Jag V12

Ok, so my car is now in Hamburg, which seems a bit of a detour! But at least its on its way. I now have a letter of authorisation to bring it into the country so hopefully when it gets here on the 3rd of Feb the formalities should not be too frustrating!

I have to take a letter from the Bahrain Motor Federation to the Director of the traffic Department for stamping, I then give this stamped letter to customs to clear the car, I then take the car to the traffic department for inspection and registering as a track car... and it getsa number plate

All seems very straight forward, however I am sure that on the day bureaucracy will reign supreme and throw a freaking great spanner into the process!

 

I have absolutely no idea. It can stay RHD and will be registered, but not for road use. As you know they have different colour plate depending on the purpose, i.e. orange - commercial, blue - police, green - diplomatic etc.. I guess there is another colour for track cars.. we will see.
It will make it interesting when it comes back to the UK though. If I present DVLA with its UK Granada logbook and its Bahrain number plate, it might get registered in the UK.

Cheers Nick

 

Letter from Bahrain motor sports, I have no idea what it say, but it looks cool Nearly got all the paper work sorted!
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Hi Guys
The car has now been in the port for the last 2 days. It arrived here in Bahrain on the 4th Feb, now its just the job of doing all the paperwork I guess..
So far i have had to shelve out £100 to a handling agency to appoint an inspector, then the fun really begins.
I had to write an invoice today for the car, listing its value, so £81 for engine, £25 Audi transaxle, £220 for steel etc.. The total cost of all the parts comes to about £1000. So theoretically I will have to pay 5% of £1000 as import duty.
Then I have to pay for the size of the container, about £1.50 for each square metre, then more money to customs to inspect the car, then the traffic inspector to inspect the car, then ... you get the idea..
So hopefuly in 2 or 3 days time I will have it back at home. I guess the downside is I have to do this all again, when I ship it back!
then there is my name, Nick, apparently if you write it in Arabic it means something VERY VERY rude, so I wont do that again
Regards
Me

 

Ok Banana, I will leave it to you to say what my name means But I think its quite appropriate really as I manage porn on the internet for a living (amongst other things)

no, sadly although he has significantly reduced the cost of the body, the price for shipping it is insane! The best quote I got was £2000 and that was to get it to the UK from Canada. Also there is an issue with it, the front does not open. The way he has made it means that there would need to be a great deal of modifications to get to the battery, brakes etc.. If you cut the front loose there would be nothing to support the front screen.
He was also a bit vague with the size of it, The Jag V12 sits higher that then Merc, and he could not say how much clearance there would be at the rear clam shell. If the shell was made for an MR2 or Fiero it would never fit a V12.

Regards

Nick

 

OH HELP!
The car has just been valued at £25000!
I need to pay £1200 duty

They can keep the car at that price!

Not happy..

 

So my $40000 kitcar is still in its container I met with the manager of customs today who agreed that if i paid the 750 bd or roughly £1250 i could keep clear it through customs. However they would only allow me to keep the car here for a maximum of 6 months. Then i would get the duty back.

So through a friend of mine I have now written to the top man in customs, his best friends Dad. Apparently that could remove this hurdle. We will see.

Quite bizarly the manager in customs had a A2 picture of my car with him, he got it from the Internet, I can't deny it’s my car, as I am driving it into the container.
So Sir, if you are reading this, please be nice.. Shukran

regards

Me

 

So I got a call yesterday saying that customs have cleared my car. I still have to pay £1250 but I get that back when I take the car out of Bahrain. They have initially cleared it for 1 year but that can be extended to another year if I want..
So tomorrow we go and open the container, the traffic inspector and the man from the motor federation will inspect it and I will get a black number plate which will allow me to drive it on the race track (not that I am going to).
Next step is to get some guys round to sort the body out..

 

At long last my car has now finished its journey. Its now parked outside my villa In the end it was all a bit of an anti-climax, I parted with £1450, and was told to get to the docks by 11:00 to open the container. When I got there the car was already out. The customs guy gave it another going over then it was loaded onto a flatback and off we went. At 12:30 it was home.
It caused some amount of interest on the freeway with loads of drivers snapping it on their phones. My son even had a few of them sent to him..

Sods law it would be a Valentine's day today so I can't do anything but tomorrow
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At last my car is now parked outside my house, so yesterday I decided to fit a new battery and start the beast up. What I had forgotten was the evolution of the car, basically I added bits to it. So the old battery was fitted into the chassis, then I added power steering, modified the suspension mounts etc..
This meant that the old battery was seriously boxed in! getting it out was a nightmare. I had to remove the electric power steering unit just to get it through the chassis rails.
Getting the new one in was even worse, it is slightly taller than the old one, so even the brake fluid reservoir had to be moved. Anyway after 2 hours I got it in place, but I will have to move it as it is still not right yet.
As I am changing the screen I will lose a lot more of the bulkhead space, I am not sure how the lotus screen will fit, but I think it will be a difficult job fitting it. The current XJS screen is not very steep so I built the bulkhead with that in mind, the new Elise screen will move the bulkhead forward nearly a foot, that will mean the power steering pump, ABS unit, battery and brake fluid reservoir will end up in the foot well.. I also will have to move the wiper motor forward..
I feel a headache coming on..
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Hi Francis
Thanks!
No not really i am at work about 2 miles away from the pearl roundabout where they are gathering, but to be honest its all very well behaved and civilised. Almost a carnival atmosphere. I just hope it stays that way! My house is miles away so there are no worries there at all, and all compounds have a security guard so he will protect us

Cheers

 

No Mate, no aircon! I am hoping that I wont have to do too much, most of the work will be done else where.

I fitted the front screen yesterday as work was closed due to Manama being cut off with tanks, it took 7 hours and was a real pita to do. I got it all in, and looked great, then it cracked right down the middle

It was 23 degs and quite warm!

Cheers
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Last night I cut the drivers door down by 10 cm, thus lowering it significantly, totally transformed the look.
I was contacted by a journalist from the Gulf Weekly this week and they did an interview with me about the car. So next wednesday my car and i will be front page of the Gulf Weekly magazine
I am still finding it hard to get serious quotes for the body, but I will continue, in the mean time, I will do what i can.
Since I have got here, I have fitted the Lotus screen, refitted the bulkhead, fitted a battery cut off switch, and done quite a lot of body mods.... the neighbours love me, they now all have fibreglass dust all over their car
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