Thousand Dollar Supercar

So I ended up spending almost what I paid for the car to get it mostly straight again. Justifications: I didn't want to be responsible for its death 'Better the devil you know / The best of the worst you can handle...' I need a car to take to Nats 2023 Some of the cost was covered by all the money I saved by not putting petrol in the Jag for 1.5 years Also, you know, I wanted to contribute to the local economy after the covid downturn. I got it back in May 2022. The panelbeaters fixed it the old fashioned way without replacing panels / using rust repair sections etc. It's better and worse than before - I got a few rust bubbles and dents seen to, both sides of the car were repainted, the new paint is nice but was mixed to the paint code rather than matched to the other panels, the replacement lights and bumper bits are crappy. The car no longer has this pinstripe: (I just thought the post needed a photo and I didn't take any) I got busy refitting bits of trim and fixing stuff for a WOF, and happily the car only failed on an intermittent park light bulb (WOF inspector wasn't satisfied when I demonstrated how to make it work by hitting it like The Fonz). So the Jag is back! I filled it up with some fresh fuel, which cost about a dollar per litre more than the last time the car was on the road. On the day it passed its WOF, I took it to a gig in Morrinsville, which was over 200km of open road driving. The trip computer said 10.1 l/100km for the weekend, but more importantly the tyre vibrations and engine idle quality improved back to their baseline crappiness. I was reminded that the Jag feels a bit disconcerting at speed - the rear end wants to make you swerve like a drunken snake, so you have to keep a grip on the wheel and just use small steering inputs. Here's Jaguar test driver Norman Dewis explaining the very British reason the XJ-S has a rear rollbar despite it making the handling worse. But I have missed these things: The instant response of a cable throttle and a naturally-aspirated engine (I daily a modern turbodiesel) The Jag's cartoonish decadence, absurd priorities and whimsical design Old car smell The motorboat-meets-line-trimmer noises it makes Now I need to get it serviced and get back to all the tasks I put on hold. Tell me how stupid I am:

So you're probably wondering why I haven't updated this thread in 1.5 years. It's because the Jaguar bit me. I was driving home in about November 2020 and the engine was up to temp, so I decided to go for an onramp pull. It wasn't raining, I had new rear tyres, not much power, and I was only flooring it in a straight line, so nothing would go wrong. Unfortunately the road was still a bit wet, the onramp was downhill and quite narrow. For a few seconds I was accelerating with full traction, still well short of the speed limit, then maybe the auto shifted gear or I hit some water or hit VTEC, and the rear stepped out to the right. I tried to catch it with the steering but I think I lifted completely off the throttle (I'm not experienced with RWD), and the car snapped back the other way. The back left corner of the car hit the concrete wall on the left side of the onramp, sending the car across into the barrier on the right. I hit that barrier squarely with the entire right side of the car. My side curtain airbags failed to deploy in the barrier impact, so my head whacked the driver's door window (cabin is pretty small). I managed to stop the car rebounding into anything else and I drove it home. I could not sleep at all for the entire night. I kept imagining the police were watching their highway cameras and they'd turn up at my door to arrest me for toxic masculinity. I was very annoyed at myself for crashing another classic car (even one with unfriendly handling). Now what? I had no insurance, and the car might be uneconomical to repair privately, particularly if I'd done any mechanical damage when the RF and RR wheels hit the barrier. So I took it to get the wheel alignment checked, and apparently it was all fine. Jolly solid car / that's why it's so heavy. I parked the car up and started looking for parts. For the longest time, nobody was wrecking an XJS except the absolute worst of TradeMe sellers. I'm talking guys so lazy that actually buying anything off them is like solving a puzzle. I had been starting the Jag every few months and moving it back and forward, but still the tyres got square and the leather got mouldy and the car got dusty etc. I was tempted to abandon it and buy a more modern vehicle, but I eventually managed to get the bare minimum of B-grade parts to allow me to take the Jag to a panelbeater. I was worried that if I didn't get it back on the road in a somewhat timely manner, it would start to rust and degrade mechanically. The plan was to get it WOFable rather than presentable, so I could resume driving it. (continued)

Recently they've been offering an espresso shake, plus a competition which I need to win ($10k of Rockshop gear). Purchasing the shake doesn't qualify for an entry into the competition, but two out of three ain't bad.

