by WR1 » Thu Jan 15, 2015 10:32 am
Welcome to the club fella - personally I would buy from the forum, you know exactly what your getting then warts and all. Salford has a nice example on at the moment @ 11.5k which seems good value given the mileage / condition (see the for sale section). I saw it at the 10 yr anniversary and looked very clean indeed. Firstly you are getting the strongest of the UK Spec's engines and gearboxes. Older models had inferior ECUs which allowed engines to go 'bang' like the P1. You dont see many of them around that have not had an engine rebuild at some point. The newer 2.5 engine suffered from engine failure due to inferior quality metals used in the piston rings I believe - refered to as the chocolate engine. Common grumbles seem to be the rear shocks seem to knock and will need replacing. Mine have been done, but most folk seem to put coilover's on them. Since I've been on the forum there have been a few diff problems, so best to try the car on full lock, reversing, and that the DCCD works. All the standard things like FSH, frequent oil changes, and the belts are every 4 years. Body work should be pretty sound although check the boot nr the spoiler as water can collect there and cause some rust. The inner arch liners at the front will pop out as the plastic clip thing normally breaks. I'd consider modified examples as well, you can tell a decently tuned motor from a bling chav rocket, look out for companies such as Roger Clark Motor Sport (RCM) if a car has a service history from them it would have been well looked after (at cost). I wouldnt get hung up on FSSH, many of the specialists are equally as good if not better as they really know there stuff on these cars. In terms of mod's, most cars seem to run to 400bhp with standard internals. Any more than that and you would be looking for a forged engine rebuild.
They are great cars, really impressive performance, not qute an M3 round a track, they tend to understeer quite a bit but fun never the less. The engine note is somthing special. You'll find yourself at traffic lights blipping the throttle just because.
Hope you get one. Oh and dont buy 241 which is on Ebay at the mo - it's ok, but was my old one and a bit dog eared. It had a rear end crunch from prior owner which was not recored and the boot makes a racket when you try and shut it, really quite anoying. There are better ones out there. You probably couldnt go far wrong with Salfords one.
Good luck with the search.
Prodrive - RaceDynamix 346 bhp - WhiteLine - AP Racing - Milltek - Cosworth