Back in beige

[misteralz]

They do US ones as well:

http://www.platemyride.com/plate-simula ... quantity=1

HTH

[jamie]

Still no sign of my registration documents, so today I called the DVLA. Apparently my application has been rejected for two reasons...

1. I didn't include the original US title (I sent a photocopy). If no title is present, a Certificate of Authenticity along with grovelling letter may suffice. I did also send the Certificate of Authenticity but no letter.

2. The car isn't registered on HMRC's NOVA system. This is because NOVA didn't exist when the car arrived in the UK back in March 2013.

I looked at filling-in an application form, but the notes specifically say that if you're a private individual, importing from outside the US, you should not fill in the form. It gives no suggestion what you should do instead.

After two calls to the DVLA (good) and four to HMRC (an old-school, tear-your-hair-out infuriating bureaucratic mess of a phone system that requires you to press numbers and lie about your query in order to speak to someone), I was instructed to send an email to an unnecessarily lengthy gsi.gov.uk email address and ask, politely, to be added to the NOVA system.

God only knows how this will pan out...

[alfi68s]

Hi Jamie, I recently had quite a long game of hmrc/ dvla tennis regarding a car imported from the states. To make quite a long and painful story a bit shorter I eventually got directed to the government gateway website. If you're not registered you will need to but after that the Nova application takes about 5 mins. You leave it a day or so and your car will be on the nova database ( assuming all duties have been paid on the car).
Alfie

[neilbardsley]

Still no sign of my registration documents, so today I called the DVLA. Apparently my application has been rejected for two reasons...

1. I didn't include the original US title (I sent a photocopy). If no title is present, a Certificate of Authenticity along with grovelling letter may suffice. I did also send the Certificate of Authenticity but no letter.

2. The car isn't registered on HMRC's NOVA system. This is because NOVA didn't exist when the car arrived in the UK back in March 2013.

I looked at filling-in an application form, but the notes specifically say that if you're a private individual, importing from outside the US, you should not fill in the form. It gives no suggestion what you should do instead.

After two calls to the DVLA (good) and four to HMRC (an old-school, tear-your-hair-out infuriating bureaucratic mess of a phone system that requires you to press numbers and lie about your query in order to speak to someone), I was instructed to send an email to an unnecessarily lengthy gsi.gov.uk email address and ask, politely, to be added to the NOVA system.

God only knows how this will pan out...

Looks like you will have to give me your car

[jamie]

Hi Jamie, I recently had quite a long game of hmrc/ dvla tennis regarding a car imported from the states. To make quite a long and painful story a bit shorter I eventually got directed to the government gateway website. If you're not registered you will need to but after that the Nova application takes about 5 mins. You leave it a day or so and your car will be on the nova database ( assuming all duties have been paid on the car).
Alfie

Cheers. Will look into that now...

[jamie]

This evening I installed a VDO dual-pole 10-bar oil pressure sender and hooked it up to the oil pressure gauge. It took me a lot longer than it should have due to the weird oil bypass arrangement that sits just behind the distributor (a by-product of the full-flow oil filter system now fitted to the engine) and also because I couldn't remember how to count from 1 to 3. Turns out they are different numbers, and wire P1 isn't wire P3, not matter how much you stare at it.

I could throw down come nonsense about it being 'a long day', but I'm not a surgeon or a judge. It's been a normal day, I'm just a fucknut cretin.

Anyway, now it's working, the gauge reads somewhere around 40psi at idle. It's too late at night to rev it and see if it moves... I think 40 is about right, but who really knows how accurate the gauge is? The measurements go up in huge increments - 20, then 60. Punds per sqvare inch?! Ha ha ha. Do not diwulge diz too muchz informasjons, yah. Etc.

[jamie]

This is my oil pressure sender setup:



The rod passing through this mess is the carb linkage, meaning there wasn't enough room for the oil pressure sender to fit in there upright. Then I remembered I had a brake caliper banjo in one of my jam jars of bits. Luckily for me, Porsche did everything M10x1, so the sender screwed right in to the banjo, and I used the banjo bolt from the caliper in the existing hole. This meant the sender could sit on its side, well away from the carb linkage. It's a very tight fit between the oil sender and the temp sender (hidden underneath) - just about clears it by a millimeter or so!

The gauge feed from the sender uses the 911 oil tank level sender, which is obviously redundant in the 912. I extended it with Tefzel aircraft wiring which is very thin, so it was easy to tuck it behind one of the spark plug wires where it can't be seen.

This is the engine bay as it stands. There's one bit of wiring to tidy (coil to distributor) once my new Pertronix kit arrives. I ordered the wrong one about two years ago when the engine rebuild started.

I love this engine bay - it's bare, sculptural and super gorgeous. The engine starts within half a second of being cranked and will idle down to nearly one RPM per second. Der-dum, der-dum, der-dum.

