Supra_Natural

Ask and ye shall receive Sacha Peiris Wicked Ep Racing 25/26a, Jayapura Mawatha, Baddegana Road, Kotte Sri Lanka [email protected] Edit: found it! 0777390559

You should pay sacha a visit, by all accounts his work is pretty good... Been meaning to take my car there also to see if he can come up with something for an oldie.

that lovely exhaust murmur. endearing though it indeed is, is nonetheless a result of exhaling through probably one of the tiniest diameter exhaust systems fitted to any volume production car. While i realize its a given to think "Fart can" whenever someone mentions performance exhaust these days, the bug is truly one of those cars that gets a pretty big benefit from the fitment of a proper Performance exhaust. And trust me on this, a properly made item sounds pretty damn good!

then ask somebody to e-mail them to you.... its not really the done thing asking somebody to post pictures of somebody else's accident on a public forum now is it?

Why?

As a bug owner myself I wholeheartedly agree! but speaking from experience if you want a proper trouble free runner that you can buy immediately and put to work without any expense then you need to spend at least 250-275k Anything with a lower pricetag is definitely hiding something... Also with VW bugs, the later the model, the better it is as a daily runner so ideally you want one of the cars that were made after 1968, with the 12v electrical system and such. A decent example of that model is roughly 250-275k.... Since our friend said his budget was 200k I didnt suggest the Bug. Kule, if you can increase the budget slightly to around 250-275k you can get a solid VW that will be a lot more interesting than the previous choices. (With the honorable exception of the fords )

MADZ, there appears to be a problem with the forum since monday... hitting "view new posts" only gets older ones to appear and even the "today's active topics" button works only sometimes. Also, my login shows the forum date to be the 12th of march.. Heard from dilesh yesterday that he cannot view topics at all, he keeps getting the "Search flood control" screen. Please check this out

Hey man, good to have you on board... The Sri lankan car market is a pretty crazy place thanks to our beloved governments tax system, so a 200k budget is not going to get very many new-ish cars im afraid. However if you dont mind something thats on the old side, plenty of cars you can find. For example: Nissan/Datsun B210 and B310, Toyota Corolla KE20 and KE30, the first generation Mitsubishi Lancer (Known to us as the "Tube light", "L Light" etc). Very early mazdas can also be found. Apart from that lot there are the european options like the ford escort and cortina and various others, Peugeots, Renaults, Austins, Morrises and such. Of the euros the only cars that can be considered realistically as daily runners are the two fords. All of the cars above have pretty simple mechanicals and mst garage baases should be able to fix them (The older the guy is, the better). Parts will be harder to find than for newer cars obviously but panchikawatte should be able to sort out most things. In the case of Ford there is a dealer who brings down parts, Gampaha Motors. I dont know whether there is a dedicated parts place for the older japanese cars, but it shouldnt be too difficult to find. Get hold of the classified ads in the sinhala weekend papers, those have a massive selection of cars in the lower price ranges.. Also, the cars that are for sale out of colombo are often lower in price so it might be worthwhile to travel outside. Read up a bit and see what suits you, when you decide on a model (or a couple of different ones) post them up here and we can give you an idea of which one would be the best pick. Good Luck and Good Hunting! Cheers

Like most places in SL machan, I think its just a matter of who you know there... Try and get fit with some of the people who work there and you'll be amazed at how much you can get done well! Send a p_m to Mr Z, he seems to have gotten to know how that place works pretty well... Congrats on the purchase btw, and good to see you back!

Sorry this is late, but Many congrats dillon, Its not often that a person can say they have landed their dream job! All the best mate!

I Know im a bit late on this, have been off the forum for yonks due to some work stuff... anyway many congrats RLan, as a former user of a 406 I can tell you that they are extremely awesome cars in most respects: Fabulously comfortable, well equipped mechanically tough and a blast to drive. The key thing is getting the mechanicals in A1 condition. Oh and also, if any niggling little issues with the electrics crop up, its best to just learn to live with them... I figure you may have already found the place by now but in case you haven't, the Pug repair place is in pelawatte, just a little way past the buddasa stadium and the Kart track if you're coming from Battaramulla. Its called French Lion Motors.

