S401 Update

Just a quick post to update on my ownership of the S401.

So as a few people have noticed, yes the car is now for sale. As much as I like this car, I have come to the end of what I wanted to do to get it back into the condition it should have been in. It’s now at a point where I can pass it onto another owner, who can be proud of the car and just enjoy it for what it is, without having to worry about ugly cosmetic issues, or having to get it running properly.

The other major reason for sale is that I heave a wedding coming up early next year, and I intend to have two matching cars as the wedding cars. I’m intending to use a pair of Rover SD1s. One will be owned by me, and the other, will hopefully be NP70.

This means I need to sell the S401, buy a Rover and get it into a condition where it is presentable for the wedding, and reliable enough that I can drive it 1000+ KM over a short space of time. This will mean resurrecting the Speeduino project, and it will be stepped up a notch (potentially with a new engine loom, wasted spark coils and distributor delete).

In the meantime, i’m still driving, and enjoying the S401. It got a good scrub down yesterday, after the Rimutaka driving the other week. Obviously I was fairly hard on the brakes, there was an awful lot of pad on the wheels. I finally picked up some Dragons Breath from United Car Care and gave it a shot. It’s really highly rated for stripping brake dust off, without damaging the wheels.

I’m impressed. I sprayed it on, left it to dwell for about 5 minutes, and then water blasted it off. The wheels looked almost spotlessly clean with such little work. I was cleaning the whole car anyway, but the ease in which it removed the brake dust is just incredible.

Speaking of cleaning the whole car, I got some new products and decided to give them a shot. The main one was CarPro Hydrofoam, a Hydrophobic car wash. As my snow foam cannon had not arrived yet I washed by hand. The results where immediately clear, after rinsing it off with the water blaster the paint was repelling water and beading like crazy. Time will tell how long it lasts, and how effective it really is at keeping dirt and water spots away. I also cleaned the daily Honda the same way, and that gets a hard life. Although, the coating of Reload on the Honda has lasted ages and it still looks good.

I also gave the seats a quick leather clean and condition, but was pleasantly surprised how little dirt actually came off them. Clearly someone had been looking after them. The floor mats did have to come out though, as they were filthy. A quick blast with the water blaster, and they have come up mint. Just waiting for them to dry now.

I put my camera to good use again too, recording the sound of the Subaru people. Sadly the S401 has a fairly quiet exhaust, so there isn’t much to hear 😒

So other than that, there isn’t a lot to go on with here. I’ll update as small things happen, but the next big update will hopefully be when the car is sold.