I quite fancy scrapping the distributor and going to electronic ignition - perhaps a project for the future.

[neilbardsley]

40 psi at startup is what my engine says. Higher when revved and lower when it warms up and idles

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk

[jamie]

Great. I just started it up and gave it a rev. 40-50 psi at 1000rpm, 60psi at 4000rpm, with around 65psi at the top end.

[KS]

Hi Jamie

I used www.craigsplates.com to have UK-style plate made to fit the US-sized frame. In the end, I reused the slightly illegal one I'd had on my Beetle, which was made by Statesplates. Craigsplates.com has a vast range to suit all styles and tastes...

[sladey]

+1 for craigsplates - quick turnaround and good quality

[jamie]

Update!

Last month I went to Montana and did the Ramshorn Rally with a friend in his Varioram'd 1970 911. Meanwhile, there was no 912 progress.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFzPls6DYcD/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFz6Nw8DYcC/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BF4aiLZDYSM/

Then I went to France on the bike, and again there was no 912 progress.



When I got back, I bought another Pertronix kit - this time one that fitted my RSR0012 distributor. I fitted it, and wired it in back-to-front, which melted the pick-up and filled the engine bay with smoke. For a brief moment thought my car was burning to the ground, and my pants were going to fill with shite.



I took this because I pressed the wrong button on my new phone. Definitely not a selfie person, but I thought my expression summed up the situation well.



Petronix UK couldn't sell me a new pick-up on it's own, and a whole new kit was £70 or so. Luckily I still had another kit that I had bought a long time ago that didn't fit my dizzy. I was able to drill the rivets that hold the pick-up in place on the (wrong) mounting plate, then re-rivet them onto the plate that does fit. I wired it in the correct way and now it works great.

Yesterday the DVLA returned my reg docs - I have a registration number! No inspection or any of that nonsense.

I'm trying to fit it onto a 12" x 6" plate so it can go in a really nice US plate frame that I found on eBay, but it's seven digits (with no 1s), so I don't think it will. Framptons can't make one with digits all on one line, and Craigsplates have stopped doing this size in black and silver.

Any ideas (other than buying a shorter registration number)?

[Mick Cliff]

Try these guys - http://www.platesforcars.ie/designer.php#numberplates
Big choice of plate sizes...

[jamie]

Cheers Mick.

I've realised that the only way I'm going to get my plate holder onto the car is to buy a shorter registration - the one the DVLA issues me is seven digits, and I need five, or perhaps six at a push.

Not sure if I can be arsed though - it's like spending hundreds (or thousands) of pounds just for the sake of a plate holder.

I've ordered number plates with the existing reg, so I can run with those for a while anyway...

[jamie]

Just took the car out for it's first proper rag.



The engine is superb. I had written it off as 'slow' when I drove it to the MOT station (all residential, 30 & 40 mph limits), but out on the open road it's great fun. The noise is good. The torque is good. There's a noticeable cammy pickup in the middle of the rev range. It doesn't sound like any 912 I've ever been in. The carbs pop a bit on the overrun, but are otherwise well behaved. It genuinely feels... brisk. Not 'fast', but not really 'slow'. It's difficult to tell, but I reckon it's as quick as some of the slower 911s I've driven (including my old 72T).

Video of a run on the bypass here. You can just about hear the engine note over the white noise from the crappy mobile phone microphone.

http://vid493.photobucket.com/albums/rr ... tuy81i.mp4

It goes around corners beautifully. On tight stuff, like roundabouts, you really feel the difference between it and a 911. I don't know which I prefer - there's something quite fun about the weird inertia of a 911 in a bend, feeling the mass push you around as you accelerate away.

At the moment, it bump-steers like a slag and desperately needs the rack raising up.

One of my favourite bits is the gearbox. Mike Bainbridge did the rebuild, and I have to say it totally silky and just shifts like a dream. I have a (prototype!) Wevo 901 shifter up front which has really nice positive feel.

The drive was a good chance to note problems and unfortunately the snag list is getting longer. The engine has sprung another leak - this time from the top. One of those wretched core plugs again. At least I know how to fix it easily.

And my speedo is dead. The internal gubbins (I guess it was a worm gear) that goes in the right-angled connector on the side of the gearbox has disappeared. Now there's just a hole.

Not having a rear view mirror is crap - I wish I hadn't lost it.

And the ride height has settle too low at the rear - 23.5 inches to the arch on the driver side, and 24 inches on the passenger side. The front is at 25 inches and the rears should be at 24.5 inches. It started the evening looking like this...



... and once the suspension had settled, ended-up looking like this - all wozza'd-up at the back.



Nine years after I sold my blood orange 72T, I now have another car that glows luminously under the flourescent lights of a petrol station forecourt

The guy in the petrol station still reckoned it was a 'sweet ride', and another guy on a motorcycle said it was beautiful. Both correct!