new engine?

(I let my dad take my vote, since he is not too happy on the idea)

well firstly, its free.. cant say no to free!

My car basiclly needs a few things done to it, which might not be worth it in the long term. The options are:

Free engine, fix rust and new brakes
Sell/scrap car, get another from the £300-500 I can get for it, which may be almost as bad (though I do know what to look for now!).
Sell/scrap car, do a CBT and learn to ride a bike.

or just leave it (which i would probably do if this engine wasnt free). The problem is eventually its going to be worth nothing, and then I wont have much money to replace it...

The free engine, I would be rebuilding it before it goes in (will cost £200-300, assuming its any good, if not it will go to the scrappy before any money gets spent on it)


it will be a 1.8 130ps vs the current 1.6 90ps half diesel. That should make it very fast (atleast 40 hp extra, doubt my 1.6 is acctually making more than 70-80..), and I will more than likely have to change insurer, from quinn direct, to one of the insurers that specialise in modified cars (adrian flux being the only one i can remember).

Im really not sure what to do - my fiesta is not too happy atm. Its got quite a few dents in total, some rust starting on the drivers side sil + floorpan. The front brake disks could also do with replacement + pads, might need to be uprated ones though. Thats not including my not too great attempts at spraying the passenger door + half finnished alloys taking up much space in my room.

How about option 4:
Scrap car, buy a rolling chassis in good nick (from a ghia ofcourse) and install free engine.

hmm i didnt think of that, although a rolling chassis will prob be a LOT more work?

Don't forget, you might pay a premium for a 'modified' car.

I'm sure someone on here has done it and can advise, but you might have to pay the DVLA to update the records on engine size and then a premium on insurance over just buying a 1.8 'standard' car.

Just mentioning because I believe you're quite young so would probably effect you more than older people.

Edit: Voted B, for above reasons.

Edit2:

get free engine, bung it on ebay... make a few quid, keep car until it dies while saving for another.... :)

SKy is another insurer to try.

So you are thinking engine rebuild (£200-300), brakes (£100ish), welding (£50-100) so around £500 to get it on the road. Plus an extra £100-200 a year in insurance.

That's alot of extra cash. So why, if you can get £300-500 from scrap, are you limiting yourself to that budget to buy again.
Why not scrap it and spend £1k on a standard car and the lower insurance will pay for the difference in a couple of years?

im not too worried about the insurance. Currently paying £540 TPFT with 1 year ncb at 21.
I done a quote on a 3L turbo supra (just for fun) which came back as ~£1100, which is a lot, but for a 3L turbo i am suprised!
The insurance issue is more that I renued it in april, and im not sure how much I would get back if I swapped it to another company (+ I lose any ncb from april to now).

I wouldn't bother with the hassle myself. I'd sell as it is pointing out it needs works, and get another. You can get a fairly decent old car for £500 if you hold out till you find a good one.

I doubt you would need to change insureres mate, its not going to cost you that much more, quinn wont insure people on 2ltrs under 25, thas why i left them but you will be fine with that.

I vote do cbt and get that under way then by 25 or w/e have a gsxr :)

New discs and pads on a fiesta? Should run into costs almost as high as....erm.... £30.

Spoke to my insurers, they said it would be +£77 per year :D

your right about the brakes two... Since I only have disks on the front :p

Rebuilding it... i will be looking on ebay for gasket sets, im getting one head gasket + bolts with it (new). It needs a timing belt and I would need to swap alinator/pumps (water/oil) over from mine (although might be worth buying new ones).

The problem is, do you know what other differences there are between engines?

If you start changing engine blocks youll find lots of other differences, electricals, brakes, subframe.. and if the engine is bigger, itll probably be hevier and screw up the handling and make the front springs sag

A mate of mine wanted to put a PD130 Fabia vRS engine into his PD100 Fabia... should be straight forward you think, considering they are technically the same engine with a different turbo.. but no, the problems he encountered were massive, different subframe, mounts, driveshafts, whole hub assemblys etc.. it ended up costing him a fortune!.. close to what it would have been to buy a Fabia vRS in the first place.. - but hes done it now, and modded it too.. 260bhp/400lb/ft with propane and NOS

I voted to just wait till it dies

I voted to get something else, the ebst thign yuou can do really is run it through your local auctions, get what you can for it, it will be worth something to somebody and then buy yourself another £500 car, the thing is you can pick up some really decent cars these days for that sort of money and it wouldbe better than what you have at the moment.

I'd be a bit wary of plugging something more powerful into a car that you're not that happy with the rest of it. If the rest of the car was solid then fine, but if the other bits are niggling you then they'll still niggle you with a bigger engine, and you're more likely to be worried about something going wrong.

You seem to be the sort who enjoys mucking around with these things, so I'd agree with the rolling chassis idea - get something that matches the engine. There must be quite a lot out there that get flogged when the cambelt fails while the rest of the car is in okay shape.

Dont bother putting another engine in something thats falling to bits, you dont want to do a Fred Flinstone half way down the local dual carriageway!. Cut your losses and get something else!.

its not falling to bits, just many parts are worn. Apart from the rust (mainly caused by me jacking it up for 6 weeks whilst repairing engine) + smokey enine the rest is just cosmetic.

My point is anything (everything) this age will be just as bad just better hidden (or just not looked for - I have spent a lot of time playing with engine and stuff so I have noticed almost everything wrong with it).


However engine was sold to someone else so staying with this for now..


and my clutch cable has snapped :angst: (again, 2nd time using breakdown cover to get home - though again I was very lucky with where it happened, in a sainsburys carpark this time).