Need to get back behind the wheel of my lude

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Sun Feb 19, 2017 12:44 am

Hey everyone! It's been a while!

I'm going to admit - I'm totally guilty of neglecting my lude, and I feel awful

I bought a practical car in 2013 in preparation for my son's arrival, and my old pride and joy has not really been used since then.

We moved house after my son was born (I bought a house with a double garage specifically with the intention of bringing my lude in and getting her back in good shape), but for one reason or another the garage is still full of junk and my lude has been sat on the drive since we moved in.

Anyway, my son is now 3 and in a normal group 2 car seat, and my job is good enough now that I don't need to moonlight as a graphic designer to boost my income, so I have a bit more free time these days - yay! I'm sick of driving my current car around - so I'm working up a plan to get old Ludey back on the road... but there's a couple of obstacles...

1. The lude has stood for 3 years (ish) so will need a good bit of work doing to get her roadworthy: brakes for starters, and a new battery etc... That's not too bad really, I'm sure I could cope with that. The real problem is that the rust has really started to set in: Both rear arches, sunroof and now the bloody A-pillars! I'm not sure whether they can be fixed, and how much it's likely to set me back. I've been looking online for a possible replacement Prelude, (I've only really fitted coilovers and a couple of little things so easy enough to swap bits over) but haven't seen many good examples for sale out there.

2. I'm tied into a personal contract on my current car till 2019! I just want to get shot of it - it's costing me £270 a month! And by the time the deal is up I'll have forked out another £6500 roughly, so I'm trying to figure out how best to end this deal. Anyone have any experience with getting out of PCP agreements? Even if I pay off the remaining finance (£12k) and sell it on at a £1k loss I'll be better off in 4 months time.

I'd rather spend good money getting my lude up to scratch than waste any more on this damn Toyota.

Just looking for some advice really. I really miss my lude, and I want to show my son the joys of going out in it. It's just been an ornament to him for his whole life so far, and that's just wrong!

Post by **Drax** » Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:01 pm

Budget and keep both, one as a daily and the other as the awesome weekend/show day car

Rust wise, investigate further - maybe post up pics for advice

89 UKDM BA4 4WS (resto job!) · Post by **wurlycorner** » Sun Feb 19, 2017 5:55 pm

Arches are easy enough to get hold of and any competent body shop can replace them.

Sunroof is much more tricky, if it's anything other than just surface rust (only real option is to replace - and finding a good used one can be difficult...)

A pillars also depends on what the damage looks like. I have seen some that were well beyond repair (check my phantom grey breaking lude thread

) but then the ones on my green ukdm were giving me sleepless nights, but actually turned out to be fine when I put it into the body shop

Pics would help us advise whether yours are a gonner or not.

firstlude · Post by **firstlude** » Sun Feb 19, 2017 6:27 pm

dont scrap it

buy some arch panels , replace the sunroof with a 5th gen glass one and i am sure the pillar rust can be fixed

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Sun Feb 19, 2017 8:25 pm

Aye it all comes down to whether the pillars are repairable I suppose. I'll try get some photos on tomorrow see what you guys think, be warned - it looks bad.

I guess one option would be to chop the pillars off a scrap one and get them welded in (if that's possible).

Scrapping this car would be an absolute last resort. If I can get rid of this pcp car then I've got £1000s to throw at it really.

mart609 · Post by **mart609** » Mon Feb 20, 2017 9:12 am

Welcome back rich!
Mine has currently been off the road for over 18months. Hopefully gona get it back on the road soon too.
My arches are also in a right state, so we can compare

what makes pillars unrepearable? I've not checked mine.

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Mon Feb 20, 2017 1:09 pm

mart609 wrote:what makes pillars unrepearable?

Nothing I hope. I'm hoping a good body shop can sort it no problem.

Anyway, here's some pics of the pillars:

And here's the arches:

Think the sills have had it too:

Post by **NafemanNathan** » Mon Feb 20, 2017 2:24 pm

No-one's going to want to hear it, but I'd be looking for a new shell. Possibly a lowish mileage 2.0l (To get it cheap enough) I could transplant everything across to.

All of that corrosion is pretty bad, and if those A-pillars have been open to the elements like that, then even if you get them fixed it'll come back with avengence soon enough. Otherwise you're looking at a complete chassis strip down and a dunk and that is going to cost you thousands!

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Mon Feb 20, 2017 7:26 pm

Cheers for the honesty Nafe. I suppose a new shell is the only realistic option. The rust's already been repaired once by a previous owner (shoddily might I add - as evidenced by the body filler that was covering the arch and pillar rust), so I'm fighting a losing battle. The rust has been eating its way through from the inside out.

To be fair the car only cost me £800 and everything else I've spent on it can come off. I'll need to get hold of some crap suspension though to get it to a rolling shell as I'll be removing the BC Sports coilovers. They cost almost as much as the car!

Post by **NafemanNathan** » Mon Feb 20, 2017 7:32 pm

Rich wrote:The rust's already been repaired once by a previous owner (shoddily might I add - as evidenced by the body filler that was covering the arch and pillar rust), so I'm fighting a losing battle. The rust has been eating its way through from the inside out.

So that would definitely sell it for me. You could spend out to get what you can see repaired only to find out the entire rest of the car is rusting inside out. Put it this way, what you can see isn't just going to be local to what you can see and that's already a lot of rust