to understand the car and work on it yourself, then I don't think it's going to be the car for you, unless you don't mind paying for someone to do the work for you!

As Chip says just the other day someone posted an advert up here of a bay ad, saying x needs doing and it will only takes 20 minutes, likely story, else it would have been done!

Martin

 

I had one of these last November, it was an Imaculate looking H REG 90's spec RS TURBO, all Original and in perfect order with all Auto Specialist parts under the bonnet and a nice engine, i Paid £2,700 for it on Ebay, had 6 months MOT LEFT no tax but i got it sorted the day of perchase, had my bro pick it up....anyway got it home and it had a leaky radiator, needed a new LSD Box, a half flat battery, rotton seals and cross members and all 7 gauges on the dash and pillar werent hooked up, inside is immaculate though, very very clean and in tip top nick, the outside (topside) is in immaculate condition aswell very surprising given the rot issues, everything else about the car seems great. i tryed to get my money back for the arshole selling me something faulsly but ultimatly knew i wouldnt see any of my money again.

Anyway i was dreading about spending money on it as i already have a S2 RS money box to spend on, so after getting no where with the arshole i bought it from i decided to do some shopping and calling about, i found a welder through a mate of mine and to my utter serprise he looked at it and told me £40 per side lol, so i was knocked for 6 on that statement....i then looked at getting a second hand LSD gearbox for it and found that you can buy them on ebay for around £60 - £150, so not too bad at all, i had a spare S2 Rad laying about so its a straight swap and easy job, also the car came with the very rare RS 7 Spokes so bit of a bonus plus the cars ECU is not tuned and is completely standard and not messed with, the only thing left to look at is hooking the gauges up but all i need to do is get the senders to hook them up, im looking to get it fixed by the end of January so hopefully i can get it to fordfair at some point, i was a bit luckier in this case but still it cost me money i shouldnt have to cost me, but at the end of the day its going to be one very nice mint S2 RST.

Trust me i was fucking well annoyed at it when i first found the problems but looking at how much to put it right it doesn't bother me that much now.

 

If you've already put a lot of money into it that your not going to get back but really want the car and can afford to put more into it then i'd say just bite the bullet and make it the car you wanted. Not a great situation or even good advice but if your going to lose out either way it may aswell end in something you want.

 

Sadly you've bought a 20 odd year old fast ford mate lol, a genuine car with no hidden problems will cost you a LOT more than 2.8k imo but i do feel gutted for you....i bought an rs turbo from a garage 8 years back now with 12 months mot and it failed on rust miserably at the next one much to my surprise as well as so many other problems that these cars give! Kept it 6 years though and chucked thousands at it in that time, don't regret it but god knows why i loved it so much as it was a real moneypit!
Just take it on the chin and crack on with getting the car up to scratch if you can mate.....hard lesson to learn but i've been there and you will learn from it !

 

Shit happens................sell me your gearbox

 

my brother bought a car from a garage turned out to be a right bag of shit all sorts wrong dealer wasnt interested he went to trading standards they wrote a letter dealer didnt reply end of he got away trading standards said no point going to court so goes to show can sell any old bag of shit and get away with it

 

If you've stripped it down and found a load of rot then your not gonna have much luck with vosa, unless its totally obvious that the tester has missed it when the car was in a complete condition.

Get some pictures up of the rot if you can?

 

the person selling mightnt have that 20 quid chip thats why their selling. i know ive got a car for sale and it needs a cat, 2 brake hoses and a pair of discs and pads on the front but moneys a huge issue at the moment with other things saying that im not selling at that high price 300euro compared to a rotten 2500 pounds which is rediculous,

sorry lad as for your predicament id go after the tester and bring him to the small claims for mallpractice. the seller as said can just deny knowledge of the issues due to lack of technical knowlege. look up the law of the Lin (actual name so college tells me) it could help your case or you might be able to twist something out of it.

 

its unfortunate for sure but you must have viewed it with your eyes shut by the sounds of things.

 

Think you just need to accept you didnt check it over properly mate and have bought a car with some issues, we've all been there.

Do you have a mechanic you trust? I have seen it so many times, mates going to places that are meant to be specialists or 'sound' and been taken to the cleaners. Sort out what needs doing, get a decent place to price it up and way up if the car is worth sorting.

20 year old RST's are going to have issues, and will constantly and rot hides everywhere, the wiring is getting on now and years of people fettling and messing around doing diy work with little clue can create nightmares. All part of owning one unless you have the bucks to get a properly sorted motor.

 

i'd just tell the bloke who sold it to you that VOSA are going to visit his mate who gave it a dodgy MOT....unless you get some money back