My Car's History, As I Know It

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I bought it in March of 1998 with about 89,000 miles on it.  I am the fifth owner of this car, which seems to have a successful history autocrossing. So far,  I've been spending my time and money sorting out the mechanical fuel injection system.  I've had the pump rebuilt and the motor re-tuned.   Thanks to the guys at Auto Sport Systems Group, the car is running awesome now.  Very fast, very fast.   From the pic to the right, you can clearly see the Magnacore wires that I installed.  I still need to replace the rubber wire guide blocks that fit between the stacks.  I'm sitting on a pressure fed tensioner kit right now.  I haven't had the time to put them in...and I don't see any time in the near future.  I guess it's become a winter project.  That along with a valve adjustment.

One of the previous owners repainted the car in the early 1980's.  It was originally a shade of white and I don't know why someone would change it from the factory color.  But that owner seems to be have been a fanatic and the current paint job is excellent.  It wasn't taken down to bare metal, but this owner most likely spent a lot of money repainting the car as there are very few signs of original paint.  The only places I've found white are inside the doors and under the carpets.  I think the fiberglass duck tail was added when the car was repainted.  The current color is a custom paint color.  Apparently, it's a mix of a Mercedes brown with red and black pigments.  The color is a dark maroon or brown, depending on the light conditions.

This car has had many other cosmetic changes.  It's tough to see from the pics above, but this car is S optioned.  This includes S gauges, S brakes, an a fake S front spoiler.   This is just one attempt by a previous owner to lighten this car (more about this some other time).  The last owner ripped off the door sill trim (but promised to mail it to me...right!).  The horn grilles are the black ones from 1973.  The end caps for the bumpers have been blacked out and the headlight trim rings were painted body color.  Also, the turn signals are euro spec...so I've been told (clear lenses with black trim).  I still need to take out all of the bulbs and clean the contacts.  If they don't look any brighter, I may switch to higher wattage bulbs.
 pcarfront.jpg (31230 bytes)

When I bought the car, it had some old 205/60 R15 Pirelli P6s on it.  They were badly flat-spotted.  So bad, in fact, that the suspension would kick and bounce over the smoothest roads, causing the driver and passenger to take a beating.  I've already replaced the tires with a nice set of 205/55 R15 Dunlop SP 8000.  I mounted them on a messy set of 15x6 Fuchs that I picked up (DC Automotive).   I plan on having the original wheels refinished and mounting some racing tires on the messy set.  Who knows, I might even paint them all black and do a rough caganize job on the rims.

The suspension has been changed around by one of the previous owners.  As I mentioned, it has a set of Koni shocks on it.  The only other things I know about it are that the front torsion bar is 22mm, and the car's ride height  is lower than stock.

The interior is in pretty good shape.  I pulled the door pockets out because they were looking pretty bad.  The odometer stopped working for a few thousand miles.  I found some information about odometer repair on the Pelican Parts web page.  I opened up my odometer, fixed the problem they describe as common, added a few thousand ticks to the odometer, and am happily motoring along with a functioning odometer again.  I also followed their repair procedure for fixing the mechanic clock, and now my clock works again.  Thanks for the help, Wayne!  Now I just need to fix the fuel gauge.  I need to put a new bulb in it.  Also, it tends to fog up from time to time.  So I suppose I'll need to replace a seal.




Space for future information???

Last updated April 14, 1999.