New member from west midlands UK

[Perry J]

Hello to all,

I'm Perry from Hereford UK. I've had my '85 series3 FB ('86 reg - possibly one of the last?) since 2002. She was given to me by my father-in-law and when I first tried to jack her up all four jacking points gave way (sound familiar?). I got her back on the road after a year of slicing , grinding and welding and used her as a daily commuter between Hereford and Malvern for two or three years. I absolutely love this car (my cliche motto for her was 'any corner, any speed'!) Sadly she's been off the road for a few years due to impending MOT failure and offspring! I dearly want to get back to driving her as a fun car in the near future. She's slightly modified, a former owner has obviously dropped the suspension, added alloys and junked the side trim. All I've done is to replace the exhaust for a WGT Auto developments stainless system after the thermal reactor cracked (real good buy!) added Magnecore leads and swapped out the diff for a slightly less rattly one! I want to do a rack and pinion conversion some time - anyone done this? Also I have a 45 DCOE to go on - motor is still sweet after 113k. Anyway there's plenty to do and hopefully I can go on learning from you guys now I'm on here.

Cheers Perry.

[codge]

Hi Perry, Welcome.
Yes, in the old days, when I did take corners at more than 35mph in our earlier 1st Gens,I used to think the blessed things were on rails!
And I changed the diff on the present S3 because of clonking due to a loose bearing inside the diff.

Well what's coming is a grovel request.....Any chance of Reg and Colour, to see if your car's already on my register?
You can PM me if you like.

Cheers Codge (Silver S3 in the Banner......the one with the beauooootiful Red Coach Line).

[Steve-A]

Hi Perry You're pretty local to me, I'll have to keep an eye out for your Rx when it gets back on the road! Good luck with getting it back together and road worthy again soon. There's plenty of good info on here about where to find parts if you need any.

Rack and pinion conversions are few and far between. There is an 'off the shelf' option in the US but it only works for left hand drive, and there's a couple of guys running custom set-ups, I believe Tim from RX motors uses a modified Micra rack.

More common and probably a whole heap easier and safer is to buy a rotten FC and take the whole front subframe, along with steering rack, and 13b engine. This is what RamoNZ on here has done, check out his build thread

[Lucky]

Hiya, and welcome. Lol, never jack on the jacking points, it's asking for trouble Fortunately a previous owner had been kind enough to flatten the sills on mine already to give me a warning it wasn't the best idea, so I always use the diff or front crossmember

[Perry J]

Thanks for the welcome guys, I'm still finding my way round here but have seen some nice cars already. I'll keep you posted on my restoration progress.

[ian65]

Hi Perry,
welcome to the forum
we love restorations on here, post up a thread if you get chance so we can follow your progress.

cheers,
Ian