Moderator: martauto
oh ok. good of you to pick up on that...aceraf wrote:Under the light...the wing doesn't fit slush with the piece that runs directly below the lights/grille.
You misunderstand....i'm not picking bits, i was simply pointing out what someone else had mentioned but you weren't seeing.Pad wrote:oh ok. good of you to pick up on that...aceraf wrote:Under the light...the wing doesn't fit slush with the piece that runs directly below the lights/grille.
Pattern part. I am not claiming the car to be mint, was hoping that people would more pick up on the amount of work all done by myself on my drive to save a Tech 1 that quite frankly should have been fragged years ago..
I'm sure with a bit of jiggling about that wing will fit neater than that? I thought you had not put in the bottom bolt that attaches the wing to the sill.Pad wrote:oh ok. good of you to pick up on that...aceraf wrote:Under the light...the wing doesn't fit slush with the piece that runs directly below the lights/grille.
Pattern part. I am not claiming the car to be mint, was hoping that people would more pick up on the amount of work all done by myself on my drive to save a Tech 1 that quite frankly should have been fragged years ago..
)
Great to see you are enjoying it.FEP wrote:With apologies for digging up this thread, prizing open the coffin and taking the deceased down the pub...
...but you may be interested!
I bought this car from PAD an unbelievable 6 years ago and just found myself reminiscing by revisiting the restoration thread. Thought it might be nice to add a bit of an update.
The car has basically been my daily driver ever since. Ownership has been pretty well pure pleasure and that rusty lump of metal and I are pretty well bonded now.
As PAD said, the car was not perfect and I did get it some fog lights and a couple of bits of missing trim, but some bits (rear bumper ends) eluded me and I just got used to them not being there.
One of the first jobs was a new fuel tank to try to fix the fuel smell. Made things better but it was only last year that I finally realised that the fuel filler neck had many micro perforations in it - easy fix.
Had some inevitable cooling issues - two replacement heads and a replacement short engine at which point I bought a new rad and finally sorted the overheating.
The paint has not fared very well. The surface particularly on the roof, is very rough and primer is showing through in many places. To be honest, as my focus is always the mechanicals it doesn't bother me much.
Rust of course is more of a worry as it has a direct bearing on MOT's and ultimately, death.
18 months ago I spent a few hundred quid having some patches put in in various places - front suspension turrets, front end of sills. I try not to think about the front bulkhead - one of the glove box mounts had to be re attached and the carpet quite often gets wet.
A nasty scab developed on the roof next to the sunroof. I never quite got round to any rust treatment etc and I thought I'd just plough on until I needed to drive in my raincoat. Well 4 years later the scab is a hole and I don't get rained on. I just keep on wondering how long till the problem can't be ignored. When that happens I'll just get a plate welded over the top of the hole and buy myself another couple of years. By which time I suspect that I'll need a bilge pump for the footwells! Oh - and the bumpers are clearly slowly losing their structural integrity.
I do really love the car and I do daydream about a new shell. But living in a 4th floor London flat it is not something that I could do myself, so I suspect when it finally gets to a bad MOT failure it will have to disgorge its LSD, Sport interior, etc etc and live in spirit only - it owes me nothing. I never imagined that it would last so long.
When it finally goes, I would be very tempted to find a very clean replacement for a few thousand - then again, I have a very clean 1990 M3, and always worrying about keeping it that way is quite stressful. If only there was a simple way to fix the front bulkhead.
PAD if you are out there, all your work was not in vain. As you said - a very nice daily driver.
FEP
