Project Snicket, Re-Rego Inspection

I finally had the time, and money, to take Snicket down for its re-registration inspection.

Its been ages since I did anything to Snicket, but sure enough after a couple of turns of the engine, it fired straight into life and ran happily.

I had basically run out of things to do that didn’t cost money, and had run out of money anyway, so the project just kinda stalled until now. But since I started a new job a wee bit back, I finally had the money to take it for the inspection and see what it would take to get on the road.

This post is a bit light on details of the exact process, but once I’m done with the process there will be a full post on re-registering a classic car.

I booked in at VTNZ, and drove the car the 20km, in rush hour, to drop the car in on Wednesday morning, with the hopes of seeing it back later that day. Unfortunately VTNZ chose to use all of their “up to three days” timeframe, and I didn’t get the car back until Friday. Driving it back home in the pouring rain, on the back roads because the visibility was too bad for the motorway… was an experience. I did have a rather large grin when I got home though, so much fun.

Sadly it didn’t pass first time, but I never really expected it to. What it failed on though, only took me by a little surprise, and that’s more because I thought it would fail on other things. No rust though!

So I need to sort these,

A new lower ball joint (will do the pair)
A new rack end (not tie rod end), which isn’t available, so a new steering rack >_<
Rebuild both rear radius arms
Replace both rear shocks (apparently there is play before the cones compress)

And fix the brake imbalance (LH 10% / RH 93% – Almost nothing from the left), which may be the hard one to do. I don’t recall any obvious leaking etc when i last removed the drums, so will strip both down, clean the lot, and replace the rear hoses when I remove the arms. Hopefully there is something obvious that needs to be replaced.

So that’s where the inspection is. I had ordered a bunch of parts for the above repairs (except brakes, as I didn’t know what was needed there, yet). The plan is to get all the work done and have it back in for a free re-check within the 20 working days. Then Snicket will be road legal!