I bought my car off Nutty_Chappie back Summer 2014 after seeing her in his yard whilst I was looking at a PZ. She had 44,000 miles on the clock, CAT D repaired, I agreed to buy the car after the sale of my Corsa went through, only thing is that the keys for her had gone walkies..
Pete, took care of that and replaced all the necessary parts but had to cut open the door in order to get in. As there aren't many copper red parts around he had to stick on a grey door, not to worry, nothing a bit of paint can't sort. Here she is the day I picked her up
I got the car booked in to get the front door resprayed with blending into the wing & rear door etc
In the mean time in needed something to do, so I set about buying some autosol to take care of the exhaust tips and chrome inserts which needed a bit of TLC!
Before
After
Happy days, looking much better!
The next thing to do was the headlights, they were looking a bit fogged over so I got the meguiars refurb kit and it brought them back to life!
Before
After
Again I was really pleased with the result!
The Next thing to try and combat was the still unknown substance on the O/S mirror, the glass not heating up and moving at any speed above 30mph
I pulled the glass off which was only held on by some sort of jelly substance round the cables.. one of which was missing, I managed to fish it out and plug it back on, I then stuck the glass back down with double sided tape. Result, the mirror heated up and no longer shook at high speed!
Next thing to sort was the crap on the mirror, I tried all sorts to get rid of this , but whatever it is wouldn't budge and in the end getting a scalpel and sliding it across the glass removed the worst of it but the glass is damaged from whatever mysterious substance was there.
Shortly after this I dropped my car off for the door to be resprayed, it only took a day or two and it looked superb, only issue was I no longer had the B pillar trim on the door as it needed a black backing and the Evolve badge wasn't put back on.
A wee bit of measuring from the other side for reference and I reapplied the badge.
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/08 ... 8f0e09.jpg
I also had a ghetto decat fitted and I was excited when I found out that she spat some flames through the stock exhaust... Video proof below
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A few weeks down the line and I saw a few rare items on fleabay, a set of brand new alloy scuff plates and an evolve badge!
I was told that the original plastic scuff plates were held down with awkward double sided tape that would need removing before I put the new ones in, so I was surprised and happy to see that mine were only held in with a few clips
After I removed it I got a load of double sided tape on the new one and put them in place
I also found a place for the evolve badge I got hold of and decided on a place for my Japfest 2 sticker
Unfortunately my car began having issues with a misfire light although she didn't seem to be misfiring.
I got the plugs off and decided that they were probably past their best. I had a set of cheap coils that were given to my by Pete so I put these on for now and they got rid of the misfire light.
The evening before Trax 2014 I got back from work and pulled the DA polisher out for a quick bit of wax on, wax off
Looking loads better now, and does a great job of hiding the scratches too!
Over the weekend at Trax I discovered that none of my towing eye points were any good, the rear one was bent upwards, presumably from an accident as the car is CAT D and the front two were very rusted! Luckily with a bit of help from Ian.M we managed to get a towing eye in a few turns on the front using a lot of WD-40 and force. Whilst at Trax Sophie managed to find a nice set of Nankang dust caps to put on my corroded alloys, these will prove to be an issue when I get to my first Car Limits day in a few months, but more on that later. Here she is at the end of Trax
Not long after Trax I took my car back to Pete to get him to change all the oils and to figure out why the traction control sometimes came on during cruising on the motorway, turns out that my tires have different tread depths so it is causing the traction control to kick in. Looks like a set of new tyres will be needed soon then.
I was also having a few issues changing gears and someone recommended that I checked my engine mounts, I decided that they were probably past their best so got in on a group buy for RX8Performance mounts.
LH
RH
At the end of September I went on an epic road trip round Wales with a few others from the forums thanks to James, I was shocked to see the condition on my R/N/S tyre on the inner edge so I quickly jumped on the net and bought some Vreds for next day delivery in 235/40
They arrived at work so I asked to leave an hour early to get them fitted, luckily I was aloud to go!
luckily while she was up in the air we found a broken spring on the R/N/S. I got this replaced within a few days
When I got home on the same day I found a set of grills for my car had been delivered thanks to Andy 1969, so I pulled the car round to the garage and got a load of lights set up to take the front bumper off. Getting the fog light connectors off was a bit of a pain but once I had that figured the bumper came off quite easily
Bumper off!
Test fitted the bumper back on
All done!
