Simplicity.

…and if you’re curious to see what they look like when backlit – click here.

For that authentic 1980s look.

Which is all kinds of odd; you’d expect maybe one or two to at least work partially, however for the price and the age of the equipment I suppose I shouldn’t complain, especially since a pretend sparky like me can easily replace the old-style bulbs with LEDs for a slightly more modern twist!

Armed with a disassembly guide I’d found on the interwebs and a few trusty tools, I set to work…

After somewhat apprehensively prying the front bezel off I carefully de-soldered the old-style incandescent lamps from the existing circuit board and replaced them with a pair of white LEDs and in-line resistors.

The old lamps are in the bottom left, and are both in fact blown.

The simplicity of the entire package is amazing, and I was careful not to upset the calibration of the gauge itself.

The question is... will it go back together again properly?

Success! There are a couple of bright spots thanks to the LED positioning, but once in the car it shouldn’t be as noticeable. Re-assembly will take place once I buy some paint to touch up the bezel, as unfortunately the only way to disassemble these gauges is with excessive prying force. Hopefully once they are mounted in the instrument panel on the car the damage/markings won’t be visible.

One gauge down, two to go.

Usually you’re the only person around for miles, and the tranquility is stunning.

Different year, different car.

Here are some older shots from over the years: 2007, 2007 again, 2008, 2010.

what do you go home to?

…and somewhere quiet to snap a photo or two.

You know you have a good daily when the damn thing just keeps on soldiering on and on and on! Apart from needing to change a front right wheel bearing/hub carrier for a WOF, the last year of AW11 motoring has been relatively trouble-free. This car has just ticked over 242,000km and really exemplifies the meaning of “reliable daily driver”!

So over the holiday break I decided to give the MR2 a bit of attention and swap over the black interior that’s been lurking in the depths of my shed for over a year. This entailed gutting the whole cabin on what seemed like the hottest two days of summer so far, and then spending another two days of re-assembly. The results were worth it in the end though!

Goodbye tacky smurf/electric blue.

With the black interior I guarantee the cabin temperature will be a thousand times worse while sitting in the sun, so I should probably re-gas the A/C like I said I was gonna…

Hello low-key black goodness.

The difference between black and blue is most evident in this shot comparing the old and new door cards:

Whoever optioned blue interior needs to have their eyes adjusted!

Fabric pattern of the ’89 spec seats doesn’t match the door cards – I assume this is because they are manual-winder as opposed to the more prevalent electric type.

A strange aesthetic mismatch.

and to finish, another view of the cockpit. And no, I still haven’t painted those wing mirrors. Or the rear spoiler, or the wheels, for that matter… I’ll get there!

What a difference black makes!

Save for a few little odds and ends (which remain blue) the conversion is 99% complete. I’m hoping to be able to slowly collect the missing bits from trademe, or even trawl pick a part for the more “generic” ’80s Toyota stuff like door handle surrounds over time.

But enough daily love! I should really turn my attention back to some of the other cars currently languishing in the shed…

A Celica like none other...

Over the weekend of 3rd-4th November a large and varied group of oldschool.co.nz club members made a pilgrimage to Hahei, on the idyllic Coromandel Peninsula, for a meet-and-greet with none other than Rod Millen, famous championship winning driver in various motorsport disciplines and proprietor of the Leadfoot Ranch.

Convoy enroute to the Coromandel, via State Highway 2.

Leaving bright and early from the convening point at Bombay just outside of Auckland, roughly 20 cars made their leisurely way to the Coromandel, stopping in the towns of Kopu and Tairua along the way for rest, refreshment, and to meet up with members from other parts of the country – some travelling from as far as Taupo – eventually arriving at Rod Millen’s sprawling ranch just outside of Hahei around 11am.

Assembling at the Ranch.

Our group was immediately shown into the large barn adjacent to the parkup spot to be greeted by Rod and Shelly, who gave a short but detailed and colourful history of the vehicles contained within. Included in the collection were Rod’s meticulously rebuilt RX-3, a pair of mighty Tundra stadium trucks, his 2007 Transsyberia Rally-winning Porsche Cayenne, a couple of quirky prototype vehicles, and of course the famous Pro Rally RX-7 and Pikes Peak Celica… both championship winners over multiple years in the ’80s and ’90s respectively.

