but I've got a little contribution to make so here it is...The price of scrap metal is seemingly pretty low at the moment (called a few guys but only one was interested in taking the shell of the GTi we broke, no suspension/gearbox/exhaust or seats. we got £30) and this seems to be borne out by the lack of the usual rag & bone fellas picking up folks rubbish round here too. Of course Corona likely has a hand in things too.
This would explain the increase in abandoned cars we've encountered lately then. not used to seeing this sort of thing since the early 2000's but there's been 3 or 4 we've noticed just left where they dropped (proven by no MoT/tax etc also). Most significantly is a '52 plate B5 Passat 1.9 PD saloon which appeared on the land next to our house a couple of weeks ago, this thing was left with the door wide open & key sat on the driver's floor!
I went to investigate the thing & on running the plates it's failed it's MoT early March, for a rusty front subframe & handbrake cable. Battery was stone dead so I just locked the doors manually to stop kids burning it hopefully & left a note on the seat stating that if you'd forgotten your keys then knock on our house & describe the other item I found inside and the key fob and you could have it back. (If people want to chance driving round with nothing on the car these days, I say go for it and see how far you get, & nobody likes a grass!!!)
Anyhow, a few weeks down the line & nothing. Nobody locally has said anything, guess they just assumed it was one of ours anyway! I went out the other day to look it over a bit closer as it showed only 110k on the failed test & overall didn't look horrible, in fact very tidy apart from the front wings being crunchy. Had a good root round to see if there was any paperwork to identify an owner but nothing with a name/address on it, looked from the paper on the floor it'd just been driven straight from the MoT and dumped!
What I did find though, was the book pack stowed in it's holder. Looking through that, there's the radio code, fully stamped service history up to 2016 but anything relating to the owner either removed or torn out. The more I look over it the more signs it's been looked after at any cost up till a couple of years ago, presumably it hit 100k and became "just an old banger"? Either way, it's seeming to me like it's been abandoned, but in a "conscientious" manner, keys left with it and outside a house where we're blatantly obviously into cars... On that basis, I took it upon myself to give it a jump and see what it did. It fired up willingly and ran quietly and smoothly, even ran it back and forward a few yards and it seems sound, left it running while I jacked it up to check out the rot and it got up to temp, no overheating and the AC even worked after a fashion! The rot it failed on (nearside and offside Front subframe corroded, severely weakened *DANGEROUS*) is not even that terrible, a hole about the size of my thumb on the left side near the bottom wishbone mount & the same but a little bigger on the driver's side. It's a bit crusty and thin under there but that's the only serious part & not even a day's worth of welding, heck it's not even overhead welding it's on the easy side!!!
Upshot of all this is, I've determined that it's well worth chancing the £25 quid to apply for the documents & have done this yesterday. Hoping to hear good news soon. If it comes off, the car is well worth saving IMO and would even make a good replacement for our Volvo which has proven too big for us and not doing the mileage it deserves to keep it fit. Time will tell, very strange though. all I can think is somebody had seen that we're into cars and rather than scrap it or pay to fix it they decided to give it a chance with us?
Just wish they'd said something rather than just leave it, I'd have happily signed over a free project lol.Sooo, long and short of it is, I'm wondering what abandoned cars/weirdness around them others have experienced lately, with people seemingly not wanting to take stuff to the scrappy for now...
The more thread starters we have the better. Always good to have something new to view when logging onto the FCF.
