Not for the first time I have come across a 30 year old car which looks like it was made yesterday . In nearly every case, they have included in the description, the fact that the vehicle was ' Ziebatred " from new.
What ever happened to this process. / Why did it die out ?
tinyurl.com/pjx58b
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wow I want that car (pitty about the colour). I can just imagine myself driving down the Kings Road in it while listening to the Clash and Buzzcocks. No doubt the car itself will arrive into Chelsea on the back of an AA truck though.
I've noticed the same about ziebatered thoughl
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it was a franchise operation
manufacturers woke up to the fact that people liked cars that didnt unpeal before their eyes so the zeibart places shut one by one to be replaced my places that now do scotchguard and paint protection systems
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Just found an Austin Maxi on the same site. 30 years old - Ziebarted ! Its like brand new
Will any of the new scotchguard / paint protection systems leave us with todays vehicles looking as new in 30 years time.
It must have been a magical process as some of the examples I seen are just mind blowing ( I checked on a couple last year and they hadn't been re sprayed ).
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Galvanising.
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most cars used to rust where the grubber robbits were put in the bodies for the ziebart process
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There are some nice memories in that link...
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Thanks Mr X! Started looking at the the classic Ford stuff :-(
Not a bad site.
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I'm addicted to the 70's section.
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Oh dear - sold the Golf today, some car money sloshing around, Morris 1000 ?, That Vauxhall ?
Oh dear.
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its an excellant site
far far better than that online auction place thats full of tat
just be aware that the cars are all over the world before you ring who flung dung for that low mileage tut tut
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I'd like to put the Maxi in a glass case on my front lawn. The family had 3 of these from their inception. The last one was ' Tundra Green ' a fantastic colour I've never seen since.
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could never sell green cars in yorkshire till this last 20 years ish
nobody would buy them
bad luck apparentlly
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>could never sell green cars in yorkshire till this last 20 years ish
nobody would buy them
bad luck apparentlly<
When I lived on the magical Isle of Portland I had a neighbour, a builder, who bought a Tranny van and just a few weeks later collided with an old lady - notorious locally for her appalling driving - in a Rover P4.
He said: 'It was my fault really, I knew I shouldn't have bought a green one'.
And that's just one of the many superstitions still fervently believed down there...
ps: a couple of weeks ago I bid up to 3k on eBay for a 1984 Honda Accord hatch that had had a similar treatment to Ziebart when new and was absolutely mint. I would much rather have something like that than a Jazz. Unfortunately someone else thought the same.
Edited by mike hannon on 27/05/2009 at 12:01
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>could never sell green cars in yorkshire till this last 20 years ish nobody would buy them bad luck apparentlly<
I seem to remember that the superstition comes from Victorian times when green paint contained higer than normal levels of lead, and those whose living rooms were painted green sometimes died young......
Or perhaps I've been had.
My Dad was killed riding a green Kawasaki motorbike (this very day 26 years ago as it happens), but my Mum's green MG Maestro and subsequent green Fiat Multipla have not taken any lives. Nor my green Fiat Stilo.
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>>When I lived on the magical Isle of Portland
Funny people there.
Can't use the American name for the VW Golf and I was told a certain Wallace & Grommet film had to be re-titled. ;>)
Edited by bathtub tom on 27/05/2009 at 20:24
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I knew I shouldn't have bought a green one'.
And that's just one of the many superstitions still fervently believed down there...
South London minicabbers had the same superstition when I was one. Not without reason perhaps. There were two green motors in our firm, an olive green Cortina MkII and a VX 4/90 like the one at the top of this thread, in pale green metallic.
The Cortina sustained front wing damage the owner, a fairly smart London kid, couldn't afford to fix, so went about looking sorry. The VX4/90 wrote itself and another car off doing 70 down Lavender Hill, putting both drivers in hospital. The driver was a flash rural wally from the south coast. Went back there no doubt.
Edited by Lud on 28/05/2009 at 04:33
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its an excellant site far far better than that online auction place thats full of tat
>>
I enjoyed the "any" section including the V8 London taxi.
The Fascel Vega prices made my eyes water:-)
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if I max out one of my CC I can get a
1972 Lancia Fulvia Zagato 1300 Sport
I musnt ... Imusnt.....................
