The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: pgkevet on November 21, 2019, 06:55:01 pm
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If not into cars then skip this one.
I bought my 200sx when it was an ex demo car less than 6 mths old in 1994. It was the first ever nearly new car I bought and was after my garage leant me a 300z which was just so comfy and powerful but beyond budget at the time.
I loved the car despite the fact that it's a drifter's favourite because it will fishtail or break away from you if being heavy footed in greasy conditions. It never it me down.
When i had my major back issues it was comfortable enough that I used to go sit in it in the driveway just for pain relief.
I'd had it some 9yrs or so when jet-washing it one day I washed a hand sized piece of paint straight off the thing (Ooops) and the paint was getting a bit tatty so i hunted around for a respray. I found a place where the guy who did spraying showed me around and the work he did and I decided he was the guy for the job. I asked his boss 'how much' for the job and kept getting told it wasn't worth it. It got to the surreal sitation where I just had to tell him not to be a pratt and just give me a price. It was my money.
They had the car for weeks. I kept ringing up. It finally turned out that the guy who I'd met that did the work had vanished on a drink and coke binge and not been seen since. They did repsray the thing but nowhere to the quality I'd expected. Merely 'acceptable'.
Anyhow round that time I started playing inside the thing -a sort of midlife crisis and fitted it out with silly blue lights and an OTT enterainment system I managed to squeeze into the single din space with a 4.5" screen but everything from DVD to Terrestrial and Digital TV, USB, radio etc.
fast forward to about 5 yrs ago. We'd been moved up here and I wasn't using it as much as when i'd -been working. It went for it's annual MOT and failed on emissions. I decided to try an Italian tune-up - as in really run it hard at high revs in low gear to clear out the cylinders - And blew the big ends.
I was heart-broken so despite being told it wasn't worth it I got local garage to find somewhere to rebuild the thing. That cost (a lot) and worse took around a year for the place to dredge up parts after they rebored, skimmed, fitted racing shells and rods and oversized pistons and new rad system and a host of other bits. Meanwhile I bought myself a 1 yr old GT86.
I finally got 200sx back all legal and MOTs etc and purring nicely but reality is that the GT86 as a more modern car, better brakes, built in sat nav etc was the one I tended to take out.
It became more noticeable that 200sx brakes weren't so hot after driving the GT86. Local garage checked them over and claimed nothing wrong.
Roll on to next MOT and it failed on emissions again. Local garage failed to resolve why. I took it to another local garage2 where the boss used to work on rally cars. He coudn't figure it out either but to be fair he did try hard. Eventually since i wasn't using car much he fudged the results to pass it and again the next year. Just after that i noticed one brake getting hot and on a close look myself could see the disc was scored. A set of new disc and suprise, suprise the brakes are hot again - but the car fails it's emissions and I can't keep on expecting a fudge.
Meanwhile I'd sold the GT86 after getting the hump that a 3 yr old car needed regassing on it's a/c and that wasn't covered under warranty (bloody well should be. 200sx is 26yrs old by then and it's A/C still works fine). That was when I traded it in for my Tesla.
Of course the Tesla is a fantastic car for instant torque, excellent brakes and all the modern fancy stuff but doesn't have the heart of my good ol' 200sx which i was still taking out once a week for old time's sake - just 12 miles each way shopping.
I was recharging the Tesla last week and a guy in the Tesla next to mine came over to ask a question about the difference in my new model compared to his. We got chatting generally. It turned out he owns a nissan sports car tuning centre so naturally I mentioned my 200sx.
The first thing he asked was how old i was because he didn't see me as a 200sx owner since it's a young man's car I pointed out I had been a young man when i bought it!
He offered to take a look at the emissions issue and claimed he could source any spares needed..it was his speciality to rebuild and soup up nissan sports cars for rallyists etc. I rang his works and made an appointment despite it being 3 hrs away.
The guy and his partner were great. They spend a couple of hours messing about with the car and came to the conclusion that it's electrical diagnostics were all normal. Then the chap took it and me for a test drive - Jeez you could tell he was a racer and justifed the shed-load of trophies in their shop. After hammering it down the country lanes he observed it was pulling better and decided that the whole emission problem was probably down to the catalyst just not being used enough and that I'd partially cleaned it out just driving the 3hrs to his place. And he had cleared it out more. I should point out it's old fashioned cat, not the urea mix modern sort. He also bet that if i took it back to my garage it'd pass it's emission test.
Not only that but he wouldn't let me pay for his time...claimed to have done nothing.
I took it into local garage2 today and the man was right - It passed an emission test with no problems.
Which now leaves me with the decsion of what to do next... shocks? some bodywork rewelding? etc