Why hello there! I'm Lewis from the UK. I've encountered your forums many times while searching for BF-related things. As I've been rained off from doing work on my car today (English summers are the best), I figured I'd sign up and tell you about Amy, the 1987 Mazda 323 GTX. (If you're curious about the name, well, you'll find out later!)
So I acquired Amy from my big brother Alex in 2015, because I figured my first car should be one I actually wanted to own, plus who wouldn't buy one of these little beasts with a complete, original interior given the chance!
Here was Amy back in 2007 when Alex owned it.
Apologies for the censored plate. I did this back when I thought there was actually a point in doing this. It's D540 APG, if you care.
If I have my timeline right, this was taken on the day of her MOT failure. The list of failed things was very long; close your eyes, imagine a big ol' list of things, then two big ol' lists of things, and you have the MOT fail sheet.
Big bro Alex started work on it. He bought new sill and rear arch panels (which are absolutely unobtainable now, as I gather). There were new Gaz rear coilovers, a bunch of bushes, a new radiator, "reconditioned" turbo, and an engine rebuild (which I did for him).
And then...nothing happened. For years. About eight of them.
To Alex's credit he completed no less than three builds in those eight years, all of which are British (for my overseas readers, "British Car" is a alternative spelling of "hell-furnaces fueled by pain, cash and tears"). Add to that four globe-trotting expeditions in his 1963 Land Rover and well, the neglect is hardly through sloth or losing his love for interesting cars. So it goes; little Amy got back-burnered by other projects, and then Alex's other car (a rather nice GT-Four ST-205) made Amy redundant to him for four-wheel-drive, turbocharged Japanese lunacy.
Anyway, after actual years of occasional hints that I'd be interested in buying it, in 2015 he realised that he really was not going to get around to getting this car back on the road and started looking for a good home for it. A "good home" meaning someone who wasn't going to ruin it with silly mods, or rip out the engine and stick it in an MX-5 and scrap the rest, or strip it out to be a track car. (One condition he added just for me was "don't block off the front wheel drive and turn it into a drift car". Okay.)
Well, I needed a car. Or rather, I figured that if I had a car I actually wanted to drive it would be a good incentive to learn how to drive.
Obviously, I bought it, for a whopping £800.
Those eight years were not very kind to Amy. Here is how she was when I bought her.
There was a lot of rot. There were a lot of things that weren't rot that were terrifying. But a car this rare and this cool deserved to be returned to her former glory and whatever it costed, it costed.
I mean, just that complete, original interior makes it worth it right?
I didn't have the time or bodywork skills to make Amy structurally sound, but I could throw money at people who do! In this case, it was Maurice Hayden (dad of British Drift Championship driver Peter Hayden), who has done some awesome builds like a insane M3-engined E36 Compact and one I am not allowed to talk about (but is retro and utterly mad). We came to an arrangement which was pretty much "give them money, receive working car".
And so, on a Sunday, the Haydens came to pick it up. I took Friday off work to free the brakes up (which were seized solid, but as my stepdad once said, WD-40 and a hammer solves everything, which is sound advice for most things that aren't relationships). As nobody felt like winching it onto the trailer, we tried to get the engine started. We put a jump pack on it, put a little fuel into it, reconnected an HT lead, and crossed our fingers...
The little B6T fired up immediately and willingly, as if eight years of neglect and idleness never happened, and dropped back to a smooth, even idle.
"That'll do, pig. That'll do."
The first thing they did when they got it home was to power-wash the mould off it. And it really did look a lot less daunting without Mother Nature's green paintjob.
And so, Team Hayden got to work. (All photos taken at Fort Hayden are courtesy of Peter Hayden - thanks Pete.)
This all took a while - significantly more than a year. This is fine; I had an agreement with Hayden that he should only work on it only when he had spare time, and in return I got a bargain price on what was a staggering amount of work.
(Beautifully restored brake calipers right there - remember that they were seized on so hard that I had to beat them with a sledgehammer to free them up just so Amy could be winched onto a trailer!)
