The ex's MK4 Golf, which was at poloshow in '12, has done 160k. Three years ago i fitted new internals to the turbocharger, a sump, and a new dual mass. It only ever failed on me, not her - i killed the clutch thrashing it to Devon, and i killed the turbo by cracking the sump and starving it of oil on a singletrack.

Since then it's had nothing but an oil change. The previous owner had it three years and did nothing to it whatsoever (not even servicing). I've offered to do the cambelt - even though i don't want to!

Some vehicles thrive on neglect. A firm I used to work for had a fleet of 1.6HDI Berlingo's. To those who don't know, the 1.6 HDI and it's badge engineered counter part the ford 1.6TDCI are renowned for fucking up, eating turbos and costing money. I picked so many low mileage carefully driven ones up when I was tradeplating that were showing lights, stuck in limp mode, or smoking like a Club Polo gathering it was unbelievable.

Anyway, these vans never seemed to have anything done apart from tyres and accident damage, mine was about 20k past a service when I got it, and they all drove fine (mine could nudge 120). The only reason I can put it down to was they hadn't got a chance of clogging up. We used to pile 4 blokes in them, with bags for a week, drive them flat out to anywhere in the country, rag them to work and back, and then drive back at the end of the week even faster that we went down at the start of the week.

I can believe that. It is strange but true...one of our transits has been past its renewal date for over 2 years now so it's by far the oldest one in the yard. The lads thrash it to bits hoping it will die so we can have a nice new one...games like how fast can you go forwards and chuck it into reverse. Or see if you can pull away from the lights...in 6th gear.

However despite all this the thing is bulletproof!

Some vehicles thrive on neglect. A firm I used to work for had a fleet of 1.6HDI Berlingo's. To those who don't know, the 1.6 HDI and it's badge engineered counter part the ford 1.6TDCI are renowned for fucking up, eating turbos and costing money. I picked so many low mileage carefully driven ones up when I was tradeplating that were showing lights, stuck in limp mode, or smoking like a Club Polo gathering it was unbelievable.

Anyway, these vans never seemed to have anything done apart from tyres and accident damage, mine was about 20k past a service when I got it, and they all drove fine (mine could nudge 120). The only reason I can put it down to was they hadn't got a chance of clogging up. We used to pile 4 blokes in them, with bags for a week, drive them flat out to anywhere in the country, rag them to work and back, and then drive back at the end of the week even faster that we went down at the start of the week.

The problem with those engines is they are susceptible to carbon build up in the oil ways, and for some stupid reason they were designed with a gauze filter in the oil line to the turbo. This clogs up starving the turbo of oil, by the time the turbo has gone the whole oil system needs stripping and cleaning. Filthy, messy, shit job

Reminds me of what happened to Jaguar in the '70s when they introduced the 2.8 XJ6. Customers were putting holes in the pistons. Jaguar engineers were trying to kill the cars with exhaustive testing to find out why it was happening, but it never happened to them.

Then in a meeting a Jag engineer pointed out the failing cars were only ever driven sedately by largely mature customers, and asked if any of the testers had tried driving slowly..? It wasn't long before an engineer ended up at the roadside with engine failure.

What was happening was carbon build-up in the combustion cylinders, sending the compression ratio sky high, and ultimately popping the pistons. This didn't happen during development or testing of the 2.8 variant because the engineers had always given the engine enough work to cough out any carbon building up.

Some vehicles thrive on neglect. A firm I used to work for had a fleet of 1.6HDI Berlingo's. To those who don't know, the 1.6 HDI and it's badge engineered counter part the ford 1.6TDCI are renowned for fucking up, eating turbos and costing money. I picked so many low mileage carefully driven ones up when I was tradeplating that were showing lights, stuck in limp mode, or smoking like a Club Polo gathering it was unbelievable.

Anyway, these vans never seemed to have anything done apart from tyres and accident damage, mine was about 20k past a service when I got it, and they all drove fine (mine could nudge 120). The only reason I can put it down to was they hadn't got a chance of clogging up. We used to pile 4 blokes in them, with bags for a week, drive them flat out to anywhere in the country, rag them to work and back, and then drive back at the end of the week even faster that we went down at the start of the week.

The problem with those engines is they are susceptible to carbon build up in the oil ways, and for some stupid reason they were designed with a gauze filter in the oil line to the turbo. This clogs up starving the turbo of oil, by the time the turbo has gone the whole oil system needs stripping and cleaning. Filthy, messy, shit job

Yep, there's so many people just lob another turbo on them and wonder why it goes pop too. The pikeytech engine flush worked well on a mates 207. Drop the sump plug, take the turdblow off, and pour half a gallon of warm petrol down the oil feed.

I can believe that. It is strange but true...one of our transits has been past its renewal date for over 2 years now so it's by far the oldest one in the yard. The lads thrash it to bits hoping it will die so we can have a nice new one...games like how fast can you go forwards and chuck it into reverse. Or see if you can pull away from the lights...in 6th gear.

However despite all this the thing is bulletproof!

Yeah we used to do that with our works transit flatbed into reverse at 50 and floor it it loved it we also used reverse instead of the brake pedal it never played up or broke down mind you saying that we had the old ldv flat beds TD and plain non turbo they were garbage and we used to try and kill those all the time but they used to just keep going even though they were rattly old pigs

I think most old vans are impossible to kill. its the rust that gets em. My grandad's work transit went to about 400k and he only got rid because it was worth nothing and was rusty...then he just upgraded to the next shape transit. That was when I was about 12 -13, was a used van...its still in tip top shape now 10 years later!