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…)