Nice pics. Cars looking good. That sun on the sunroof was a pretty neat idea. It seems to match the paint pretty well and the visors are looking good too.
This car is a gem. If you put on a Stillen lip kit and Volk TE37s this car would be amazing, might have to get a usdm spec rear bumper though.
By the looks of it the stillen rear bumper would fit fine. The U.K rear bumpers just have the rear fogs and the plate portion is different. Apart from that doesnt look much different on the bottom. The paint and body condition is what i think is one of the most impressive points especially if its original paint.
Wow, nearly 4 months since an update. I wonder if anyone thought I'd sold up! haha. Well, no, I haven't, and the J30 just keeps on rolling in the way they do.
Since the last post, it's passed it's yearly check (MOT) with zero advisories, which was great. Oil and filter change too, plus new fan/aux belts.
I didn't like the clear front repeaters, so I put the original orange ones back on.
Some recent pics....
Fitted the double din touchscreen head unit that used to be in my now sold Boxster...
I saw this for sale and couldn't resist....
Oh, and I recently bought a 1996 Ford Probe 24V as a new stablemate for the J30...
One other small thing, I've ordered some more 4DSC decals, but this time in gold which should look better. I'll post some pics when I put them on.
A Probe? Presumably those must have been better received on that side of the pond than they were here?
Here we always called them "Pubes"
Looks to be in great shape though
To be honest James, the Probe wasn't well received in the UK when it launched, and sales suffered because of that. I was one who had a downer on them for years, based solely on the initial reviews 22 years ago. I'm not a Ford person at all, and I've only had one previous Ford in the fifty cars I've owned, so I really bought this to polish a bit of value into it and move it on. Thing is, driving it actually made me realise how underrated they are, and I've grown to really like it. The 2.5 litre V6 24V Mazda engine is sweet. I like it enough to have it in the bodyshop for the last three weeks for a full correction and respray.
So the last post in this thread was October 2016. I happily smoked around in the J30 for another seven or eight months after that, then decided to sell as we needed funds to input into our "give up our normal crappy jobs and do something for ourselves" coffee shop. It was a sad sale, but the shop was everything at the time.
So two years passed, the shop is hard work but I wouldn't change the decisions we made two years ago, and it's going well. A couple of months ago, I started one particular week with one old 1983 Datsun Stanza (T11) project in my garage, Seven days later I had three.
The brown one was a one lady owner from new car (1982), with only 34k miles covered. The blue one has an even better story. Bought new in 1984 by an engineer guy, he drove it for three years (1984 - 1987), clocking up 33k miles, then serviced it, parked it up in his garage, then left it, and it never moved again until earlier this year (32 years dormant). The guy had passed away, left everything to his daughter, who later passed away herself, then house and all the posessions went up for auction. Amazing. I had a bit of trouble getting it to run right after all those years standing still, but as soon as I swapped over the carburettor from the saloon project car, it started, ran and idled sweet as a nut.
It really feels like a three year old car, which in effect, it is....
So, having two really good examples was great, BUT....when the chance to get back a particular car that you always regretted parting with comes about, decisions have to be made....
The decision I came to was swap the brown Stanza for my old J30. My lovely J30. Yep, it was coming home!
Deal done on June 12th this year...and it was back home....
...for a few hours. I had the car booked in with my mate's garage the next morning for it's annual MOT test (certificate of health type thing). I took it in the next morning, left it there, then the car failed it's MOT. Basically all four calipers were siezed solid. I looked for a specialist company in the UK who refurbed calipers, found one, and sent them away. Went for the premium service which included powder coating, and sent them away. Three weeks later they came back all lovely and shiny....
MOT passed today!!! Great news, and it's fantastic to have the car back on my driveway tonight, almost eight weeks after it originally came back....
looking fabulous, how in the world did you find your car after selling it ?? and this was towards the 2016 posts but im curious why you didnt go with hubcentric spacers? cheers !! nice to see the j30 back in your hands!
looking fabulous, how in the world did you find your car after selling it ?? and this was towards the 2016 posts but im curious why you didnt go with hubcentric spacers? cheers !! nice to see the j30 back in your hands!
I sold the car to a fellow car-fanatic and friend two years ago, so I knew who had it and where it was all the time.
Presumably those must have been better received on that side of the pond than they were here?
