Motors Keep or Replace?

That's disappointing news about the car, but good that you have found an honest and pragmatic mechanic.
Maybe he'll be able to advise what to get for £1.5K, or help you look.
I have a youngish mechanic as a tenant who does a lot of work to recommission stuff he's bought cheaply, and I can get good advice from him.
He saved me from disaster just over a year go when I bought a cheap Citroen C3 as a 'get me by' car. He gave it the once over the day after I bought it and was generally happy with it.
He then called in a friend, who had a look at the engine and said something, he immediately took the key out of the ignition and put it in his pocket.
The car was impounded as amazingly the cam belt was slopping by 40-50mm! The person that fitted it didn't set up the tensioner properly, and it could have jumped off at any moment .
So, my cheap car was suddenly not so cheap.... He did a brilliant job of changing the cam belt and tensioner that day, also fitted a new water pump and did and oil and filter change for a tad over £200.
He likes cars up to about 2008 as they are less complex electronically, and you can do more physically rather than with a laptop...

GLW buying.

 

Two of my mechanic friends concur with the up-to-2008 rule. Rock and a hard place now, though, because they're all getting a bit rusty underneath and long in the tooth...

 

Ouch! Sorry to hear it was such a disaster. I hope you get better luck next time.

 

Shame, sounds like you got unlucky with the original purchase really... If you want anything giving a once-over roughly around Chester then let me know, happy to kick some tyres

 

It gets better - the eBay seller who I returned the unused timing chain kit to is claiming that two little bolts are missing from the box, and is refusing to refund it! My mechanic swears blind they went back in the box (he barely got round to opening the thing). The seller swears he hasn't misplaced them.

Knowing eBay, this will be basically a 50/50 whether I get my money back or not.

edit 2021-03-12: eBay are actually coming through and guaranteeing a refund for me! At their expense, not the seller's. Their staff mucked up and opened the wrong kind of return case on it, so they consider it 'their fault'. Even though the seller is clearly a scamming *****.