Break or repair? '96 B5 A4

[Lee Goodall]

I have a dilemma. As the title says should I break and sell my old A4 as parts or do I do a bit of work for an MOT pass and sell the car as a whole?

The car is SORN at the moment and for an MOT I'd imagine it will need a new catalytic converter and a few other bits.

Money is very tight at the minute as I get married in August and I could do without wasting cash. Will it be worthwhile investing in the car or should I break it?

Cheers.

 

[aragorn]

As a standard car, you'd see at least 800quid for a good condition 1.8T with a full MOT in my eyes.

You need to weigh up what its going to cost to fix it, vs what you can make from breaking it.

You've also got to remember that with breaking it, the money comes in dribs and drabs, whereas an outright sale landing you £800 cash in hand can often be a much better proposition, even if its less than what you could have made from breaking it, as its a lump sum. Small amounts (in my experience anyway) tend to get frittered away, whereas with a big lump you tend to do something specific with the whole thing.

 

[Lee Goodall]

Yeah I suppose it'd be better to get an MOT then really.

Tax and MOT (not including parts) is going to sting me for £150+
Oh cr@p!

 

[jcb]

do you need a cat?
i think 96 was the cut off for cats.
certainly didn't on a puegot I had, just fitted a straight pipe and tweaked the co levels to get it through

 

[Oranoco]

93 onwards you will need a CAT to meet the emmisions regs

 

[Lee Goodall]

AFAIK all B5s need a CAT to meet the required emission levels.

 

[B5NUT]

Both my 1996 B5 have cats. You can pass an mot without a cat, or one in poor condition, I know this as my 1.8T had seen a decat thanks to the last owner, and it passed it's MOT with the decat on (Just)!

 

[aragorn]

Sorry but theres simply no way to legitimately pass a cat test with a non-working cat.

If you leaned the mixture out enough to get the CO level below 0.3, then the lambda value (ie the measure of oxygen in the exhaust) would show an excess of oxygen in the exhaust and they'd fail it on that instead.

A car with a perfect condition engine, but no cat will give a CO reading of 0.5 to 0.7% at lambda 1.0 and the lambda sensor will be doing its best to keep the exhaust stream at lambda 1.0 so leaning it out any more isnt possible.

Our old car also passed quite a few MOTs before we baught it with a gutted cat fitted, however that was undoubtedly down to the tester sticking the probe up some other cars exhaust, or simply ignoring the fail altogether, as the emissions were a streight fail before i took it for its first test.

 

[Broken Byzan]

I gave my old cat to Kev, otherwise you coulda had that.

She cant need that much mate?
I have some spare bits kicking around i am sure between us we can cobble her together to help the wedding fund

 

[B5NUT]

Sorry but theres simply no way to legitimately pass a cat test with a non-working cat.

I'l not saying it is legitimate, I did not know the car was running a decat and if it was an out & out fail then that should of been noted at the test station & the car failed. I had never used them before so there was no back handers to get the car to pass, it just passed but they did say that the car was on the edge of failing.

 

[Lee Goodall]

I gave my old cat to Kev, otherwise you coulda had that.

She cant need that much mate?
I have some spare bits kicking around i am sure between us we can cobble her together to help the wedding fund

Cheers mate. She's in good condition really but there are a few bits that I'm fairly sure will need doing.

I might stick her in for the MOT and keep my fingers crossed!! They'll give me the ten days to sort out any issues for the free retest but you never know she might make it through (although she shouldn't have passed on lambda last time though really).