Mid-week Collection Thread: Alternator Gambling - It Survived!

[Spottedlaurel]

17 minutes ago, stuboy said:

looks fab, where they auto?

Yes, and in my opinion a particularly smooth one.

[Schaefft]

47 minutes ago, Bren said:

It's hard to believe these have been around since 1990. And quite a few still on the road. I always fancied one.

I watched car wizard a few months ago talking about these - sadly it would appear that, in the US anyway, parts are becoming difficult to source.

It's no different here as most of the parts actually come from America. It's not impossible if you are patient enough (parts availability for my similar age Infiniti Q45 is significantly worse, same with my Lincolns etc.) so using one nowadays as a daily driver could become challenging if the wrong thing fails. However, there aren't all that many people putting the miles on these in the UK nowadays, so wear and tear is very slow. It helps that it's always the same stuff that breaks on these so I naturally went through all of that with my Celsior before. In fact one of the first posts in my fleet thread was about removing and rebuilding the alternator on that car (over 7 years ago now). It's amazing this one survived for so long!

@Spottedlaurel a very long day indeed. Me and Theo ended up staying awake until 2am ha!

[Spottedlaurel]

Trawling through the archives......

 

As first photographed in 2013, although I had seen it a few times before then. It starts appearing on Streetview in 2012, possibly replacing a Peugeot 406.

At some point in 2013 I knocked on the door and had a chat with the owner, but heard no more about until I received a call in 2020.

Collection day on 20th June 2020 (must have been between lockdowns). Although the MoT was almost a year old it was the time when we gained six months and I was happy to make use of that.

Two of my favourite cars here. Note my much-missed Camry was also fitted with LS400 wheels (thanks @Semi-C!), which were in really good condition with decent Dunlop tyres and would eventually replace the tired ones on the Lexus.

[Schaefft]

15 hours ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Trawling through the archives......

 

As first photographed in 2013, although I had seen it a few times before then. It starts appearing on Streetview in 2012, possibly replacing a Peugeot 406.

At some point in 2013 I knocked on the door and had a chat with the owner, but heard no more about until I received a call in 2020.

Collection day on 20th June 2020 (must have been between lockdowns). Although the MoT was almost a year old it was the time when we gained six months and I was happy to make use of that.

Two of my favourite cars here. Note my much-missed Camry was also fitted with LS400 wheels (thanks @Semi-C!), which were in really good condition with decent Dunlop tyres and would eventually replace the tired ones on the Lexus.

I just had a dig through the paperwork and the owner in the photo had it at least since July 2012, possibly earlier if the V5 had to be reissued for whatever reason. With me being the 7th owner, he'd be the 5th. Lexus/Toyota was most likely the first (registered on the 30th of September 1992 to pump up those sales numbers), I got documents for the first real owner (likely the 2nd) in London until 1999. That leaves us with a few owners between 1999 and 2012.