The Barn.

After the meet-and-greet we had the opportunity to mill around browsing the collection of vehicles and take photos to our hearts’ content, while Rod chatted with various groups and individuals in turn. It was somewhat humbling to see him taking the time to answer various questions and shoot the breeze with so many of us!

Of particular interest to me was Rod’s SCCA Pro Rally Championship winning Series 3 RX-7, a vehicle which inspired my own love of RX-7s growing up. This particular example runs a fascinatingly unique 4WD drivetrain prepared by Weismann in California for the Pro Rally series in the early 1980s. As Rod put it, “we did it in order to beat Audi’s quattro!”

Pro Rally 4WD RX-7. Click photo for walkaround video!

And of course, parked square in the middle of the barn towards the rear of the room, sat Rod’s “Unlimited” Pikes Peak winning 1000hp Celica in all of its outrageously sculpted aerodynamic glory. Of certain note is the fact that the 10:04 minute start-to-finish record set by this car in 1994 cannot technically be broken!

There’s already discussion of entering an oldschool.co.nz club stand at the 2013 Festival, so hopefully this is only just the beginning.

Peeking under the bonnet of the RX-3.

Additional photos courtesy of Automotive Culture – check out their album of shots from the Leadfoot Cruise here. Thanks to Ryan Fels for the driveway video footage!

Details for Leadfoot Festival 2013 can be found here.

After so many frustrating dead ends and one false start approaching nervous breakdown proportions earlier this year, I never thought I would see the day my RX-7 finally looked like this:

Look ma, no rear seats!

False start, you may ask? Turns out the “seller” of the rear conversion parts I “purchased” at the end of last year (see this blog post) turned out to be nothing more than a conman, and I ended up $250 poorer as a result of his swindling. (in a nutshell: he claimed that the parts were “lost” by UPS yet couldn’t provide any tracking info once probed, and UPS couldn’t help me, as only the seller can lodge claims in such circumstances, leaving me neatly trapped in the middle with no recourse).

Fortunately in the end PayPal came to my rescue by refunding $200 (75%) of my transaction amount, and with confidence somewhat restored I resumed the hunt for the parts I so badly needed.

Around halfway through April, after asking around a couple more forums and ringing a bunch of rotary wreckers in the United States, one of the latter companies finally managed to put me on to a private collector/restorer/hoarder in Michigan who also runs his own eBay store as a side business. A flurry of emails were exchanged, and hey presto:

A nice pair of rear boot panels.

A nice pair of storage bins and frames. Perfect.

A quick skim through the seller’s eBay history quickly established him as a legitimate trader and a price for the parts was agreed upon, with monies duly transferred. I then commissioned the help of Chucks Restoration Services to forward these items from the USA to Auckland in one of their regular containers – thanks to oldschool.co.nz forum user andy for the recommendation!

So with the conversion bits and pieces on their way to Chucks’ freight forwarding depot in Orange County, LA, the only thing left to do was wait. Roll on part two of the story!

Must. Complete. Squid.

Maximum Low.

I’ve been following zeki‘s Minkara blog for some time and his DR30 sedan is picture-perfect in terms of aesthetics.

This is 'stance' I could definitely live with.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I’m fervently hoping I can pull off a look with squid that’s even half as clean. I don’t have the wide Wats but I do have some Ewings that might do the trick!

Cherry blossoms! So iconic.

Perhaps 2012 will finally be Year of the Squid?

photos courtesy of zeki @ minkara

This is cassette deck build number two, a KP-717G deck from 1983 with added attenuator circuit (to bring the auxiliary input down to a level which the onboard pre-amp can handle), outputting through a CD-5 graphic equalizer into a pair of (hidden) amps.

At the moment only the front speakers are functional… they’re fucked and need replacing anyway, as evidenced by the awful crackle in the video – I won’t hook up the rears until the two-seater conversion parts arrive.

which should be sometime in the next few weeks. Then I can hit the streets with some phat beats playing, haha.

aka, Operation: Moneypit.

These two cars alone have cost me infinitely more in time, money and sanity than all of the others combined…

And I’m still determined on resurrecting the black one. What on earth could be wrong with me? No, wait, don’t answer that.