BaktotheFuture

Below post has been lifted from my personal blog to make that blog more readable and so people will know what the photo's are of

I dropped in on a wreckers on my way home, cause there are a few little placky bits in the Exa which have been annoying me and i want to replace them. "Got any n13 Exa's" I ask - "Sure, we've got 2 in fact - one black and one red" hmmm well colours all wrong for starters - but the interiors are identical in all, so i grabbed the parts that i was after. Then my eyes got the better of me and before i knew it i was helping the wreckers lackey carry the entire rear hatch off the black exa out of the yard. Its not that i need a replacement but i have been looking for a second hatch - preferably a gunmetal grey one, and this one was in better nick than the white one that i have on the Exa at the moment. In fact it looks good enough to go straight on - but if i wanted to do that then i should have taken the black targas as well and gone for the whole black and white panda look.

Anyway $300 worth of parts later and i had the fun job of trying to fit the back of an Exa into the back of an Exa. Me and the wreckers lackey managed to violate several laws of geometery and fold space enough to make it fit. I drove home with my knees up near my ears. So now i have my "Baktothefuture" project to get my teeth (and bank account) stuck into. (note: the technical term Nissan uses for the rear hatch of an Exa is a 'HatchBak' as opposed to the 'SportsBak' which makes it into a wagon)

Wednesday night i got to work on my rear hatch, Starting by cleaning all the wreckers yard dust off. I removed the tiny Exa spoiler and made up a cardboard and masking tape mockup of the iconic delorean rear vents - it looks good. Will be even better when i have a mockup of the fusion reactor to build around. I'm thinking of using the inner hub of an old alloy wheel, as i'm going for a BTTF 1 conversion without the MrFusion on top; we'll see how that looks before i try and start mounting any Soda-fountains on the rear of my car. If the wheel hub is too heavy then i might have to cut up Sytrene foam and make it like a proper model maker - but it won't be as durable. I've been studying the design from pictures (like ones on the gallery page, and from a 1:18 scale model i have) and i know which parts i need to source now. If anyone has access to some old steel braided hoses then please let me know otherwise i'm gonna have to organise another expedition to Pete's Bargian center - or maybe back to a local wrecker.

Mark