The TP12 IS kinda heavy but weren't we talking about the P11? FYI a manual gearbox P11 camino with the SR20 DE and the GT spec suspension can take a SOHC VTEC civic to the cleaners any day of the week. And before the legions of honda fanboys jump in let me say again I'm talking about STOCK form. Im sure some work and a few (hundred?) thousand bucks into the Civic and it should be able to "take down" a primera, but it sure as hell won't in stock form, its only logical since the primera isnt really THAT much heavier and it has a bigger motor.

So how much is Honda paying you? J/k

no it wouldnt.

Well first of all one of the key things about buying any car really is to ensure that it has had a proper service history (or at least make sure nothing is broken/likely to break in the near future). Even a 15-20 Year old japanese car which has been looked after and had routine maintenance done properly will give many thousands of Km of trouble free running. By the same token a 3 to 5 year old car which has been neglected will break down as much as that doctor sunny! So the first thing you need to do is get hold of a qualified/knowledgeable bloke to come along with you and check out your potential purchase. Also if possible take the car to the relevant agents and get a condition check done. This will save you loads of cash in the long run. http://www.autolanka.com/ad.asp?ID=19016 here Is something you could look at within that budget. Good fun to drive, generally decent running costs, spacious and fairly comfy.

fan-bleedin-tastic Gtam! she looks superb!

on the topic, the matrix is not a bad car for what it is, its spacious and quite practical and you can get them for cheap. The fuel consumption is nowhere near as terrible as some of the sheep on this thread are suggesting, a relative has one with an auto and they get 7 to 8 in town, which is about right for a 1.6 liter automatic. As with any car, as long as you find one which hasn't been run into the ground by its 10th caring owner it shouldn't give too much trouble. Having said that, for the money that you pay, unless you specifically need a cheap MPV-ish thing t or you just absolutely love the Matrix, there are a lot of other options out there. P.S. Matrixes are never easy to sell, mostly thanks to people like the gentleman who made post number 3 on this thread.

How old is the accent? and how many owners had it had? Did it come with a full service history? The problem with cars like the accent in Sri Lanka is that people buy them because they are dirt cheap, skimp on the maintenance and then howl when they start giving issues. True the old accents were not really upto the standards of the japs at the time, but the new cars coming out of korea have long since met and in some cases even bettered the standards of quality and ability that the japanese for so long assumed were solely their playing field. Don't make blanket statements about a brand based on one particular car.... it makes you look a little dumb.

Well said, its EXACTLY the kind of idiotic, uninformed attitude that people like smart accu go around displaying that leads to the ridiculous perceptions that the average Sri Lankan buyer has about cars.

oh really? so why arent you driving yours then?

The Stability issue is really a matter of minute differences it's nowhere near enough of a gap to say that an LR is stable and the 'Cruiser is unstable. Also keep in mind that with vehicles this old, which (Hopefully at least) should have hat a lot of major components replaced/upgraded over the last 25+ years, the differences really do come down to individual vehicles. So your best bet would be to try out similar examples of both and see.

ah so going ahead with it? How does it ride on the 18's btw? those S series audis are supposed to be a bit stiff.

well no, not really... fact is that LR's ARE more difficult to maintain/source the correct parts for than a Bj series Cruiser. They aren't the nightmares that sri lankan "wisdom" considers them to be by any means, but compared to the toyotas they do give more headaches.

Speedfreak for the love of god will you bloomin make a comment already? If you post an image on this thread and people answer, at least have the damn courtesy to check the thread and respond... At everyone else, if this guy doesnt respond within a few hours just ignore it and put up something else,

Dude, just go to the honda sub forum under "specific Makes": http://forum.autolanka.com/index.php?showforum=33 This has been discussed dozens of times, just look through a few threads.