A few days later I refitted the number plate and painted the grilles a nice silver colour
I decided I liked the colour and wanted to do the side vents and thought it'd be a good excuse to refurb the strakes too, here's the side vents painted and refitted without the strakes
and off the car once I had refurbed the strakes, I made a 'deliberate mistake' when positioning the strakes on the vents, but I sorted this and got them fitted on the car. Looking loads better
A month later BigPete dangled a Cobra exhaust in front of me, so I snapped it up and bought it! It sounded glorious and I had to go for a good drive with it, I decided to tag along to the end of the Midlands meet despite having to travel 100 miles and knowing I would arrive two hours late. I loved every minute of the drive!
And when I got there the sound convinced Shedned that he needed a cobra exhaust too! Another month later and the boss was given a toy to play with whilst waiting for a delivery on his new car. I got to have a quick play in it and managed to give him a bit of a scare
The next day I thought I would check out my cabin filters to see if they needed replacing. I was surprised when I opened up the little compartment and found.. well a nest and packing peanuts, that solves the mystery of packing peanuts sometimes randomly appearing in the passenger foot well, appears that a small family of mice have called this home for a while. A wonder that we couldn't smell it!
Unfortunately it was late at night so I couldn't get any replacements so I emptied them out and gave them a good blast from the air compressor.
A few weeks later was the Midlands run that I had organised where Jim took a few awesome photos below.
and one from the very cold morning after!
Not long after I got some bonnet struts from Nutty_Chappie, the fitting for these didn't go as well as I wanted it to and I ended up just doing a bodge job, but they've held up for almost a year so I don't intend on changing it yet!
A week after that I received a set of Rotary Revs D585 coils and plugs from the Rotary Revs group buy that I organised
In the new year I had an issue with an intermittent grinding sound whilst breaking, a quick check of the pads and there was still some meat on all of them, but once I took the rear pads off I could see the issue, an uneven wear!
Whilst I was under the car I also found that the rear ARB had snapped, I managed to get a replacement part from Nutty
In February Sophie & I found a new place to rent with matching door and garage, unfortunately the driveway is too thin to get the car in the garage
Lesson learned for when we look at our next place! 
The night before Car Limits I had an issue with my rear brakes binding, luckily I was just round the corner from home and after the brakes had stopped smoking I limped her home, gave her a couple of minutes to cool whilst getting tools and a friend out to help. We took the brakes apart, pondered on why they binded, put them back together and went for a quick drive, all seemed well which was good because it was almost 1am and I was due to leave in about 4 hours for Essex to get to North Weald. The issues didn't stop there either! Remember those nice red dust caps from Trax, they have now had a whole winter to weld themselves to the valves, which meant that I couldn't partake in the high speed bend!
Oh well lesson learned! Shortly after I decided that my lovely Cobra needed a good clean so I picked up some Killer Chrome and gave the tail pipes a quick go over, looking really good now!
After having a few bits of track tasters during Trax and Car Limits I decided that I needed better tyres and a couple of track days, shortly after these bad boys arrived on the door step
Federal 595 RS-R
I got the tyres fitted and a few weeks later gave the car a wash ready for a day at Mallory Park courtesy of Ranjan. Here she is the night before
And on the day
Oh man! What fun! That's me hooked on trackdays now!
Not much happened during the summer as I spent most days at work doing overtime, I had decided that I needed a rebuild and a few other engine mods. Although during this time I did manage to have a little incident with a bird. luckily this came out with a bit of force, as did the bird which was wedged solid under the radiator! Turned out to be a blackbird! 23 more and I'll be making a pie!
A few weeks later and this arrived thanks to phoenix11
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/m95sQ ... 40-h623-no
Again another few weeks later I found something else to do on one of my few days off in the summer, I got a bit of paint and painted the centre console trim and gear gaiter surround
This only kept me entertained for a while.. I was having issues with my cobra, it had a loose baffle so when another one came up I couldn't resist buying it, and when an AEM CAI in red popped up in the same week I though why the hell not, and got that too!
It didn't take long for me to get these bits fitted either, and I did a bit of rust treatment on the front too!
Not long after I found something else to paint, only small but it's something
A couple of days later I got an OMP adapter and a Stage 2 clutch for my rebuild
And not long after that I got a nice set of shiny coilovers!
On my next day off I got the fronts fitted
And the day after the rears, she sits nice and low now
Whilst fitting these I thought that my Hawk HP+ Pads were wearing nicely so I got myself a set of new pads, this time Mintex 1155 from camskill, these will sit in the garage until I need them
As for now, I have just dropped my car off at Rotary Revs ready for her rebuild and a few other little bits and bobs!
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Time to fire up photoshop and see if it'll look any good...
