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As per the title this next stage of building the exhaust silencer/muffler/back box/ take your pick has taken much more time and effort than I had always expected. I started by taking the blue imp apart. To Woolf valley garage I went.... ..where I removed (rusty mild steel) exhaust, bumper and rear valance.. Popped it onto rusty imp shell... Now I knew exactly how much room I have to play with. Whatever I was going to build had to work with several things. I wanted the box to be mounted higher than the existing one behind the Datsun engine as I was sick of scraping it on steep driveway exits. It had to be built completely of stainless steel, no exceptions. No more corrosion. It had to look tidy and fit within the bumper line, tailpipes excluded. The tailpipes were to be twin centre exit. I had a very specific look in mind and they have to be just right. It had to be quiet enough and yet still sound sporty. This last one is tricky and will most likely need modifications to get right hence the last design point... It has to be modular, easy enough to disassemble and repack with sound deadening (most likely glass fibre) Now I knew the size I could build it to I started by making some flanges. This so I can unbolt the flexible sections between the V clamps and the box. Made to suit the 44mm tube as per the tube off the V clamps. Lifted the big folder we'd made onto the bench top and folded up some 1.2mm stainless. Although heftier than I could have used I've gone with this thickness to helped avoid the tinny sound thin stainless boxes can make. I wanted perforated stainless tube but couldn't find any within NZ. Got some perforated sheet instead - again 1.2... Which I cut strips from and formed up into tubes as such... Welded... Now I had the start of a box and some tube. I could sit down and nut out a design. I have had some basic ideas for ages on how it might look inside but it was really good to sit down and see how it might work. Drew some ideas up.. Nutted out something I think would work well and be easy enough to change if need be. Time to commit. I had to cut some blue steel. First actual act of modification to the imp in my quest to plonk a flat six in it. Now I could double check box sizing and weld the flanges in place. Folded up the second box side.. Complete with captive nuts to suit a lid.. Tail pipe time. I almost went with twin 2" exits but they were just a tad too big. Settled on twin 45mm. Tacked them to yet another stainless pair of flanges to work with the modular design aspect. Happy with the look I then fully welded them on the inside. The flanges will be sealed with a soft copper gasket. Happy I had the look right I cut the centre top from the box, created a recessed bit and carefully welded in the second threaded flange. So now I have inlets and outlets where I want them and just have to connect the dots. Ideally a nice long a route to dampen sound while keeping it as smooth flowing as possible. Plus, as per original brief, it has to allow for easy disassembly and re-packing. There was quite a bit of head scratching with this bit of the build but eventually I sorted a design out. I cut various bit of sheet and put big holes in them with a nice brand new holesaw set. Made little boxes with more big holes... Shaped bits like a heart...(#putmyheartandsoulintoit.....) Welded the ends onto the main box, curved in bit to help with flow and also hide the external bobbin mounts from view a little. Now I had a collection of parts that would come together and form a london underground of tubeways for the exhaust gases to follow. I was pretty happy with the layout for its potential silencing effect. However I now wondered if it might just end up being a touch too quiet and restrictive. Luckily I had come up with an idea early on where I could add some valves. Quite a little bit of extra work involved but the more I'd thought about it the more I was convinced it could work well. With this in mind I had built the middle chamber width to allow for some valves and made sure they could be removed to fit said valves in place. I cut some 44mm holes in the middle chamber lids and made some to valves to suit... Whipped up a little press form to create brackets.. Valves mounted. Underside of lids have the heart halves which help direct flow from one tube back too the next, or up and out through the open valves.. Valve shafts stick out through back of box. Sealing will be by a combination of spring loaded fibre and silicone washers. Now for an exciting point in life that every shed 'Barry' looks forward to. Emptying out those boxes of little random fittings that have been stashed away 'just in case you might need them'... Such fun! I selected my (stainless!!!) treats and scribbled on some alloy. Made lots of alloy swarf.. Ended up with these levers. Pinch bolted to the shafts along with added grub screws. The short length of threaded rod will be changed for a long length of stainless rod, actuation method from within the car yet undecided. Possibly a 12volt door lock motor etc or maybe mechanically with a bicycle cable. Recessed the backs to allow for seals.. So yeah. Lots of parts! Compulsory photo of thing exploded into many bits... All together now with some arrows. Remember each side is just a mirror of the other side (there is a small cross over hole in the centre plate that separates the sides) Valve closed... Valve open... I think it'll be quite a difference in sound and look forward to hearing it. Valves can be seen in action in this very exciting video... So It's pretty much complete except for the mount points which I'll do once I've got some bobbins from engineering shop along with seals. The lid will be sealed by running a bead of silicone which I'll let set before clamping the lid down. Oh I weighed it too. I was worried it might end up quite hefty but it will be only about 6.4 kg once all the bolts are in/packed with fibreglass.. The box will be painted satin/matt black leaving the tailpipes shiny. Silencer mounted in place... View from above showing plenty of room for the valve linkages in place. I ended up cutting a tiny bit more of the valance away so there's room for a stainless heatshield. I then covered the valance with some masking tape to help prevent it getting too scratched while I put back in some internal strengthening and capping it all off. I'll also be adding mount areas for the bobbins. I'll remove the engine next and add in the big multi-pin connector to the engine loom. Then I'll be seriously very close to removing the Datsun engine and cutting out the under seat area just as I have on this rusty shell. Wow!!

