Advice on second hand car purchase | Motoring discussion | Back Room Forum

Thu 16 May 2024 09:16

Advice on second hand car purchase - tinyian

Morning All,

After some advice from you helpful people as I'm on a dreadful run of buying cars that let me down within a couple of years despite my best efforts into researching them!

My Skoda Octavia just died after melting it's inlet manifold, it's been at the garage for a week and they can't find out why it's happened - only option from them is a full strip of the engine which would cost way more than the cars current value (it's done 144,000 and lasted me only 15 months).

Before that I had a C class Merc ruin it's subframe after less than 2 years and only 80,000 miles, I could go on...

I'm doing about 175 miles a week, mainly motorway trips to and from work which is why I went for the big old Skoda and the C class before it but I'm wondering if the big old diesel engine route is still the way to go. I do a longer run to Oxford from Liverpool about once every 6 weeks or so.

Budget is about £6,000. For some reason I've been drawn to some cheap second hand Nissan Leaf's (some within that budget with really low miles on auto trader near me) but I'm so in doubt of my own decisions after the last couple of cars that I'm hoping some clever folks on here can give me some pointers!

Thanks in advance!

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Thu 16 May 2024 10:08

Advice on second hand car purchase - pd

LEAF would probably do your daily stuff (35 miles a day by my calculation) assuming you have somewhere to charge but might/will be a right pain doing Oxford to Liverpool.

Incidentally did you approach Mercedes about the subframe? They are still replacing them for free usually even on a 15+ year old car.

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Thu 16 May 2024 10:46

Advice on second hand car purchase - Terry W

Sadly, as you have found, there are no guarantees when buying that an older car. Reality is that at 144k all cars will be at risk, and old premium motors fail and cost lots to fix.

A commute of 15-20 miles each way which if it includes some motorway probably takes no more than 30 mins. You could consider an entirely capable, much newer, low mileage smaller car. An Autotrader search throws up the following examples:

2018 White Suzuki Swift 1.2 Dualjet SZ3 Euro 6 (s/s) 5dr for sale for £6,995 in Craigavon, County Armagh (autotrader.co.uk)

2018 White Dacia Sandero 0.9 TCe Ambiance Euro 6 (s/s) 5dr for sale for £6,999 in Kings Lynn, Norfolk (autotrader.co.uk)

2017 Red MG 3 1.5 STYLE PLUS VTI-TECH 5d 106 BHP RAC WARRANTIES for sale for £5,995 in Warrington, Cheshire (autotrader.co.uk)

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Thu 16 May 2024 11:56

Advice on second hand car purchase - tinyian

I wish I had known this at the time. It was a Merc specialist (not main dealer) that found the issue and they never mentioned anything about Merc doing replacements!!!

I'm very tempted with the Leaf. The wife has a big old C Max that we can always use for the Oxford runs if the charging is too much of a pain, it'll be harsh on the petrol usage but it's not like it's a super regular run and the leaf should more than make up for it in running savings

Thanks for your help!

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Thu 16 May 2024 14:18

Advice on second hand car purchase - mcb100

Make sure you’ve checked out charging costs if you’re looking at LEAF for purely economic reasons.
A dependence on public charging is way more expensive than charging at home. Put your numbers in here - www.zap-map.com/tools.
Home charging on a dedicated EV tariff could cost 7.5p per kW/h, a standard tariff is at c25p per kW/h, whilst public charging is around 75p per kW/h.
I’m a massive advocate of going EV, but people must be aware of the cost of charging away from home.

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Thu 16 May 2024 14:27

Advice on second hand car purchase - tinyian

This is such a great tool, thanks for sharing. Looks like my saving is over £1,000 per year which is great!

I am factoring in around the £1,000 mark to put in a home charger so knowing it'll pay for itself in 12 months is very satisfying!

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Thu 16 May 2024 14:37

Advice on second hand car purchase - pd

A LEAF will charge at 2.3Kw/h on the supplied "granny" charger so presuming you are looking at the 24 or 30Kwh Mk 1 version you'll quite easily get our 35 miles in overnight even without a charger.

If you do buy a charger make sure it is compatible with whatever tariff you might be looking at. With Octopus I think it is mainly the Ohme ones.

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Thu 16 May 2024 16:00

Advice on second hand car purchase - bathtub tom

I understand early Leafs (Leaves?) have a very poor range, due to battery degradation. You may want to investigate this before buying one.

