My new motor - a 1992 17TXD Turbo. My first BX that isn't either a 19 diesel or a 16-valve, and my fifth BX in total (taking me up to two in current ownership). 104,980 miles on the clock, some important stuff changed recently (clutch and cambelt), very clean condition but very poor paint on the front bumper, bonnet and silly pram handle. Gave it a check over and it's solid in most of the important places, though rot is starting to chew on the rear end a bit - something I plan to tackle sooner rather than later given how bad things can get! Sills, A posts (one repaired), B posts and C posts are all solid, as are the inner wheelarches - though the engine bay sides will need attending to.
The red light of doom came on as the bloke drove me to his house. Just a flicker, but reminding me that there's a leak from the regulator pipework. Sadly the chap had no LHM and foolishly, I hadn't brought any with me, even though this was a declared fault. Duh!
But, it was good enough for me at the money so payment and paperwork was sorted and I was off! I realised I hadn't tried the sunroof so within a few yards of the bloke's house, I tried to tilt it. Nothing. I then did something really silly and tried it the other way. It slid back merrily! It still wouldn't go the other way. DOH! I quickly pulled over, pulled down the flap and tried manually cranking it. Nothing. Tried the buttons again. Success! Right, leave the sunroof alone then!
Filled up with fuel (not used to be able to get £70 worth into a BX...) and got straight onto the M1. 70mph came up quickly - what a change! Sadly it was accompanied by a really bad vibration through the wheel. I suspect a wheel balance issue as those lovely alloys have no centre hole, and most places can't be bothered to fit the adapter necessary to balance them. Being sporting, I could say that perhaps a weight had fallen off.
After a couple of hours, I'd reached Newtown in Wales without problem. But then it started raining. How do people drive around with such useless wipers?! The blade was ancient and I'd have had better visibility if I waved an oily rag over the windscreen. I pinched the blade off the back to improve things. This is actually an improvement.
Needless to say, none of the petrol stations sold anything as useful as wiper blades. Grrrr!
The rain eased as I almost reached home, so I took a couple of pics.
It has some really bad clonks from the front end. A balljoint was an advisory last MOT (November) but I wonder if there's something else as there are all sorts of clonks and creaks. I've had pretty bad balljoints that didn't really make a sound. There is also some creaking from the back end, which we can be pretty sure is arm bearings. The ride is firm and a touch bouncy too, though I don't know if that's just because it has firmer spheres.
It drives really well otherwise, much better off-boost than I expected with a much more progressive power delivery than I recall from my Pug 306 DTurbo. I love the taller gearing too. I may be a convert...
