Lucky's Series 3

[Marc S]

I detango'd mine - the orange lens is glued in at the edges, so just break the majority of it away, and then clean up the rest with a dremmel or something - easy enough

[Lucky]

Yeah, that's the way forward! Cheers, Marc, and God bless Mazda and their insanely over-engineered indicator strategy Like, this little lot is the contents of an FD sidelight/indicator, I'm glad they go to such lengths cos at least it makes it much easier to de-tango them in the name of style

[codge]

Right, seems to be an overwhelming choice of gunmetal/polished lip. Good, that's my first choice too. Must be right, then lol.

Not much to report, just one minor alteration. I finally (with moral support from Ada) manned up enough to bin the front plate and get my sticky one on instead. It's amazing how much of the lines of the front end that hideous, massive plate held on with four pounds of pig iron used to hide. Every time I looked at the car it enraged me, and the improvement is massive (IMHO ). I guess it may divide opinion a bit, but hopefully it'll at least keep Plod away

Wellllll......Hmmmmm......I could have guessed you would be totally artistic Nik and that you would position the sticky in exactly the right place. (IMHO that offset is nigh on perfect).

BUT.....you ain't vertical my boy and that might be seen as an illegal NONO if the police want to feel your collar.

Maybe if you could have fabbed up more pig iron and bolted an upstanding kidney cutter onto the bonnet, to accept the sticky, then that would be vertical AND would satisfy your artistic needs.
but maybe 'Construction and Use Act' might have a say then about 'lethal upstanding parts'.....no smut intended.

[Lucky]

*chuckles* Delicately put, Dave, I appreciate the gentle phrasing there. I'm aware that it's not strictly speaking within the letter of the law, but equally I feel it's not totally taking the mickey either. Numberplates have consistently been one of the things that enrage me the most about vehicles, a design studio spends weeks of sleepless nights sculpting automotive beauty and then it gets desecrated by a plastic monstrosity the size of a surfboard I'm not trying to hide, or evade the law, just make the car look a bit nicer. Hopefully any reasonable ol Bill would understand this is a tolerable halfway house (yep, I'm willing to believe there are still reasonable coppers out there )

Anyway, it's just as likely to fail an MOT as get me a tug, I understand that it's now a fail if you don't have the postcode of the issuing garage along the bottom of the plate Another MAJOR contribution to road safety there, then Well, we'll see, but fair to say my FD's plate has looked like since I got fed up with getting grief for not having one at all about three years ago, and it's not yet (touch wood) attracted too much hassle;



As to the placement, if it hadn't been for Adam forcing me to do it, I'd still be there now trying to work up the courage to peel off the backing and take the last step....and it'd STILL be crooked

[Marc S]

Nice


They got better at it - my 2003 323F had orange bulbs in the front...so I swapped them for silver vision ones, and hey presto

[Lucky]

Finally got round to it!



What a lovely piece of bling, and functional too! Winner. Only trouble is now I keep getting urges to polish the alternator and stuff to match. Then I remember what an utter PITA it was doing the FD one and lie down till the feeling wears off



Whilst I've been under the bonnet, I've been thinking (always dangerous, I know ). It would appear that the airpump is not only completely pointless, what with the header exhaust system, but doesn't even have a drive belt. It would seem to my feeble mind therefore that it's just a gurt big lump of pigiron I could be well advised to throw in the bin. As far as I can see, it's two bolts, then block this pipe;


...block this pipe;


...and chuck it in the bin. Is there any reason why this is NOT a good idea? What am I missing lol?

Finally, couldn't help but include an arty pic. Had a rotor FD key blank that had been in a drawer for years. Got the end cut for the FB, then spent a while filing away the extra wide shoulders on it, and it works perfick. Hurrah, I now have more than one key for the next time I errr..... lock the door with the keys still in the car

[ian65]

if you remove the air pump, you need to fit 2 blanking plates to the inlet manifold as shown on here...

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=477

that pulley look the dogs.... I'll have to fit mine ( after Keiths copied it)

.

[Lucky]

Thanks for the link, Ian. I have to say, I can't relate that diagram to how the engine looks, but maybe when I get the plates in my hand it'll swim into focus. Any reason why I can't just bung the pipe for now? Don't see where the blanking plate would fit

[ian65]

Nik, these pics show the plates in position...





and on these pics, the plates have been removed...

[Lucky]

Thanks again, but unless I'm being really thick here, isn't that mani bit different to mine? No matter which way up I look at it, it doesn't seem to match up. Sorry to keep on being stupid, but is this blanking plate



The same as the one on mine already?


If so, that hose union from the airpump looks completely different I guess I need to leave this till I have the manfiold off to fix my water leak, anyway, yeah? Is there another connection from the pump other than the two hoses I highlighted earlier that you can't see without stripping everything back? Hopelessly confused now