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Thu 16 May 2024 16:10

Advice on second hand car purchase - pd

I understand early Leafs (Leaves?) have a very poor range, due to battery degradation. You may want to investigate this before buying one.

Judging by the OP's budget they'd be looking at a later version of the Mk 1 with not too higher mileage, so not an early one.

I'd avoid the very early 2011-2012 ones (with an electric handbrake) now as you can get the better UK built one for not a lot more money. Also some 30Kw ones showed excess battery degradation and need an update from Nissan - worth finding out if that has been done if looking at those.

It is easy to tell a LEAF's battery status - it is on the dashboard (although you have to press a button to see it on the Mk 2).

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Thu 16 May 2024 16:26

Advice on second hand car purchase - SLO76

Best bet is to follow some of the relevant Facebook pages relating to the Nissan Leaf. I own a Mk II 40kwh which has a been trouble free and very cheap to run second car. But you do hear a fair number of horror stories relating to battery pack failures.

The Mk I comes in two sizes 24kwh 30kwh, the latter is in theory the better car but in practice they tend to suffer more rapid battery degradation than the smaller 24kwh plus the smaller car usually has less miles and fewer fast charges - which can damage the battery over the longterm. A commute similar to mine 34 miles in total, 17 each way is fine for one of these while leaving a reasonable margin for diversions etc.

The trade are wary of them and disinterested so they offer buttons for them. A good 24kwh car in a private sale can be had for less than £4k. Avoid the Japanese built early 2011 cars as they’re all knackered now. I get the appeal as a cheap runabout but the Mk I’s really are limited due to their poor real world range. Many non-franchise garages won’t work on them too so repairs can be an issue, though as long as the battery pack is ok there’s very little to go wrong. A good longterm owned private sale is the safest bet. Most backstreet dealers (the guys who will flog these) offer warranties that are next to worthless anyway. But on the flip side they tend to be keen to get shot of them and usually have little interest so a deal should be possible.

I’d recommend begging and borrowing to get the much more useful Mk II 40kwh. These can do longer runs and they’re a bit more capable on the road. I’ve seen these with sensible miles up for £8/£9k. There are loads about with six figure mileages and 12 bars of battery health remaining.

Buy the Leaf spy app to check any prospective purchase. The battery pack health is everything with these cars. You don’t want one that’s been sat at a dealer for months. Batteries don’t like sitting with no charge or a full charge for extended periods. This is another issue for dealers selling them. They don’t like inactivity.

Where roughly will you be searching?

Edited by SLO76 on 16/05/2024 at 16:29

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Fri 17 May 2024 12:10

Advice on second hand car purchase - tinyian

I'm looking around the North West, based in Liverpool but I can travel a fair way to check one out. I was thinking of finding the nearest one to me first to have a sit in and just get a general feel for the car and then travelling further if needed to get the right car/deal.

Thanks for the tips about the MK II's, I'll have another look at the finances as the extra range looks like I'd only need the 1 charge doing the Oxford runs which would be well worth it to avoid complains from the wife and kids! There's plenty on Auto trader with 40-60,000 miles on them in that price bracket and I've got the app downloaded in anticipation of checking out battery health.

Have you had a home charger installed or do you just use the 3 pin mains? My main concern with going for the MKII would be if I had to forgo the home charger to spend the cash on the car instead would I get enough charge into it overnight?

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Fri 17 May 2024 18:31

Advice on second hand car purchase - SLO76

You 100% need a home charger to run an EV so factor in the cost. We plug it in every two to three days, public fast charging is too unreliable and far far too costly.

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Fri 17 May 2024 20:12

Advice on second hand car purchase - mcb100

‘ If you do buy a charger make sure it is compatible with whatever tariff you might be looking at. With Octopus I think it is mainly the Ohme ones.’

It’s only Intelligent Octopus Go (a tariff that watches wholesale electricity prices every 30 minutes) that requires a compatible charger. The regular Octopus Go tariff will work with any charger, as will every other supplier’s tariff.

I know folks that use a 3 pin plug to run their EV, but they’re low mileage users - at c2.2kW output, it’ll take 24 hours to fully charge a 40kW/h battery.

Be aware that LEAF does use a charging socket that isn’t now the most common (putting it mildly) on public chargers, so any search for amps will have to be filtered to look for Chademo connections. You will find them in the wild at existing sites, but I don’t see many being installed now.

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