Yo.

boscoj said:

It's a Volkswagen with independent front suspension !

Reminds me of when we "detailed" one back in the day, boss said to use Comet so we did. Came out looking like a chrome bumper . . . strangely enough the owner loved it . . . I think I would have been pissed . . .

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Not really. VW's, at least i'm assuming you mean original design beetles, didn't really have a 'frame' per se.. The D defiantly has a frame heh. As I said, it's closer to a lotus esprit than anything else, and the two cars share a LOT of design similarities.

Doesn't surprise me on the comet thing. Using paint thinner/gas/kerosene to get rid of stubborn road grime isn't exactly an uncommon practice. You just can't do it on the painted front and rear fascia's. A scotch brite pad rubbed with the grain is actually the recommended cleaning method, and sandpaper will get rid of stubborn scratches. Never use steel wool though. particles of it will embed themselves in the stainless and will rust, and you'll have rust spots even though it's not the stainless itself that's actually rusting. About the only thing delorean owners fear are dents. lol. For obvious reasons. Pretty much anything else will 'buff out'.... literally.

holy moley . . . that is a huge difference.

did they add anything to the torque box?

well just the trailing arm rear susp etc . . .

qumefox said:

Not really. VW's, at least i'm assuming you mean original design beetles, didn't really have a 'frame' per se.. The D defiantly has a frame heh. As I said, it's closer to a lotus esprit than anything else, and the two cars share a LOT of design similarities.

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boscoj said:

well just the trailing arm rear susp etc . . .

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Well the trailing arm rear suspension is nothing new. loads of cars have that. even nascar cars of today. That design wasn't anything new or revolutionary with the delorean either.

And I think the major changes in the upgraded car, are poly bushings, boxed UCA's and LCA's, and the addition of additional mounting plates to the LCA to make it behave more like an A arm than just single connection points at each end.

And I don't think those two videos are of the same car. but the first one was mostly stock, so it behaved like pretty much all stock D's do. Just judging by the sound as well, the second one has at minimum, an upgraded exhaust as well.

Though on my car I have every intention of going all out. I have a brand new 0 mile crate 3.0L ready to drop in it, as well as a nice matched pair of TD04-13t turbos. I'm just stuck at the suspension right now.

qumefox said:

Actually he had several designs. However, generally you only get one shot at such grand endeavors as starting your own car company. Between the first company failing(and thusly the creditors losing lots of capitol) and the whole drug indictment thing (the fact that he was aquitted because it was entrapment is meaningless, all people remember is the accusation) meant he was hard pressed to raise enough funds to try again, which was the case. He did try several times but never could get financial backers.

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I remember seeing somewhere online (maybe the website) of his family trying to sell jewelry to fund the next project.

They did. Watches and all kinds of stuff. Though with no real venture capitalists wanting to get on board, a new car company was never going to happen.

Though funnily enough, deloreans are still being manufactured. Steven Wynne got the rights to the name, logo, and bought the remaining factory inventory from consolidated (who bought it from the factory when it closed)

Actually, as far as collector cars are concerned, us delorean owners have it REALLY good. This is because the factory closed in mid production with little advanced warning, leaving oodles of unused parts. If the closing had been planned, cars would have continued to be produced until the stockpiles had all been used up.

It's one of the reasons why DMCH is able to sell NEW deloreans, and also why the delorean is one of the more affordable collector cars to own. Most other cars, the only source of parts are from parts cars, and usually go at a premium. We, on the other hand, have a factory's worth of parts to pull from. Only a very handful of parts on the delorean are hard to find, and to be honest, most of these have been reproduced. The only two parts I can think of off hand that are hard to find, are the original grooved hoods with gas flaps that were used on the early cars, and left front fenders.

FYI there are only 3 exterior 'style' differences in the delorean througout it's production.

Wheel color: The first 700 cars I believe had dark grey wheels. All the rest had lighter silver.

Hood: Initially the hoods had grooves and a gas flap cut out so you could put gas in the car without raising the hood. Later on the gas flap was removed, and finally the grooves vanished as well. I've read these changes were done to try and minimize stamping rejects. The hood is the biggest single sheet of stainless on the car after all. Flat hoods are all that are available new. Grooved hoods (which my car has) cost a bit more, but aren't super rare on the used market. It's hard to find someone giving up a gas flap hood though unless they're just parting out a barn find not worth restoring or otherwise deemed non-salvageable car.

