At the moment I have a basic Mk1 which I can manage to maintain with the help of a local mechanic at home. (No PAS, handraulic windows, no air con etc). To help my daughter out I was considering giving her this car and go for a 1.8 Mk2.
With all of the extra gizmos (ABS, PAS Air Con etc) the newer car will have, is it still reasonable to expect to be able to do most repairs / maintenance at home?
The mechanic is a wonderful old guy who will do most things, but things like the ABS etc is new territory to me and probably to old Eddy (being into bangernomics, none of my cars have had anything that fancy yet) I am a little concerned about our ability to cope with all of this new magic stuff.
Are most of the gizmos still manageable by fairly competant mechanics at home? I appreciate things like Air Con chargeing etc needs specialist help.
The cars are very similar with respect to maintenace. As you say you need a pro for the air con, pas is very simple hydraulics, abs, very few if any problems on either this forum of it’s predecessor, but if you have abs problems then another expert is called for, the rest is basically the same. One problem you will have, without going to USA e bay, or paying a fortune to mazda you can’t get a Mk2 workshop manual, however the 1.8 book by Rod Grainger gives you pretty well everything you want to know…enjoy
ABS is not really as scary as it sounds - if you buy an OBD tool (plenty on eBay for not a lot of money), you can get the fault code for whatever component on the car is playing up (whether it is ABS sensors, Oil pressure sender, or something more complicated), which makes it straight forward to diagnose faults and repair/replace the parts.
As Geoff said, ABS issus are pretty rare, and let’s face it - there are plenty of competent mechanics out there who don’t charge an arm and a leg should you not want to tackle something yourself - but start looking for them now, because that is by far the hardest part!
Have found a nice V reg 1.8, no A/C, no ABS, no dings, drives well and looks very tidy. Many of the other special editions’ ride heights are too low as my drive access is a restriction I cannot overcome, so in a way it solves my problems / worries with those ‘modern’ gizmos. As I have never owned a car with A/C, ABS they are things I won’t miss anyway.
