Automotive Maintenance

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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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

Wherefore art thou, shades?

August 27, 2009

from the day I bought my latest AW11 MR2 I’ve been slightly annoyed by its lack of interior t-top shades, which makes driving in direct sunlight a bit of a drain at times (the sunvisors are of limited use).

63301A and 63302A, is it really too much to ask for?

So ever the completist/OCDist (depending on who you talk to) I set about tracking down a decent pair of the blasted things. Now most AW11 owners will tell you the t-top shades along with the facelift front lip valance are the two most incredibly difficult items to obtain replacements of. Turns out they were only partially right, as within a day I had tracked down a brand new front lip valance (ex Toyota Japan, no less; those people I see whinging on MR2 forums ought to do their homework better!) but the shades proved to be far more elusive, and what I hadn’t prepared myself for was the pricing: a whopping $925 per side provided Toyota still had new old stock lying around… screw that idea.

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Cleaning & Detailing.

December 16, 2008

Having once worked as a Car Groomer, I have a great appreciation for those that take a massive amount of time and effort to properly and sometimes anally clean their or other peoples vehicles.  There’s likely a few different websites and forums about that are dedicated to this type of thing but one of the more well known ones is detailingworld.co.uk

Though a lot of people seem to scoff at those that go right to the extreme of measuring the depth of the paint and such things, it’s these fastidious details that pass on and allow the lives of cars to continue in other’s hands rather than being sent to the scrapper.

Here’s a few before and after’s,  lots of the threads on detailingworld.co.uk are worth a good gander.  Of course, once you’re there, feel free to have a nosey about, there’s some epic skill on show and some fine machinery also.

Before

Before

After

After

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