And so, after a long wait, Amy arrived home. And I had to start thinking about paint. Continued in a reply as I reached some image limit on this board
So I acquired Amy from my big brother Alex in 2015, because I figured my first car should be one I actually wanted to own, plus who wouldn't buy one of these little beasts with a complete, original interior given the chance!
Here was Amy back in 2007 when Alex owned it.
Apologies for the censored plate. I did this back when I thought there was actually a point in doing this. It's D540 APG, if you care.
If I have my timeline right, this was taken on the day of her MOT failure. The list of failed things was very long; close your eyes, imagine a big ol' list of things, then two big ol' lists of things, and you have the MOT fail sheet.
Big bro Alex started work on it. He bought new sill and rear arch panels (which are absolutely unobtainable now, as I gather). There were new Gaz rear coilovers, a bunch of bushes, a new radiator, "reconditioned" turbo, and an engine rebuild (which I did for him).
And then...nothing happened. For years. About eight of them.
To Alex's credit he completed no less than three builds in those eight years, all of which are British (for my overseas readers, "British Car" is a alternative spelling of "hell-furnaces fueled by pain, cash and tears"). Add to that four globe-trotting expeditions in his 1963 Land Rover and well, the neglect is hardly through sloth or losing his love for interesting cars. So it goes; little Amy got back-burnered by other projects, and then Alex's other car (a rather nice GT-Four ST-205) made Amy redundant to him for four-wheel-drive, turbocharged Japanese lunacy.
Anyway, after actual years of occasional hints that I'd be interested in buying it, in 2015 he realised that he really was not going to get around to getting this car back on the road and started looking for a good home for it. A "good home" meaning someone who wasn't going to ruin it with silly mods, or rip out the engine and stick it in an MX-5 and scrap the rest, or strip it out to be a track car. (One condition he added just for me was "don't block off the front wheel drive and turn it into a drift car". Okay.)
Well, I needed a car. Or rather, I figured that if I had a car I actually wanted to drive it would be a good incentive to learn how to drive.
Obviously, I bought it, for a whopping £800.
Those eight years were not very kind to Amy. Here is how she was when I bought her.
There was a lot of rot. There were a lot of things that weren't rot that were terrifying. But a car this rare and this cool deserved to be returned to her former glory and whatever it costed, it costed.
I mean, just that complete, original interior makes it worth it right?
I didn't have the time or bodywork skills to make Amy structurally sound, but I could throw money at people who do! In this case, it was Maurice Hayden (dad of British Drift Championship driver Peter Hayden), who has done some awesome builds like a insane M3-engined E36 Compact and one I am not allowed to talk about (but is retro and utterly mad). We came to an arrangement which was pretty much "give them money, receive working car".
And so, on a Sunday, the Haydens came to pick it up. I took Friday off work to free the brakes up (which were seized solid, but as my stepdad once said, WD-40 and a hammer solves everything, which is sound advice for most things that aren't relationships). As nobody felt like winching it onto the trailer, we tried to get the engine started. We put a jump pack on it, put a little fuel into it, reconnected an HT lead, and crossed our fingers...
The little B6T fired up immediately and willingly, as if eight years of neglect and idleness never happened, and dropped back to a smooth, even idle.
"That'll do, pig. That'll do."
The first thing they did when they got it home was to power-wash the mould off it. And it really did look a lot less daunting without Mother Nature's green paintjob.
And so, Team Hayden got to work. (All photos taken at Fort Hayden are courtesy of Peter Hayden - thanks Pete.)
This all took a while - significantly more than a year. This is fine; I had an agreement with Hayden that he should only work on it only when he had spare time, and in return I got a bargain price on what was a staggering amount of work.
(Beautifully restored brake calipers right there - remember that they were seized on so hard that I had to beat them with a sledgehammer to free them up just so Amy could be winched onto a trailer!)
And so, after a long wait, Amy arrived home. And I had to start thinking about paint. Continued in a reply as I reached some image limit on this board
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