Kirby's Cartastrophe Part 2

So in Kirby's Cartastraphe part 1, I wound up buying this blue Astra Sport, all was going very well until it started misfiring, after about 200 miles of driving .
What could have caused it?
 Possibilities; Contaminated fuel? Or something a more costly?
I called my friend Keith, a mechanic and explained the situation.
Initially he suggested to buy some Redex to clean the fuel tank to hopefully clear the issue,  if not he had other idea's but wanted to try the cheapest option first.
Leaving work I headed straight for Halfords to buy some Redex following the instructions carefully I put half of the bottle in the tank.
Reading the bottle it did state that this can take up to a week to clear the system.
  After a week the car had not improved, clearly there was nothing was wrong with the fuel but at least I had  a clean fuel tank and system.
I took the car to Keith where he had look and a listen to the engine, he concluded and instructed me to buy new spark plugs made by Bosch and an ignition coil pack made by Haas.
 I went straight to Halfords to buy the parts, they didn't  have the parts in stock but they ordered them and they arrived the following day at the cost of £75.
I then asked Keith if he would allow me to use his tools and guide me through the process of removing and re-installing the affected parts.
 He was happy to guide me through my first time working on an engine.

Below are the photos I took and step by step guide.

Open the bonnet and this is what greeted me  

Remove the plastic panel with Ecotec written on it to reveal two star bolts.

Remove the lead that attaches the ignition coil pack to the engine then with the correct tool, remove the star bolts.

you can now remove the ignition coil pack.

Below the ignition coil pack are the spark plugs. 

Using the correct wrench, turn anti clockwise to remove the spark plug

You can see rust on the bottom of the spark, all four plugs were the same. 

 Insert the new spark plug  into the wench and return the new plug where the old one was removed, turning clockwise to tighten it. This had to be done four times due to there being four spark plugs.

Initially, I tried the new spark plugs with the old ignition coil pack to see if the spark plugs had been the issue. I started the car up and it still misfired. I then replaced the ignition coil pack, refitted the plastic panel. 

Anxiously I went to start the car if this did not work, then it would be an expensive engine repair job that I could not afford. 

I turned the key and the engine started and it sounded smooth again. I was delighted that I had been able to fix the problem and not have it cost a great deal of money. 

I was grateful to Keith for his guidance and his tools. 500 miles on and everything is still running smoothly.

Kirby's Cartastrophe Part 1

Earlier this year I was involved in a road traffic collision that wrote off my Nissan Almera .

This left me and my family needing a new car to get us around, the problem being I had bought the Nissan with the only funds available at that time in October 2016 as my previous cars gearbox had broke. According to the mechanic, a bearing from the gearbox of my Seat Cordoba wanted to be like Freddie Mercury and break free.

So the predicament, no car and no funds to purchase one with,

my parents then made a generous offer to buy me a car that would be reliable and value for money and I would pay them back over time. So I was given £1,000 budget to buy a car, so the hunt began. 

Buying a second hand car on a small budget is not the easiest of things to do, the last two cars my wife found after looking at adverts on Facebook, both turned out to be good cars and value for money.

 After having a looking at various websites it seemed that people were asking way over what I would call an acceptable price for the cars they were offering, either that or I would find a car that seemed too good to be true, more often than not they had big issues. 

For example the first car I was interested in was a 2005 Peugeot 307 estate like the one pictured below, for its age it had good mileage at roughly 86,000 and this was priced at roughly £800. The photo's and description made it out to be a good car and previous MOT reports had shown no real drama's. My concerns; the current MOT was out of date, from what I could tell it had been stood for a long time and not had a good drive in a while, it was at a dealership that had several sub locations, the exact location was not given out until you arrived at the main dealership. A background check on the owner of the business and reviews written regarding this dealership made me stay well away.  

The next car I came across was a 2003 Citroen C3 like the one shown below.  

This was around the £500 area, with just over 100,000 miles, 6 months MOT and it's previous MOT reports had shown a couple of issues that had recently been fixed. The photo's showed a clean car both outside and inside. It was less than the Peugeot but it had more miles on the odometer but it was at a dealership a long way from where I live.

My wife conducted a check on the seller of  the car and discovered reports and reviews about the business which were enough to put anyone off. 

So with two good looking cars on the outside ruled out, could I find someone selling a car that I could trust and be a reliable, good value car?

It got to the time where I was in desperate need of a car and I had nothing arranged.

 After a frantic hunt on Autotrader my wife Sam found a 2004 Vauxhall Astra Sport. 

This was a familiar car to me as I had previously owned a 2003 Astra Club for a number of years and for the most part it was a reliable car. 

 This was advertised at £950 and had roughly 65,000 miles on the clock, it was not far away and no real issues on its MOT history.

A quick phone call to the owner and the car was ready to be viewed, turns out I would be the first to view it. With my dad in the driving seat, we made our way to Trowbridge.

 Upon arrival we met the owner who turned out to be a police officer. 

The car and it was incredibly tidy, clean inside and out, next I checked the engine making sure the fluid levels were correct and everything was in good working order, my dad examined the documents everything was in order, so far so good. 

Time for a test drive to make sure that it ran as good as it looked.

 The ride was smooth, good acceleration, responsive steering, gearbox felt much sharper than the Club. While on the drive, I was  informed  the owner before him was an F1 engineer, he updated the head lights on the car and also fitted an ipod adapter into the radio. 

After the test drive I consulted with my dad concluding this was a lot of car for its price, after a bit of haggling the car was purchased for £850.

 I was delighted to be back on the road in a car I was well acquainted with.

After 200 miles of driving over the course of the weekend and into the following week I was driving with my family, there was a small bang in the engine after which the car had a uneven lumpy feel to it.

Turning of the radio I asked my family to be quiet for a minute so I could listen to the engine, sure enough it had started to misfire. 

Find out what happens next in part two of the New Car blog post.