coldel

Perfect day for a bonnet polish with the DA polisher! Scholl g20+ and topped with bilt hamber double speed wax 

Fingers crossed! 

Great pics mate. Paddy’s porker! What happened?

Ah sorry Davey I didn’t see this post. The plate doesn’t look too bad actually, my mate is going to change his out for something stick on so will wait for him to be the test subject!

Today I popped off the dash plates as they are silver aluminium colour and I wanted to try wrap them in alcantara. I popped off the drivers side part and found it’s a fully cut piece of aluminium metal and quite weighty. I honestly thought it was a thin bendy metal, but it was pretty chunky and great quality. So decided to keep as it is. 
 

I have to say the build quality of the Z4 is pretty good even though the first ones were coming out now 20 years ago. Every dial and every switch just has that solid smooth feel to the movement. Am very impressed overall sitting in the car. 
 

Something that bothered me was under the handbrake was a plastic surface all scratched and nasty so got some fabric vinyl and measured up a piece to go in there, rather pleases with the cheap mod!

I also discovered something rather cool. The battery in the key charges up whilst it’s in the ignition barrel. Clever. I guess I’ve been far to used to driving cars built in the 80s!

Just getting prices for refurbishing the wheels at the moment, they are split rim so not cheap!

…but a couple of months in and still loving that straight six, it’s a beast. I do need to change out the clutch delay valve next time it’s up in the air as that ruins the lower gear changes. 

Gave the old girl a clean up and added the 15mm spacers .. took it down by the river for a very quick photo shoot this morning 

What tends to hit the value of heavily modded cars is a mix of:

• Has it been done properly or have short cuts been taken
• I didn't do it myself so don't know what issues have come up as the car was modded
• Insurance costs
• Cosmetic mods often reduce your potential buying audience making it less sought after and harder to sell
• Future potential value where unmodded cars are generally more sought after

When modding a car you have to go in eyes wide open that every penny you spend is likely to never come back - unless you set back to standard and sell parts used. 

All that said, I had a reasonably modified 350z years ago and was told I would never sell it at the premium price I put it up for, I sold it within a couple of weeks at the asking price. I think I was quite lucky in that respect and wouldn't say thats the norm!

If you have the time, price it a little above the going rate for an unmodded one and try your luck. If nothing bites, drop some value off or offer up some sort of deal i.e. buy it cheaper but you dont get the easy to replace value items like wheels/intake etc. just pick up some standard items cheap off ebay and sell wheels etc separately.

Can’t help but stare at this out the window when working at home. The side profile is just 🤩

Complete non-article and 100% click bait, this was doing the rounds months ago and is not new news. Also aligns quite nicely with the Mail agenda on politics. 

I always find it interesting that people worry about it and claim it shouldn't be an offence/civil liberties...yet probably 9 out of 10 fights in the UK start with the line 'oi who you lookin at [insert expletive]'.  

Few little cosmetic bits. I sourced the oil cooler cover, installing was a pain ITB but got it on with a bit of force!

Two other bits, the stock gear knob is a plastic chrome affair, aside from looking crap it’s also not great to handle. Have been looking at the genuine weighted M knob for a while and saw a deal on eBay so snapped one up. I think it definitely suits much better and being three times the weight of the previous one and a good inch and a half shorter makes shifting soo much more engaging

Next job, spacers. Again saw a money off deal and snapped up a set of 12mm and 15mm for front and rear. The difference really sets the car off, looks so much more imposing and stanced.

Before and after. It’s subtle but in the metal looks so much better. And before you ask…yes it was Esso Supreme 99 E5! All the local Shells were sold out!

If you can fit a Z of the German variety…

Payco - Datsun 510 SSS - WWU 276J

andy James 350Z - AJ07 ZZZ

nismoandy  350Z - WP06FNX

George1966 350Z CK06ACK

Andy_Muxlow 350Z A20 MUX

Loadmaster - 370Z Nismo - RK67 DZZ 

GranTurismoEra - 370Z- RA62DXH

gnarly - 370z GT - LM18TGU

TommZ - 370z Nismo - VV66TOM

coldel - z4 - KT09JDO

Staying at a B&B just down the road!

TGM in Fleet did some amazing work on my previous cars, they can be a bit pricey but the work will be spot on. Worth a call see what they can do. 

