[Boot Hill Bandit]

John.....

Just buy it if you like it bud! No car is ever going to be perfect and once you have it you can take some pride in putting it right. Judging by the fantastic friendly atmosphere here I am sure any niggles can be sorted out which mostly sound to me to be 'time' rather than money.

Invest in a cat back system for a fit and forget approach for at least 3 or 4 years......

See if you can get your car onto a 4 post lift one weekend and clean off the underside of the car and get it painted in underbodyseal it will save you worrying about that rust taking hold and it will even drown some roadnoise out.

To clean the car off properly I would use a light brush and 'truckwash' to get the worst off and then being carefull and working in small sections use white spirit or similar to remove any 'grease' film and original underseal.........there is some method in my madness..........to get back to the original paint finish........when you are there you can see any 'rust' affected areas that need attention first........after that you can put the underseal on.

Reason for all that..........my mk2 Fiesta 1.1 I had as a first car I wanted to fit a tow bar on.........so I had to clean a patch off to get metal to metal........I ended up getting carried away with doing the whole boot floor section and painting in hammerite. Needless to say on checking this part out frequently it was immaculate whereas the rest of the underside was not.

Sure some 'restorers' on here might have some better advice (Stamford??) but its worth doing if you want to keep the car and avoid problems later.

Jim