Got a new banger yesterday, i was using a Proton MPI but every time you took a roundabout, or even a modest curve meant "brown trousers time" thanks to the over-light PAS and the jelly like suspension, sold it to a guy who is going to use it for a bit of autocross (rather him than me ) and as a runaround.

Needed a new car under £250 as after over a year of unemployment, i have been offered a job, so needed a little cheapie non-dangerous runaround with a bit of tax and test, so after a lot of frustration and heartache, thanks to not very well thought out government policy regarding old cars and the lack of them thereof, i managed to get my hands on a 91 H Cavalier 1.6 with two months t&t for a modest £175

I wasn't expecting much but it's not all bad, a couple of minor jobs need doing to put her right for travelling up and down the A1 each day and one of them was replacing a perished oil breather pipe, which i ripped after cleaning the caked on oil and crap off the cylinder head.

No problem thought i, it's a Cavalier, my freindly local dealer had will have one, probabaly only take two days at most to come in, and be under a tenner.

Well, i was right on the price, shockingly wrong on the delivery time: A week, maybe more, maybe less as it has to come from Opel in Germany.

Well, i was shocked. a part for a Vauxhall Cavalier, one of Britain's former best selling cars, built in the UK, and part of bread and butter motoring in the UK, and you have to wait one week for a simple and easily fitted part to come from Germany?! to give the dealer their due, they did ring round some more local Vauxhall dealerships for a part but to no avail, i knew the cav was old hat but i didn't know it was obsolete!

I was going to bodge it for the weekend, making a repair with that flexi aluminium pipe but no local stores stock it, even the local motor factors!

Well, i'm back to using shoe leather and trains yet again...sorry for the moan, just had to get it off my chest as it's really inconvinienced me and i thought it would be easier to sort

Well done, I love the old Cavaliers, Kingswood Cavalier may be able to help, but it is disgraceful that parts are so hard to come by.

Hi James, thanks for that, i've ordered the part but i am tempted to just have a little punt round the scrappies where my fiance lives when i visit her at the weekend, see if they've got any 1.6 Astras or Cav's left, see if they've got any pipes that aren't as perished as mine was, just to get me back on the road, only prob is that it's a bit of a tricky area where the pipe came from, near the carb, which has a few rotten looking rubber connections and brittle plastic pipes so it's a bit of a microsurgery job and i have to be careful, it's a easy job, but with the age of the kit under the bonnet, there's a lot of room for error and swear words...Yeah, the cav is a great car, i've owned one before and they are a solid, steady old beast which still looks stylish, much better than a proton

I had a Proton MPi for a week in 1989 and it was outdated and outclassed back then being an old Mr Bishi... It does seem that cars as old as your Cavalier are now too old for scrapyards...sad

Yeah, the scrappy isn't a area of fun anymore, there used to be a scrappy near where i lived 10 years ago, where nothing was newer than a C-Reg and most bits were only a few quid, and you had to keep a eye open for the scrapyard dog as you went in...The last small breaker i went in wasn't extortionately overpriced, but i had to pay £25 for a cavalier headlight last year which made me think a bit when you think they probably got the whole car for thirty quid...

I think that in the future, as predicted in the press quite a few years ago that most big breakers will be a "parts off the shelf job" rather than the scrapyard of yore, which for me at least, used to be a joy to visit to see the really old stuff tucked back at the yard...

But one good thing is that now there are more specialist places about which are competitive, and ebay is a good place for banger bits, i find because there's a lot of genuine old stock about for (on occasion) better prices than the modern scrappy.

Ah, yes, the proton. I might be wrong on this but wasn't it's original unique selling point something to do with free road tax/registration/aa membership, etc, might be wrong on that though...

Yes the Proton was a value brand, like Daewoo, but at least it never broke down. Yes scrappies are all a bit bland now...

Rang the Vauxhall dealer today to check pipe progress to be confronted with a chirpy "tried to get hold of you mate, it's in!-turns out there was one in the UK after all..." so, fitted today and all is well for now...

Well done, another good car mobile again...