This is going to be more of a rambling monologue than anything.

I brought my Fury over to New Zealand with the intention of getting it certified for road use within a couple of months. 3 jobs, 5 houses, and 4 years later it's still not done. However, late last year I gave myself the ultimatum that I'd at least take it to the February track day at the Fraser Club AGM in Taupo. February rolled around and it looked unlikely that I'd have it ready. As luck would have it, the track day was postponed to the end of March. Great! That should be enough time to finish things off!

When I brought the car over I also brought a set of Toyo R888 tyres because I knew they're expensive over here. A pair of 185/65/14 for the front and some wide 225/50/14 for the rear. After all this time I finally got to checking the fit of the 225s at the weekend. Without having them actually mounted on a rim, the most optimistic measurement I can get would give 10 mm of clearance from the chassis. Under hard cornering that would likely mean the tyres will rub. I don't have time to mess about with wheel spacers/different offset/flaring the arches. So I've gone looking for a pair of 185 width R888.

Over here a single Toyo R888R will cost $460 (about £265). I had a look on Demontweeks and they're £100 each inc VAT plus £85 postage. Take off VAT because it's going outside the EU and it comes out to $440 (£250) for two tyres. But I only have 2 weeks to get them fitted and that's how long it takes for things to get from the UK at the best of times! What a dilemma!

Is anyone coming to NZ for a holiday next week with some spare luggage space?

Have a look at hyperdrive.co.nz for the R888R
185/60/14 is NZD$369.00 fitted
pays to shop around - still not as cheap as UK prices.

David

[Edited on 6/3/17 by feckn7]

don't forget you would no doubt end up with some sort of import duty charge NZ side too.

My tyres turned up today!

No customs charges to pay. $25/tyre to fit them. So it came to $490 for two tyres vs $740 from hyper drive as above.

Still have a week to finish other things with the car.

nice saving

Off topic, but how hard is it to register an ex-UK kit in NZ?

I'm hoping to do an ex-pat stint as my next career move and NZ is very close to the top of my desirable list.

Incidentally, I watched a couple of V8 Supercars test at Taupo when I was travelling around a few years ago. It looks like a fun circuit.

The advice I was given was that I wouldn't be able to just register the car, even though it was on the road in the uk. It doesn't meet certain safety standards. I was told to get it certified through LVVTA as if it was a new build.

My problem was the Fury was kind of shabby. I ended up pretty much doing a full rebuild, but haven't had a huge amount of spare time to get it done. If I did it again, I'd make sure I had a well sorted car before bringing it over. But I wasn't planning on emigrating when I bought the car.

One of the biggest issues getting it certified is that you need to submit technical drawings of the suspension for approval. I ended up getting a friend to make some up but I just haven't got to submitting all the paperwork.

Now that it's ready for the track it won't need much more doing to make it roadworthy and I can start to think about getting it certified.


Description



Edit: I picked up the wheels from the tyre shop after work today. The guy covered the charge for swapping them because he wanted my old Yokohama AO32s. I thought I was going to have to pay an extra fee to get rid of them. I did let him know they were 13 years old but he still wanted them. Win-win!

[Edited on 16/3/17 by Furyous]