I managed to kick the SD1 sickness. Mine was a 2600 manual and probably the worst car I've ever owned, even though it made perhaps the best noise of the lot. I agree with you on wanting a series 2 - all of the styling changes were for the better. I just can't believe the build quality is also supposed to be an improvement over series 1.

Looks like it comes with a Lexus bath towel and handkerchiefs! I didn't realise these were sold new in NZ. Stupid question - why do you need the fuel computer?

The analogue VU meters are alive! Because they're modern, their LED backlighting is super effective. Each of them sits beside its corresponding magic eye, which of course was a silly decision, because it highlights that the magic eyes are even more laggy and unresponsive than the analogue meters. I've just basically got some electric stuff spasming half a step behind the beat. Why did I jam the analogue meters into valve shrouds? I don't know.... if the magic eye VU meter box already looked a bit like a robot face, now I've made it worse by giving him some bazookas. Everything is just temporarily hooked up directly to its respective power supply at the moment. Once I have all the elements at least to this point (only a few are still yet to be finished and livened for the first time), the next step will be to re-route power to the deflector shields re-run all the power via the control panel.

Welcome back to my art project, where I thought I was aiming for retro.... Today it's looking more like sci-fi futurism. You can see I've put a mirror on one inner wall of the radio cabinet enclosure, to give the illusion of space. I've polished up a bunch of metal valve shrouds and illuminated them from within using neon bulbs, to symbolise the glow of an actual valve. I've incorporated an LED spotlight which is faulty and flickers in an atmospheric way. On the right of the above photo, a pair of 'icicle' Christmas lights chase up and down inside the case of an electrified bug zapper. This both conceals them and helps them cast shadows. I've embedded strings of LEDs into the floor which chase off into the distance, deliberately laid out to give forced perspective. Unfortunately you're not really tricked into thinking the interior of the radio cabinet is impossibly large like the TARDIS - it just looks like a cross between Tron and a penny arcade machine. Here's a piece of interior decoration in the light of day. I cut out and folded a metal box, mainly to give me somewhere to house another moving coil meter. Then I wrecked the meter by accidentally drilling into its internal mechanism when making a hole for a backlight bulb. I managed to half fix it, just enough for it to mostly work. Atop the box, a valve shroud is hiding the light fitting. This either looks like a rubbish bin, or a steam train chimney on a boiler. On the side of the box, there's a vent grille which exists so that I can stick another neon inside and have the glow coming out. Everything has to glow. Also, everything has to hurry up. I've only got another 8 months until my ten-year deadline for this project, and I'm looking forward to kicking back with my first ever glass of Absinthe and tripping out to the pretty lights.

I already want to stab the people parked backwards with their tailgates up.

Daddy Doug discusses the Eterna Sigma V3000's quirks and features until you want to stab him: Did these cars ever come with a manual transmission and a digital dash and a turbo all at the same time, for the 1980s bingo win?

Hi Chris. The guy still owns it, but he's no longer visiting this forum. I spoke to him on Facebook and got his email address, which I'll send to you in a private message.

