First thing to do, upon getting it back on my drive while my brother sorts out more permanent insurance for it was to have a good look around. We had of course inspected it on purchase, but you never get a real chance to poke about until you get a car home.
Being an LXi it comes with some neat factory extras. It's likely more factory extras will be sourced to spec this up a bit further.
Both flanks are nice and straight, there's one little ding on the front passenger door, but other than that (and the bits I'll go on to mention) it's pretty good, as you'd want.
At some point, a previous owner has bumped something with the nose.
There's moss under the headlights and inside the indicator units which we need to clean out. But then, the car had been sat under a tree in a garden for six months before going to the garage and getting pressure washed.
Usual Felicia rust spots on the front wings, but perfectly saveable with a bit of effort.
This is the worst part of the car, we think it was reversed into something due to the rust on the arch, the broken light cluster and broken bumper. None of this is serious, but it's a shame it wasn't dealt with when it happened. The light cluster lets a bit of water into the car so will be replaced along with the bumper and the arch will get repaired. The sills are absolutely solid, quite amazing for a 13 year old shed really.
Another common rust spot is the trim on the tailgate, so we'll have to whip that off and get it nipped in the bud. Easy stuff really.
It also has the weirdest dealer plates I've seen. Skoda logo and space for telephone number and garage details, but none of it filled in.
Passenger rear arch also has the usual rust, but again it's not that serious having had a prod at it, the silver paint makes it look far worse than it is. This is another easy fix.
The interior is grubby. Whoever was in the driving seat was possibly a mechanic as there's a good amount of engine oil type grease on the handles and steering wheel. Those air fresheners STINK so they were removed fairly quickly but the interior still smells like a '90s Metrocab.
We took the back seats out completely to remove a lot of pine needles, bits of wood and dirt from the boot area and found that there were sweets and detritus under the rear bench. There were also some cubes of glass which is when we noticed the rear passenger window is a blue tint replacement glass... on a brown tint glass car.
So after vacuuming the back out - we'll go back and give it a proper deep clean later - we decided to tackle the outside of the car which was covered in tiny black spots all over that I thought were tar at first, but are more likely tree sap. By the time we'd done, the car was a different silver as you can see in this picture if you compare the front half with the rear (clean) half.
Arches all got a much needed hose out revealing shiny silver paint in as new condition and no rust. Remarkable really. That's my brother doing the hose pipe work, it was an unpleasant job.
By the time we'd done, the rain set in and the cloths we'd used that were once white weren't anymore. We also took a plastic bristled scrubbing brush to the trim to get all the moss out of the crevices, that took a while.
We wanted to see just how well the paint would come up with the materials to hand, so into the garage the Skoda went. I love this picture, it really demonstrates my love of shite old cars.
Started with this.
Had some chips and very bad scratches on the bonnet to deal with. This is the worst panel on the car for stonechips, scratches and roughness of paint.
Finally ended up with this, before we ran out of time for the day.
So we're going to slog it out tomorrow if the weather holds getting more of the car deep cleaned. Lurking underneath all the detritus is a very solid little economy estate that I swear we paid too little for. For now, my brother is contenting himself with reading through the lovely leatherette folder of paperwork and the treasure we dug out of the car so far.
