05/09/02 - VTS Trouble!
I bought the beast about May 2002, after waking up one morning thinking I needed to get one I made an extra special trip to the bank! 30 minutes later I came out with £5000. So there I was skipping to the shop to buy an Auto Trader (dont really trust garage sales). After looking through a few pages I found my car in the performance section with a mint picture and a really promising price tag on it £4275. Off iI went to Liverpool where I met this dodgy scouser that looked about 23 years old and he lived in a castle. (well is there any other way to describe a house with a tower on each corner?). This guy had the biggest garage known to man, he sold real performance cars with the likes of Ferrari and Porsche monsters all over his land.
Happy knowing the car was okay after giving it a test drive, and proving that a VTS will happily do 0-60 in just over 7 seconds and running to 125mph in a road a short as a tent peg I bought it there and then.
Less than three weeks into my dream, the car started to give me sh*t, the timing pinion went on it (the bottom cog to your timing belt) hhmmm serious I know! But as the part is only £22 + Vat I ordered one!
12 weeks later by part still hadnt arrived. Knowing that this car is an insurance group 14 I had to get it back on the road it cost me a bomb in insurance while it was off the road. So in came a 2nd hand engine £500 for a VTS engine with less than 20,000 on the clock and a 3 year warranty aint bad at all, and as the insurance cost me more than that for the 12 weeks it was on a life support machine I thought I had to get it!
So... here I was with the babe back and running, but it didnt feel like it was when I bought it so i took it in to have a check over and I found out that the ECU was fooked and was running on stand-by (no power, no go).
I thought to myself well this aint too bad ill book it in for next week and I will get it sorted then...
I drove the car today for about 65 miles thinking it would be okay and on the way home it really started to piss about with me, the car was back firing and was stalling etc etc.
I got it home and got my lady in the drivers seat to rev the engine (with the handbrake fully on dont worry lads) while I had a quick look under the bonnet, I couldnt see anything untill I checked under the car and saw that the catalytic converter was glowing red ready asif it had been smashed with the sun a few times. The bottom of the car started to smoke and everything metal on the inside started to get really really hot.
As the petrol tank aint far from the exhaust on a car as small as a Saxo I thought I had better do something about it, so there I was for 20 minutes with a hose pipe squirting it with my life!
So... I am going to get it repaired on Tuesday and trade it in for a car I have been wanting for a while. Obviously this beast needs to be quicker than any car I have had and had to be very very modifiable! Watch this space..
