@Salieri Your information about engines saved the day at the Toyota dealer. Parts guy looked sceptical but tracked the gaskets down pretty quickly with the engine type. £3.50 for both.
We had a fairly decent frost overnight and the Copen was frozen over, which was to be expected. What I didn't expect though was that the drivers side door handle was completely frozen and wouldn't budge ! As it was early, and my brain wasn't in gear, I had to climb over from the passenger side (what I shoud have done first was to try the internal release). Obviously Gummipfledge has protected the seals but is there anything that can sort out the external door handles ?
Glad I could help I hope you were given the right gaskets I usually pull on the handle until they budge It rarely happens to me that the door handles are frozen
It turns out that the internal diameter of the gasket was larger than the originals so they just aligned them carefully and carried on. I'll keep an eye on them and order via Daihatsu if I start losing oil. Luckily the engine is pretty clean so I should notice sooner rather than later.
Well I'm slowly working down the list and have booked the car in at JR Classics in Doncaster for Dinitrol rust proofing and bonnet and roof respray in. They have some great reviews from the Defender forums as well as others. It's around £525 for the rustproofing and probably the same for the paintwork. Of course, if there's any additional nasties uncovered similar to Tasman, the bill will end up higher so fingers crossed it's as good as it looks superficially.
I can't think of anything that would change the handling characteristics with the roof down vs up. I will say that it does seem to turn into a different car with the roof down, so any perceived differences in the ride are probably in the eye of the beholder. Also, GBP 430, which is nearly $AU700, is an awful lot of money to me, for a relatively minor amount of work. And this is a country where everything is ludicrously expensive. As for the brakes, after 90,000 km, the front and back brakes on mine look brand new. Obviously, the previous owner must have changed the front pads, but the rear shoes are original. Reading some of this stuff makes me glad I don't live in the UK. I thought they were fussy down here, but; replacing the radio counts as a modification?? I've put in a 2-DIN radio/GPS/Bluetooth/GSM unit, and I don't have to tell anyone about it. I might add, it looks very nice and is safer than using the GPS in my phone.
@freddyzdead Removing the roof from any car, from the Copen to a Bentley, has a significant effect on the structural integrity and stiffness of the vehicle which gives rise to what's know as scuttle shake; hence the need to reinforce the body with additional bracing etc. Unfortunately, it appears that my particular Copen is more prone than others or I'm just sensitive to the front wheels shimmying over bumps and scrubbing around corners. Chopping the back off a Holden to make a Ute doesn't count
Nope, I can't agree. There is nothing structural about the roof of a Copen, it might as well be a rag-top as far as that goes. As far as "Scuttle Shake", I've not experienced anything like that. If you look, you will find a large steel tube behind the dash, going right across the car. There is a similar tube behind the seats. These are there to contribute the stiffening that the retractable roof does not provide, as well as crumple protection in the event of a crash. I was pretty impressed when I discovered these. Those Daihatsu designers don't miss much. Chopping the back off a Holden does count. Doing that would allow the body to twist in ways the designers didn't intend.
When pushing hard in the copen I can defiantly feel a difference between roof up and down in the corners. Roof up it is much more likely to lift a rear wheel going into a corner hard. No amount of internal bracing can make up for a roof and the roof does a lot for the diagonal bracing of the car.
DRLs fitted this morning so hopefully I'll be a little less invisible to some of the morons around here. Autoelectricians couldn't code the Cobra alarm either so they'll remove the unit next week and ship it back to Cobra for them to do it. I can't make my mind up re parking sensors for £120. The problem is that I leave a BMW X5 backend gap wherever I park and it looks frankly silly, although less expensive than if I judge a Copen boot behind the X5 ! What's the view ? Sensors or not ?
Never Either you can drive, or you can take the bus...no gimmicks to make up for lack of skill/dedication
I've fitted these to three of our cars. They cost next to nothing but have been working just fine for a couple of years now. Also: what Salieri says...
They look quite handy, although I reckon 2 would do it. I'm only thinking of getting them so I don't leave an embarrassing gap between my rear end and whatever I'm parking up to. Years of driving 4x4 tanks have imprinted on my brain I'm afraid.
Well pretty much done all I wanted to do at a fairly reasonable cost. The underseal, Dinitrol treatment and bonnet respray came in at £1130, which also included polishing the existing paint to a decent finish. It isn't concourse but that was never the plan anyway. The only advisories on the Dinitrol warranty was the drain holes on the boot and bonnet have some anodisation and the petrol tank had surface rust - treated but they didn't want to get aggressive with a grinder for obvious reasons. Interestingly, I reckon the car is easier to live with when the roof is down and I suspect that's down to removing the underbody bracing for the underseal and then tightening it back up properly. There's still a bit of scuttle shake but everything is a lot more predictable. Most of the work isn't visible but I'll try and get a couple of underbody pictures if the weather holds next week. All told, I reckon the Copen owes me close to £7k which isn't bad going considering I wanted a little £1k banger to run down to the shops ! I may have to leave the parking sensors and alloys for another day.
I personally HATE parking sensors. A parking CAMERA is actually useful (and I got one included with my stereo, they're fairly cheap) but all the sensors I've used (admittedly few, Mercedes A180, Nissan Qashqai, some fiesta I had as a courtesy car) have been wayyy too sensitive. They actually worsened my parking, I found I left huge gaps because by the time I'm 4 foot away from something the damn things are beeping continuously as if I'm about to hit and though I'm looking and certain I have more room, I still don't go back much further as the beeping also annoys the hell out of me
As promised, a few pics of the underbody and one not so good area that I need to get sorted (JR didn't do it as it would have required the full sill to be resprayed).
Hopefully it's just a shadow but that's not a hole in your tailpipe is it? On the 5th picture, on the right-hand tailpipe where it's resting on the bracket?
