New Skylines at the Port of Long Beach. Someone totally needs to cut a hole in the fence and Swede another episode to the 2 FRIGGIN’ FAST, 2 FARGIN’ FURIOUS universe.
Category: Cars
Ford Escort Mk1 1300 De Luxe
I took a few photos of Nam’s uncle’s Escort this morning. It’s from around 1971 or so; check out my favorite features including the “dogbone” front grill, the recycled 1500cc Nissan engine, and transplanted (Toyota + Mitsu???) steering/dash/gauge assembly with permanently lit “TURBO” indicator. (Oh also – this is not the Escort we had in the US from the 80’s, it’s the European model.)
The absolute coolest thing about this car is that even though I can’t find online records of these early Escorts being assembled in Thailand, the VIN plate clearly states it was so:
good juju, bad juju, it’s all just plain old juju
Yes, sometime I will probably stop trying to write blues lyrics in the titles… but today is not the day to do so, because yesterday, I ran over a chameleon sunning himself on the highway. When chameleons are chilling, sometimes they do this curious push up routine where they puff out their chests and bob up and down (apparently, this is the best time to catch them – in order to eat them, of course – at least my Thai friends tell me so). I was on my way to work in the Crown, cruising along in fifth gear and enjoying engine noise, the wind in my hair, and the way the asphalt turns into streams of buttery gold in the intense summer morning sun.
The stretch of highway I was on is a long straightway with no intersecting roads , so I was only looking about twenty feet ahead of my car. By the time I saw the chameleon doing push ups, it was too late to swerve. I felt a small disturbance in the force as the tiniest crunching sound was heard from under the front left tire. Then all was still.
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Last week a coworker said he had seen the exact same model of car as mine on the edge of town, so I hopped in the Kujira to go check it out… there it was, in dark blue, indeed looking pretty damn similar to the very car I was driving. As I’ve been looking for spare parts (most noticeably a missing piece of chrome trim from the front), this was a truly exciting find. Who would have thought another specimen, in seemingly good condition, could be found in the very city I brought mine to? I got stuck thinking about what to do next, though.
If I expressed interest in the car, I was afraid the owner would ask too much for it. Would the better play be to keep an eye on it and wait for the situation to change (the car might appear with a for sale sign some day, or break down)? In the end, I took a gamble on being straightforward and went to talk to the owner with Nam yesterday afternoon. The car wasn’t in the parking space of what turned out to be an insurance company, but the lady inside told us it was her grandfather’s and not a customer’s , as we had begun to fear. She told us they couldn’t sell the car, as it was all they had, but we left our number in case they ever wanted to sell it, and told the lady that as we wanted it for parts, it didn’t even have to be in running condition.
So that’s that. Someday, I may have a chance at parts, and until then, it’s nice to know there’s a friend running around town. I didn’t get a chance to see the car up close or verify if it’s the same model or not, but maybe I’ll make onther visit sometime to do that and speak to the old man. At the very least, I’d like to know how he came by it.
More Crown History
I got a mail out of the blue today from the previous previous owner of the Kujira Crown I bought last year:
I owned the Crown before you bought it off Chris.
Thought you might like to hear how I came (although it was in my wifes name ) to be the proud owner of that lovely old girl.
In 2003 I was an in house English teacher at a semi-conductor factory in Pathum Thani.
While waiting for the remainder of the class to arrive the boys were talking about cars. As we do!?P, one of the best guys in the class, asked me what sort of car I would like to buy. I answered a Toyota Crown.
“Oh I have one that my father bought new in 1973, I am having it re-painted at the moment ” he said. “I’ts got a Nissan RB 20 engine in it.”
I asked him why did you put a Nissan engine in a Crown and he said it was 10,000 baht cheaper than a Toyota engine.
At that point I said that if he ever decided to sell the Crown to contact me.
Finished my contract at the factory and went on to other things.
Some 6 months later I got a call from him saying he wanted to sell it and he would bring it over at the weekend.
It was cool to be able to hear more background on this amazing car..?.She’s still running great, although I had to take off the new rims because they were – cough – just too big (surprise).
but do i deserve to be?
Yes, I’m still alive.
Just finished finals week; now it’s time to grade 500 tests from nine different classes. This 30-hour teaching week thing has finally come to an end. Yay.
Car maintenance side notes:
- The Crown was acting like she needed a new battery or alternator, so I changed the cheaper of the two and everything is fine again.
- The front brakes on the Cefiro were squealing so I got the rotors ground; they are still being broken in.
Homely
We put in curtains (cream) and grass (green) today. It’s amazing how much more this house feels like home now.
As a side note, there’s a dirt track to the rear of our house where dump trucks come to drop fill dirt at the back end of the development. I took the Crown back there today to drop off 16 bags of black loam I bought (20 Baht/bag) to lay under the grass. After throwing the bags of loam over our fence, I got back in the car and did donuts and long drifts in the dirt all the way back to the paved road. All of the laborers working on various houses pumped their fists in the air and shouted Thai arribas. I’ve changed back to 15″ wheels because I didn’t have money to buy new tires for the 17″ rims and I got tired of changing flats every other day. I know, poor white collar me. Next thing you know I’ll be drilling holes in my muffler instead of getting it done properly.
The Toyota Collection
Speaking of the Crown, Ive been meaning to post an original sales brochure for it that I found on this page (They’re restoring a Kujira Crown they found on e-Bay).
