Spac’s adventures in Magna

Confirmed that the 380 has a blown head gasket. Combustion pressure in the cooling system.

It runs, clearly with one dead cylinder. When the revs are right down, the steam pulses are in time with the misfire…

I am currently pondering whether to fix it straight away or just pull the motor & box out and leave it in the shed for a while. Third option is to actually give the engine a rebuild - a rebuild kit is $800 including delivery, which seems pretty tempting.

Some wheel shuffling…

The 15” Solara alloys went onto the wagon so its 16s could go onto the 380 (15s don’t go over 380 brakes), so that the 17” 380 wheels could be test fitted over the Evo Brembos…

But the 380 wheels have nowhere near enough clearance to the inside of the spokes, so that’s a fail.

Solution!

These are 17x8 +35 with 235/45 tyres.

They have tons of brake clearance and don’t seem to scrub. They juuuusst stick out of the front guards though. Dropping back to 225/45s combined with the small amount of negative camber that will come when I lower the car, ought to be enough to bring them back in.

Hopefully.

And another one.

TJ2, auto, 150,000km. Been sitting in an underground carpark for a couple of years.

It’s a very nice car overall. Still starts easily on the original battery and runs nicely.

A few niggles: taken a light hit on the bum , and some idiot felt the compulsion to put clearcoat on the the front guard…

I honestly don’t know what I am going to do with it - really only bought it to save it from the scrapper. Most likely outcome is that I will get it roadworthy and sell it.

Yup…

$300 3.5 manual. It looked MUCH better in the photos in the ad - could only see the damage to the driver’s side front corner…

Meh, it was only ever going to be a parts car… it’s just that there’s less useful parts than there appeared. The only usable panel is the bootlid.

Still runs beautifully, including the 3-years-since-the-crash battery being able hold a charge (so far).

I think that does me.

I have more decent motors and manual gearboxes than I have decent cars, and I have more cars than I want.

Need to move the Mirage back on the trailer, but this experiment goes live tomorrow morning.

carnut1100

Stick a 3.5 manual into a Mirage...

This has definitely been considered.

The people who have done it reckon that it actually works well - apparently the extra weight over the front doesn’t hurt them.

Also, some rolling things in glitter.

The paint is just some vaguely close shit I had in an aerosol can. And is a terrible match…

Z

Did the same on the blue Mirage. (Photos in reverse order)

Both cars were far easier to do than the Bubble was. The original colour coat on the Mitsubishis was MUCH thicker than the colour on the 121.

The poor old Magna has copped a lot of poor paint repairs in the past, so the paint thickness is all over the joint. If I cared, I would just respray it.