Happy New Year to all retro-classics readers

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… (more…)

Previous owners, they’re special people.

FFUUUUUUUUU

Attempts to find a motor on it’s own for my newly purchased coupe a whole sedan came up on trademe, it was de-registered but completely stock. This meant it was an ideal candidate for a motor and everything else I require, as luck would have it, it was also red!

HR30 Skyline sedan – Donor car

I won the auction and drove to Ashburton a few weekends later to pick up the new acquisition, seeing it in person it was even cleaner than the auction had let on. The previous owner was sad to see it go, he’d replaced it with an R33 GTS25t coupe some years ago, de-registered it and then used it to tow around a horse doo-dad which it had been doing quite happily for some 8 years.

I managed to get the trip to collect done in a single day, leaving me at least on day of the weekend to recover and relax before returning to work.

The subsequent week at work I managed to pull a muscle in my back.  Not ideal as it has put somewhat of a halt on proceedings to get the precious parts switched from one to the other.  I did however cautiously and gingerly waddle about removing as much of the easier to remove stuff as I could on the coupe, leaving it looking like this…  (more…)

In an effort to find some replacement suspension for the back of my R30, I decided to remove the rear springs to get some measurements, they’re there, so why not get an actual measurement of what was in it as opposed to what the internet says.

The result of removing my “Monroe Gas-matics” was this;

There is no space for your jack, sorry.

No guard gap. (primarily due to the massive 235/60 tire)

Tempting to remove the front springs too…

Hah!  So hilarious.  I’ll get something back in there ASAP, a closer level to this than the previous though.

-Michael

In a slightly disappointing note, I had to sell my Bluebird recently as another car popped up on TM that I have been searching for a variant of for many years.  It’s not exactly what I was after but I’m still pretty stoked as it’s the most important thing.

Stopped outside Hinds awesome car garage on the way home.

In case you’re unaware, it’s a 1983 Nissan Skyline GT-EX Coupe.  So.  Freakin’.  Stoked.

It’s currently not running and needs a few bits of work done on it to get it up to scratch.  The trademe ad claimed it wouldn’t take too much to get going but it’s got no sump or pick-up and the engine is in an unknown state of repair, no exhaust system and monster truck tyres.  The manual conversion is average at best but nothing that can’t be fixed.  It’s factory L20ET, R200 rear-end, disc brakes all round, awesomeness just waiting to happen.

The first thing I did after I got it home and the weather allowed was to re-attach the driver’s side door card which had been taken off to look into why the electric window wasn’t working.  I’ll get onto that later after I’ve bought a battery to see just how much of, if anything, of the electrical system is still wired in.

The interior is in pretty good condition, for its age very good, really.

In between more weather I managed to “repair” the passenger door pinching on the fender and not opening/also bending the fender.  Then today I got a little lazy and rather than trying to repair anything I thought I would try on the SSR’s I have on the Sunny.

This is how it looks with it’s monster tires and wheel combo that’s on it;  (more…)