Living with Zastava Florida Business - Little car that could returns to hometown

[Matty]

On 10/11/2024 at 15:08, IronStar said:

(511 in the UK).

We had one when I was a kid and the family was quite skint for a period. Sold an XR2 to get the money out of it and bought the Yugo for £200. I was so embarrassed at the time (12) but by God it was a good car. Snapped cambelt, new belt 2 new valves lapped in good to go. Car crash in the snow, new bumper bit of finessing with a ballpein good to go

 Proper motor.

 

[IronStar]

42 minutes ago, Matty said:

We had one when I was a kid and the family was quite skint for a period. Sold an XR2 to get the money out of it and bought the Yugo for £200. I was so embarrassed at the time (12) but by God it was a good car. Snapped cambelt, new belt 2 new valves lapped in good to go. Car crash in the snow, new bumper bit of finessing with a ballpein good to go

 Proper motor.

 

People love shitting on them because they’re cheap motors with no prestige attached but if you even remotely keep up with maintenance they are great cars. Tough, dependable, built to last and be simple to fix. Shame about the (lack of) rustproofing.

[hairnet]

would visa make that

[IronStar]

6 minutes ago, hairnet said:

would visa make that

Easily 😄

[IronStar]

You know what’s back from long-time loan? Yup! It’s back home baby! Delivered from cousin-Star tonight, as he finally got confidence back in his Bini and finished lugging things around that needed a bigger car. It’s exchanged for Mini so he can surprise his kid tomorrow with what I can only guess is “look what IronStar did to my ex-car that was absolutely shattered last time you saw it!” type of scene. 😄

It’s a bit worse for wear. Last time I saw it, I clumsily pushed in switches on the side of the speedo, and cracked the very very tired switch mounting bracket. 🤦‍♂️ End result of that is LED wiring managed to rip itself apart from shaking around and being tugged on. 
So switches went out

and back together 

This mounting bracket actually has the locking pins as well, so it shouldn’t rattle around. If only seller manages to find another one or 5, as these are super prone to borkage, and these are probably the sole remaining NOS items in existence.

One of the dash backlight bulbs conked out as well, and annoyingly it’s the one on the odometer. Shit quality parts strike again. I’m so not looking forward to taking that apart again. 

I got reminded again about how uncomfortable the seats are, and now I’m almost 100% certain I want them out, into the bin, and replaced with something nicer, probably 156 leather ones. I like originality and these are Florida Business only, but I also like being able to drive the car without being stupidly uncomfortable in it.

I also spoke to the bodyshop guy, and he’s happy for me to deliver all the bodywork for it before it goes extinct and he’ll store it in his attic along with all the other parts he owns, and put them on when it gets its turn in the shop. A++++ bloke, looking forward to spending more money for his services.

[IronStar]

You may or may not’ve seen that the car was retrieved from its long-term loan duty the other day. Today is the day little car that could went home. Home home to Kragujevac, the hometown of Zastava. 

You know how I keep saying this car is stupidly rare, but no one gives a shit really? How rare? Im at the biggest Zastava meet there is, in its hometown, there is a single other, and not nearly as rich in trim. Predictably, next to no one gives a shit about it, even here. However, everyone I spoke to was shocked by the fact it has an aircon. 😄

Anyway, have a bunch of Zastavas in their hometown, parked in front of the city hall.

 

[hairnet]

the facelift is massively fugly

 

[Yoss]

1 hour ago, IronStar said:

You may or may not’ve seen that the car was retrieved from its long-term loan duty the other day. Today is the day little car that could went home. Home home to Kragujevac, the hometown of Zastava. 

You know how I keep saying this car is stupidly rare, but no one gives a shit really? How rare? Im the biggest Zastava meet there is, in its hometown, there is a single other, and not nearly as rich in trim. Predictably, next to no one gives a shit about it, even here. However, everyone I spoke to was shocked by the fact it has an aircon. 😄

Anyway, have a bunch of Zastavas in their hometown, parked in front of the city hall.

 

Looks like a great day out. 

 

[IronStar]

Some more photos of THE car by the other people. Seems that some people did give a shit!

This one is by Tourist board of Kragujevac!

Random others I found

 

[Yoss]

7 hours ago, IronStar said:

Some more photos of THE car by the other people. Seems that some people did give a shit!

