1977 343 - from the Netherlands to the UK

Hi Sion, great to have you here, welcome!!

looks like the 343 has landed on the right driveway :+

re.headlamps; you might need to swap the mirrors themselves as well. the lamp is positioned differently vs the housing... (15 degree rotation?)

345DL;220102 schreef : General Custom - that would be very kind of you - could you maybe send me a picture of the rear-view mirror?

Sure, I'll look after it tomorrow

Wouter;220128 schreef : re.headlamps; you might need to swap the mirrors themselves as well. the lamp is positioned differently vs the housing... (15 degree rotation?)

Argh, you're right! I will have to do it again, I don't know how I missed that before.

I thought I would update this thread. The car has passed its UK MOT at the end of August, and I successfully applied for it to be registered with the UK vehicle registration agency. It is now taxed, and on British number plates, historical to the date of first registration.

Here are a few pictures taken this weekend:







As you can see, I have also painted the wheels, which look a little too silver, but hopefully some road dirt will soon tone it down. The slightly later hubcaps have been borrowed from my '79 for photo purposes, as I'm waiting for the pins to fit the correct black ones.

I've also cleaned the engine bay a little, but decided not to clean off the protective 'gloop' that someone has slapped all over the body - I think it has done a good job. Here are some fun little details on the air filter:



I've also changed the spark plugs; all other ignition components looked brand new.

The car drives nicely and now starts and idles fairly easily. I'm sure it's running too rich, but when I retard the mixture the engine sounds unhappy. The old spark plugs were very black. The vacuum pipe to the clutch disengage servo has also been disconnected, but when I reconnect it makes the engine extremely unhappy at idle. I've left it disconnected for now, and it drives fine without it, but obviously it all needs sorting.


The indicator relay is extremely slow and quiet, you can barely hear it inside the car, I don't know if that is normal. It's interestingly stamped with DAF.


When relaxing the throttle from overdrive in order to slow down slightly, the engine revs go up quite considerably, making a lot of noise. I'm told that this is normal as 77s don't have a tachometric relay but a microswitch on the carb, but it is really very strange.

The speedo needle bounces around like mad.

I still have quite a lot to do, including sorting out some cosmetic rust, seeing if I can straighten the rear bumper, oil change, cure a water leak, deal with MOT advisories (handbrake, leaky diff, split driveshaft gaiter), align the headlamps properly, clean and check the carb and sort out the vacuum to the clutch disengage servo.

Hi, if you experience downshifting when you release the throttle too early, you may need to adjust the position of the bracket that holds the switch.

You need to rev the engine to a given RPM with the cvt in Neutral, and set the switch to toggle at that position. When driving, the rpm will be much lower than during setup, but of course that's exactly what you want.
I'm sure the exact procedure is decribed somewhere in the technical manuals, but I'm not 100% sure where

Oh and by the way; these decals are available as reproduction since a few years! google for Born Built Beauties and you will find them.