I've discovered that my radiogram is actually from about 1957, newer than I expected. It is (or was) a La Gloria Recordergram, made here in Auckland by Dominion Radio and Electrical. A nice example sold on TradeMe the other day for $100. I got the magic eye installed and working: It responds fast (no damping) and the microphone input works well. I nearly came unstuck a few times with electrical oversights, but I managed not to blow anything up. So now my cabinet has some kind of sink plug affixed to the front of it for some reason cyclops vision. I'm working on multiple bits of the project simultaneously at the moment, with varying degrees of success. The common thread seems to be that I throw stuff together out of hoarded junk because I'm impatient. Here's my TV screen thing: Don't worry, it'll sit right in the back in the dark where (fingers crossed) it's barely visible. Hopefully you'll just see the screen and the illuminated gauges. Nobody will know I used a bit of cupboard door, tile edging, copper cut from a hot water cylinder and tarnished on my gas cooktop etc. There's a digital photo frame at the top, which will run a slideshow of random stuff like period advertisements for electronics and alcohol. The bit between the analogue meters at the bottom is a light-up display from a cheap Chinese UPS. It may look out of place, but I can't live without incorporating its red "UNUSUAL!" warning somewhere! And here's my ripoff of the Starlight Headliner, an option I'll definitely be specifying on my next Rolls Royce. Take one piece of left-over roof flashing, drill it full of holes, spray it with rubberised underseal, hide the remains of some Christmas lights behind it, seal it with left-over draft stopper..... Wow, staaaars! They twinkle in random ways and it's all very cheesy. I've cut alcohol out of my home life lately, but the day this project is finished, I'm allowed to buy myself a bottle of Absinthe: I'm gonna need something at least this hallucinogenic in order to appreciate the end result of whatever it is I'm actually making here!

@GMH63 That would be great if you've got an eye trim with a hood/eyelid that you'd be prepared to part with.. My first choice would be brass, bronze or similar, but brown Bakelite/plastic would also match existing trim on my radiogram. Re the collectors, the cheapest broken 'project' radios with magic eyes seem to fetch ~$50+ for small ones and ~$100+ for tombstones, plus there's the challenge of getting a whole radio to Auckland. They seem to be worth a few hundred once done up (everyone in Napier and every trendy hipster needs one). I wasn't gonna pay that just to scavenge one piece of trim, and in the process, ruin a proper antique to adorn my abomination. But if you've got a trim piece on a radio that's already missing parts, let me know.. I'd also be interested in a couple of logo / nameplates and large valves (not working) for decoration. Will pay monies plus shipping. Pic for thread:

More parts arrived. There's pre-assembled kits to drive analogue VU meters and another magic eye. I've wanted this circular kind of magic eye since I first saw them, cos they're daft and creepy. My radiogram never had one, so I'm adding it, even if it's from slightly the wrong era. The hardest piece to obtain was the eye's trim surround, because the few that come up for sale are attached to 90YO radios that collectors keep outbidding me for. I would have preferred brass or a similar metal: The eye is going to sit on the front face of my radiogram above the display window, and I'll experiment with giving it a direct audio input from the guitar amp or using its mic input to pick up the speaker cavity sound mix. The VU meters will just be installed somewhere inside the display area, trying to look retro despite their LED backlighting. As they're another item that reacts to the music, they'll hopefully help distract from the fact that you're basically looking at a static collection of lights. I've got all the key parts for this project now, so nothing is holding up anything else. I'm hoping to make some progress over summer. =)

Really? Hopefully they're making it into a cheesy bogan turbo edition, with a panther stripe.

It's a knockoff no-brand "Neon Cross". Surplustronics used to sell them but they don't seem to be listed any more. Hindu "Om" lamps are still available but unfortunately those can't be inverted for Satan worship. The left channel of my magic eye kit has stopped working. The tube now just indicates the minimum level. I need to fix this before I can go any further. =( Edit: I traced the problem to an open-circuit resistor. Of course I don't have a replacement one of the right value, but I'm pretty sure that Ohm's law is temporarily suspended during lockdown...

I'll be in town for the week but probably won't have a car. Is this meet gonna be on the Thursday night?

That's 'Run of the Mill' by Judas Priest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXoalKim9c I picked it because of that quiet section which shows off the fact that the kit works in stereo. With most busy and full-sounding music tracks, the tube displays just sit near their maximum most of the time.

My magic eye VU meter parts arrived! Magic eye tubes were used as signal strength indicators on old valve radios, to help show you when you'd tuned the station accurately. Fast forward 90 years and this kitset just makes the tube displays dance to the music. I went for a pricier kit, but made up for it by getting the tubes on TradeMe and supplying my own case. Here's the kit assembled: I set about installing it in the project box and started to freak out that it would look like a monster face - the box for the head, tubes for eyes and a grille for a mouth. I added a Tesla nameplate below the grille to try to minimise that, but from some angles.... Anyway. Here's a video. Behold the pointlessness!

