mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jul 20, 2017 13:26:10 GMT
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Last Edit: Jul 20, 2017 13:26:39 GMT by mino
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jul 20, 2017 11:45:18 GMT
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I guess it would be more fun if you could tilt it on the side...my memories are mostly molten steel on my head...but it's still a good feeling, cutting out and putting in!
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jul 20, 2017 11:23:13 GMT
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As inspection was overdue and the rust was serious I took it off the road for over a year until I found the time and motivation to go through with the reapairs. Mechanics wise there wasn't much to do, rear brakes needed a service as the rubber sleeves were perished and the pistons didn't move at all, one headlight was corroded and swapped and the headlight range adjusters needed a stern talking to. Catalytic converter was also due...this is when I found out the very last 1.6 models had a bespoke one, twice as expensive as the others. Anyhow, back to welding. I'm no expert and it shows. For a long time I lost motivation as I wasn't happy with my work but then I decided to just go through with it, my next repairs will be better and I just have to learn by doing. Also I brought the car to a friend's garage and used his welder as I didn't get mine to work properly. But let's start with the poking... The right hand side was the better one. Still quite grim if no surprise to anyone I guess. I have no poking pictures from the left side...probably due to shock...let's say this was the result of cutting all that rot out: So on I went, piece by piece, with the crappy welder...far from perfect: The first hole was turned back into metal... And here's a new inner fender...not great, next one will be better! Right hand side still had the inner fender mostly intact and so it was only patches... First of all we needed a start... And then patches to connect it with the next layer... Alright, now the outer repair panel could be cut to measure and go on the car: Not very neat but hey, solid metal from the outside! There was still a large gap on the inner side though, some creativity was needed as nothing was left on either side. And welded in...doesn't look great but it's solid. Eagle eyes readers might have spotted a little hole on the back... Done. Lost my patience with taking photos for the left hand side...but eventually that was metal again too: All the superficial rust on the underside was treated and later painted! And so it was ready to go back on it's on wheels again and have some filler applied After which the coveted seal of approval was handed over! Felt good to have it back on the road, if I want it to look like new I might have to redo some of the work...but that's not really my aim at the moment, it's just about driving it! More soon!
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Last Edit: Jul 20, 2017 11:26:02 GMT by mino
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jul 20, 2017 10:42:32 GMT
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So, I haven't posted in quite a while but I thought I should bring stuff up to date and also create seperate threads for seperate cars. This one is a 97 MX-5 with the 90hp 1,6 liter engine. Even before I bought my X1/9 back in 2005 I helped a friend buying this car in southern Germany. So I went down the Fiat route back then and even bought myself another MX-5 but when she came to sell it to make place for a later model I couldn't not buy it. The good thing is that she had regular services done, it wasn't in great shape but it wasn't neglected either. I helped her change the roof back in 2008 but that is sadly due again as we got a cheap one back then. The thing she didn't do was cleaning it, she daily drove it through the winter and hardly ever took it to a car wash so the body was a bit tired. The first pictures when I took custody of it. It's quite complete, I have the tonneau cover and the wind deflector, manual and so on. signs of age here and there... and a bit of trouble brewing: Work to come... Anyways, inspection was still valid and so I took it around the snowy alps for a start: But then (slowly) the work started...
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Last Edit: Jul 3, 2018 7:56:35 GMT by mino
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jun 29, 2017 15:54:17 GMT
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jul 19, 2015 17:31:08 GMT
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Awesome! Very awesome. I wanted one for some time now, I thought about getting the Zastava version, as it had more powerful engines...
Looking forward to the progress!
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jun 20, 2013 13:08:14 GMT
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Great Fulvia, I have an X1/9 I would happily swap for it .
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jun 10, 2013 20:30:55 GMT
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There seems to be a ferry between Harwich UK and Esbjerg DK, then you could do what I did and take the most austere ferry in the world between Frederikshavn and Oslo or one of the many other options. The passage towards Oslo through the Fjord is great in itself.
Norway is overwhelmingly beautiful, definately worth the visit. It's very diverse with all the Fjords, neat villages and snowy mountain passes. Sweden up north is very barren and the distances are hard to grasp for a central european. We drove around 800kms and honestly haven't seen more than 5 villages (not counting the small houses you find at every lake). It was very beautiful still, but not as cozy as Norway. The part of Finnland we passed was green and the population much denser. The lake region was again strikingly beautiful, but in a whole different way then Sweden, it felt quite crowded all of a sudden. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are all worth a visit and it was a pity we didn't spend more time there.
We had no moskitos at all in Norway, quite a lot at night in Sweden (unbearable) and it wasn't too bad in Finnland, we also prepared ourselves better later on. I think last year started cold, so there were relatively few moskitos around.
