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This could be good news for restoring cars and bikes – but we must be quick!

5 March, 2025

The ‘Right to repair’ bill is going before parliament and we need to have our say
By Peter Barton

The broken starter motor

Our parliament is currently considering a member’s Bill, drawn by ballot, called the ‘Right to Repair’ Bill. 
It’s due to go a Select Committee for consideration, and we can make submissions ie say what we think of it, before 3 April this year. It’s important because it will make spare parts and information for doing repairs far more readily available and this should slow the rate at which appliances, toys and so on get sent to landfill.
Here is the NZ Parliament website summary (and look especially at the second bullet point):
“The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee is calling for public submissions on the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill.
The bill would amend the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. It seeks to require manufacturers to make repair parts and information available to consumers in order to extend the lifetime of products. The bill would replace the Act’s guarantee as to repair and spare parts, requiring manufacturers to:

  • reasonably ensure that facilities for repair of goods and supply of parts for the goods are reasonably available for a reasonable period after the goods are supplied
  • provide the consumer with, upon request, information, spare parts, software, and other tools used for diagnosing, maintaining, or repairing goods.

It would also:

  • provide consumers with a right of redress against manufacturers where goods fail to comply with the guarantee
  • enable consumers to request that a supplier repairs goods rather than replacing them
  • require suppliers to repair goods within a reasonable time if such a request is made by a consumer
  • repeal section 42 of the Act, which provides that repair facilities and parts do not have to be made available if the consumer is notified at the time the product is supplied.”
Undo the two long bolts, and the end of the motor can be removed
Further parts can be pulled out. The field magnet is very strong, and the armature has to be pulled out with some force. The commutator is visible, with a lot of carbon dust from the brushes which are visible to the right

I am currently rebuilding a seventy-plus year old AJS motorcycle  (see The Shed magazine issues 118 and 119), and I do not expect any help from long defunct manufacturers, but I do think that many other sheddies will be like me and also often try to repair modern household items before throwing them out or cannibalising for parts.  One issue I am currently working through now concerns the starter motor for a car which has given me great service otherwise.
I thought it had a bad battery to start with, but attempts to jump start showed the problem was the starter.  The dealer couldn’t help in a reasonable time frame (I needed the car urgently) and would have charged a ridiculous sum.
The local garage located a clone for me, at about $250, which I installed, all good.
Could I be a good citizen and give the starter back to the company, for reconditioning?  I didn’t want money.  No. I decided (curiosity) to dig into the motor (they are not complicated) to locate the problem; as I suspected, the brushes were totally worn.  At this moment, I am trying to locate replacement brushes and my chances of getting some which I can be confident will be the correct fit, and at a reasonable price are not looking good.
Overseas vendors (who I generally avoid) seem to have some, but the P&P makes the prices hilarious.
I had to repair a hot water kettle, the type that sits on a power base. A replacement base was unavailable.  I had to make a special screwdriver to open the base (I accept that electrical safety reasons can justify that), but then I found that some points had burned out, beyond being salvageable.  I could not get any replacement and had to make some. Over the years I have had similar issues with other appliances (switches on a rangehood, an oven controller, fridge thermostat, dishwasher control unit ….).
I urge you to make your views known on the bill.

The brush assembly is in the foreground. The brushes (four, silvery grey, pulled out of their holders) are worn down and badly pitted. Planetary gears in the background increase the torque to the starter gear, and act as locating bearings
A close up of the brush assembly. Brushes (out of their holders) are welded into the assembly plate

The Bill is a private member’s one, and no political party is under any obligation to support it.  Industry may oppose it or create pressure to water it down.
A couple of websites which are interesting:  search for ‘A J Park’ and also ‘Russell McVeagh’ and give the name of the Bill. The Parliamentary website gives directions on how to make a submission and provides a link so that the process is made easier.
There is very little time left before the Thursday, 3 April, which is the deadline for submissions.

Another view of the brush assembly. Not very easy to replace the brushes themselves individually as they are welded to the back plate of this whole unit

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”