Motors Potential new car purchase but rust on wheel hub

So I am looking at a polo 1.4 x reg with 50k on the clock. There seems to be a fair bit of rust on the wheel hubs. It's had 4 owners. Price is 1k. I'm going to try offer £900. There does seem to be a fair bit of rust on the wheel hubs, is this a serious issue?

Please excuse the mahoosive pictures, I'm at a 1990's pc.



http://i907.photobucket.com/albums/ac274/Gregory_Kouvatsis/IMAG0085.jpg[img]


[img]http://i907.photobucket.com/albums/ac274/Gregory_Kouvatsis/IMAG0087.jpg

Any help would be appreciated

 

The top one looks like the rear drums, and the rust is exterior. Contact patch is in the interior. Your fine. The bottom one is the front disks, and the rust will disappear once you drive it a bit......at 180kph.

Both are cast iron. And that means the surface rust doesn't really penetrate.

 

Looks similar to mine, at least the rear drums. Normal for a car of that age TBH. Main thing is to check quality of the service history - regular servicing = win!

Should be a reliable car, but rust is a bit of a killer - watch out for rust on the bodywork. I've had to do quite a few bits of (minor) paintwork bodging on mine.

 

Body work looks good, I looked under the real arches, but obviously there are the covers there so doesnt seem to be rust there. The car has mot and road tax till feb 14 but the current owner says they havent had the car serviced recently. I was told it had trouble starting last winter and a battery changed sorted that. This was from the kids mother. The guy is 18, and I assume hasn't had the car very long. Initially the car was used to go the odd long distance to cornwall or something but has only been used for local commutes from what I'm told. Anything I should look out for on this particular car?

My mom told me to check under the oil cap for any white residue (signs of water in the engine), and there were none. Am I allowed to go for a test drive even if I'm not insured under any car? The owner has offered to take me on a drive as a passenger, is this good enough?

 

1. http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/volkswagen/polo-iii-1994/

2&3. Nope, go with a test drive as a passenger if you can though.

 

No, if your not insured you can't legally drive it.

At £900, if it seems to work ok, and doesn't make any loud "wrong" nosies your probably fine.

Go for a passenger ride in it. Listen to the engine, listen for any grinding/scraping that increases/decreases with road speed.

At the end of the day though it's a £900 car, so you've got to expect that you may need to do some work on it at some point.


See tons of those little polos around, so must be pretty hardwearing.

 

While the surface of the disks will clean up after a short drive they do look like they are fairly worn as there seems to be quite an edge on them.

Might just be the angle of the pic though.

 

Aye, that's true in my experience. I had a 1996 1.4 for a couple of years. It wasn't quick, but I put 60k on it and the only non-service part that I had to buy was a pair of rear shock absorbers.

Almost wish that I didn't get rid of it, as the car I replaced it with was a total lemon.

 

Dude, new drum and rotors ain't a big deal to replace and it's not very expensive.

 

New droms and disks could cost half as much as the car to replace though.

 

If greg can't do it himself yes.

Otherwise, pretty cheap I would guess, certainly less than £100, possibly even less than £50.

 

How much do you have to fiddle round with replacing the disks? Personally I wouldn't really want to mess with any of the hydraulics myself (kinda need to know that I can stop reliably) but if it comes under the umbrella of jack+socket set+a couple of hours of your time then there's no reason really to fork out for expensive mechanic bills.

 

What hydraulics ? You have a tire, a rotor, 2 brake pads and a caliper mounted on a hub. You only have to jack the car, remove the nuts, remove the caliper, put it on a milkbox so it wont hang, remove the rotor, install the new one, install the new pads, put pressure on the caliper's piston so it go inside and put it back on the rotor. Do it 4 time and you're in business.

 

Pretty much this, no real reason to read any further.

 

Make sure the driver goes through all the gears during the test drive, gives a good test of the brakes etc.

 

And it's even easier on modern cars as the disc is just held on by the wheel/wheel nuts, unlike my mini where you have to take off the hub nut which is torqued to some stupid value, .

But yeah, brakes are pretty easy to replace, especially if it's just discs and pads on a simple car.


Fiat wanted £300 to change the front discs and pads on my mums 500, the discs were fine so my Dad and I changed the pads for a total cost of ~£15, , discs wouldn't have made it much more.

 

That's not a rusty disc, this is rusty disc;



As has been said 10 minute job per corner, basic toolkit requirements, add 15 minutes per rear drum to collapse the shoes and readjust @ the end.

Haynes is your friend

Edit: look through fleabay & autotrader for current prices, £1k seems a tad high to me.

 

Leave the rear drums, maybe do front discs and pads, but they'll have life left in them yet. Easy job, cheap on a Polo of that vintage..

Sounds like a good buy to me - haggle them down to £900 as you planned to cover a service. New battery is good, if the tyres have good tread then do it.

Where are you going to be in the country Greg? [Edit] Never mind, found it. Reading is far away, otherwise I'd do a few bits for free.

 

I'll second all the posts about brakes being a relative easy job to complete, provided you have the ability to get the car safely off the ground. And I'll second the idea of doing the fronts first if you have to, and leaving the rears for the time being.

I found this youtube channel helpful in doing both disk and drum brakes, if only for the general information. Obviously you should look at a haynes to get more model specific instructions. but it's not rocket science, trust me.

 

Invest in a trolley jack. Ease of use and peace of mind.