Edited by Webmaster on 27/05/2009 at 02:07
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1972 Lancia Fulvia Zagato 1300 Sport
If ever a car needed Ziebarting (and keeping in a tank of oil in an air conditioned garage) it was a seventies Fulvia.
A friend had an HF1600 inherited from his mother, a lady who liked nice cars, but later sold it because it seemed to be getting rusty and expensive to run. A couple of years later he saw it advertised for sale and we went to look at it. The floor on the driver's side had fallen out and had been repaired with a bit of metal pop-riveted on. Needless to say my buddy didn't buy it back. It was a fantastic car though. Went like anything, handled and had that sweet narrow-angle V4 with mucho poke...
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Why splash out on a new fiat panda or similar when you could have something like this for your local run a round ?
tinyurl.com/qonesh
Of course I'd want to look underneath and give the sills a good poke but £1,500.! I know people who spend that on a fortnights holiday and I know which I'd rather have.
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Its a Fiesta. Its the holiday every time.
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Does on body on this forum own a Ziebarted car ?
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What a cracking website Mr X has introduced us to, procrastination central! I think it's nice to see the ordinary stuff like the aforementioned Fiesta in such good nick because you just don't expect it. Most people are only willing to invest serious time and money in exotica, with good reason, but it's the bread & butter stuff on this site that makees you feel you've travelled back in time.
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I see some of those vehicles as really usable classics. If looked after with a degree of care and attention, there's no reason why they couldn't retain their appeal whilst being enjoyed.
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Wow I would buy that Fiesta if I had the space and money. Truly stunning car the last time I saw a MK2 like that was probably circa 1990. I love basic old classics because they are what the people drove. Also you see a lot of XR2s but they have all been abused and modified.
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I bought a brand new Fiat 131s in 1978 and had it Ziebarted. It started rusting after very few years and was only put out of it's misery by a nasty smash after about 9 years - it would'nt have lasted much longer. I think Ziebart helped only if the car was fairly well made in the first place.
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Car manufacturers started designing bodies which didn't have open box sections and wings which collected mud. These were the things which promoted corrosion. Later improvements were factory-applied underseal and galvanising. The demand for aftermarket undersealing dwindled and the companies went out of business.
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I had a 1964 Renault 8 which had the Ziebart treatment, there was a little sticker in the rear window. When I bought it in the early 1990s and dragged it out of the farmer's ditch it needed no welding at all, sailed through it's MoT and needed no welding over the year or two I owned it.
Was it supposed to be an annual treatment at the time? That little Renault must have had quite a lot of them to survive so well
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I had a family member work for and apply Ziebart in Hull in the 70's.
He used to come home absolutely stinking of the stuff.
Thick browny blackish tar like deposits on his boots and work clothes.
He worked mostly on commercial vehicle chassis straight off the docks but they also did all types of vehicles there too.
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It died out because it was crap.
As Bell boy has said, my metro was rusting away on the sills at every drilled hole.
Not hard to work out why, a virgin hole ,with bare metal starts rusting with in weeks.
Just to rub my nose in it the top of the wings was rusting at 2.5 years!
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Does on body on this forum own a Ziebarted car ?
My Maxi's not Ziebarted, but it was undersealed from new and garaged, so it also in really good nick... though the colour is one of those classic 70s colours... Russet Brown!!
The alternative to ziebarting, was, I think, Waxoil, which I think is still going... the cars in the late 70s early 80s had some form of protection, unlike the early 70s stuff, thats why Maxi2s (80 to 82) tend to look so much better... and they had some decent paint colours by then as well!!
TBH anything from the late 60s early 70s thats in really good nick has either been rebuilt recently or garaged all its life and not let out in the snow and ice, even ziebarting would struggle with over 30 years of salt!
Edited by b308 on 27/05/2009 at 09:40
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We had three in the family at one time or another that had been treated in this way. Mum had a Mini and a Renault 5 but her brother led the way c.1972 with a Peugeot 304.
Success depended on the thoroughness of the franchise and the design of the vehicle - it worked best in box sections. The mini still rusted on the A panels ahead of the doors and the R5 over the rear wheels. The Mini's floor remained intact after 6 years though, more than could be said for the '66 model that preceded it. But that was in almond green so perhaps the Yorkshire bad luck got it.
Treated vehicles had a distinctive smell, reducing over time but still apparent after several years if left standing in the sun. A sniff today would take me straight back to Bank Holiday trips to Scarborough!