Making slow progress on this whenever I can be bothered. The control panel is covered in leather jacket, and we have volts! I bought a kitset of a motorised chain similar to a tank track, and used it to create a motorised curtain. The curtain grinds its way noisily open and closed, which adds to the cheese factor. It's lit by some Christmas lights: Hopefully the lights in front are sufficient to stop lights behind from being visible through the thin fabric. I discovered that my plasma globe causes my neon bulbs to glow dimly, which is kinda cool. I hope I don't have to ditch the plasma globe because it scrambles electronics in its vicinity. Next up on this project is puzzling out what the rest of the controls should do, and deciding how much effort to put in. I'd quite like a magic eye VU meter.

They have nixie watches now: https://www.fesaaides.com/products/nixie-watch The battery lasts 3~4 weeks because of tube power consumption - nixie life.

Fast forward half a decade, and not much had changed. I put microswitches into the cupboards so that the lights actually turn off when you shut the doors, and I continued puzzling about what I should put in the radio hole and how I should control it. I decided I wanted a retro-style control panel, so I tried to make one out of a piece of wood covered in the vinyl wrap from the guitar amp case. I got to this point and decided it was rubbish and unable to be saved: One of the problems (besides using wood, the wood being too thick, me not having a drill press to line up the holes etc etc) was trying to sit that modern-style voltmeter behind the panel to hide its age. So I went to Kumeu and bought a voltage gauge from an old car, and started on version 2 of my control panel. The panel was always going to sit in the top of the cabinet somewhere, but I thought it would also be cool if it rose up automatically when you opened the lid, for no good reason. So I bought my first linear actuator, in giant overkill size, without thinking it all through too much. Here is the mock-up of control panel v2 in its raised position. All of the stuff is just sitting in place and is not wired up. I'm gonna cover the panel, most likely in leather, then I'll start deciding what all the switches do and wiring them up. I'm basically an electronics magpie, and over the last few years I've been buying any shiny things for this project that catch my eye. I can't be bothered acquiring the knowledge to create anything too clever with them; I'm just aiming to create a simple retro/steampunk-inspired display that's hopefully not entirely lame. After all, it would be nice if this project actually got finished within a decade of being started....

I had a cheap guitar practice amp kicking around, plus various old speakers and a hand-me-down micro system. I chopped them all up and made a new speaker panel, like so: I got some new fabric (the old stuff was rotten) and covered it up... Then I put the guts of the guitar amp in behind, and put the controls where the knobs of the old valve radio were. This meant I had to use rotary switches for on/off and for the overdrive button. I cut holes in the cabinet for the guitar input and headphones sockets. So in this photo, the original knobs are now controlling the guitar amp: I've also got a few vintage bulbs, a plasma globe and random junk in the hole where the radio dial used to be. This is just 'proof of concept' decorative electronics and I'll be developing this aspect further. =) I sat the micro system in one of the side cupboards, so that (in theory) I could play my music and jam along. The cabinet actually produces almost excessive bass for some reason, but anyway..... I put some lights in the back of the cupboards, and that's about where the project got to in 2014. Here are some staged photos:

Oldschool home entertainment circa 1940s(?) (edit: I now believe it was made around 1957): I didn't choose this project - my brother just turned up with it on my birthday in 2012 (a frabulous, grabulous, zip-zoop-zabulous present). It contained the expected Bakelite record player and reel-to-reel tape machine housed in the top, and a built-in valve radio. I set the needle to 88mph to see if I would be transported back to 1945: Nothing happened except a loud 50Hz hum. None of the other gizmos was fully operational either. I pulled the radio and speakers out: My plans were to use the cabinet for storing booze, and to put some electronics back into it which were more functional and decorative than the original stuff. Basically keep it as a man cave accessory / conversation piece.

I've had enough time to grieve the loss of my Alfa now, and to grow sick of jump-starting it to move it out of the way. Yowser made me feel guilty for hanging onto it for ever and ever and ever, so it's finally listed for sale. https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/alfa-romeo/listing/2865335316

I promise I wouldn't know an AE101 brake kit if it had a label on. You must have tagged the wrong person?