KiwiBirkin

What a great picture I didnt think we could do dogs but I now know we can and its given the wife an idea

Thanks for posting Slomove looks like a interesting upgrade and I would be keen on your comments when you drive on the how you find it compared to you old setup.

Not in NZ :conehead:

Not too fussed on that inception of the seven I prefer the Lambretta version. You dont need a spare on a seven all you need is a can of tyre weld so you then save about 15kg in weight, I havnt run a spare on the rear for about 10000 miles now.

Saw the topic heading and then found out it wasnt about what i thought the topic chat was about. Anyway Twobone I guess one ride will lead to another if you play your cards right so dont scare the crap out of her. Hope you had a good night.

Hi guys we have elec, water & sewers so all is ok. Christchurch has about 95% back on water and elec but sewers are a big problem still, the picture is of damage to one of the older buildings in Christchurch and its a common theme around town with nearly all of the old building suffering damage and last count was at least 500 will be demolished. The big news is that the geo scientists now have found new fault lines that are 16000 years old they didnt know exsist right under the city and that they are still shifting and we are told there is a 50/50 chance of another +6 shock to come

Hi guys were still getting some pretty big after shocks 5 days after the main big one, some have been around the 5.5 mark and are starting to open up cracks in some of the older buildings around the city of Christchurch, in my local town Kaiapoi we have had over 50 houses been declared unfit too live in and will be demolished. Tensions & stress levels have been running high for the last 3 days as most of the big after shocks have been in the night which is freaking people out. Still my house was untouched and my housing estate came out really well due to it being built on clay and its a modern housing estate and all the houses are less than 4 years old so were built to high earthquake proof codes, most of the condemed house were close to either the beach or by rivers. Here's a good pic of the damage we are seeing from around the Canterbury provence. http://media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/image/jpg/f100365.jpg

Now the cars finished I have been blating around Christchurch looking at the quake damage and around the Port Hills and then on to work for my evening shift and then blating home Long weekend coming up for me as my shift finished Thusday night so im going to put some extended miles on the car over the 3 day weekend if the weather is kind to us. Slowmove how about some pics of your upgrades your doing in the Tech section. Im interested in the wide-track suspension upgrade and would like to know how you are going about it. Cheers Stephen

Twobone I have just black mesh in my car behind my custom cut Birkin emblem which is the way I like it, I did this to stop rocks taking out my radiator but im really quite happy with how it looks too.

Great job dave the ali looks fantastic. Any chance you can tell me in in what kit it is ? Cheers Stephen

Tim I have custom seats made for my Birkin. But from the firewall to my back sitting in the seat its 2 1/4" and from the firwall to the wheel 27" but I could lose another 2" if I removed the removable steering wheel boss thats bolted on and just mouted my sterring wheel straight up.

Im the opposite I really like my driving position in my Birkin and having my arms at a 90 deg bend at the elbow it feels much more natural than having then stretched out like in my normal cars, in fact i have now started to move my normal cars close to the dash a bit to get the same bend in my arms. The best bet to get your arms more out stretched in a Birkin is to take the bucket seats out and replace them with a custom made bench seat which will have you sitting as far back against the firewall as you want be depending on how much padding gets put behind you, trouble is they are not adjustable.

I really didn't need to lower my seat anymore as I had accomplished what i wanted too with the seat rails in place but the little bit extra was there for the taking I tried to get the photos off my mates camera today but he had a mini sd card and I didn't have a reader capable of reading it, I will have photos up by at least the beginning of next week though for you Scott.

Managed to lower my drivers seat another 1" today by taking out the seat rails and bolting the seat directly to the floor via the new 50x5mm flat bar bits I put in the other day. While this is great for me as I drive the car 99% of the time I will put the seat rails back in when I go on longer trips in case Marg wants to have a go at driving some of the time, it will only take about 20 mins to swap this around when I come to do it. Out of all the mods I have done to my car lowering the seat is the best one yet and im now in sitting position like I was in a my mates Caterham, I cant not for any reason think why Birkin mount their seats so high up ???.

Hi Scott I have managed to lower my seat today and keep the slider I have lowered it around 1 1/2" inches and it has made a huge difference to me sitting in the drivers side. im 5ft 11 and instead of looking through the windscreen 2" from the top of the windscreen frame im now looking through it just above center. All up it took about 5 hours and I have taken pictures and will put them in this forum thread as soon as I can get them of my mates camera. It involved cutting out the seat rails so it looked like Slowmoves picture of the passenger side and then mig welding 5mm x 50mm flat bar across the bottom and then using the flat bar from the bit I cut out with the nuts in that held the seat slider in place, this was then welded across between the 2 bits of 5mmx50mm flat bar after I grinded the nuts of and opened the holes to 8mm which was also drilled through the floor pan. I then re bolted the sliders back in and had to bend the slider handle up a bit as it now fowled on the front bracing box section as it was sitting lower I then re-bolted the seat rails back in, because I used the flat bar they were mounted to they lined back up fine and I then put the seats back in place. I hope you can understand what I did and if I have made it clear enough. Opps there is one thing I did do while doing this and that was move the flat bar that the seat rails were mounted to aft a bit from the orignal position as I noticed I was at the 2nd to last notch of the slider when sitting in the car and when you do all this you have to remember that you are moving the seat to a more upright position from its angled position and therefor will end up with a gap at the back of the seat if you keep it all in the same place so move those bits back about 10mm and you will have about 2 more notches for your seat to go back on. Pics soon .

