I can get a pair of general purpose Nankang tyres in the 205/70 15 size that's currently on there fitted for £65 each. That will get the car back into a safe and drivable state - bearing in mind they're replacing 17 year old, unevenly worn and badly out of round Corsas I'm not going to quibble over the 10mm size difference to spec, it's still going to be an absolutely massive improvement. I'd not have known had I not looked in the handbook anyway that they were fractionally too small. We're not talking putting a space saver on or anything daft, they're still plenty chunky.
I'll then get it stuck in for an MOT at either my usual or another known classic friendly garage and see if that leaves me with anything else other than my current known list.
In the spring, assuming everything else has been sorted without incident (and the MOT tester doesn't just condemn the car!) I'll then look to get a full set of Vredstein Sprint Classics in the correct 215/70 15 size fitted. I just really don't want to drop the best part of a grand on tyres until the car's got a year's ticket on it. Especially knowing that if the rear brakes need any work that at today's labour rates you're probably going to be looking at a quote starting at £500 before they've even picked up a spanner.
Once it's got some serviceable tyres on and the front discs/pads changed she can come out on the occasional dry day through the winter. Given that I don't have any covered storage that's probably honestly better than just leaving the car sitting for the next three months. We all know that the thing highly strung cars like this hate more than anything is disuse. Just look back at when I first got it. Have said it before and no doubt will again, I really wish I had somewhere under cover (or at the very least on tarmac!) to store it over the winter. Sadly even if I were to magically empty my garage overnight and evict the Invacar, it's still a good 4" wider than the garage door. In 1981 when our house was built they predicted as was the trend at the time, that cars in the future would be smaller. The one guess they got wrong!
Plus I'd really rather have a backup roadworthy car on hand in case I have problems with the Xantia (not that I commute or anything so it's purely convenience for errand running!). The whole being a single seater slightly limits the applications I can use the Invacar for in that field. Bit annoying that I'd been planning to get a few things on the Xantia sorted with Jim shortly, but being back under house arrest like everyone else scuppers that plan for the time being. Not really sure where we'd stand with the rules at the moment meeting to sort stuff on the car...would probably be deemed unnecessary and that I should just take it to a garage for the repairs to be done.
...We saw how well that went last time!
Hopefully a "simple" sphere change should be pretty quick at least. Given how limited miles I do the rest can wait until things are relaxed again, I just want to get the rear spheres swapped before I wind up breaking something as the nearside has very limited travel left at the moment.
When are you planning to have it done?
And I thought Xantias were a bit on the complex side!!!
A bit how the XUD 1.9TD diesel evolved from the NA 1.9 and in doing so made some things really hard to get to... Such as the cambelt, oil filter, glowplugs and exhaust manifold... When it 'evolved' EGR it got even worse 
