My Cefiro #4: Starting the modifications

My Cefiro #1: http://carscameraschronicillness.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-cefiro-1-carsales-ad.html

My Cefiro #2: http://carscameraschronicillness.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-cefiro-2-inspection-and-test-drive.html

My Cefiro #3: http://carscameraschronicillness.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-cefiro-3-buying-it-and-bringing-it.html



Having brought the Cefiro home the night before, the next morning I started it up and reversed out into the driveway, to take some photos of it in sunlight. After having it sit in my garage for nearly a year from June 2010- May 2011 with a repaired and resprayed rear end, when I looked at these photos again for this post, I was a bit taken aback by how much of a pig it looked when I first bought it. Mostly due to the melted and burnt rear bumper, as well as both the bonnet and boot being black.

 From this side it looks relatively ok.

And then...yikes. Looks particularly nasty in this first photo, can't believe I drove it in daylight looking like that, even if it was only once to wash the car and pick up a few car-related bits and pieces from Port Adelaide.

 After taking a few photos of the Ceffy in the driveway, I headed over to a car wash at Port Adelaide to clean some of the dust and dirt off the car. While I was hosing it down, a guy from the Bob Jane T-Mart store next to the carwash came up, and said he knew the previous owner, and that at some point it had been defected and had to be taken back to stock. I mentioned that I was after some new rear tyres, as the current ones didn't have much tread left. He said that they had 17" tyres on special for a good price, so after rinsing the car off, I made the huge 30 metre road trip over to the workshop to get a couple fitted.

Up on the jack in preparation for the new tyres. It was a good chance to have a bit of a look underneath the car, with it being quite low I wasn't able to see much lying on the ground when I first checked it out.

With the new shoes fitted a short time later, I headed back home and parked it in the garage. The car came with a few bits and pieces, including a spare boot lid that wasn't black.

Some pretty substantial flames came out of the exhaust at some point in time by the looks of the bumper. I've seen various rotors pop flames fairly regularly, but they don't melt the bumper like this.

I suppose you don't need too many points to attach a boot lid, but I was a little surprised that there were only 4 little bolts holding it.

So after a couple of minutes with a ratchet, and some awkward maneuvering holding the boot lid by myself, I got it off and laid it on the ground next to the bubble-wrapped replacement. It would have been even easier with a second person, but in the middle of a weekday with nobody else around I managed ok.

I was under the impression that the spare boot lid was the same colour white as the car, given that would be the logical conclusion, and under the bubble wrap it did look white. It turned out to be more of a light grey colour, which obviously didn't match, but stood out a lot less than the black one. So it was the better option until I could take the car in to get resprayed properly.

There were a few random stickers inside the new one. With some difficulty I held it in place while I did the bolts up tight again.

So looking marginally more respectable after the change, but still has the nasty bumper burn dragging it down.

Some of the bits and pieces that came with the car in the boot, lots of random plastic trim pieces, as well as 600x300mm HKS front-mount intercooler.

Coming up in Post #5; my dodgy stopgap bumper respray, and some decent DSLR photos of the Ceffy, taken on our first short cruise to Outer Harbour and back.