This was my first car. It was a 1979 Skoda 105 in a bright light green with black, either velour or plastic, seats. Can’t remember which. I got given it for nothing. I seem to remember that I had to weld new seals on to it at some point I got these from Berskshire panels up in High Wycombe, I think the cost was around £3.00 each which I remmember as it was stupidly cheap. I also remember this being my first outing with a MIG welder (Metal Inert Gas). It was not a neat job and was a bit blobby in places but after grinding it all down and painting it passed the MOT so must have been good enough.
It suffered from the usual engine overheating issues caused by the cylinder head warping after the head gasket blew. This needed to be skimmed back to flatness which I got done up at a company in Oxford called Oselli Engineering. Don’t ask me how I remeber all this trivia after 35 years…… it just seem sto come back as I write it down, one thing leads to another. I also had to change all the brake lines on it which took quite a while grubbing around underneath with a pipe bender, flaring tool and about 30 metres of copper piping but it was strangely satisfying, lots of pipe flaring and bending. Most therapeutic and I remeber being pretty pleased with the result.
One of the other issues with these was that you nearly always had to be doing something every week to keep it running properly. Usually it was the point as they closed up regularly and then the car was hard to start. Next thing was the tyres which were on alloy wheels whish used to shed it lacquer. This meant that the tyres kept going down. Alos remember I had a shocking vibration at around 50 mph this used to feel that the car had an oval tyre on one corner. Didn’t do it for days on end then it would suddenly start and near shake the thing to bits. Took ages to find it, turned out to be an egg shaped swelling on the sidewall of one of the front tyres. Went down when it cooled so took quite a while to find it. Other issue was freezing of the heater pipes which ran from the radiator in the front of the car all the way to the engine in the back. These were prone to icing if the antifreeze was neglected.
One other trait was that the car handled a lot better if my big toolbox was in the bonnet in the front as this made the handling a lot more sure footed, if this wasn’t done then the front had a tendancy to go straight on if you threw it into a bend too fast. I still have this in teh garage. Its an old PROTO cabinet from the 1970s which I paid £60 for.
Not too bad as a car. and seeing as it was free, was a bit of a bargain. Kept me dry and never failed to start except in the mornings, evenings and when you were in a hurry, so pretty much all the time……
Don’t have any pictures of it sadly. So here’s a stock one from the intermaweb….
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