"New" second hand car

[garynortheast]

Vauxhall is no booked for collection by the scrappers for 9.30am on Tuesday. They're paying me £250 for it. It'll be broken and the bits sold on to keep other Zafiras on the road so at least it'll have some function beyond my use.

[Bibio]

looks good Gary. hope it gives you miles of smiles.

[rowdy]

I don’t know how different they are from the 206, but on those the rear trailing arms are prone to wear. I worked for a courier firm that ran a couple of 206 hdi’s and had one let go on me, felt like the rear end was trying to overtake me when I turned into left hand bends.

They were ok though, think one of them did a couple of hundred thousand miles (the one with the rear arm that failed) but I did have a small fire under the bonnet on one occasion when I ragged it and the turbo got too hot and set alight some felt wadding under the engine bay.
The other one got written off when a Toyota Prius rear ended me in snow.

[garynortheast]

Bye bye Vauxhall and good riddance!

Originally Posted by rowdy

I don’t know how different they are from the 206, but on those the rear trailing arms are prone to wear. I worked for a courier firm that ran a couple of 206 hdi’s and had one let go on me, felt like the rear end was trying to overtake me when I turned into left hand bends.

Interestingly, just chatted with the chap who has collected the Zafira about this and he said the 207 has a standard rear axle as opposed to the trailing arms on the 206.

[garynortheast]

Just had the car up on my friends workshop lift and checked to see what needed doing. It's just the l/h lower suspension arm and ball joint. On his advice I've bought the l/h anti-roll bar tie rod as well. Total price, £35. They'll be here in the next few days so I'll get it up on the ramp again and change the bits when they arrive.

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by garynortheast

Bye bye Vauxhall and good riddance!

Interestingly, just chatted with the chap who has collected the Zafira about this and he said the 207 has a standard rear axle as opposed to the trailing arms on the 206.

I was quite sad when I let my Zafira go, it didn't have all the problems yours had, but it was getting to the point I thought things were going to need doing

Think I had it for 13 years, never let me down, and the EGR valve causing it to go into limp mode.

Fantastic carrying capability and comfortable for long journeys

[garynortheast]

The carrying capacity and the motorway comfort and ability were definite pluses Mav. However, the rest of it along with the £200+ per year in road tax were a constant ball-ache.

[maviczap]

Yep, handy when the kids were young, and like you say the VED was expensive. Mind you the Saab I got to replace it was even more expensive to run, for the brief period I had that, before the divorce.

I picked up a low mileage Astra SRI estate which has good load capacity and is pretty comfortable for long journeys, but as a diesel is pretty thirsty. But then it's a 2 litre turbo and pretty heavy.

[garynortheast]

The 207 estate I've just bought has a pretty good capacity and a towbar, and gives me over 60mpg on the motorway. Ideal car for me now really. The 30 quid a year in road tax is a welcome relief too!

[garynortheast]

When I bought the car the front left was knocking over bumps. The seller warned me that this was the case, and when I looked at the MoT history online I could see it had an advisory for the lower left suspension arm ball joint.

I bought a new arm and also a new anti-roll bar tie rod (£35 the lot) and yesterday took the car over to my friends workshop and put it up on the lift. Changed the arm and the tie rod, and the car now drives perfectly with no noises. Very happy with that!