Author Archive

Hacking into it again.

September 23, 2009

Demoralising though it may be to discover copious amount of rust spots that the previous owner lied about, it is an inevitability in of car restoration.  My previous cheap drill had died during my last effort at the task at hand and not wanting to leave it sitting in gloom and doom, (due to being low on cash) today I decided that I’d buy a replacement cheap piece of crap drill to continue my effort of wire brushing all the paint and rust off the surface of my C110.  ($19.97, cheers Mitre 10 Mega)

Firstly I’ll show where I left off last time.  After the drill gave up and on the first decent sunny day, I rolled the car outside the garage and started to pull the interior out so I could get to some holes from the inside (Doesn’t sound good does it?  It’s not… trust me.)

Oxidisation, it takes my metal!

Oxidisation, it takes my metal!

It’s a little hard to see (even when you click the image for a slightly larger version.  You’ll have to take my word for it when I say that there’s holes along the hip line, down the bottom of the quarters, at the bottom of the doors, along the guttering and across the top of the windscreen.  Thank-fully (as shown previous) the holes in the sills are minimal, far less than I expected.

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Inspiration

September 22, 2009

Working at an Internet Cafe, I probably spend more time online checking out things for my cars than I could possibly spend doing to them, so I thought I would share a couple of images that I happened stumble upon…

We’ll start with a fairly impressive amount of solid colour RS-Watanabe eight-spoke, R Type.

C110 Skyline

S21 Prince Skyline (on the right)

What a Daihatsu MAX engine bay should look like.

What a Daihatsu MAX engine bay should look like.

Ahh.. one day mine will be comparable (in regards to all three)

-Michael

KB310 Sunny Sneak-peak

September 22, 2009

Potentially Picturesque

Potentially Picturesque

Coming to a reality near you. Owned by Rob. (You might know him from such blogs as RIVERSIDE)

SUNNY Special Shop

September 21, 2009

We hear you like Sunnys.  So we provide you with a link to a specialty Sunny store in where else, but Japan.

Introducing, Matsuoka Engineering – MOTOR SPORTS PRO SHOP

They appear to have everything you could ever want to do with the Sunny, from MSR Flat Valve Carbs to Weber and Mikuni options, to Interior parts, Exterior parts, Exhaust systems, Engine parts, ancillaries, if you can think it, it’s likely they have it.  Just browsing through the site lets you imagine building your dream Sunny and you don’t even have to change sites (perhaps to get wheels,  I guess).

I’ll let you check out what’s available yourself, here;

http://www.matsuoka-m.com/

Enjoy!

-Michael

The Travels of a Two-Stroke

September 18, 2009

It’s always interesting finding out the history of your cars.  I’ve been lucky enough that all my classics of recent time have come with their original ownership papers.  Where things were all… dun dun dun, HAND WRITTEN! between the owners.

The latest purchase, my 1974 Daihatsu Max, to my surprise has actually been around and about the country quite a bit, as you can see here on the papers;

Removed the owner’s details for privacy’s sake.  As you can see those, started by being sold brand new in Henderson, then onto Glenfield, then Milford then Grey Lynn.  All very Auckland up until the 5th owner at which point it starts moving further south.  Sadly to Tauranga.  However, owner 9 is a car sales from where it was sold to a family where it appears to have stayed within though through various owners until these ownership papers ran out of space.  It was within that family that it made the move from Tauranga to Balclutha.  Quite the distance from the top section of the North Island to near the bottom of the South.  From there it’s made it’s way further south and now in my Ownership, it’s as close to the south of the south as you’d want it to be.  Any further south and it’s likely to suffer salt damage from the sea breezes in the likes of Bluff or Riverton.  All this leads to a genuine 88000kms on the car, pretty impressive for a two-smoke and you can understand why it needs sorted now.

-Michael