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Jun 10, 2013 10:34:14 GMT
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After getting sunburned in Norway the rain started pretty much with the Swedish boarder (the night in Sweden was just as light as the overcast day) and lastet up until we drove into Finnland, where it was incredibly clear and sunny. Mikko, a Finn who drove more then 500 kms to meet us up in Oulu, led us southwards through the lake region near Jyväskylä on a road that was winding from island to island. On our way we visited a nature reserve where we had lunch by a lake. We spent the night at a campground on an island, where we did the Sauna and barbeque thing. Before that Mikko and I went out to drive some gravel roads while Jan tried to fish. For the next day we wanted to drive some more gravel tracks and we looked for stages of the legendary 1000 Lakes Rally. One of the most fearsome stages was the near mythical Ouninpohja, which was a lot of fun drifting in the MX5, but looks quite scary in onboard clips of rally cars doing three times our speed. Infact, we didn't catch air but the professionals do it all the time. Next stop was Helsinki, where we met up with yet more Finns and saw the first other MX5 after a long time. But sadly shortly after it was already time to bid farewell again as we boarded the ferry to Tallinn My co-driver, Jan, spent half a year in Tallinn and my basic mission was to pick him up there (the long way). So after around 4000 kms we actually arrived there and spent two nights in his flat, visiting the city. But soon we were back in the seats, driving towards Latvia ...were we visited Riga in the evening... ...and spent our night in a field near a lake. The next morning we reached Lithuania and stopped at the Hill of Crosses along the way. There were new, smooth highways, almost completely empty. We drove most of the day to reach Vilnius in the early evening. For whatever reason I don't have a single good picture of Vilnius, but we liked it a lot, the atmosphere was very peaceful, lots of people hanging out along the river and in the parks. That evening we found a place for our tent at the edge of a nature reserve. The little Mazda was completely covered in bugs by then. After driving around in the nature reserve the next morning we continued on towards Poland, reaching Warszawa in the early evening. This was last year and it was the time of the Football Championship. Warszawa was impressive as well, I'll have to come back to all the cities we visited. As we had to hurry up a little at that point we drove on into Germany and set up camp in the Spreewald near the boarder to Poland. Since we covered so many miles the night before we could stay off the Autobahn and drove towards Frankfurt almost as the crow flies, arriving home in the evening. ...the end.It has almost been a year now, the memories are still so fresh. Having condensed the whole trip into 12 days makes it seem much longer than it actually was. And the only thing that went wrong with the MX5 in 7000 kms was a burnt out headlight. This year the little Mazda takes a rest, I'll have to buy a bigger car for the next road trip, most possibly to Turkey and back.
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Not that early the next morning we headed for Trondheim, were we had a place for the night. Out first stop were the legendary switchbacks of Trollstigen pass. In contrast to the rest of Norway it was quite crowded, mostly by tourists, and some stretches were so narrow you had to yield for incoming traffic. The views were so spectacular though, so we weren’t bothered. At the top of the pass a new visitor centre was being built, already opened were platforms stretching out over the vertical cliff faces all in concrete and pre-rusted cor-ten steel, stylish! After spending half an hour enjoying the view we drove down again and round the fjord at the foot of the mountains. We had to take a ferry and after around an hour we reached the Atlanterhavsvejen, a series of bridges leading over several small islands on to a big island, all next to the open Atlantic Ocean. First time we saw it without island infront. The sea was very calm and so we crossed the bridges open top and staying dry on the low bridges. The curvy high one really is as great as it is to be expected from pictures, an unreal experience. After a picnic we drove on, had to cross a beautiful suspension bridge and another ferry which lead us to a great, smooth driving road towards Orkanger and then to Trondheim, a large town compared to it’s surroundings but still calm and filled with wooden houses, a cathedral and a fjord. For this night we stayed with a friend of a friend of Jan, who came from France to study hydropower stuff. Weather turned bad at that point and we had a lot of driving to do the next morning to be in time for our meet-up with DaBoom the day after. Our goal was to drive from one coast to the other, which meand almost all of the sweden part of our trip in one day. We started out on the highway which some miles later turned into a fast main road. It was raining from time to time as we headed north. Soon we decided to turn of the main road and take smaller ones towards the Swedish boarder. Good decision since the landscape was really beautiful, small houses on lakesides, snow again and soon reindeers. Reindeer, moose as well, seemed to be rather stupid. We reached them driving and they started running away. We stopped to have a look and so did they, staring at us. This game could be repeated at wish. At one point we encountered them on a narrow road and they would flee on the road rather then to the sides. So they would run infront of us, stopping when we were. We had to almost push them off the road to get rid. Up here the big lakes were still frozen halfway and people were living in icy surroundings in the middle of June, presumably freezing their butts off all year round, amazing. Further on the road got even smaller and exactly at the boarder to Sweden the pavement stopped. Living in central Europe I didn’t have much experience on gravel and unpaved roads, but