Edited by Bromptonaut on 27/05/2009 at 09:35
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I've owned a couple of Ziebarted classics over the years and both were in remarkable condition, no rust at all let alone around the drilled holes. As it was a franchise operation the efficacy of the treatment would be down to the care the operative took in the first place. Done properly, it was very effective from my experience.
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I worked at a garage that operated a Ziebart franchise in the 70's and I remember that they couldn't do a fair number of "new" cars as they were already going rusty.
I know, reading the Mercedes forums, that a lot of owners of older Mercs get them Waxoyled.
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I've owned a couple of Ziebarted classics over the years and both were in remarkable
>>condition no rust at all let alone around the drilled holes.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>im talking bread and butter escorts vivas minis that kind of rubbish----------you might consider it a classic now but back then they were just rubbish to tart up and sell on and trust me they were indeed rotten round the rommits.
It was even harder to weld these ziebarted/waxoyled cars up as the oils/fats used to run out and catch fire and buzz as they cooked and the worst thing was the fire in the cavities used to go along the sills/rear quarters and set fire to stuff like seat belts.
old cars/c;assics/pah
Did i mention i set fire to an old "classic" by welding at one end and it caught fire at the other?
since that day ive always been a firm believer in black smoke does indeed kill and my fire alarms at home are checked weekly
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Did i mention i set fire to an old "classic" by welding at one end and it caught fire at the other? since that day ive always been a firm believer in black smoke does indeed kill and my fire alarms at home are checked weekly
I also set fire to my Mk1 Astra, by welding at oneside and it caught fire at the other, managed to put it out in time with very minimal damage that i fixed. but it could have been a different story, with a "mushroom cloud" of smoke rising above the Stockton area countryside :-)
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Had a new Fiesta 1.1L Ziebarted in 1980. Stayed good for the 5 years I kept it but often wished I could have seen it as it got older. Probably not needed but as my previous car was an Alfasud I wasn't going to take any chances with the tin worms!
Steve.
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There is a garage not far from where I live. They specialise in undersealing and waxoyling classic/ older cars. They use dry ice to clean the underside, something or other to dry out the box sections and then they use underseal and different types of wax to preserve the chassis, inside of the box sections, bottoms of the doors, etc. If you are really mad or rich they will also dismantle, sandblast and powder coat your suspension components.
It's a thriving business as there is a massive classic car boom in Germany at the moment. I hope they survive the downturn.
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I have recently given the internals of my Honda XRV750's frame a good coating with ACF50 as best I can to hopefully achieve the same thing
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Had a new Fiesta 1.1L Ziebarted in 1980. Stayed good for the 5 years I kept it but often wished I could have seen it as it got older.
you probably have seen it lately, when did you last open a tin of beans etc etc
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Some very optimistic pricing on that classic car site. There's someone asking 2 grand for a Vauxhall Viva, 3 and a half grand for a Vauxhall ShoveIt and 12 grand for a Mk1 VW Golf!
The Alfasuds by comparison seem good value and there's one of the only Citroen GS Birotors left in the world up for grabs! Any takers?
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There can't be many Vauxhall Vivas left knocking about in a reasonable condition so I wouldn't carp about £2,000. It's not going to rocket in value but kept in good nick, should hold most of the value it all ready has. Compare that with the 0.5% interest on £2,000 that you'd get off one of our Spanish owned building societies . I'd be better off with the Viva.
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I think that you are probably right, whilst the cars that had "performance" versions like the Escort and Cortina have quite a few left because people have tended to get lower powered versions and re-engine them, the more common "run of the mill" cars have all but disappeared... 70s cars like the Viva, Marina and Maxi are now very rare.
I reckon you should be able to get a decent one for a little less, though - Practical Classics and Classics Monthly both have current value sections which should give you a better idea of values... That site is very hit and miss, the more expensive cars tend to be dealers, try looking at the Owners Clubs for decent, lower priced examples.
Edited by b308 on 27/05/2009 at 21:46
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There can't be many Vauxhall Vivas left knocking about in a reasonable condition so I wouldn't carp about £2 000.
My first car was a Mk2 Ford Escort which was rubbish. 2 of my mates at the time had Vauxhall Vivas. The only good thing about the Vivas was that they made my Escort look like a Mercedes by comparison. Honestly, Vivas were terrible things. Truly horrible to drive even by the standards of the late 70s.
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