smitty

Not that it matter, but my dad used to have an aftermarket conversion convertible Celica in Holland. Said it was probably the best handling car he has owned: And the car in the background of Vintage Grumble's photo is a car I saw IRL.

I am like, 90% sure that when you make a comment you are meant to make it in the Discussion section (Which I have in my signature) On another note, to not make this post obsolete once the mods will probably delete NZCarFreak's comment, here is my wagon with my friend's wagon: I personally prefer the look of mine, being more original and all. But I drove his yesterday and it's like new, which makes sense, because he did a complete restoration. It's so quiet inside, it's unbelievable. Better angle of his:

Instead of painting the bumpers you should try chrome wrapping them, I believe it has been done before.

Old springs are back on. Likely won't cut springs or try wheel spacers because cutting springs is dodgey and spacers need to be certed and that costs money. On another note, my dad has a Simca now too, he may or may not make a thread:

There's not enough space to do that on either the arm or the perch. I'll probably go with spacers and then either cutting the racing springs or hoping with the original springs that the tire doesn't scrape the inside of the wheel well. On another note, turns out the guy I bought the car from did have his wheels widened outwards as shown by this picture here: Anyone know here I could get something like that done and how much it would cost?

Yeah, but isn't cutting the spring illegal? I would do it but I also don't have any money to pay fines. Then again, the law here is more like guidelines than it is like actual rules, and I do have a lot of spares. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that? I'll ask my dad when he comes home from work because he's smarter than me.

Lowering attempt number 2 has become a failure. I installed a shorter suspension part (arm? I'm horrible with these types of names) and then the stiffer springs which I tried to use earlier to lower it but raised the car by a centimetre: As of now the lowered side sits 2 centimetres higher than the non-lowered side. This is due to the stiffer springs which came from a sedan 1501 and on that sedan the car did actually sit lower but that was likely due to the heavier 2 litre fiat engine that was in it. We put in the stiffer springs to stop the car from rubbing against the wheel during corners but I guess I'll just have to hope that doesn't happen when I change the springs. Sadly though, just changing the springs won't completely fix the problem, well, it will fix the problem but there is another problem at hand. The lowered suspension part (and I've got spares, than god for that) is rubbing against the inside of the tire as seen here: This leaves me with the options of either grinding down the suspension part, which seems kind of risky, or putting in wheel spacers which could probably work. The guy I bought the car from up in Auckland has a white sedan where he had the wheels widened so for that to not hit the suspension he probably had to use spacers or something as well now that i think about it. Unless of course the widening was done into the other direction like with this 1501 wagon: Although that car was actually sold with those dish wheels, they are very rare, I love them. Sorry that this comment may be a bit incomprehensible apparently I am getting worse at English over time.

I LOVE your wagon! Wagons are my thing, it looks like my car's long lost brother! To be honest, I have no real clue how close they are related to the Fiat counterparts. I know for a fact that Simca was owned by Fiat until the early sixties. But according to Wikipedia (the Italian article), design on the 1501s predecessor (1500) started in 1957, but was actually halted by fiat to not hinder the sales of their 1300/1500 models. I know that in the eighties there was a member of the Dutch club who put a 2 litre Fiat engine into his 1501, and there was also a guy in New Zealand who managed to do it earlier, so I'm thinking that the engines would probably bolt directly onto the transmissions. My dad seems to think so anyway. But in terms of design they look pretty close. I wouldn't be surprised if Simca "borrowed" some of the design from the Fiat. The boot floor table thing is really awesome and probably the best part of the design. Surprisingly useful too, simply use the boot lid as a chair and you've got yourself an impromptu picnic, without even having to sit on the ground. I reckon the best part is though that mine has never even been opened. It is in perfect condition. All of the interior is. Well was, right up until I scratched the fake leather on the driver's seat with my broken pants. Anyway, I seriously love your 2300, probably because it is the car that looks the most like mine!

Thanks! I used 3ds Max. I am all self taught, Been modelling since 2011ish. I do it mostly in my spare time with a goal of getting it into Assetto Corsa as a mod. I've actually started about 2 or 3 other simca models which are at various stages of completion but usually I start a new one before I complete the other.

So not much has happened at all to the car over the last few months. I photoshopped what the car would look like if I went crazy and wasn't scared about getting murdered by Simca club members: And stock: I have also been creating the car in 3d but progress is slow because I am a lazy bum and I procrastinate at every turn I can: Anyway, I have been coming across actual problems though. The rear window is winding up one one side more than the other. I'm thinking this is rust related because it only started after I accidentally left the car out in the pouring rain for 4 days. Yesterday's rain also got to the car and it seems I have a leak. The passenger side carpet was soaked through yesterday after the rain, but luckily we found the plug and it should be mostly fine. Another problem is where the roof was fixed a few years ago. We never actually painted over the new fixed part, other than with zinc and now we are seeing more rust showing on what was fixed.

Hubcaps! I've also got a real FDM spec (Like JDM, but for French cars) speedometer that has Kilometers instead of miles, but doesn't come with a daycounter, so we're still thinking about how to fix this. Sharing the garage with my dad's car. I've also started compressing the images to 30% of the original size, all this loading images is making me crazy.

Sorry for not posting more pics, it's kind of cold and rainy out here and the car likes it in the garage. Also, if anyone knows of any Simca 1501 wagon wreck locations in NZ please tell me, I really want to find a roof rack.

More recently nothing much has happened. Dad opened up the transmission and fixed the sticking clutch about half a year ago. Right now the car is road legal but sits in the garage and we only really drive it to shows. I bought some new wing mirrors from ebay and we put them on last week. I also bought some new hubcaps but don't have any good pics. The next thing on the list will be to replace the speedo that has miles on it with the speedo that has kilometres on it that I got from Holland. Tomorrow I'll take the car outside for some updated pictures. Cheers.

-We also had to fix the back of the roof as it was very rusted and cost us the WOF.

- We've also fixed some minor rust problems on one of the fenders.

-We also renewed the jackpoints. At some point in the car's life someone had put the jack in the wrong place and broken the jackpoints, and they were very rusted. No before pic.

Hi everyone. Link to discussion Just updating my dad's thread, since he never bothered to. Here's what we've done to the car since we've bought it: - We fixed the brakes. The brakes were rusted badly. We had the brake discs grinded and we put in all new brake lines. The master cylinder has also been redone. I read in the rules to put 5-6 images per post to speed up loading so more pics in the next post.