This one is by Tourist board of Kragujevac!

Random others I found

 

That is an impressive building behind you. Can you tell us more? 

[IronStar]

3 hours ago, Yoss said:

That is an impressive building behind you. Can you tell us more? 

It's the city assembly / town hall of Kragujevac. The architect is Miladin Prljevic.

In 1949, Serbia was made up of six districts and two provinces. Kragujevac was the center of the Šumadija–Raška district. A palace for the District People’s Council was built, intended to be a representative building.

However, by the 1960s, architects considered it to be a rather gloomy structure. In 1961, it was generally rebuilt: extended, given a new façade, and fitted with brise-soleils, modeled after the UNESCO building in Paris. 

 

[DSdriver]

On 07/10/2024 at 13:26, IronStar said:

Yugos and Zastavas in general, when new, arrived with a toolkit that’s essentially everything you need to do any work on the engine or interior. These have, of course, been mostly long lost and I think I saw only one car for sale that still had them either the car. Going through the boot the other day, I was thinking - yeah, there needs to be some tools in the back, in case I need to tighten up something. Spare wheel has been kicked out in exchange for that stabby cord thing, but it would still be a good idea to have something to tighten the wheel with. Quick look on classifieds, and turns out there’s still NOS tool box available for ~20€ delivered. Impressive for a thing that’s been out of production for over 20 years now.

I also wanted to sort out the blown dash bulbs the other day, started disassembling, and when I threw it all back together, I thought I saw a blink when I locked the car. Unlock *blink blink* Lock *blink* Lock the locked car *blink blink blink*. I was wondering who the hell installed remote central locking with no indicators, but thought it’s probably one of those things. Apparently not, it just wasn’t working right.

 

Minor thing, incandescent interior bulb was swapped for an LED unit, so it actually illuminates the interior now. I need to measure it and get a warm white / yellow one ordered, as only white was available, but this is a small but significant quality of life improvement. Annoyingly, there’s no switch, it just turns on when door is ajar, but there’s a blank next to it, so I might wire something up in the future.

I wanted to fix the lights behind the switches, but Florida also uses absolutely insane system with fiber optic that gets light up from a single bulb, and inevitably gets broken and ripped from the fixtures in the switches, so I left that alone. There’s enough space to shove in a bare led and keep it in place with a glue gun, so that’s what I’ll probably do at some point. 

I'm just catching up on all this!

I fitted those LED bulbs into the interior lights on my boat, 10 bulbs in all. When I put the power on to test them I found only half were working. Sat down to think about it and remembered that LEDs are transistors on only work one way round so I end for ended the non-working bulbs and all was good. I was impressed by how the coin toss theory worked on randomly fitted light bulbs.

[DSdriver]

On 08/10/2024 at 17:00, Zelandeth said:

The fibre-optic system will date back to the Fiat origins of the design - they used the same setup on the Panda/Uno/Tipo and probably others.  Jaguar in the 80s were a huge fan of fibre optics too.

My 1973 Citroen DS has a fibre optic cable from one of the bulbs behind the speedo down to illuminate the ignition key barrel. I guess Citroen were just experimenting - a bit like the fibreglass roof panel. A real time machine!

[DSdriver]

Thread hi-jack over, back to normal viewing...

[IronStar]

 

Since I got the car, my biggest gripe with it has been the seats. I don't think they were amazing from the factory, but the collapsed foam, which resulted in the cloth rubbing through and exposed metal frame, definitely did it no favours. They were shit, and the exposed frame left my back aching if driven for longer than half an hour.

Seating position is a bit rubbish as well. You sit way too high, and it feels like you're driving a van.
Tbh I subconciously avoided driving it due to the garbage seats.

So imagine my excitement when I saw a breaker taking apart a Florida locally, that had something different addapted to bolt in. Citroen lickers may recognize another similatly shaped car these came out of:

Much, much, much, much better. I forgot just how comfortable these armchairs are! Rails are sitting much lower than the original Florida seats as well, so the driving position has improved immensely. I also got the rear seat that's converted to fit Florida, but is missing some plastic cover, so I didn't fit it, another set of door cards, and the rear glass that has the defroster tabs intact. 11/10, would spend 65E again.