205 replies to this topic

[StephenSLR]

Workshop employees rummaging around in your car is only the tip of the iceberg.

I'd be more worried about the increased miles/km on the odo when you pick up your vehicle after having work done that doesn't require a test drive be performed.

 

Has happened to me, the guy said he noticed the rear shock bushes were worn while delivering something a few suburbs away.

 

My thought was wtf is this guy using my car for deliveries???

 

Never went back.

 

s

[REDA9X]

Interesting, I have actually seen one of those before, not in a glovebox though, this is not what I was picturing from the original decscription.

[StephenSLR]

this is not what I was picturing from the original decscription.

 

Yeah, dot matrix looks like this:

 

 

s

[v8xu1pete]

I don't remember it like that either, don't remember it having GMH on it , but hey, it was 20+ years ago & I only saw it for about 30 seconds. I thought it was fine dot matrix print, but memory fades over time.

Pete.

[eyepeeler]

How cool is that, good stuff.

[v8xu1pete]

Well I have just been to shed and checked out glovebox of hatchback and there it was. Owned the car for many years and never noticed it. Being a hatchback maybe it was a real A9X [hatchback] thing. The mystery thickens [big deal] but certainly not BS

 

Does anyone else have one of these stickers in the glovebox of their A9X hatch, or sedan, or evidence of where one may have once been.

Pete.

[Dr Terry]

That's the first time I've ever seen A9X written as A9-X. Why the hyphen ? Is it genuine ?

 

According to Leo Pruneau, the only reason XU1 was written as XU-1 was to make the GTR XU-1 decal look balanced. In all other literature it was written XU1.

 

Dr Terry 

[LXM21]

Mine certainly has not got one, nor has another genuine car that I know of.

[a9x868]

Mine certainly has not got one, nor has another genuine car that I know of.

yours is a sedan
what are the others you have looked at
the guys are talking hatchs here?

[REDA9X]

I spoke to Greg  on the weekend about this, and in the 30 odd years he has owned his cars, he has never once seen one or any evidence of ever having been one in a car. I fail to see how someone can own a car for a long period of time and not see it in their glovebox, and why would it only be limited to hatches? Has the ink dried on it yet?

[StephenSLR]

This was lifted from another forum from a guy in Victoria, possibly working for Holden.  I'm not saying it applies in this case but he lists reasons why things can be different on the same car.  It may shed some insight.

 

When I go to any car event and look at the cars there, the thing I appreciate most (outside personal taste in aesthetics) is the workmanship that has gone into the car. It doesn't matter to me whether it is custom, period correct resto, rat or bone original. 

 

I must admit that the arguments I see / hear about what is the correct widget for a particular car just makes me laugh. The almost God-like reverence some 'experts' bestow on regular production line workers is baffling to me.

 

I am an engineer working for a car manufacturer and I authorise changes to regular production cars almost on a daily basis. These are driven by many root causes - build / ergo difficulties, cost reduction, reliability / durability improvements, fit & finish improvements, supplier stock shortages, supplier closedowns, whatever. To say that a car built on day one of production is identical to one built a year later (let alone on the next day) is being naive.

 

I laugh when I think that in 40 years from now, there will be some 'expert' telling people that the only widget that is correct for a VF Commodore is the blue one with white dots. 

 

Don't get me started on inspection paint / chalk marks.

 

In the end, what matters is whether you, the owner, gets pleasure from your car. Not what some self appointed judge (no matter how well researched or knowledgeable he is) thinks of it.

 

s

Edited by StephenSLR, 22 July 2013 - 09:17 AM.

[REDA9X]

Thats fine Steven, if you had a batch of cars that had something slightly different to the next batch, like you say something a different color for instance. What we have here is a few cars built at different times that seem to be different to every other car in Australia by having some decal that was only made for a select few hatches at different times? Are we seriously going to say, hey we'll make up a few of these decals and throw them in gloveboxes of a couple of cars, hatches only. Apparently you could get a 10 grand tacho too, but only one car ever had one.

[StephenSLR]

Are we seriously going to say, hey we'll make up a few of these decals and throw them in gloveboxes of a couple of cars, hatches only. 

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, just looking to see if there's any chance it could happen and for what reason.  

 

You'd have to go into finer detail, for instance find out the build date of these cars and build date of the cars that don't have the stickers, try to match up any other coincidences between the two cars.

 

Perhaps these stickers also exist on non A9X Toranas and it was a batch of glove box lids that arrived that week from one particular supplier.

 

I used to work for a company the made plastic badges for cars, Holden Astra, etc.  I'm pretty sure we weren't the only company supplying Holden, Ford, etc. with plastic badges as contracts are won and lost for the work or even shared between companies.

 

It could very well be one company chose to put stickers on their glove box lids, the A9-X could also be entirely coincidental.

 

This is all speculation of course, not saying that it did happen.

 

s

[REDA9X]

No mate, I'm hearing what you're saying. That decal though looks awefully like the one on my BCM from my Commodore, 21 years later.

[StephenSLR]

There are several examples of differences among A9Xs, narrow flares v wide flares, 2 types of intake manifolds were used, Paterson,s hand cut guards v GMH production line cut guards, plastic spoilers v fibreglass spoilers, and so on. Guess what ? They are still A9Xs. StephenSLR, your quote from the Engineer is priceless.

 

I was watching Dream Car Garage and when they find survivor cars in factory condition they photograph all the details, chalk marks, etc. and keep a record so they can copy these details onto restorations.  They also go into detail with certain cars pointing out all these chalk marks, paint dabs on shock absorbers, springs, etc.

 

This is all well and good to get a factory correct look.  It's better referencing from one car than none at all but after reading the engineers comment above they could be actually doing more harm than good.  You could have a genuine  survivor get devalued because someone disputes the originality due to chalk marks or whatever they saw on Dream Car Garage.

 

s

Edited by StephenSLR, 22 July 2013 - 01:41 PM.