You really have to click on the photo to open the enlarged version and read the copy at the bottom; it’s pretty trippy (I’m relieved to see that mine has at least one of the options listed – seat belts!).
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What comes straight out of a rarified atmosphere of true elegance and good breeding at 100mph, replete with luxury, power-steering, Cooler Air Conditioning, 8-track stereo and every creature comfort?
The Crown Special 2600 Automatic. A precious object for collectors only.
At 2303.44 recommended retail price, incPT (extra for seat belts and delivery) why should one pay more?
And there’s no answer to that.
Crown Special. One of The Toyota Collection.
hooked up
Got my DSL hookup at the new house – currently 256/128k or some such sadness, but it’s a lot better than nothing, and I’ll be upgrading to 1Mb/512k on Monday. I think I may even bother to bring the DL speed to 1.5M for another 110 Baht/month. Thinking about the hikari line I gave up in Japan sometimes makes me sad, but I find comfort in the Apocalypse coming and killing everybody with faster connections than me (most of the developed world).
As a side note, this morning at first I could not get the Crown into gear but somehow squeezed it into second while starting at the same time, and drove it all the way to a garage without depressing the clutch. I borrowed my sister in law’s new Chevy Aveo because we are getting the Cefiro resprayed (almost for free with 1st class insurance – we only pay 4,000 Baht). They replaced a clutch cylinder part on the Crown and I just picked it up – 600 Baht, all inclusive. I love Thailand.
Mooban Hacking Part 1 (Pimp My Ride, Thailand)
Here are the plans I have for the Crown:
Fix brakes (possibly replace master cylinder)Fixed & replaced- Bodywork/new paint job (needs missing chrome part on front)
- Install parking break
- Install wing mirrors to replace current side mirrors
- Repair/replace gauges (the temp. gauge is the only one I really need and it works; fuel gauge works at full tank and 1/4 tank, again, this is all I really need)
- Suspension (may dump the front; rear sus is OK as is)
Sadly, this car is a poor candidate for classic restoration – she’s a bit rough and it would be quite expensive. Plus, it just doesn’t fit this car’s kick-ass demeanor. She doesn’t want to be pretty in the restoration sense, I think. She is special and deserves to stand out, however. With that in mind, I went searching for some used rims a couple weeks ago with my pal Don. I told him I’d buy a pair of good ones, something with flavor, if we could find them for 6 or 7,000 Baht. We visited five tire shops and joked about calling MTV to Sarakham for help with Pimp My Ride Thailand (after all, people all over the world are thinking similar things). At the last shop, guess what we found?
I know it takes a while to get used to them; it completely changes the look of the car. It’s amazing what new shoes can do – and what shoes they are! In my last post about the Kuj, I said that I began suspecting that this car is a luck magnet… Well guess what? Those are used seventeen-inch Ray’s Volk Racing six points that I picked up for 6500 Baht. With tires, 225s on back and 215s on front, total Jap VIP-car style. Unreal. And the whole time we drove from shop to shop I was telling Don how we were definitely going to happen across a perfect set. This car is a witch. A good witch.
This became evident again last week when we took the car in to a mechanic that Don knew in order to change out the master cylinder. We bought the almost-new part at a local used parts warehouse (2200 Baht, fair) and took it back to the garage. The mechanic turned out to be a kindergarten classmate of Nam’s, so when we went back to pick up the car a couple days later, he only wanted to charge us 800 Baht! That’s like $25 US! For custom fitting a part that didn’t really fit in the engine compartment (because it’s stuffed with an RB-20 engine) and adjusting the brakes! As lucky a break as this was, I couldn’t bear to pay the guy so little for such a big job and insisted he take a thousand (just call me Rockefeller).
Anyway. I took some more photos to update this logbook on the progress of our mooban hacking.
(as always, left click once on photos to open a larger size in a pop-up window)
The careful reader will notice the red spray job that the nice man at the tire store insisted on doing on my brake calipers (rear brakes are drums, luckily sprayed black and not red). He even went so far as to spray a primer coat of silver on them first. This is the level of pimptitude in Thailand (MTV we need you!). Everybody sprays their calipers red, Brembo style. The real posers actually spray their drums red and/or stick Brembo stickers over the paint job. (BTW I noticed that my calipers were made by Sumitomo before the guy sprayed the stamping over. Never seen Sumitomo calipers before. I guess they’re the originals.)
Also, since I wrote that list above a few things have changed. Obviously, the most important item, the brakes, have been worked out, almost completely. There is still a slight issue with balance when braking hard (it’s pulling right), but part of this is the mismatched rubber I’m driving on now. I can handle it how it is for a while. Eventually, I’ll switch over the tires from my Cefiro (luckily, also on 17s – the tires are Eagle F1 215s all around) and buy new tires for it – new tires won’t make a difference on the Crown.
Um, I’m almost ashamed to write this, but I briefly considered having the front springs cut to give it a greaseball Camaro-type slant. I say I’m ashamed because I know this is a truly a Tijuana-level hack. I say briefly because since I changed over to these big rims, I’ve bottomed out the front tires against the wheel wells, lightly, a couple of times. There are big bumps and dips in the road around here, so this has to be done the right way, with new and shorter springs, if at all.
Also, my knee-freezing aircon worked brilliantly for a few weeks after I had it gassed up in Bangkok, but apparently there’s a slow leak because all I get now is a warm breeze out of the vents. So the leak has to be found and fixed there as well.
That concludes this installment of Pimp My Ride, Thailand.