We often laugh at today`s youth with those `dustbin` exhausts and front `splitters` being ripped off by road humps, but what about your own past?
I`m almost sure I stuck some of those fake bullet holes on something long ago....
Bet that would go down well now, in certain parts of Manchester and London...
Wonder how modern plod would react to that? ;)
Regards
Edited by oilrag on 22/01/2008 at 20:41
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Another good one Oilrag.
I enjoyed the electric klaxon horn which i had on my hillman super minx estate.
The ''harry moss carnegie'' 8 track stereo where i played Alice Cooper all the night (which i still do but at 1000 watts at home and went to see him at Wembley about 5 years ago, probably the oldest swinger there).
The harry moss was quite a good one of its type, and locked the tape in place, which meant it would play tapes that would skip on some of my mates players, so i got lots of freebies.
Had that in the Austin 1100.
Would upgrading bulb type headlights for upmarket ''sealed beams'' count as an accessory?
And of course the orange cruising lights that were fitted in the grille of the cortina mk 2.
Will remember more in due course.
Just remembered the stick on shade for the top of the screen, to upmarket the motor.
Edited by gordonbennet on 22/01/2008 at 21:04
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Hi Gorden bennet, :)
Yep, the sealed beams count ;) remember doing that on my mini van and thinking how modern they were....(yes preferring vans even then, circa 69)
Now here`s a newly released memory, I painted the inside cardboard door and dash trim with a sort of violet paint. :( (seemed great at the time)
The steering wheel was an aftermarket smaller one that I then bound with about 20 feet of rope, really thick. The carb had one of those Mangoletsi manifold modifiers and the engine painted green and red with aluminium paint on the head nuts.
Oil pressure, ammeter, temp gauges and a `Fuel pressure` gauge with switchable twin, inline SU fuel pumps.
There was a sort of small den in the back, but I better not expand on that.....
I have to thank the Mini for giving me a lifelong interest in greasing (well actually, sprayed engine oil with the mini) subframes;)
And at the end of it all 7 years later, guess what, I wished I had left it standard.
Never altered a car again, but can`t stop the greasing;)
regards
Edited by oilrag on 22/01/2008 at 21:33
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Couple of quick ones, my mate Dougy put one of those really small steering wheels on his Triumph Herald, and he could barely turn the thing. (it wasnt much bigger than a tap)
SWMBO has just admitted she had a toggle flasher switch wired to her brake lights on her (proper genuine cooper s) which if anyone was tailgating her would give them a flash of brake lights and zoom off (she still hasnt grown up and in good company here methinks).
I like the idea of all those gauges, but somehow never got into that meself.
All the best.
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Do under-bumper Cibie foglights and twin airhorns on a 1600E count?
I also had rear window louvres on all three Cortinas I owned in Namibia (a 3000GT, a 3.0S and an Interceptor).
In my defense - without aircon, they did keep the interior a few degrees cooler.
Kevin...
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I had a Morris Ital when I was 18. I put Raydot Fireballs on and I also put an exhaust embellishment on. Older people at work laughed so much and to teach me a lesson, would unlock it with any BL key and hide the tax disc on another window and turn all the controls and move the seats, since then, I have kept things ultra stock. I even turned that Ital back to stock!
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My obsession in those days was to fit a Kenlowe electric fan and release lots of bhp - on one car I did fit an "aerofan" who's blades feathered as the revs rose.
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I'm very jealous - all I had was a Tiger tail on my filler cap!
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I did bolt a Golf GTI twin exhaust (just the twin pipe end piece) to my Vauxhall Viva back in 1990. Or rather it was held on with an exhaust bandage and some wire......
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A white 40s Cadillac convertible, lhd of course, driven by a fashionable couple, with a a gigantic, cuddly dog - a Newfoundland? - in the back seat and two real genuine bullet holes in the top right corner of the windscreen...
(King's Road, Chelsea, circa 1961).
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Hillman Imp - 8 track stereo (playing Neil Diamond!), pair of Lucas 8" driving lamps on the front, bag of sand in the front to weigh the front down and straighten the camber of the front wheels, black painted wheel trims (why?), an anti-mist screen stuck on the rear window (did I really have that?), pair of Cibie reversing lights stuck under the bumper, and an additional 4" Cibie wired up to blind anyone behind me, twin tone air-horns, stick-on "pin stripes" along the side, and lastly a ball of steel wool stuffed up tne exhaust pipe which my mates had holed - made a great rasping sound!
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yea, bag of sand in front of the imp, it went flying when i hit an electricity pole at 50 after skidding on black ice. the nose of the imp was also painted orange, went well with the blue paintwork? jag.
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A30 with 2 eyes mounted carefully either side of the bonnet inboard of the headlamps.
Second hand big bore exhaust (I was a student: the car cost £30, the exhaust £1...)
Went much faster after that.. especialy when I fitted push windscreen washers.
:-)
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I also had a `dogs paw` exhaust deflector held on by a jubilee clip...........
Also twin air horns wired to the relay through the door switches as a crude alarm.
Original colour tweed grey, I sprayed the bonnet and side panels red, that really helped it, along with the interior violet emulsion and white, genuine rope bound steering wheel.
Trying to think of more `naff` efforts. I seem to remember a pre war family car that had a big amber `fly deflector` mounted at the end of the bonnet.
