This season I was detirmined to get the car finally back on its wheels. I always feel like I’m working slowly – and I am – but the results are worth it and I can’t see anything changing. This will take me a long time to complete but I am enjoying every hour in the garage. A large piece of the puzzle was the new shocks from Koni made availavble by MSA. The timing was perfect and I took advatage of the pre-order as soon as I could. The fit and finish is fantastic but obviously it’ll be a while …
Suspension Detail
Immensely satisfying to be finally assembling components instead of cleaning decades of grease off them. This is what I was picturing all those years ago when I set out to restore a car. The reality is not far from the fantasy in this case. A smile grows to a grin each time the roller door winds up. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum now that I’m on a roll. Get it?
KONI Sport Adjustable Struts
The timing could not have been better! Just as I started to work on my suspension I received an email from MSA announcing the new KONI Sport Adjustable Gas Struts for standard strut assemblies of the S30 chassis (and later Z’s as well). MSA will be the sole distributor for these inserts; an indication that they were a driving force behind the product coming to market. They are a completely new product designed to fit the ’70-’83 Z strut assemblies. The cartridge inserts are a twin-tube low pressure gas-charged design and are externally rebound adjustable. They’re capable of close to …
Summer 2019
Spring Break is Over! This has been the longest break I’ve taken from the car. A whole 6 months! While I know breaks like this severely delay the completion of the project, they are necessary, healthy, and sometimes unavoidable. How can you resist that little adorable face!? Her birth coincided with the start of my break and you can see why. Discussion over. As the year ticked over I made my way up the coast to meet with a dear friend for the first time. We had been in contact for a few years talking cars and finally got to …
Spring 2018
Priorities I’ve seen it – and used it – numerous times. It’s the age-old excuse… “I don’t have enough time.” I’m going to call myself out on that one. Not having enough time is an excuse used when other things in our lives take priority. You can dodge around exercise for years and then one day your doctor gives you some unfavourable news – shakes fist – and you suddenly find the time. The only thing that changed are your priorities. I phoned it in this quarter. There were opportunities for me to progress the project and I kind of …
Autumn 2018
Reproduction Autumn started off with a bang! On day one I finally joined the exclusive club of RH door mirror owners thanks to Ian from the Gong. I can clearly remember scouring eBay for door mirrors as early as a month into purchasing my rusty shell back in January 2014. They might not be as rare as I make them out to be but you do need a lot of luck to find one. A couple of weeks ago Chinese reproduction RH door mirrors popped up on eBay and by all accounts are an excellent copy and likely to be …
Summer 2018
Collaboration I dabble in a bit of photography and I keep hearing the arty folk liberally throw around the ‘collaborate’ buzzword. At work we recently dealt with a young company and their hip employees couldn’t resist using it in every paragraph of every email they sent. I’m not quite that hip but allow me to use it just this once. I’ve been collaborating with some amazingly generous and passionate people lately. Without their assistance my results would be sub par but I’ve come to realise that, outcomes aside, it’s the relationships built that are far more precious. Progress was elusive …