Productive day

[Tom Nas]

Hi all,

Well, my 80 is finally silent! Thanks to the help of a good friend, the 
downpipe-to-cat flange has been firmly attached, and the resulting silence 
is incredible... that's what you get after doing nearly 3000 km in a car 
without any exhaust to speak of. The largest leak actually came from the 
missing plug in the cat (where the O2 sensor's supposed to go in cars so 
equipped), but putting a new steel ring and spring-loaded bolts in the 
flange helped a lot, too. I can hear the radio now, and it sounds a lot 
better than I thought! A quick drive-through wash helped with the car's 
appearance, I hope we won't get any more snow this winter so this will be 
the last time it's covered in salt.

The morning was spent at the model-car swapmeet, which yielded the 
following: Minichamps 1:43 allroad quattro (what an incredible model!), 
ditto new A4, ditto NSU Ro80 and a nice mint/boxed early-'80s Matchbox 
Superkings rally UrQ in factory livery. Also spotted: the Minichamps 1:43 
UrQ has finally been released to the general public- an excellent model of 
the early 4-headlight variety in silver. Better than the DetailCars effort, 
IMO. At the same time, the Minichamps '70s 100 Coupe S and 100 LS sedan 
were released (the former in denim blue metallic, the latter in beautiful 
dark green), both are excellent recreations of the original.
The items on sale now were the higher-priced models in original 'Audi 
Collection' boxes, and I suspect we'll see more colours in the lower-priced 
Minichamps packaging in the coming months. Finally, Quarzo, a sub-brand of 
Vitesse from Portugal, has released a fine model of the '00 Le Mans-winning 
R8R. A nice addition to the '99s already available.

Bye, Tom
Zeist, The Netherlands
87 80 1.8, 'quiet reliable'
87 90q, resting