Regards
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Alfasun in green. Painted the vents behind the read doors gold and attached a pair of Capri S go-faster stripes downthe bottom of both sides! Also put an exhaust embellinsher on the rear of my Cortina. Since then, the only things I have done were to to interupt the power supply to the ignition by putting in a fake foglight switch on the dash (using a standard switch for that particular car - did it several times). This was before electronic immobilisers and certainly worked.
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Jag, until the suspension was improved the factory mod was two bags of sand, one on each side. I was an apprentice at a Rootes dealer at the time and can still remember the pile of sandbags, two of which were installed during a routine service.
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Blimey, reading this thread I seem to have missed out on sooooo much!!!!!
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Didn't we just do this one in the 'Black vinyl roofs and bendy aerials' thread a couple of days back?
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Mum & Dad used to do cross-country rallies with the local motor club in the '60s. Dad's secret weapon was a Helphos spotlight that stuck to the inside of the windscreen and could be shone at sign posts. That was when you could look at the circle on top of a sign post and see the OS map reference on it. Those were the days etc. etc. So much more discreet than the A-pillar-mounted chrome spotlights with handles on the back that other motor-club members would dismantle and nick the bulbs from.
The Helphos light was lifted from Dad's bits box and became a fixture (with the bulb changed to a 6V one) on my 1961 LHD Beetle.
From the same era, a map-reading light on the end of a long flexi metal tube was in use up to about 10 years ago for the middle back-seat passenger in the Citroen XM I had.
Never fancied the stick-on bullet holes and fake tiger's tails that I remember my mates having, but I swore blind my windscreen wiper aerofoils helped the wipers wipe in crosswinds.
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My Mini sported the following "customisations":
Front spot lights, which wrecked the aerodynamics even more and lopped about 10 mph off the top speed (or 20 when turned on!) ;-)
A botched steering column upper clamp to lower the wheel to a less "bus like" angle. Which the MOT inspector called "different" - not sure if that was a complement or not.
A £5.99 Halfords stick on chrome effect tailpipe turning the visible exhaust from a straw into a peashooter. As long as you didn't look too closely....
The naff stick on wiper spoilers that consisted of three squares of cheap plastic sticking up at 45° from each wiper arm.
A clothes peg in lieu of a functioning choke knob "lock".
A Splat on the back quarter by the fuel filler.
I was young.
Cheers
DP
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Fondly remembered - painting the rear axle in red primer and illuminating same with a red light. Seemed to afflict Escorts, Cortinas and Capris in the main.
Bring on the white socks..... :-)
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If you want to modify your car, then this is the perfect way to do so. Video, 4 minutes, work safe.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh5XVPSx9Dk&feature=related
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I remember when fitting an upgraded stereo to my old Maestro 1.3L I installed two illuminated switches on the dash to allow me to switch the front and rear speakers on and off.
Many years later and I'm still not sure why - looked nice though.
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I have so many memories, oh so naff memories.
Its easier to talk about those that were any use.
A set of tripple tone FIAMM air horns fitted to the FIAT. They could crack old ladies walking sticks at 100 yards, and frighten lorry and bus drivers, such was the strident and urgent banshee issued forth.
I miss them so.
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Rally Giants.
I could never decide if they looked cooler with the covers on or off.
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I had red rubber gaiters on the windscreen wipers of my FIAT uno... and I told everyone the FIRE badge meant it was a turbo. Am so ashamed!
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Double exhaust tip bolt-on (to look like Abarth) on my '59 MGA (paid $1000 for it in '63). This car also had a 6X9 speaker mounted in small cardboard box to augment tinny 4 incher in dash. It's final indignity was to be painted "Lancelot Turquoise Irridescent", a Studebaker Avanti colour, and then driven to Salt Lake City (to see girlfriend) where I encountered the same colour on every second Thunderbird driven by "rich kids".
Homemade cruise control consisting of MG choke cable around accelerator linkage on my Rover 200 TC in 1968. It worked!
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In 1960 I turned up at my workplace with my new frog-eyed Sprite (in leaf green) but had decided to adorn it with 'go faster' stripes in pale yellow in an off set postion. I felt quite chuffed about it until my boses secretary (a mature lady) looked out of the window and said "what on earth have you done to your car, for goodnes sake take those ridiculous stripes off."
I felt so sheepish I removed the said offending tape, in the lunch break, in order to restore my credibility as a budding Analytical chemist!
Edited by oldgit on 25/01/2008 at 16:10
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I know mature ladies could seem a bit scary in one's youth oldgit, but I must say that was a bit wimpish of you. Why didn't you say you had just driven under a tree containing a pair of Siamese-twin acrobats with the squits, or something like that?
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What she may have said was " take those ridiculous strides off ! " Possibly a missed opportunity for a young man learning his way in life ;-)
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Why didn't you say you had just driven under a tree containing a pair of Siamese-twin acrobats with the squits or something like that?
You obviously had never met a woman quite like Eileen Jones, then? A delightful lady, nevertheless, but deceased now, of course.
I expect I just gulped hard and my face probably reddened with embarrassment upon realising how boy-racer it must have looked and especially considering what a sober-sides I was in those days, wearing grey flannel trousers, black shoes and spectacles.
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Not really a naff accessory, but it did remind me of my youth driving days...
Back home in NZ during 1991, I had a 1986 Ford Laser (Mazda 323). Completely standard 1.5l car - right down to the factory wheel trims. It was lovely in white too.
The car was worth £2000, so I thought it made complete sense to go out and spend £1500 on a custom Alpine/Infinity car audio installation for it.
My word it sounded good - I mean *real* good. Still very slow and understated though!
Cheers,
Matt
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