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Jo’s Diary: Trouble in paradise
1 year ago
An erratic idle has temporarily taken Jo's RX-7 off the road
I’d decided to stretch its legs on a jaunt to the West Sussex coast and back. Until then I’d had the dream of taking it on a long European journey too, now quashed by the bleak realisation I’d spend as much on fuel as we spend on mortgage payments. Still, without such hindsight, this trip to the coast seemed the perfect opportunity to gently immerse myself in driving my RX-7 long-distance. And the car did great: it drove like an absolute dream and I happily sat on the motorway, listening to my British Dad playlist, belting my lungs out to Semisonic and Radiohead. We were having a grand old time.
Yes, in the aforementioned spirit of honesty I’ll begrudgingly admit there were times when my foot might have been overly eager on the right pedal, but I’m only human, so don’t feel fully to blame. Indeed, someone wise once said it is not always about the journey, but rather the friends you make along the way. So, whenever another driver made eye contact and lowered their window with a thumbs up or a nod of appreciation, I had no choice but to drop a gear and provide them with what they were looking for. This is an important rule of motoring, and I don’t have it in me to disappoint a fellow car lover.
But I forgot my RX-7 is of a certain age. The same way that I might wake up feeling a sore head or an aching back after any excess, my body resenting the choices of the day prior, so I am left to deal with my car’s groans and pains. In this case, it’s an erratic idle, the poor engine thumping and shaking unhappily when warm, leaving me in the unenviable position of being forced into a round of that ill-fated game we call rotary roulette, which so many RX-7 owners warned me about.
It could be something as simple as a vacuum line leak or a full engine rebuild, but more likely something in between. There is no telling, and I am not ashamed to admit that my engine comfort zone is of the piston variety. So, while I wait for the formal diagnosis from someone who knows more about the mysterious witchcraft moving the spinning triangles in my engine bay, the Mazda has been left on the bench, and who knows when it may yet be ready to take to the field once more?
"Sod’s Law meant that every single time I searched for a new piece of the puzzle, I would find exactly what I needed but for the opposite side of the car. Passenger side wings? Half a dozen, ready to go to a new home. Driver’s side? No can do. Even in Japan, the stock seemed sparse"
The second culprit is my Toyota Sera. It has been a year since I last laid eyes on it, and I wonder how much longer it will be until we are reunited. When I embarked on my ‘light restoration’ journey (I am beginning to suspect that, in real life, no such thing actually exists) with Midland Performance and Retro, who brought my Suzuki Cappuccino back to life, I knew it would be in great hands. Yet, I underestimated just a little how difficult the parts sourcing process would be. Okay, make that a lot. Honesty, you see.
Surprisingly, there is a fairly active Sera community in the UK. If the internet doesn’t fail me, there are 74 Seras toting a valid MOT, roughly half of the number of Cappuccini in the same condition. I find this statistic fascinating because the Suzukis were actually sold in the UK market from new, with Suzuki GB importing roughly 1100 between 1993 and 1995. By contrast Seras were a Japanese Domestic Market product, with all of the ones in the UK being privately imported. So there are some keen owners out there.
Yet, Sod’s Law meant that every single time I searched for a new piece of the puzzle, I would find exactly what I needed but for the opposite side of the car. Passenger side wings? Half a dozen, ready to go to a new home. Driver’s side? No can do. Even in Japan, the stock seemed sparse. On the rare occasions one of these Holy Grails appeared, the shipping quotes to get it here made filling the car with bundles of £50 notes and setting fire to it seem the more cost-effective solution.
“I really am not a creep. All I’ve tried to do is give these people money in return for some metal they have been keeping on their driveway. I can only hope that psychologists one day come up with answers to what is one of the most baffling of all human behaviours”
There have been times when I reached out to the community directly, asking for anyone breaking their car to sell me donor parts. Owners are often willing to respond, offering all types of bits falling off their vehicles. Indeed, one man’s rusty Sera is another woman’s treasure. But then, as I eagerly accept their price wanting to get my hands on this niche JDM gold, a bizarre phenomenon happens: I am ghosted, messages left on read or, even worse, blocked.
I really am not a creep. All I’ve tried to do is give these people money in return for some metal they have been keeping on their driveway. I can only hope that psychologists one day come up with answers to what is one of the most baffling of all human behaviours. In the meantime, don’t worry, Rick_theDragonSlayer73, keep your secrets… and your bumper.
Frustratingly, this means the whole process has been lethargic at best, and some compromises have had to be made along the way. Not all is doom and gloom, though; there are also some positive things to look forward to. I have managed to visit a man in a shed in the middle of the night and return home with some rare loot of the round variety, as I acquired a set of custom three-piece split BBS Mahle 16in wheels, which I hope will fit the Toyota nicely.
The Sera will return to being a show star... eventually
The third offender is my latest acquisition, albeit not through any real fault of its own. You might recall I have recently added an ex-Lotus Cup Elise S2 race car to my roster, as I vowed to spend more time honing my skills around a track. Without it being road legal, there was a big unknown about the real state of the car. I knew it wasn’t exactly concours condition on the aesthetic side, which wasn’t overly worrisome: so long as the chassis wasn’t bent and the engine was solid, that was all I could ask for.
Happily, for once, that is precisely as it’s turned out. While I was being kept captive at work planning the event for the launch of our UK Corvette Concept that Dan reported on, my partner Al took the Elise for a shakedown at Anglesey, and the little Coca-Cola Lotus proved to have a fighting spirit, having spent the day parked in the rear view mirror of much more powerful cars. He returned home with a big grin and we both breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn’t just bought a lemon.
However, even when life doesn’t give you a lemon, you can still make some lemonade, and we had a long shopping list of things we had found while servicing the Elise, which we wanted to improve before it could start its proper track day career. Driver’s seat and harness are to be replaced with in-date ones, not only in the interest of safety but also future-proofing, in case one of us decides to try our hand at racing. The current rollcage needs upgrading, to allow for a passenger seat for instruction. The fire suppression system needs recommissioning, as do the wipers. Plus, there were a lot of small items that needed tightening, replacing or just a general sprucing up. So, the Lotus was delivered to specialists Road To Race who provide high-performance parts for road, track and race cars, and where Shaun was kind and didn’t just laugh in our face, so again the car might have a chance of not self-combusting the moment I try to drive it around some UK tracks later in the year.
While I wait, I will make sure to pull myself out of this self-pitying spiral of doom and actually enjoy the remaining fleet. The Cappuccino only needs an MOT to be back on the road, which I know it will excel at. And my Triumph Thruxton is begging for a good scrub and polish after its adventure in the Alps, but otherwise I have no good excuse not to bring it out on a sunny day. So, it could be worse and despite it all I should continue to count myself very lucky: I could have a full fleet of perfectly functioning, excruciatingly boring cars, instead. And where would be the fun in that?
