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If this is all you have to do, I'd be getting a good mate to help out with a car trailer and just trailer it round to the engineers... the $50 you'd pay to hire a trailer is going to be a heap easier than putting some shonky compliance plate on your car to try and fool the cops if you happen to get pulled over... if you do get pulled over and the plates number is scratched off or 'dented up' then they are going to think something REALLY shonky is going on as already pointed out, and you'll have more to contend with than just a quick trip to Regency.

Just do it the right way the first time. With your CA18 in there, they're gonna know if there's no modification plate that it's not kosher and defect it anyway.

I would think to get suicides street legal, you would have to have some kind of locking mechanism that does not allow the door to open when the vehicle is moving...

eg.

Mazda had to make the rear doors on the RX8 unable to be opened without the front doors being open. With the mini doors on the rear, this was no big deal for them.

When BMW designed the new Rolls, the suicide doors had to be locked by the engine management system, and they will not open unless the car is stationary. Similarly, the car cannot be driven if the rear doors are open.

If they make OEM manufacturers do this, then I guess something similar would apply for modified cars??

sheesh- I feel lucky! I got a full set of tie rods for the 1200 at $20 when Rocca Brothers closed down here in SA a while back (and became SuperCrap) they basically threw away all their parts- getting progressively cheaper over a few weeks. We got several full L-series gasket sets for $7 each!

When I needed front disks recently I phoned around, and also found wild discrepancies between parts suppliers. ABS ended up being the cheapest but didn't have them in stock, Repco then price matched them (at nearly half their original price!)

yup- Irontight is in Australia... I have grabbed it from Sprint Auto Parts in the past, but probably just about any auto parts store should have it.

As someone else recomended... just make sure you follow the instructions! You add the irontight at x number of mls per litre of cooling system capacity. You run the engine up to operating temp to circulate the mixture and then leave it in there until you have driven around for something like 12 hours, then you drain it out with the engine hot to allow it to set and refill with distilled water. Sorry, I can't remember exact details, but that's a rough guide! I thankfully haven't had to use it for a few years... cars have been reliable

It does stop the leak pretty quickly though.

I'd always been told to avoid chemiweld if at all possible due to it blocking your radiator... I have used 'irontight' though on a few motors and had much success! You put a lot less irontight into the radiator vs chemiweld, so there's no way it can really block up.

We ran a L20B on gas for 3 years with a crook head on irontight. Just gave it a dose once a year, and when we finally pulled it apart, the head was actually very bad, but the iron tight had sealed it up ok. Also kept a corolla and a 4 cylinder BMW going with the stuff for up to 12 months after they had been boiled badly.

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yeah- it's a bit expensive for a rebuild don't you think?

I rebuilt my BMW M20 6 cylinder for less than that, and those parts are damn expensive compared to an a12! Mind you don't go to Repco for one a those- they'll tell you $10000 changeover.

I guess it all comes down to what you can do yourself, but when we rebuilt our a12 for the 1200, it cost around $400 including getting the head faced, valves cut, and a hone on a stock bore.

Picking up an already worked a12 is a damn good idea - you will save a lot this way!

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well... the mazda seats set me back $150AUD, while re-upholsering was going to be around $700AUD. I don't know whether upholstery is a cheaper option in the USA, but it certainly isn't down here.

I recently picked up a set of '1998 era Mitsubishi seats to bolt into an old BMW I've got for $60, so if you aren't worried about originality then it's a no brainer really.

when I upgraded my 1200 seats, I took a tape measure down do 'just little car spares' and measured up a heap of seats they had in a stack.

Went with early 90's Mazda Astina seats. They are virtually the same dimensions as the 1200 seats, just unbolt the Mazda runners and fit up the 1200 ones. The front of the runner bolts straight up, and the back needs a couple of short pieces of steel bolted between the seat and the runner, as the mounting points for the seat on the datsun runners were about 30mm further back than the mazda ones. Once you fit up the runners, obviously the seats are a bolt in fit to the 1200.

The seats don't look too out of place either with grey/ navy blue cloth in a black/blue interior.

Here's a vq30 from Adelaide Jap in Holden Hill. 3.0L version of the 350Z motor... according to the engine weight chart they're only 3kg heavier than an SR20. $2850 for a front cut sounds pretty good! They look fairly WIDE though.