It's about time for an update!
A few things have happened lately:
In December I was contacted by a UK club magazine called Total Nissan, they wanted to make an article about my car. This was a chance of my life, so I accepted! The article can be found in the January-February 2012 issue (23) of Total Nissan magazine [
www.totalnissan.co.uk]. Thank you very much, Total Nissan! Your interest in my car is very appreciated!
(note: due to copyright issues, I cannot present the article to you guys. You need to buy the magazine to see it.)
In the middle of December, my almost brand new alternator broke down; it started producing a crazy overvoltage. My voltage gauge readout was off the scale (more than 18 volts!), and one headlight burned out. The interior fan was running quite a bit faster than usual and all the dashboard lights were a lot brighter than usual. Knowing that the alternator was still under warranty, I disconnected the alternator and drove off to the car parts shop where I had bought it. Fortunately they had a replacement unit for me, so I swapped out the broken one for the replacement unit right in the parking lot outside the parts shop. (I had to pay for the replacement unit first and got my money back when I returned the broken unit about 30 minutes later).
In January, I had to take the car to its yearly MOT, as always. Verdict: pass. No negative remarks, only positive remarks by the fascinated MOT engineer.
Beginning from late February, I have been working on the Zona Spoke 9 - wheels. Cleaning and polishing. I've finally reached a stage when I can start re-painting the black areas of the wheels. Masking the wheels up for painting took me almost an hour per wheel. I'm now waiting (7 days!) for the primer to harden up before I can start painting the layers of black.
And this week I noticed that the rear part of the exhaust is rotting away badly and needs to be completely replaced. Since I have a 2" front muffler, the exhaust size on the rear part will now go up from 1 3/4" to 2". The old exhaust was created by a local mechanic (who sadly died of a heart attack in 2008, the man wasn't even 60 years old!) back in 2006 using the OEM pipes. So in order to make the mufflers fit, the local mechanic had to create quite a few step-down adapters. Now I don't need any adapters apart from the 2" -> 60mm adapter for the cannon muffler, it'll be 2" all the way from the front muffler to the cannon.
Some pictures:
- Ash
