AlexH

I thought I’d make a list of my favourite cars, in an ideal world where I had unlimited storage, money, and time.

• 92 Camaro, 25th anniversary edition, with the high rise spoiler. Black with red stripes. 5.7L with a 6-speed transmission. Some kind of intake manifold swap from the stock TPI.
• First gen Miata with the Ford V8 swap.
• 1960ish Lincoln Continental. White on white. Suicide doors. Hydraulics.
• 1968+ Corvair, turbocharged. White with blue stripes.
• 1993+ RX7 with the LS1 swap.
• 240/260/280Z with a V8 swap. So many options here.
• 1993-5 MR2 Turbo with T-tops.
• Porsche 914 with a Subaru engine. Lots of options here, but the STi engine would be most fun.
• Porsche 944 with the LS1.
• Jaguar XJ6 with an LT1 engine.
• 1968 Impala Supersport, completely stock. I’d love to be able to find the one my grandpa owned, but chances of that are practically nil.
• 1957 Willys Jeep. First car I ever owned, and sold to pay for university.

I wish I had some cash for this!

The real K.I.T.T. is up for sale - Autoblog

Now, one of the four documented 1982 Pontiac Trans Ams actually used in the Knight Rider series during the ’80s has a For Sale sign on its windshield. The car has been restored to its “debut-season glory” and is being displayed at Kassabian Motors in Dublin, California. The price? $149,995.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I’ve started a website for local Miata enthusiasts: Vancouver Miatas.

I used Joomla to run it, and I was amazed at how easy it is to set up a website.  There are a ton of plug-ins (called components, modules, or mambots depending on what they do) available to do whatever you want.  Events calendars, galleries, classifieds, or anything else you want in a website.  Sometimes the quality isn’t that great but there are a lot of nice packages out there.  You just need to try them out.

It’s been a whirlwind weekend for cars.

• Tuesday night: Someone comes out to test drive the Firebird, he agrees to buy it, but doesn’t put down a deposit.
• Wednesday night: See the ad on Craigslist, email the guy. Arrange for a test drive at lunch the next day. Start researching Miata’s until 1:00am.
• Thursday lunch: Take the car for a test drive. It’s the first time I’ve driven a manual tranny on a real road in a long time. The 3rd to 4th shift was nerve wracking. The car is in great shape, a few parking lot dings here and there, but overall in very good condition.
• Friday lunch: Meet the Miata owner at BCAA to get the report. It looks good except for the brakes (which I knew about) and various engine and tranny seals (which I didn’t know about). I had the $500 deposit in my pocket but I said I’d have to research the prices to fix these issues. Later that afternoon he brough the price down $500 and I agreed to buy it.
• Saturday morning: Drop off the deposit.
• Saturday afternoon: Get a loan and a bank draft. They were more than pleased to help, especially after we mentioned a possible mortgage in the future.
• Saturday 3:00pm: Call the owner and say that we can pick it up! We thought it would take longer to get the loan approved.
• Saturday 4:00pm: The car is mine!
• Sunday morning: Deliver the Firebird to it’s new owner. I forget the AirCare papers.
• Sunday afternoon: Put in the new brake pads. One of the caliper bolts was seized but we cleaned it off and it works fine now. Then we took it for a spin up Burnaby mountain, with the top down. Wow!

The Firebird (along with all of the spare parts) has been sold. It’s gone back to Coquitlam where the new owner is going to put the time and effort into fixing all of the ‘quirks’.

Now I have a new car:

Well, I’ve finally had it with my car. After replacing the radiator and a bunch of coolant hoses, I now have a coolant leak at the back of the engine somewhere. I love this car but I need a reliable car to get to work every day, so I’ve put it up for sale.
Hopefully someone who is more mechanically inclined can take care of it.

Another Slush Series autocross at Pitt Meadows.

It was cold, rainy, and miserable. My best time was my 3rd run of the day, for the rest of the afternoon I ended up facing backwards on the track, at the exact same point on the course.
FTD was a stock Miata running regular all seasons!

Pics taken by Paul:

Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

According to News 1130, Mirage Auto Sales can no longer sell cars. This is great news for the consumer because they have been scamming inexperienced cars buyers for many years.

I’m happy to see this happen because I’m constantly seeing kids post on local car boards about this great deal they think they’ve found. It usually ends up that the cars are rebuilts and/or out-of-province cars that are unsafe to be driven.

Terra2imports has an RSS feed, so you can watch the new cars come in through your RSS reader.

The Japanese have an interesting method of keeping their economy going, it is called ’shaken’, where cars have an inspection fee that is paid every 2 years, apparently it works out to about $2000 CDN. This is on top of paying for parking spots, insurance, gas, and high maintenance fees. This encourages people to buy new cars quite often. It also applies to motorcycles, scooters, and farm equipment like tractors.

Now, Canadian regulations state that a car doesn’t need crash testing and approval if it is over 15 years old, so there have always been importers bringing in grey market vehicles, with really good deals if you’re willing to take the risk of driving a vehicle that was never sold in Canada. Mechanics probably won’t know how to deal with them, and there is always the right-hand-drive problem.
But the big news recently is that the really desirable Japanese sports cars are now legal for import: Skyline, Supra, MR-2, etc. So importers have been popping up all over, and it looks like there is going to be an excellent aftermarket for the Skyline in Vancouver. I’m starting to save my pennies for a GTR.

One day I’m going to be an old man, telling my kids about how we were allowed to race our cars in a safe manner, but that stopped on May 27, 2005.