VIN 2703

[igb]

After looking at a few Deloreans over the past 2 months, I am purchasing VIN 2703. The formalities of purchase should complete this week, and then it should soon be on its way.

Thanks to the forum and especially to Chris Williams and Dave Howarth for all their advice when I have been looking at various cars.

This one is a dry car, kept garaged all its life, and is run about once a week by the present owner. 5 speed manual, black interior, grooved hood with gas flap. Aug 81.

A 3 owner car. Checked out the details as far as I can and they seem to match with what the current owner says

I'm hoping I have made the right choice, as I currently don't have time for a project car.

Not done this kind of thing before, the forum advice has been very valuable. I may need your help going forward.

Ian

[Chris J]

(14 Feb 2016, 22:09)igb Wrote: After looking at a few Deloreans over the past 2 months, I am purchasing VIN 2703. The formalities of purchase should complete this week, and then it should soon be on its way.

Thanks to the forum and especially to Chris Williams and Dave Howarth for all their advice when I have been looking at various cars.

This one is a dry car, kept garaged all its life, and is run about once a week by the present owner. 5 speed manual, black interior, grooved hood with gas flap. Aug 81.

A 3 owner car. Checked out the details as far as I can and they seem to match with what the current owner says

I'm hoping I have made the right choice, as I currently don't have time for a project car.

Not done this kind of thing before, the forum advice has been very valuable. I may need your help going forward.

Ian

Congratulations the car looks great I take it it's from the USA. I recently bought my car back in December & Dave was a great help to me also

[igb]

Yes from USA, I meant to say its currently in North Carolina and has 16000 miles on the clock.

Ian

[Stuart Rees]

Well Done. Looks a nice car.
I bought my Delorean at this time of year 10 years ago, just in time for Eurofest 06.
Will you be taking it back to Belfast this May?

[Chris Williams]

That's great news, whilst I'm sure it's a great car remember that there will always be little things that break, especially as it's put into use. It's the nature of these things I'm afraid
Chris

[igb]

Thanks for the messages. I am hoping that I will be able to have it UK road worthy by end June, not planning for Belfast, nice as it would be to go. I am expecting there will be a few ongoing things to do, the nature of a 35 year old car.



Ian

[igb]

#2703 arrived in Southampton last night, expected to clear customs early next week and will then be transported up to Cumbria. Another Delorean in the UK.

[igb]

An exciting day today, as Delorean 2703 was delivered to Wigton, Cumbria. It came up the M6 and was at the front of the top deck of a car transporter. They got stopped in a traffic jam, and apparently several people came and took photos while the traffic was stopped.

It did give me the opportunity to check the chassis while waiting to get unloaded, it generally looks good to me, which was a relief!

Some photos attached.

[Chris Williams]

Chassis looks really good, not sure it's got the front end recall kit fitted though. http://www.delorean.eu/catalog/product_i..._id=161003
Chris

[Guinney1971]

that's a cracker you have there - will you be bringing it to the Club's 20th Anniversary meet in September?

[igb]

Would like to come to the 20th Anniversary in September, but some family commitments mean it looks like I won't be able to make it. Would like to meet up with members at some time.

An update on 2703
TGAL arranged transportation to Southampton, Will in the UK could not help me, but put me in touch with Sal Alvarez in the US and I dealt directly with him. everything went very smoothly, they arranged transport on a vehicle carrier. The title arrived yesterday via their agent on Germany. TGAL put me in touch with David Old at Wallenius Wilhelsen Logistics who did all port handling, liaising with HMRC (NOVA letter arrived today) and arranged onward shipping to Cumbria. The Delorean rolled off the transport straight onto my drive. The import process has gone very smoothly, I know they have imported many other Deloreans and I can certainly recommend these companies based on my experience.

Last weekend did headlight conversion and fog light fitting (using the kit on Eurotec). Put her through MOT on Wednesday, and it failed with various split rubber boots - drive shaft, track rod ends, steering rack. Plus poor handbrake (only working properly on 1 wheel) windscreen washer not working (I should have spotted that one), intermittent fault on a back light.
The good news is that brakes, steering rack, ball joints, and most other things are okay. I was allowed to inspect her while up on the ramp and seems in good condition. The MOT was done by a local independent we know, a Land Rover specialist who is going to do the rubber boot replacement for me ( I ordered all parts yesterday, plus a few recommended extras all arrived this morning) and hopefully get an MOT certificate on Wednesday.

I already have the V55/5 form, and have printed out the helpful guide from DMC talk that I found via another useful link on this forum. Hopefully that should go in post later next week, and with a bit of luck I might get the registration number before my insurance cover note runs out at the end of this month!

Still a bit to do after that but can do it on slightly more relaxed timescale once I have the registration number. Thanks to all who have posted threads on this forum, helped me a lot so far and I'm sure will continue to do.

[igb]

Registration number came through this morning SVU 243W. Now getting number plates made. I changed insurance companies since my last post, and I had a delay getting MOT work done so form eventually sent off on 28th April. Thanks again for the link to the guide on DMC talk on V55/5 form, I had no queries from DVLA.

[igb]

Its only taken 15 months, but significant performance improvement today.

In that time we have fitted a new stainless free flow exhaust, replaced the intake manifold 'o' rings, repaired other vacuum leaks, refitted a bunch of earth's disconnected from the intake manifold, all of which helped the performance, but is was still poor when cold, and acceleration was not fantastic, but not having experienced any other Delorean not sure what to expect

We had done the injector test into the jam jars, and getting a good flow of fuel equally in all six jars.

Was coming to conclusion that it could be the Control Pressure Regulator, and by chance started tracing the pipes to find that the return from the warm up regulator and the feed to the frequency valve were crossed on the Primary Pressure Regulator.

I had carefully marked all these pipes when I took the fuel distributor off to get to the intake manifold, so I can only conclude that the previous owner had work done and got the pipes mixed up. He did tell me it was poor when cold, and did not know why.

I had assumed that all the pipes were correct, I should have known better after finding earth wires off, the vacuum lines to thermo switch and vapour control disconnected and a stripped bolt on the intake manifold.

With the pipes swopped and mixture reset using dwell meter on 4 cylinder scale the frequency valve is now working correctly for the first time. I had to take 3/4 turn off the mixture adjusting screw to get mixture correct.

The difference in performance is amazing, and reading how the fuel system works these swopped pipes meant that control pressure was opposite to what it should be, full system pressure when cold and under acceleration.

Makes me wonder how many other Deloreans are running around with same problem.

[Nick H]

Hi Ian,
        My car is also a August '81. Glad you sorted the problem.

 I have found similar issues with my car. Other people in the cars past playing around without the factory manual/common sense
 In my case it was the central locking system and lock adjustment inside the doors. They even managed to mess up the location of the inner window seal. 
To cut a long story short the actual fault they were trying to rectify ended up being a dodgy electrical 
connection in the roof! 

Nick H

[Guinney1971]

Great work Ian, and glad you sorted a problem that could have had many heads scratching.
Hopefully you can crack on with enjoying your car to the full now