Okay so... where do I start. Let's do it somewhat chronologically.
First of all, because of a misaligned front number plate (this is for you, D-fence) I ordered the
one must-have mod for every car person who likes to pose with their cars.
Onwards, to a small site anecdote of me visiting a friend who lives in Bavaria. While driving around the town, he told me there's a Sierra somewhere in his city with a Cosworth spoiler on it. Half an hour later, we did find it - and, as it turns out, I actually knew the car, and it even was for sale. It's a '91 "Stufe" with a 2.9 24V BOA swap, an ex-hill climb race car. I've known about the car since 2012, iirc.
Here is when we found it live...
I texted the number and arranged a test drive a couple of weeks later, in minus Celsius degrees, with semi slicks, when it was starting to snow. And of course with a welded diff. Sadly I don't have pictures of it, only videos (links:
1,
2,
3), but it drove really well. It's actually fully TÜV legal, it even says in the papers that the car can run with what is basically a near-straight pipe with just a rear muffler installed. Fully fucking road legal ex race car. This makes me moist. This is only possible because it was built and TÜV-approved like this in the 90s. Modern day TÜV would say fuckkkk nooo to you but since it's all in the papers, you could also say fuckkkk yeahhh to modern day police patrols.
This is a pic of the car when I found it for sale in 2012:
Sad looking, neglected, paint coming off...
Luckily, someone restored it, then sold it to the guy who was selling it now then. Fun fact... he's a driving school owner, who likes to go drifting on his weekends off. Now that is a cool driving school teacher. He actually send me some of the restauration and original 90s build photos, but I can't find them anymore.
That guy then posted this...
...picture last summer in a Ford Sierra facebook group, just casually asking about an MT75 V6 gearbox to fit to his BOA because he broke his T9 V6 gearbox... doing a burnout. Lol. Quite a lot of people commented under the picture, asking what was done to the car, and people wanting to buy the wing off him (one guy even saying he'd easily give him a grand for it, because it is VERY rare).
I instantly recognized the car back from 2012 and was very happy to see that someone has restored it to original condition. I didn't even think about the numberplate being from the same city where that friend of mine lives...
Then finding it by pure luck in said city and being able to test drive and potentially buy it was amazing. In the end, I didn't purchase it because he wouldn't budge with the price in the slightest (mostly because of having had that new MT75 V6 gearbox fitted recently), and ... well, he only told me when I took it for a test drive that the whole wiring loom of the car isn't fully connected, partly fucked and that no dials (except the external rev counter) works. That means quite a lot of work, especially for me, being not very good at electrics and electronics.
Anyway, that's the end of that story, and I am really sad that I didn't buy it in the end... but I do approve it massively and... LAUTly!
Bonus points for those spotting the GT86 of my friend in the background which was wrapped around the tree in snow a month later. R.I.P. in fucking R.I.P. ...
Well, going forward in the story with
my Sierra now.
TÜV was running out on march, and I needed to fix the sills, which were getting more and more rusty, for TÜV - albeit it being only visually. But hey, if that gets you to pass...
I don't have the exact pictures how it looked like before, but you can find some of them one or two pages down the thread, and just imagine it being quite a bit worse with the sills rusting from the inside out.
So, on I went with trying to somewhat sandpaper down the old paint, putting some kind of anti-rust-fluid on it, a little bit of zink spray, paint (was quite tough to find Nordic Green Metallic) and clearcoat. I think, for a sunday morning excercise on the parking lot and having never done this before, this came out really nicely.
See above how bodged the rear right sill is. This was done by the previous-previous owner.
And in this pic, you can see how the lower sill line is actually kind of pressed into the car, probably because someone tried to jack up the car there. And yes, it's way too soft for that now. It's really just crust with paint on top of it, to make it look nice to easily pass TÜV. Oh, and to get the lowering springs in the papers, which were installed before I bought the car, and apparently the last TÜV guy didn't even notice them. Well... I don't wanna push my luck, as they are bright red, even with the dirt on it.
Coming towards TÜV, turns out I would pass if only I didn't have the following faults in my car:
- missing safety jackets
- missing warning triangle
- missing first aid kit
- rear left handbrake without any function at all.
Well, the first three things are easy. Actually, I didn't fail them. I put all of those CLEARLY visible in the back pockets of the driver's and co-driver's seats but... he didn't see them. Ouch!
The handbrake... well, I knew it was not in the best working order. So that wasn't really kind of a bummer, I just hoped it might, just
might pass with it. Oh and yeah, the guy also didn't notice my leaking radiator, but he showed me how I baaaarely passed emissions. I took the car for a nice 200-kph-on-the-speedo-Autobahn-run beforehand, otherwise the catalytic converter would have easily made me fail. A new one is 1000+ euros. nope.jpg.
So, last weeks tuesday I finally had the chance of getting a new brake caliper at the rear left fitted and the handbrake fixed. The car was, by then, now ready for TÜV re-examination. Well, two days later, on thursday, I set off towards Spa in Belgium for a nice racing weekend when suddenly...
Yeah. When I set off, the exhaust was intact and not louder than it should be. Some couple of hundreds of kilometers into the journey, the middle silencer broke off due to rusting from inside out. As if the exhaust was ten years old... which it infact isn't. It's around two years old, with all the stickers still on it. HOW CHEAP do you car parts have to be when replacing them that this exhaust was only good for such a short period before fully rusting away?! Boggles my mind how bad the quality of this exhaust is.
That pipe with the screw in it is already from when the very friendly (and former Sierra V6 owner, as he told me) ADAC-guy tried to hackjob-repair the car on the spot next to the Autobahn on a shady parking lot.
This is the end result, having held together for more than 1000 kilometers, having driven a basically not-inspected and non-road-legal car over countries borders, while also being so loud from the inside... my ears weren't ringing because of the action on Spa circuit, but because of the middle silencer being fully broken. I must have looked like an absolute idiot. But best ghettofix I've ever used.
Well, what to do now? This would be needed to be fixed until the end of may, otherwise a re-examination at TÜV is not possible and I have to do a full inspection (all those moneyz...) again. I am already more into it money-wise than the car is worth without TÜV - and repairing this (
if I can find someone local who's skilled enough to weld this, which might be tough) will result in costs for making this shitbox road worthy which are higher than it the car is worth freshly TÜVed.
I am so fed up with this and unsure what to do. At least since april I finally managed to rent a little parking spot for myself, so in the event of having this being declared off the road, I can still park it legally there. It's not possible to park a car legally without plates on the open street.
Anyone wanna buy a Sierra with LSD? It's yours for very cheap. Antti told me, he found a Sierra-free like to be quite a good life. I can't wait to finally join that life (again). Owning a beater-level car that needs stuff done without time, space, readily available parts, will to spend money, and in the year 2019, where this car feels so out of place, is such a pain in the arse. My goal for this year has been just to TÜV and sell it, and that's now taking five and a half months so far... and yesterday I even picked some wheels up from a friend who bought them for me in january, and was holding onto them for me for so long. I've basically now bought wheels for a car (the same ones as before, 15 inch, but painted in grey) that I want to get rid off anyway. I also do have a spare radiator with fans lying around in the basement, but no one wants to buy that off me so far.