When I bought my 110, way back when. I was lead to believe by the seller that there was very little rust in it. He made mention of a few points that were a concern but there was certainly nothing major and it was in fact, “The best 240K I’ve seen, as far as rust goes and I’ve owned a few.”. Sure, it’s a line, I realise that, I’m not entirely stupid. What I did not realise was the extent of the deception. So without further delay I shall bring you fine observers up to speed with the stripping back to metal of my C110. Firstly, here is what I began with, from the rear;
Obvious signs but not all bad, right?
BZZZT! Wrong. Sure, it’s not entirely cheese but it’s hardly fantastic. Observe!
That time of year has rolled around again which meant it was time to drive for several hours up to Alexandra from Invercargill on the Sunday to see the Drag Racing and witness the cars parked in and about the area at such a time. As usual, they did not disappoint. Entries were up on last year and thankfully so were the numbers of older cars competing. I kept my photos as much to the classic and retro scale of things as possible though I didn’t have my camera on me at all times and towards the end of the day I got a bit lazy and probably missed out on taking photos of a good 20-30 classics sitting in the parking area. Mopars were represented in a large proportion, as is typical, they seems to be the classic of choice in Central Otago and it’s easy to see why, they’re that little bit different to the regular Aussie fodder of Fords and Holdens. Enough yabba and on with the pictures!
Q ute vs A9X
The drag racing itself was far more organised this year than it was last, things were almost kept to classes but the whole Rung What Ya Brung idea lends itself well to grudge racing vs. friends so there was quite a bit of leniency in that regard, which is good. Thankfully the Motorcycles were kept to their own class and weren’t allowed to squeeze many numbers of runs in between the cars as they did last year.
The ranges around Alexandra make for quite the impressive backdrop, as you can see in the previous photo and will see in a number of the following ones, so browse away. There’s a link to the whole gallery at the end of this entry and I’ll have a small selection of badly filmed videos up in due course.
Ed (Orion) fellow RC writer and Skyline Enthusiast extraordinaire (as well as an 80′s enthusiast, he can be forgiven in that though, he was born in the 80′s) sent me the above titled video for my perusal. Having heard about it from him I was most definitely looking forward to it. I slapped it in the drive and pressed the appropriate buttons in order to begin my viewing pleasure and the first car that popped up actually took me by surprise. A Suzuki Mighty-Boy! Magic. Only a brief showing, followed by a magnitude of Corollas of varying model and other interesting cars.
Suzuki Mighty Boy, so mighty!
By now, everyone has seen enough AE85/6′s so there’s really no need for me to share any screen captures of those, I will however share some of the more unexpected and amusing vehicles that feature through-out the video. As such… (more…)
Ah, I still remember back when I wanted to buy a HBSN2 Cosmo. Fortunately that plan got scuppered when I managed to find a SA22C RX-7 instead, much to the relief of Tom who still has recurring nightmares of a certain Cosmo nicknamed “drainpipe”… more on that below.
Either way, I still have a soft spot for those cars (the side profile reminds me of a UFO) and it was nice to come across this tidy little 1983 Series 1 HBSN2 at a yard called FLYRAT today. They certainly are getting rare in rotary turbo coupe form these days, maybe even more so than their SA22C counterpart – and if truth be told, I sorta prefer the Cosmo’s independent rear over the watts link in the 7. Minor quibbles only!
Only the Japs could come up with something named after not one, but TWO types of vermin...
There ain’t no price listed for the car, but I’m guessing it won’t be going cheap. This is why:
39,230 km real driving car accident superb history two owners
User manual inspection and maintenance records at car maintenance handbook
Rare early model to the present time car garage storage 12A rotary turbo
That first line sounds a bit confusing (real driving car accident?), but that’s just Google translate at work. Full advertisement here.
Mmm, luxurious velour. And you can never have too many buttons on the dashboard.
I recommend checking out the other cars on offer at FLYRAT if you enjoy internet window shopping – the yard publishes all of its ads in a neat blog format, and they have quite a few different cars from various makers on offer. Yet another bookmark to add to the likes of Musashino, Jenesis, Amon et al.
So… this Cosmo, why was it called “drainpipe” you may wonder? Imagine your usual backyard drillport rotary engine “pulsing” through a standard exhaust pipe. Now feed that sound through a couple of milo tins and out through a kazoo. The end result? Much like someone farting through a drainpipe.
FLYRAT »
