Time for another catch up summary for what I've been up to in July 2015, only a handful of things to report but a couple of them are good milestones.
01/07/2015 - Kerb Feelers
These aren't one of the milestones but more of a temporary patch up. I've always liked these as a funky accessory and suit the retro vannin' direction I'm heading in but more importantly the bracket covers a little bit of front bumper that was missing when I bought the Elgrand and has really bugged me up to now.
Before and After
03/07/2015 - Status Error Ice Cream
It's probably just the way my mind works but when I saw the new "Junior" design by Status Error it immediately made me think of an ice cream scoop. Luckily I had a spare Strictly Static ice cream sticker so with the use of a craft knife I combined the two and made another custom sticker fitting for my ice cream van theme. Status Error shared it on Facebook and it seemed to go down well.
03/07/2015 - Rear smoked LED lamps
Although a straight-forward swap this particular modification was a big breakthrough for me, mainly because I was relying on them to make the upper light bar blend in with the rear window, but also because they were so difficult to get hold of.
Although I'm a big fan of the ease of use of importmonster.com, a site which enables you to browse yahoo.co.jp and more importantly get instant shipping and handling fees quotes, I'd never actually needed to use them before as the majority of my cube modifications were completed using universal or custom items.
For the Elgrand however I'd rather stick to using replacement parts designed specifically for my car especially when it comes to things like lighting and other items covered by the MOT.
My search for a set of LED smoked rear light units started a few months ago, after initially winning a set on yahoo.co.jp via importmonster it turned out that the seller could no longer supply them. They refunded my money back into my account without a problem and I found an alternative set, unfortunately that seller said he needed an extra few weeks to get them from his supplier and in the end they too were unavailable. Third time lucky and I won a third set, luckily the price was actually lower each time and the ones i ended up with are slightly nicer looking than the sets that were no longer available.
Once a set was sourced that were in stock they actually arrived to Coventry, UK from Japan within 10.5 hours and then it took a week for customs to contact me to get their share but arrived the next day once taxes had been paid. The total including the goods, I'm's commission, tracked airmail, customs fee and taxes was around £70 so well worth it IMHO.
Fitting was very straight-forward, bolt off / plug in / bolt on.
New versus old
Fitted with lights on (yes I still haven't fixed my right reg light bulb)
I'm really pleased with how they look, see more photos a bit further down to see how they look when turned off.
05/07/2015 - Cars In The Park, Lichfield
As in 2014 I was pleased to be on the Slambox stand for this local car show which raises money for charity through the local Rotary club. With over 1000 vehicles of all kinds, both classic and modified, it makes a nice change to take a step off the modified car show merry-go-round and see what other cars are out there that you don't normally get to see. The only downside is that it clashes with Japshow at Santa Pod.
We had a nice variety and good quality of just under 30 cars on the Slambox stand and it was good to catch up with everyone.
The weather was great apart from the time we tried to walk around to see all the other cars at which point we had heavy rain and hail for about 45 minutes followed by hot sunshine again to dry us out. It felt like a car show in Florida from that aspect.
Photos of all the cars on stand are at my Facebook page -
www.fb.com/freshandminty but here's a couple of mine on the stand.
18/07/2015 - Nissan Experience, Donington
This is a show on an invite-only basis organised by Nissan to put on a showcase of interesting and modified Nissans as well as drift and fast-lap passenger rides in a variety of Nissan cars.
It's designed as a family day out for Nissan employees to see what in can be had with the cars they sell and service.
Other attractions include animal displays, free bouncy castles, face painting, etc.
I took 2 year old Ethan to the show which actually meant most of my time was spent moving between the family attractions but I did get some time to look at the cars that were on show.
This sums up the day most
That's pretty much me up to date, just before I go I'll leave you with a couple of photos I took at Birmingham's Custard Factory in Digbeth last week, the bus isn't the cleanest but it was an interesting backdrop and sometimes it's about taking the photo opportunity while you can rather than worrying about washing the car and going back for photos another time, because that other time may never come around.
