This was a one owner car, purchased new from dealer 05135 Almaden Toyota, San Jose California. The car spent it's life in CA, and from the look of the interior, it was always garage kept.
The previous owner, Les Theurich decided to part with the car last year after 29 years of ownership. I don't know the complete in's and out's but I do know that he was quite ill, which I believe was his only reason for selling.
I purchased the car from Les in November and then set about the task of figuring out how to get the thing over here. A big thank you to Gez at this point for putting up with my constant questions! I shipped the car over using Transglobal, Tony Lester from the US side, and Will Pocock on the UK side to handle clearing the car through customs.
To tide me over until the car arrived, a box containing all the documents relating to the car was sent over to me. It took some time to sort through this as it wasn't in any particular order, but there is literally a folder full of receipts relating to work carried out on the car, along with copies of Gullwing magazine, and literally years worth of DeLorean World Magazine. At the risk of slightly annoying my other half, I left her watching her soaps one evening, commandeered the bedroom and set about organising all of the documents, quite some task considering the quantity of stuff that had been sent.
Back to the car, although the car was running when sold, the car had some electrical challanges and would not start, and as such I missed the original vessel it was planned to go on, and had the additional hit of VAT going up to 20% on January 4th. It took three attempts for the haulage company to deliver the car to the port in Long Beach as the port authority would not accept it as a non-runner. Finally though, on the third delivery attempt, it did start and was accepted. The car was loaded onto the Tirranna which left Long Beach on the 6th December with an estimated arrival date into the UK of January 19th.
The car arrived ahead of schedule and I was able to pick up the car from the port on the 19th January. The battery on the car was well flat and even with a jumper pack attached to it the car did not show any signs of life (the reason for which would become known later), in the end we towed it onto Huxtables trailer and set off to Canvey Island. I gave a courtesy call to Les the next day to let him know that the car had arrived safely, he seemed extremely happy that the car had made it over ok, and asked if I would mind sending him some pictures of me with the car so that he could see the car with it's new owner. Sadly Les passed away during the early part of February so it was a request I was not able to complete.
Chris did a lot of work on the car, which was mostly fuel system related, along with removing a few dents and a re-grain. Our friends at the DVLA took their sweet time in registering the car, but I finally got the plate authorisation certificate and tax disk through on the 9th March. I quickly got some plates made up and arranged with Chris to pick the car up on Friday evening.
Below is a brief list of what was done on the car while with Chris:
-Obviously UK requirements, full set of new front lights from Dave H, along with new tyres all round (didnt' fancy crusing down the M25 or M1 on 30 year old rubber ).
-Fuel system - new tank, pump, boot, seal, pickup hose, filters, stainless braided fuel lines
-Stainless braided brake lines - the brakes themselves were supprisingly ok
-Oil pressure sender
-Otterstat + seal
-Ed's front springs
-Door mirror glass (the old glass was well knackered!)
-Upgraded relays
-Trip reset shaft replaced
-John Hervey's soft-lift door strut's
-All fluids flushed and changed along with new belts.
-Centre headliner re-trimmed
-2 dents removed on drivers door, 1 dent removed on t-panel and full re-grain
As they say 'this topic is useless without pics' so here are some I took over the weekend: