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General Looking at a Marbella

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General Looking at a Marbella

Nuova500

Nuova500

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Going to have a wee look at a Marbella tommorow... hears cries of laughter:)
Its for my wife, her VW is too thirsty and we were offered a Greg Polo cheap, but Im not sure about them! So, theres a 44000 mile Seat down the road about 10 miles, got to be worth a peep:)
 
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I was gonna say about £200/300. TBH at 44k as long as the body is half decent you can't go wrong.
www seatcupra.net will be able to help you. (I've been a member there for years!)

Should't be anything you can't fix yourself, it was built with nuts and bolts not a laptop!
 
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Service bits may be????? the only thing I got to fit a panda was the wheel bolts they other things look similar don't be fooled glass no chance different curv. on corners door locks handles yuk. full doors yes but need to be altered.
Hope this helps you, if you can stick to pandas and you can still get solid 20 year old pandas!
 
i had a marbella a couple of years ago it was a special edition "jeans" it was dark blue and the seats where denim i liked it it was the winter car one year when i had sally the sisley. i paid £15 for it from a scrappy the body was mint but the head gasket had gone (which i did) i would have another they are more scarce than pandas now! i only sold it when this bloke came up up to me and begged me to sell it him for his missis i think he gave me £400 for it that was back in 2002 i passed it on the motorway this summer still going and still looking mint.
 
That was interesting, drove very well and it really had no rust, a very clean Marbella. But, bits were falling off like door locks and trim. Gearbox was an experiance and it doesnt pull like the Panda 903, must be gear ratios. The thing that killed it was a massive amount of creamy gunk under the oil filler cap, and another 2"s or so in the filler neck. Owner thinks its because of cold weather but I decided to walk away. Its no Panda:)
 
nuovapanda said:
That was interesting, drove very well and it really had no rust, a very clean Marbella. But, bits were falling off like door locks and trim. Gearbox was an experiance and it doesnt pull like the Panda 903, must be gear ratios. The thing that killed it was a massive amount of creamy gunk under the oil filler cap, and another 2"s or so in the filler neck. Owner thinks its because of cold weather but I decided to walk away. Its no Panda:)
Click to expand...
Yeah that cold weather :rolleyes: :spin:

Shame really. Never mind "plenty more fish..." as they say.
 
LOL, my Panda has a small amount under the filler cap but its not much. But the Marbella had loads of it, looked like a blancmange:)
Oh well, back to trying to fix the VW for now... bit of luck as a mate has a Mk3 Golf with exactly the same engine management system as our Passat, so will swap sensors over till we find the one thats faulty.
Ideally, if I could find a real nice Panda, the wife could have the Dance:)
 
I had a G reg Marbella GLX with the 903cc engine and was very pleased with it until no. 2 son drowned it in a rhyne 3 weeks after passing his test! (it came out cleaner than it went in, but was written off). A bit like driving a box full of cutlery, but just as much fun as the 2 Pandas I've had. As to that engine, I had it in a C1973 Fiat 127, the Marbella and an old Panda. In all 3, 2 from new, we always got 'mayonnaise' in the filler cap and were regularly cleaning it out of the breather pipes, but it never seemed to affect performance and just seemed to be a characteristic of that particular engine. No sign of using coolant or anything like that. I think it was just condensation mixing with the oil. Always a bit worse in colder weather, but still got it in summer too. The only 2 faults with the car, easily remedied, were that, from new, a wire from the coil had to be glued back onto the bodywork to stop the drive belt rubbing on it and a similar problem inside the distributor cap where the LT wire was rubbed through by being in contact with the rotor arm. That caused me to break down once, but easily fixed by shortening or bending the wire out of the way. So I wouldn't let the mayonnaise put you off provided you're prepared to get in there with an old towel once a week and run a rag through the short breather tube too.
 
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He said he had to clean it out of the breathers too! But, I never have to do that on my 903 and I know it doesnt even run up to temp. properly, the Marbella could well be OK but there are plenty of cars out there. It also had a noisy wheel bearing on left hand lock.
If it were for me then Id say yes, but I want the wife to feel it wont break down straight away and she wasnt happy seeing all the mayo:)

I just cant get over how underpowered it felt compared to my 903 Panda, it revved up fine and didnt feel like anything was wrong, if anything the ignition system felt smoother than my car! But it just felt soooo slow.
 
If you're (still) thinking about the Polo you aught to read this

The bottom line is, provided you're capable of doing work on it yourself, they're quite well put together and if you go to the right places - like GSF - for parts they can be cheap motoring. There are one or two nasty jobs, like the breather, but it's all detailed somewhere under the "Bangernomics" umbrella.

P.S. you want to watch out for a bastardised engine management system driving a carburettor on late Marbellas - it's a horror.
 
I think driving the Marbella has put me off them, it felt exatly like a cheap copy of a Fiat, Polo is still there, it will have years MOT and be around £250... its very clean and a G reg Fox, so not the nasty Spanish built ones:)
Stillo, would rather find another Panda:) Cant wait to get shot of the Passat:(
 
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