Is this worth buying?

[nellyp]

Hi all. i am thinking of buying a Toledo, 1.9tdi. I have seen one pretty cheap at £1695 but its done 160,000miles. here is the ad.......all the receipts and service history are available What do you think guys (also looking at an x reg for 2K MOT till dec, 6 months tax)

For sale is my Seat Toledo 1.9 SE TDI, which is packed with features as listed above, all of which are perfectly working! The car is in fantastic condition, inside and out and has full service history, all but one carried out by Seat.

I bought it nearly 3 years ago from here on eBay, with around 127000 miles on the clock, most done on motorways. The only fault at the time was the aircon needed re gassing! (Not the case, as below).

Since I have owed the car, I would say that over 90% of my use has also been motorway miles.

Apart from the normal servicing, wear and tear and general usage costs, I have had the following done-



April 07 I paid around just under £500 to have a new aircon compressor fitted and an aircon service.

Jan 08 I paid just over £500 to have all the door seal rubber replaced at the local Seat dealer, making the car nice and watertight.

Jan 08 When just under 138000 miles, a loss of engine coolant was discovered and it was found to have a cracked head gasket. I spent over £1000 to have the engine stripped down, re skimmed and rebuilt with new gaskets, thermostat and cam belt. This was all done again at the local Seat dealer.



It is still a fantastic runner giving over 50 mpg. Its only fault is it sometimes can be stubborn to start when very cold, but will always start!



MOT till Sept 10 and Tax till end of Feb.

 

[sssstew]

seems not too bad, plenty of life left in the engine. Good that it has all receipts etc, thats worth a bit.

Looks like he wasnt afraid to spend money on the car so would probably go and have a drive see how it felt/looked. then look at about 1400 or so.

 

[Robertotoledo]

It sounds like a good car but I would ignore it simply because of the head gasket repair. It's a big big job to be done on any engine and no doubt it'll shorten the life of it. With high miles already; I think you'd be taking a chance.

 

[nellyp]

Cheers mate, I'm also a bit concerned about the other working parts that won't may not have been replaced. or do you think for that amount of money the engine could have been rebuilt?

 

[Slimy]

It sounds like a good car but I would ignore it simply because of the head gasket repair. It's a big big job to be done on any engine and no doubt it'll shorten the life of it. With high miles already; I think you'd be taking a chance.

I'd totally agree. A head gasket rarely fails without good reason, such as oil starvation or overheating due to a water leak. Just because they fixed the gasket doesn't mean that they fixed the original problem.

My Astra head gasket failed three times in it's lifetime, each time I replaced it I could see a weak point in the cylinder head. Even with skimming the weak point was still there. And it was exactly where the gasket failed every time. In the end I just had the head gasket change as an annual maintenance task as I couldn't fix the weak point without replacing the engine.

 

[sssstew]

least he's owned up to the headgasket, he could just 'lose' the receipts then you would never know, like any car out there.

 

[Slimy]

least he's owned up to the headgasket, he could just 'lose' the receipts then you would never know, like any car out there.

Not sure about that, the guy who bought my Astra was able to see that the head was cleaner than the rest of the engine, and the head bolts were even cleaner, as well as the 'fresh' sealant on the cam cover...

Although my experience so far with VAG engines is that they tend not to spew as much oil as my Astra used to, so perhaps it wouldn't be as obvious!