Antenna location: the first 500 or so cars had the antenna embedded in the windshield. Looked ok. reception sucked though. The antenna was then relocated on later cars to a fixed antenna on the passenger side fender. Reception much better, but looks crappy. This is how my car is. Finally the last change was locating the antenna in the drivers rear quarter panel as a power antenna. This is generally what people who aren't worried about the car being 'original' switch to as it looks the best. I'll be doing this modification as well, and having the hole in the passenger fender patched when it gets to this point.

A note on getting gas. Never drive your D when it's low on gas, when you need to be somewhere in a hurry. You'll end up at the gas station at least half an hour talking to people and being told repeatedly that your putting gas in the windshield washer reservoir. :undecided:

it gets old at times.

qumefox said:

They did. Watches and all kinds of stuff. Though with no real venture capitalists wanting to get on board, a new car company was never going to happen.

Though funnily enough, deloreans are still being manufactured. Steven Wynne got the rights to the name, logo, and bought the remaining factory inventory from consolidated (who bought it from the factory when it closed)

Actually, as far as collector cars are concerned, us delorean owners have it REALLY good. This is because the factory closed in mid production with little advanced warning, leaving oodles of unused parts. If the closing had been planned, cars would have continued to be produced until the stockpiles had all been used up.

It's one of the reasons why DMCH is able to sell NEW deloreans, and also why the delorean is one of the more affordable collector cars to own. Most other cars, the only source of parts are from parts cars, and usually go at a premium. We, on the other hand, have a factory's worth of parts to pull from. Only a very handful of parts on the delorean are hard to find, and to be honest, most of these have been reproduced. The only two parts I can think of off hand that are hard to find, are the original grooved hoods with gas flaps that were used on the early cars, and left front fenders.

FYI there are only 3 exterior 'style' differences in the delorean througout it's production.

Wheel color: The first 700 cars I believe had dark grey wheels. All the rest had lighter silver.

Hood: Initially the hoods had grooves and a gas flap cut out so you could put gas in the car without raising the hood. Later on the gas flap was removed, and finally the grooves vanished as well. I've read these changes were done to try and minimize stamping rejects. The hood is the biggest single sheet of stainless on the car after all. Flat hoods are all that are available new. Grooved hoods (which my car has) cost a bit more, but aren't super rare on the used market. It's hard to find someone giving up a gas flap hood though unless they're just parting out a barn find not worth restoring or otherwise deemed non-salvageable car.

Antenna location: the first 500 or so cars had the antenna embedded in the windshield. Looked ok. reception sucked though. The antenna was then relocated on later cars to a fixed antenna on the passenger side fender. Reception much better, but looks crappy. This is how my car is. Finally the last change was locating the antenna in the drivers rear quarter panel as a power antenna. This is generally what people who aren't worried about the car being 'original' switch to as it looks the best. I'll be doing this modification as well, and having the hole in the passenger fender patched when it gets to this point.

A note on getting gas. Never drive your D when it's low on gas, when you need to be somewhere in a hurry. You'll end up at the gas station at least half an hour talking to people and being told repeatedly that your putting gas in the windshield washer reservoir. :undecided:

it gets old at times.

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Ahahaha!

That's good about the parts being easily replaceable. An old car that won't die ... it keeps getting better. Hey if you don't mind keep posting info on yours even though its a laser forum. I love to look at the work involved with it.

Crazy Jay said:

Ahahaha!

That's good about the parts being easily replaceable. An old car that won't die ... it keeps getting better. Hey if you don't mind keep posting info on yours even though its a laser forum. I love to look at the work involved with it.

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I've been trying to just keep it in this thread though.

The car's aren't without their problems still. Many an owner has bought 'project cars' then given up and sold them at a loss because they just didn't know what they were getting in to.

Unless you want to do ground up restores, with the delorean, buy the best car you can initially. People think they can buy cheap project cars and work on it 'as they go' but it really doesn't work that way with these, and it usually ends up a 'fix one thing and something else breaks' deal and the owner gets frustrated.

It's still a lot easier.. and cheaper in the long run.. to maintain a good car, than it is to fix a bad one.