As we most cars heavily modified you will have significantly reduced your potential buyers market, I am sure a buyer is out there somewhere but you might have to wait a while for them to turn up - this will affect your pricing. You could find something equivalent in terms of mileage/colour which is an unmolested one on AutoTrader/Ebay (generally well maintained unmolested are premium) and price it alongside that and go from there, if you don't get any bites and depending on how long you want it sat outside the house for, slowly drop the price until you get a nibble.

Good job done today, serviced!

Air oil and cabin filters all done. Spar plugs, oil change. Total cost of parts £160. Not too bad at all. 
 

Also sourced an oil cooler cover which was missing (that’s the silver box to the front of the engine) and put that on.

Other good job is plugging in a diagnostic tool to check the parking sensor issues and believe we have identified offender rear right, ordering a replacement as we speak.

Well I found out the other day that these cars come with a “noise pipe” effectively a plastic pipe that runs from the air box area of the car into the cabin firewall into the passenger footwell. It has two foam plugs at each end. I removed one. So now I hear the engine inside the cabin a bit louder…and it’s wonderful!

It’s foam…

A bonus point if any one can guess what this is then…

Needed a VERY steady hand haha

Lots of little things going on. I had a few scratches on the front bumper painted by a mobile paint firm, did an 8/10 job did reasonably well given the high winds we had going on. 

Dig out some old fly eye stuff and tried it in the side indicator lights to make them more subtle i actually like it!

Also bought some stickers that cover the blue triangles with black for the badges - goes well with the whole dark scheme

I never gave the Z4 any time of day if I am honest until I started looking at the coupes, which look stunning they just got the side profile so right and the rear quarter angle is beautiful. I wont be adding any body modifications at all. I also didnt appreciate just how good the N52 engine is, its easy to look past it at the M car and 265bhp doesnt set the world alight nowadays but its got that rare characteristic of having oodles of torque low down and being very free revving it doesn't feel lazy at all. 

From the weekend, the first of many fill ups I suspect 🤣

As usual I couldn’t resist getting the kit out and giving the new motor a gentle going over…

Gyeon Bathe+ 

Scholl G20 machine polish 

Bilt Hamber Double Speed wax

There are definitely details that need to be attended to but a good starter for ten.

Todays job involved fitting a bluetooth dongle to the standard headunit. I really want to retain the original head unit it looks so perfect with the rest of the dash, and standard aftermarket just do not look right. Anyway the job is you need to remove the vents above the headunit to access the screws holding it in, 2 minute job apparently as its just two clips which you pull down by poking a little flat head through...any way an hour later along with a lot of swearing I realised why mine was more challenging than most...

Cannot describe how bloody annoying this was! Obviously its been out before...anyway did a gorilla glue fix on it with a random bit of plastic to avoid the pain again.

£20 ebay dongle plugged in and boom we have a working bluetooth head unit. Happy days. 

1 hour ago, ibrakeformoose said:

All the parts and panels still have the original VIN sticker on them, except the driver's side wing, bonnet and bumper.. I suspect they wrote it off due to the gravel chippings on the original Rays.. I sold three off but kept the 'worst' one back to show any prospective buyer how harsh the assessor was.

 

I'm going to get the car jacked up this weekend to see if it makes any odds to get into it, if it doesn't it'll just have to go, but if it does I'll pull the trigger on a bag set up.. the car's too good to give away and I had intended to keep it for years but didn't count on two of my vertebra exploding..

Yes unfortunately this is the risk with Cat cars. You can get them cheap but selling on privately is a nightmare, buyers wont go near them unless they are VERY cheap. I just bought a Z4 coupe and there is a gorgeous blue one up for sale, top spec, low miles, and a cat car and hasnt sold in months. Its priced at about 2/3rds of what it should be if it wasnt a cat car and they still cant shift it. 

Do you have any pics of the cat D damage? Often that really helps reassure a buyer and also gives them some chance of selling it on in future. It would help with the sale. 

Otherwise I think you might have to swallow the bitter pill and go trade? Bagging the car is going to be expensive and in reality it wont add any sell on value to the car if you intend to move it on later down the line. 

Interesting watch. Personally I would be buying the level down for fast road and all round. Very happy with my PS4 I got yesterday. 

Shame they still don't understand how to visualise data or how to use bar charts properly 🤣