Thats great new Mike as it means you have recoverd from your injury :party:

Hi guys I will give you a update. We are getting a lot of rather large after shocks 14hrs after the main event with 3 just rolling past us in the last 10mins which really shook us up as we were sitting at a nepews place having pizza for his birthday, Marg is better now she has a wine in her hand though :rofl:. Central Christchurch has just been given a curfew for the night from 7pm to 7am because of the massive building damage and also we are starting to see images of some really bad road damage around the area. We are going to stay with a friend tonight as we still have no power and water and who has 2 small girls whos partner has been called out to duty as he is in the police so we are going to help support her as the girls really freaked out all day long and its been a tough day for her Before I left the house though i made sure that anything that could fall on Grace was put down low and could not hit the car Lets hope for a better nights sleep :seeya:

Great pictue Slomove it helps alot with my ideas.

Cheers guys the Seven is actually ok a small patio gas heater missed it by inches and a large lamp too that i was storing in the garage. If you want to see some of damaged cause here is a good site to vist http://www.nzherald.co.nz/

HI guys thanks for your concerns. WOW mann what a shocker I had just gone to the loo at 4.30am when it hit as i was getting back into bed, it was very vicious in its intensity and threw me sideways as i pulled the wife out of bed and into the doorway where we rocked and rolled (not what you think) for nearly 2 mins the wife was freaking out as we could hear all sorts of stuff comeing away from walls and in cupboards. Once it subdued we had a couple of really big after shocks as I started to get the tourches out and stop Marg freaking out. We sorted our selfs out with warm cloths and water in the car and with the continuing large after shocks spent the next 1 hour by the front door ready to vacate if we needed too, after about 1 hour the shockes scaled down a bit so we had a look around the house, lots of fallen objects with the only casualty a couple a few wine glasses and the main one my Warfdale speakers crashing into the wall causing a rather large dent, lucky we have a new house so no damage outside. Went back to bed about 6am with our cloths on in just in case and was woken by a couple of big jolts a couple of times. Anyway pretty freaky and my first BIG earthquake in NZ in my 25 years here, we have no power or water and apparently Kaiapoi is one of the worst hit places in Canterbury and we have been told to not expect water for upto 3-5 days. We decided to get over to make sure Margs mum was fine and on the way we saw numerous gapping cracks in roads and a lot of mud and sand on padocks whch has come up thu the surface.Lots of Damage around Christchurch City on the older buildings with only 2 main casulaties confirmed from falling chimminys hitting people, we were very lucky it hit at 4.30am and not at time after 9pm when the central city would have started getting busy. Plenty of roads have good crackes along them. Anyway still getting some good after shocks still were lucky its a nice sunny day too as this is helping with the clean up. Anyway thats my report once agine thenks for the concern guys

Do you have any pics Slomove, I understand what you have done but pics spell a 1000 words. Mind you I still have to make the drivers side adjustable for those rare days my 5 ft 7" wife wants to drive which means i maybe cant drop that much. But as they say another 1" is some time all you need :rofl:

Hi guys my car needs to go back to the work shop for a small issue with the rebuild of my car (nothing serious) and the center consol is coming out again, i promised my self that when the center consol was ever removed again that I would look at lowering my seats in my Birkin and now is the time to do it. So has any one done this in their Birkins and if so do you have pictures at all you could share ?. My thoughts are to cut the 2x 25mm box sections that the seat slider is bolted to out and weld in some 5mm flat bar along the same lines and then bolt the seat slider to that instead, it looks like I could lower the seat about 35mm lower this way. Cheers Kiwibirkin

Tom I have really enjoyed this thread and loved your write up it really does make for a very intresting story into Seven ownership. As for the damage I would demand nothing but new from the insurance company as Martin said a new bonnet is the easy part and would have one deliverd to your home town from Caterham USA and matched painted to your car by the best spray painters in your town. The scuttle I would also see if Caterham can supply a new one then get a metal working company to fit it for you and again painted to suit.

Stealth car looking foward to seeing the rest.

Hi Twobone The transmission is a Toyota T50 gearbox which is a pretty standard gearbox for use on a 4AGE the rear axel and diff I have been told is from a South African Toyota Corrola and is pretty standard to Birkins and is 4.11