By: Phil Weedon

Phil Weeden says bye-bye to the BMW and some essential winter prep work is carried out on the Golf GTI

MY CAR

1990 VW Golf GTI

After a few months of fairly lame intentions, I’ve finally sold my 1988 BMW 316. A familiar story to many of you I’m sure, I was left with too many cars and not enough time to appreciate them all. With two other cars in the fleet, the BMW was being used less and less; having got it through its MoT in July I did start using it again, but ultimately missed the more sporty Golf GTI that also resides at home. I put a cheeky ad in CCB for £800 expecting a few calls and a couple of offers; but nothing. I dropped the price by £100 for the next three weeks. At £500 the phone did start to ring, but even then people were disturbingly cautious.

For me, any car with a year’s MoT has to be worth £500, as even a complete scrapper will make around £150 at the breaker’s and if the 316 was a total wreck, it could have still been stripped for its parts and made more than £500. However, for me, I was perhaps deluding myself that I’d find someone who appreciated it for what it was: a low frills, no nonsense motor car, with no gadgets or gizmos. Just straight forward, honest engineering.

After a few time-wasters, I did eventually end up with a keen buyer. They travelled down from Stafford to see the car, gave a thorough inspection and drive. It was clear they knew what they were looking at, but were handy with the spanners and enthusiastic enough to keep it on the road. So a deal was finally done and the BMW is now in the hands of new owners. I’ll miss it, but equally it’s good to know it’s gone to someone who will genuinely use it and enjoy, and hopefully keep it on the road for years to come.

The BMW 316 has gone to a good home, where the new owners appreciate the car’s no nonsense simplicity.

GOLF WAR

Since the summer, I’ve been meaning to get the windscreen in my Golf sorted. Following an unidentified object hitting it on the motorway, a large circular crack quickly spread out across the screen in both directions. The other tick box on the to-do list was having the underside rust-proofed. With the tabloids full of horror stories of an imminent arctic chill blowing into town, the pressure was on to get both jobs done before the winter truly gripped.

The trouble as ever has been time, and when I rung John at Volkscars in Kidderminster, it appeared he was just as busy as I was. So scheduling a convenient slot in our diaries was proving tricky. Ultimately a rare gap in the calendar opened up and it was time to ship my Golf over there, where I left it for John to carry out the windscreen replacement and rust-proofing with his network of specialists. Luckily the drive over had been rain free – just – so the rust-proofing could also take place as planned. As I understand, the Golf was all structurally sound underneath, and just needed some surface crud to be removed with a wire brush before the black gooey mix could be applied.

IN THE BUFF

Despite those crucial jobs being done, the following weekend afforded me the time to polish the paintwork as the red had started to oxidise somewhat. My couple of hours of elbow grease had certainly improved things, but it’s still not perfect. So I might need to call in some reinforcements from fellow Kelsey motoring editor, Adam Tait, to borrow his clay bar, rotary polisher and all the other detailing equipment he has to see if we can really restore the shine. A shine that lasts.

Beyond that, the car was running perfectly. Then a coolant light came on. Then it went off. Then back on, and off again. I checked the coolant and sure enough it was certainly on the low side. Given that the MoT was also coming up, the simplest thing to do was to book it in for its annual inspection and have the garage drain and replenish the coolant at the same time. After all, that’s another aspect of the car that needs to be right in readiness for winter. I couldn’t face another arduous train commute, so checked the car into the garage local to the office. While it was in there, it also had the washer jets cleaned out and a new brake light bulb fitted.

I still really want to get some winter tyres, on a separate set of wheels ideally. Well, that simply isn’t going to happen now, so I will instead just make sure that I at least have some fresh regular rubber on the existing wheels