The Croctavia, Outofthi5world's Octy track car

[Outofthi5world]

17 hours ago, pip_vrs said:

Theres a few Octavia vrs popping up around the £800 mark.

If your just wanting it as a track car then youd get a bit of cash back selling things track cars don't need.

That's basically what I was thinking, and why I'm considering scraping the Croc. For not much more money than fixing the Croc I could buy a VRS.

[Outofthi5world]

Big news to come regarding the Croctavia, will update you on Saturday...

[Rustynuts]

You sold it, didn't you...

[petrolbloke]

On 15/03/2017 at 12:16, Rustynuts said:

You sold it, didn't you...

To Stevie Wonder?!

 

I've said it before but I'll say it again - an £800 Octavia VRS is not a great choice for a budget track car compared to other options (Saxo, Clio, Puma, MX-5, MR2, old BMW 3 series...). The Octavia is heavy which means more wear on tyres and brakes. Also tyres in the Octavia size (probably 205/50/17 or 225/45/17) are more expensive than the sizes used on most of the previously mentioned cars. A standard VRS will need a fair bit spending to make it any good on track - most of the others should be better out of the box (save for fitting better pads maybe). When you come to sell it you'll be targeting a smaller market than the previously mentioned options too.

[Outofthi5world]

So yesterday morning we came back down from Appleby to Catterick to start stripping bits off the Croc that I wanted to keep, I rang the scrap man on Thursday and arranged for the car to be picked up on Saturday. 

[Outofthi5world]

Sorry it won't let me do this properly on my phone, not much going right at the minute. :(

[Outofthi5world]

As a final update and closure to this thread the original scrap man never came to pick the car up on the arranged date and basically wasted my time despite me buying all my spare parts off him. I left the car for a while as it stood and about a month later there was a flyer on the windscreen from a scrap man. In any other situation id be cursing them but because that was my intention I rang them up. They came with their own set of wheels, swapped them over so I could keep mine and took the car. I wasn't there but my dad was, apparently they were very interested in the engine. So I'm pretty certain that the engine lives on in another car somewhere now.

 

Id like to say a massive thanks to the guy who sold me this car 18 months ago, unseen off Ebay for the tiny price of £171. Id like to thank all the people on here who got me into track-days, Richard, Ben, Phill, Dave, Jason, John, Andrew, Dan and all the rest of you, Colin for the forum that started everything off in the first place and organizing the Brisky meats where I first got to know about and take part in track-days and the people that make this such a great community.

 

The car was great fun, passed its MOT last year with the only advisory being slight play in the offside front wheel bearing, it managed to do track-days at Bedford, Croft, Croft again and then finally Snetterton with the only real maintenance being oil changes and break calipers. The car had 199,900 miles on it when I got it and 202,500 ish when I sold it. In those 2600 miles it had 4 oil changes, one of which was with tractor transmission oil, 2 new sumps, both due to over ambitious test driving, 2 and a half sets of front break pads a few sets of tyres a couple of liters of break fluid and 3 "new" break calipers. If I was to have put it through its MOT again and got it back on track it would have needed 2 front wheel bearings, rear wishbone bushes changing and new suspension plus anything I didn't see, so I deamed it uneconomical to continue.

I've changed headlights, rear bulbs, installed a new tailgate, removed a tow-bar, changed a door and a wing, gave it a custom paint job stripped the interior to its bare bones, replaced the sunroof with a piece of roof from a Golf and filled the hole where I removed the aerial. I've sold bits, bought bits and made some bits myself, I've expanded my tool-kit and learned a lot of stuff on the way. I've had great fun with this car. I've spent a bit of money on it and while it may not have been to everyone's taste and some people may not agree with allot of the things I've done to/with the car but I loved it, I liked tinkering with it, I liked bodging it up, I likes the fact that if it went wrong I could scrap it and not really lose anything yet in reality when I scrapped it I felt like I lost allot, I've had to focus on other things recently, since New years I found a  girlfriend, crashed the Monte Carlo, got an 02 Octavia estate to replace the Monte and used a few parts of the Croctavia to fix the estate a bit, then got a new job in Appleby that came with a house so moved out of my dads house to here with my girlfriend, then traded the Octavia estate in for a Seat Ibiza FR with the same 1.2 TSI engine as the Monte, so things have been busy. The insurance have only just payed the finance company for the Monte last week and I found out that I have 6 months to pay the remaining balance. Luckily if I keep paying as Iam now it will be paid in 3 months anyway so that's good. Then I may not be in overdraft any more at the end of the month.

 

As soon as things settle down financially I intend to be back on track with something else. I plan to stick with the cheap and cheerful approach and aim for something like an older Ibiza, Mk 1 Fabia, Golf Mk 4 or something like that, partly because of the wheel sizes and partly because it will be easier to fit on our drive than a barge like the Octy. But we'll see what I get when the time comes. As for now I have one car, and one car only. 64 plate Ibiza FR, great car and feels a bit better than the Monty to drive to be honest.

Edited 6 August, 2017 by Outofthi5world

[Rustynuts]

I was wondering where you'd got to.