I'm just happy that you can keep the original wheels if that's what you're wanting.
Yeah, I'm chuffed they get to stay.
When we started out looking for a Z, we had the intention of finding something a bit unloved or in a less desirable spec, and making it better within a limited budget. There aren't a lot of OEM Z wheels, other than the style 18's, that we liked, so had even picked a set of aftermarket, along with some other bits that we would use on the project.
We never expected to get a car this good and I really value the rarity of it's original spec, with the paint, seat colour and background history so the wheels from the original build sheet need to stay.
Even all the stuff i'm taking off the car, I'm cleaning up and putting in storage. The radio (sorry
@oldcarman), brakes and suspension and airbox, even the original mirror glass all getting kept incase we ever feel the need to restore to factory spec, but for now OEM+ is the vision, as it was for the M3 and Pug.
Actually, I've not actually shared any info on how we came to own this Z yet...
Anyway, about 5 or 6 weeks ago, an ad appeared on Gumtree, and I literally jumped in the car and went to see it. Having looked at a few other Z's, and knowing my way around these cars well enough, I knew as soon as I saw it, that it was the right car. But it was in a field, covered in filth.
How did it end up here?
The car had actually been sold for scrap to a local breaker. Yeah, scrap!
It's had one owner, only 58k miles and full dealer service history, and as we now know, was it almost perfect condition, except some wobbly seats and one rotten outer sill. The battery had died, so the owner got it toed to their local dealer who replaced the battery, fired it up and announced the ECU had blown. New ECU + Battery + Toe Charge was more than the owner was willing to pay, since that involved messing about with the EWS, keys, etc..., so told them to get rid.
They contacted the breaker, who only really valued the engine, gearbox and diff for scrap and had actually advertised those parts on ebay, gumtree and facebook back in December. I've even printed out copys of the scrap ad's for the history file. Fortunately, no one was looking any of those parts at the time, so the car sat waiting to be broken.
However, over christmas the breaker decided to take a look at it and found a fault in the alternator (or maybe someone came looking an alternator and he was going to sell this one before they realised it was over volting), so he swapped that plus the ews, ecu and some other bits off another m52b28 car he had lying in the field and bingo. Z running smooth. Apparently he was considering keeping it himself, but i think he's got enough vehicles about so just wanted to move it on.
Anyway, the punchline of this story is that he only wanted the scrap value of the engine, gearbox and diff for it. Ok, 50k running gear goes for good money, but still, the rest of the car was free, and I blagged a few other parts out of the yard whilst i was there, including these brakes and a purple tag steering rack for the M3.
The rest you may already know from the thread: I collected it, drove it straight to MOT, passed, home, cleaned, cleaned again, and now upgrading some parts, before servicing, some more cleaning and finally handing the keys over to my dad.
Been a fun project for me to work on, and have definitely become a Z fan just learning about them and seeing the enthusiasm from everyone I've spoken to. Far more than I see for the M3 or Pug
Can't wait to get it complete, take it for a drive and feel the difference from the day we got it.
