No, not the ice cream ...
About a month back I picked up a relatively cheap 3dr ST170 in (you guessed it) Magnum Grey, big stack of service invoices, full service history, blah blah blah. Sounds great, right?
Well, pretty OK, sure. Picked it up from a garage in SE London for the drive back to mine (20-ish miles) and discovered about halfway that the garage selling it had gone to the trouble of cleaning the engine bay. With a jet-washer. Misfires and stutters galore, lovely job.
Nursed it back to my local town and had the leads and cylinder head air-blasted, which cured that ..
When the initial OMG I LOVE THIS CAR feeling had subsided, I started to look over it with a properly fine-toothed comb and have found a few bits I
really want to fix before they drive me nuts, money (hah) and work schedules (double hah) permitting.
Long term goal for the car? Well, restore it as best I can (and improve it). So, how?
- Fix front bumper (paint chipped, dented above numberplate)
- New IMRC
- Clean headlight covers (DONE)
- Refurb/get new alloys
- Replace driver & passenger doors
- Put in new stereo (DONE)
- New cat (DONE)
- General engine TLC (plugs, leads, ignition coil etc.)
- Remove airbox resonator
- New exhaust system (DONE)
So, how's it looking so far? Well, see for yourself!
On the day I picked it up!
Lovely clean engine, wonder how they managed that ...
Important things first, new stereo. Absolute steal from Halfords, got to love end-of-month deals! New fascia from Dynamic Sounds in Wandsworth, fitting by a chap in my local Halfords for a very reasonable £30!
Headlights in the original (as-purchased) state. YUK.
MUCH BETTER.
Washed, polished & waxed. Looks beautiful if I do say so myself.
Shameless beauty shot after a post-waxing rain shower.
As I do bits to the car I'll update this post with links to the relevant posts below. Here begins the adventure.
So, item one ... sports cat or OEM?