grip on this road was good and the surface quite smooth. We reached a huge lake were the car was refuelled and the humans had lunch. Next was Stekkenjokk pass, quite different to the pass of the first night in Norway. There had been a twisty road around high cliffs whilst this one was an immense snow field with dark, round rocks lurking under the surface in every direction. It was forbidden to leave the road as the birds were breeding…there was just ice and snow and rock around, poor creatures. Down from Stekkenjokk, apparently the windiest place in Sweden, we reached the huge, softly sloping hills of northern sweden, huge parallel mountain spines stretching in west to east direction, one after the other. Roads here were very differen to the hill side hugging ones in Norway, they were mostly plowed straight through the landscape and very wide. Sometimes there were lakes with neat wooden houses surrounding them, but mostly it was just trees left and right with the additional moose or reindeer from time to time. Most of it was paved. Even though it was basically all the sime there were still subtle variations all the time. After lots of rain there was a brighter spot of sky visible near the coast and we followed it till we found a place to camp, not easy as even though we passed only three noticable towns in 600 kms there were houses everywhere at the coastline. The place we found was a bit creepy, we drove via an abandoned quarry and followed a track into the woods to find some small wooden houses. They seemed abandoned as well, probably people would only come here on weekends. Since the clouds were thinner than during day it really was as light at midnight as it was at noon. The place was eerily quiet except for an infinite number of mosquitos, all desperately hungry. We hastily built the tent and spent the rest of our time there inside. The next day we had to be in Oulu in the early afternoon to meet up with a local guy I know from another forum. We started early, went shopping in a lumberjack town somewhere on the road and then crossed the next boarder into Finland. We miscalculated our driving time to Oulu and so Mikko had to wait for us but we made it and went to the excellent Burger Bar. FinlandWe met up with another local, Antti, in Kokkola and he showed us around, told us about the local car scene and we hat some ice cream. ...end of part two...
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Last Edit: Jul 19, 2017 22:21:28 GMT by mino
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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It started as all my trips do, I suddenly remembered to throw some clothes into a bag, randomly packed some other stuff that looked useful at that point and got it all in the car, which already seemed full to the brim with just my luggage and the tent in the boot. After crossing the last points off my list, bringing some tools to a friend and filling the tank to the brim I was on the road at half past 10 in the evening. Check in at the ferry terminal in Fredrikshavn would be at 9 o' clock the following morning and that should have left me plenty of time, but the radio was already telling me there would be a jam an hour north because of an accident. Long before the announced accident there was heavy traffic, the nasty kind of jam where it constantly varies between a flow of 80 kph to a full stop and so on. First I guessed it was caused by the sheer amount of trucks making their way through the particularly hilly bit of Autobahn, but after traffic slowed down another time a Mercedes M-Class suddenly appeared stopped in the fast lane, the driver standing a few meters infront of it in the oncoming traffic. The jam continued and shortly after I passed the announced accident, a truck drove onto the central divider on a bridge and remained stuck there, and shortly after that took the way north at an important intersection where many other cars continued eastwards and so I had the Autobahn pretty much for myself for the rest of the journey. The Mazda was driving well at that point. I had just bought it in March and only drove it a few kms before pulling it apart in the garage to check for rust and other problems. Reassembly was only about two weeks before the trip but I had full confidence in it. Continuing towards north I stopped for fuel south of Hamburg and whilst dawn was coming I entered Danmark. Another fuel- and coffeestop was due somewhere halfway between the border and Fredrikshavn. I know Danmark (which indeed is much bigger than it looks on any map) is beautiful, but looking a it from the motorway on a rainy morning it all looked the same and I started to feel tired. I reached the ferry terminal after a snip over 1000 kms and one hour ahead of schedule at 8 o'clock. The waiting lanes were empty and the ship still unloading. I had about an hour to kill and sleeping in the car didn't really work, but in expectance of 8 and a half hours in comfy seats on the ferry I stayed awake and checked the maps. The ferry was the once stylish MS Silvia Regina and now hopelessly dated Stena Saga. There weren't any comfy seats, you could either go to a restaurant, stay at a café or use the spa. If you just wanted to lie down there was only a corny not-in-use disco. It wasn't too bad, but I didn't get more then 3 hours of sleep. The upside was I had internet access and so was able to sort a few things out I didn't have the time for at home. Otherwise entertainment was sparse, a nice trampish man talked to me in what I suppose was Norwegian. After making it clear that I didn't understand a word he deduced with a smile that I must be a tourist, only to continue talking to me in his language after a short while. There was a great open deck on top and after we reached land again the sun came out and the scenery of Oslo Fjord was spectacular. Hills, water and fortified islands, large ships passing through narrow gaps and finally Oslo itself at the end. Arriving in Oslo, pic by JanThe primary mission of the trip was to pick a friend of mine, Jan, up from where he studied for a semester, Tallinn in Estonia. The whole idea got a