I'm deliberately starting this in the members only section. By way of explaination, until recently I had been posting progress elsewhere but it unfortunately had to draw to a sudden close so as to stop being inundated with spam and porn. Bots likely harvested my email address, lesson learned. Thinking is perhaps being visible to a closed circle of viewers will hopefully help prevent a repeat. Car's currently at the stage you see it below and has been for over three months while waiting on the drivers door and bonnet coming back from painting... an unfortunate delay that dragged on leading to a major dip in motivation. Good news is they might be with me in the next week or so... perhaps jump start some updates.
Cheers... Had it 11+ years and only began to sort it out in earnest about 18 months ago or so. Had one back when they were current, plan's nothing more exciting than to have another to enjoy again. No big mods or changes planned, standard works fine for me. it's a keeper so will be looking after it, but not to the extent it won't be properly used. Already foolishly missed out on driving it for over a decade, all that lost time to make up, plus I'm doing this for me and not the next person.
Love these original dealer bits. Did you get them made or are they the true original items? I'm trying to find out where mine was originally sold so I can get some plates and dealers stickers made.
The car was originally a 'J' reg. ending in OVU (Manchester). I got it from a guy in Derry/Londonderry (I'm Antrim), though it was being stored at his sisters home, across the border in Donegal. Cars history isn't complete, so can't say how it came to be there. I put the AUX plate on it donkeys ages ago... the MK1 from the Z20 thread is A91 AUX so you can see where I was going with it! Got A16 and A19 off the DVLA for buttons as they meant nothing to anyone but me. Seemed like a good idea at the time, not so sure now. Not the end of the world though, they're holding back OVU in case I take the personal plate back off and it'll be reassigned. They're doing the same with whoever holds A61 (it's on a Metro apparently) so it's working both for and against me, otherwise I'd have had the full quartet by now. Problem too is if I wanted to go back to OVU the car'd need to be MOT'd first, which it hasn't been for a while now. The plates I got made up by DMB, but they''re only doing dealer stickers / tax discs now I believe. The Agnew tax disc holder is the real thing, from a car I had a very long time ago, bought quite a few from them over the years. The back window sticker I had made up from the graphics on the rear of the disc holder / inter-web images and memory. Can't remember the outfits name, will need to try and check for you. Did a great job and not hard to pay considering it was a very limited number being made. They'd do the art work for you or you could submit your own. If they did it, you'd no control over it's reuse, but your graphics meant it was yours alone.
Very very nice - looks a very clean car. I think your plan is sound to keep it standard. I can't help but tinker but like them to look close to factory.
Only a door and bonnet, but when you haven't seen them for over 3 months it's better than Xmas. Old pillows never die...
If I was as lucky as Chris Evans I'd probably have quite a few modded cars in a collection... it's not that I don't like them, but when you've just the one MK2, it's got to be standard first for me. Z20 is the exception, but then again it's hopefully going to be as faithful to an original as possible... just a dull old git when it comes down to it.
Diginate made the rear window stickers, had a few different ones done and can fault any of them - https://diginate.com/ Earlier Agnews they also made... check out the correct four digit phone number! DMB made these up and the disc holder is genuine...
Thread drift, though sort of OK... More Diginate stuff they did for me. Was going through a GTI-Engineering phase and came up with these. The disc holder was based on the genuine one pictured in that teeney little image I found on the inter-web (may even have been on this forum?) - the rear window sticker was pure fiction, but used the correct graphics / font etc. as found in some of their catalogues and flyers. Recouped the cost by flogging the majority of the surplus sets, think it worked out that ordering about 15 of each made it viable. You could have them make one of each if you'd wanted but would've cost big bucks. The square plastic holder's another internet image of a genuine item, tracked down a plain one and thought of having a sticker made to apply to it, but that came to nothing.
Post Xmas blues, plus it's just too cold to get motivated as well, we'd our first snow this AM. Glad now the door went on the same day it came back, but wavered about putting on the bonnet. Thought it might be wiser to leave things alone until the engine's back in rather than have to take it off again, though the weather's decided that one for me. When I began all this I originally didn't realise there was so much needing attention to the suspension etc. and forged on tidying up the interior. Up shot is things weren't done in the order I'd probably now have preferred, and knowing what I do. For example the interior was completed first, came out for a second time, and is now back in once more. Apologies in advance if you've seen some of these elsewhere, I'm going to stick up random posts of work that was previously completed. Likely be in no sort of order, just keeping myself (and hopefully a few others) amused until things properly start to move again. Wick piccie... for anyone not born last century, having a mobile phone usually meant you needed a car to move it about.
Looks class mate, I'm not far from you either, hopefully you'll see me getting some use out of mine soon! (Cushendun)
Beautiful part of the world Cushendun, very envious. Though I bet you get well ticked off in the summer when the likes of me visit for the scenery! Coincidentally finished building up the drivers door yesterday, footery job that took ten times as long as it should've. Big deal for me, but probably not that riveting to look at for the rest of you, so I'll not bore you with a piccy. For a while I'd toyed with the idea of doing some of the engine work, both out of interest / wanting to learn and there's a local mecahnic on standby for advice / parachute in if it all went badly wrong. Now realise I'm trying to run before I can walk and farmed it out to a machine shop instead, maybe do the MK1 when the time comes. Downside is their reputation means it'll be a month before he's worked his way up the list to me. Can't believe I'm at this point, potentially a running car again though I'd be amazed if there isn't going to be a mass of hiccups along the way to that happening.