little bit out of hand and after I decided that taking the ferry from Germany to Tallinn was a bit boring we somehow ended up with Jan coming to Oslo by plane to meet me and then going the long way round the Gulf of Bothnia. Oslo Opera House, pic by JanSince he had to adapt to the Ryan-Air schedule and I couln't leave work earlier, Jan had already been in Oslo for a night and after I cleared customs (the guy was friendly, but basically though I was nuts talking a car in this state on a trip of this scale) he waited for me at the harbour and we made a quick 2,5 hour tour around Oslo city in beautiful weather. I would have stayed another day but our schedule was tight from the beginning as I didn't have much holidays. We jumped in the car and intended to just drive until we were tired or found a good place to camp. After leaving the shore we almost instantly steered uphill into the mountains and encountered the first Moose about an hour in. At first the hills were low and pleasant, green forrests and lakes and a deep red and yellow dusk ahead of us. Then gradually the trees ended and we climbed higher and higher. We spotted some snow on distant hills and 15 minutes later we were already surrounded by snowy mountains. The scenery became quite surreal, the light was eerie and the road turned into an alpine like mountain pass. It was completely forsaken but then suddenly we spotted another MX-5 NA with two people sleeping inside at a rest area. On top of the pass there was a small group of houses around an even smaller pond on the one side, on the other there was a giant and partially frozen lake a few hundred meters below us and further up the road just a giant snow field with dark boulders in it and equally dark cliffs as the backdrop. pic by JanIt was already an hour after midnight, but since there still was a bit of light and we weren't prepared to sleep in the snow we continued on the road and down the northern side of the pass. The scenery was overwhelming, soft foothills clad in copper gras and occasionaly lakes spreading early morining mist. But the air coming down from the mountains was glacial and so we decided not to set up camp but to press on. The pass was a natural reservation, after we left it the area became populated again and there wasn't any open space for camping to be found. After an unsuccessfull detour at around 5 in the morning, on which we at least spotted another five mooses, we continued to the next natural reserve and took the first somewhat agreeable rest area to set up camp. We were quite tired but didn't sleep that well as it was very cold and only got reasonably warm when the sun was well up in the sky. Driving on we later discovered the next mountain pass and giant snow field were just a few miles up the road. After we got used to all the white stuff covering the grounds besides the road we reached the highest point of the pass were a plough had carved it's way through snow so high that there was still 2 metres left on each side in early June. 15 minutes further we we drove through spring and into summer again down in the harbour at Geiranger Fjord. It's hard to grasp that the water is not a lake high up in the mountains but the sea and the little town at the foot of the snowy pass road is as high as Venice. The Knuten of the old road near Geiranger, pic by JanSoon after the road took us up to a platform overlooking the fjord and we had the famous surreal scene of a cruise ship between the steep cliffs and waterfalls with the snow caps in the background. The rest of the day was spent driving to Ålesund, a pleasant little city near the open sea, and then on towards east again to find a place for the night. As it had proven a bit difficult the day before we left the more populated area and finally found a great spot directly at the waterfront next to an old road that was replaced by a tunnel a few years ago. It was like a balcony overlooking the Fjord with two large stones conveniently placed for preparing dinner. Meat was really expensive compared to Germany but fish was very reasonable. And since we fancied it anyways we cooked salmon steaks with potatoes and salad in a beautiful all-night sunset. pic by Jan...end of part one...
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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An unusual car scene, but a diversity of retros so there's something for everyone's taste.
The movie is called "Un homme et une femme, 20 ans déjà" by Claude Lelouche, the director/driver of "C'était un Rendezvous". I haven't seen the movie and have no clue how all those cars came together:
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Last Edit: Jun 7, 2013 8:12:57 GMT by mino
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Great little car, I'm also getting more and more into 80s and 90s japanese cars, there aren't older ones in Germany anyways.
I'm also from the Frankfurt area and don't know many retro car people around. Shouldn't we guys get together some day?
I have a little workshop, it's around 45 minutes outside Frankfurt, besides old Fiats there is an MX5 and an old BMW in there as well.
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Thank you very much, the number of Sonderausstattungen of the E28 is impressive, isn't it?
Die Schlüsselnummer zu 2.2 (falls Du Dich mit deutschen Papieren auskennst) ist 0, das heisst wohl Import. DDR war wohl nur eine Vermutung aufgrund der spartanischen Ausstattung. Es gab sie wohl dort für ein paar wenige Glückliche.
Schöne BMWs hast Du!
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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The E28: 0800247
Someone assumed it was originally built for the GDR, maybe you can shed some light on it.
The E30: AD50077
Thank you!
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Last Edit: Mar 6, 2011 22:56:13 GMT by mino
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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Great progress, have a picture:
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mino
Part of things
Posts: 99
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