I actually have a massive boner for early Jimny 2-strokes. An old guy that comes into work has one, I'm trying to get put into his will so I can get my mits on it. Anyways, I have done a bit more on this thing. Don't laugh at my lack of wood working skills, I fucking hate working with wood. So I made the front guards, bit of a weird shape to try and make out of wood, mostly because of my being a tard and all. A bit of fiberglass & resin, a hint of bog, and they should come out pretty good. Then I got started on the bonnet, which is probably the most complicated shape on the thing. Added some wooden ribs, and a couple of dowels as reference marks, then put real thin MDF under them to keep the foam in, then filled the gaps up with foam, then carved the foam with a hacksaw blade and Stanley knife, then chucked a couple of layers of fiberglass over it, to give me a firm base to work with. It actually came out really close to correct, so will need very minimal amounts of filler. Next was lights. My B-I-L used OG dolphin torch reflectors/lens' on his Jeep, that he cut down to the correct size. New dolphin torches have four round LED bulbs in them, so don't look anything like a head light. The only torch I could find that was roughly the correct size, and also sort of looked like a real headlight was some budget items from Bunnings. I pulled them to bits, linished & sanded the OD of the lens down as small as I could, but so that the reflector still fit into it. I then cut the holes in the body to suit these. The front grill will hold the lights in, and also down size them to roughly the right scale size. I also found a Toyota badge that used to be on my 86 (before I got a legit one) that's pretty damn close to the correct size for this, but not sure if I will use it or not. The back lights were way easier, I found some LED lights on Ali that were the right shape and scale for this thing. They are meant to be in corners of the bumper IRL, which seems silly, as they would get smashed real easy. I added in a bit of wood roughly the same shape as the real bumper, and set them into this, so they are a bit more protected. There will be a steel bumper under them mounted to the tow bar in the future, so it should be quite a challenge for the kids to smash them. That's pretty much where I'm up to. Regards, VG. xoxox

*girly screams of excitement * just got these through

I did a thing. First I went to visit @yoeddynz who kindly welded the crack up. I also got a preview of exciting Imp developments.... When I got home I had a look to see what that plug thread was. Interestingly it appeared to be an M22x1.5 parallel thread, which meant a tapered plug made very little sense. And it just so happened that I had an M22x1.5 tap and some threaded rod. So I messed around for a while to get this; I put some pretty mega threadlocker on the insert, so it shouldn't go anywhere. Now the fucked shaft. It was pretty obvious that the broken bit wasnt a new development, and that the box had basically been working ok like that, so I did the obvious thing and just put it back together with the broken bit back in place, retained by the gear and the retaining nut. It feels fine. I figure that worst case I lose 5th at some point, by which time I will have a new box to go in. I will lift an optimistic pint to that notion tonight....

Ive been making good progress on getting everything wired into the fusebox and controlled by ECU rather than hardwired. I bought 2x 500mm coby hotdog mufflers which are currently just sitting pushed over the ends of the pipes on each bank. Quieter than just open manifolds but should be better once welded. Have wired up ECT, wideband, fuel pressure sensor. The motor was still idling really high (like 4200rpm...) with fully closed throttles, even after setting everything to fully closed. I couldnt figure out why until I noticed that my 2x lower intake manifolds dont quite cover the edge of the circular holes which must be an idle air bypass. It was only by a smidge, so gooed the gap with some silicone and solved that problem. My current issue is that the cam angle triggers arent being picked up properly. This motor uses hall effect sensors on the cam angle sensors, and the voltage they output is too low for this ECU to register correctly. So pullup resistors are needed, which I have wired in. But stilk not working it seems. Some people have suggested wiring them to the 8v power supply rather than 5v supply, and this boosts the output voltage. But this stuffs up my loom a bit, as the 5v supply on that plug branches to a few other things as well as the triggers. So, another annoying problem, but not insurmountable. Just soaking up more time on little bits and pieces than expected. But thats always the way I guess!

I got it all back together and has all of its gears so I'm calling that a win. It also does not appear to be leaking any transmission fluid, another win. So then I looked to the wheel bearing situation, and smashed that out. There is a dedicated X1/9 forum, Xweb, which has a lot of excellent info and how to's. I found a great pictorial run through of the process and set to. I did need to make a special tool to remove a locking ring but that was no drama. Octagonal lock ring fuckery. Special tool made by a special tool. That and the engine going in meant Sunday was quite a big day, so I left the tie rod end for tonight. On the basis of this minor last task I booked the car in for its recheck and a wheel alignment. After work I went down to sort it, only to find that the rod end is the wrong one, and about 50mm too short, GAHhhh! It took two weeks for the last one to arrive, I am so disappointed. Anyway. Previously to this weekends shenanigans I had done some messing with the jetting, and drilled the mains out to 130 from 125. So I took it out for a short run so I could bleed the cooling system properly and check the AFRs which were much improved, as was the idle to main circuit transition, so that at least was good.

This is kind of random project thread worthy. So I’ve owned this old single axle car transporter for over 20 years (apart from a short period where a mate owned it, then I bought it back). In about 2005 I gave it a rough wire brush and painted it tractor red and put a new timber deck on it (necessitated by a mates Fiat 131R almost falling through the rotten old deck). I’ve been meaning to give it a refurb for ages, but it kept passing wofs and just looked like shit. It progressively got worse until @azzurro borrowed it and it had some structural failures where the spare wheel mounted (coincidentally while also towing a Fiat on it). He kindly patched it up before returning it but it needed attention. After moving back up north I decided it was time to tackle it and strip it right down and give it a birthday. Fix a few bad welds. Paint, new electrics, new deck etc. Anyway. After a few solid weekends of work it’s just like a new one. P.S. if you want to buy it, hit me up. It’s only small (suit Viva, 1200, Escort, Starlet etc).

However, during the pre purchase inspection I picked up a few things in the engine bay and suspension wise that placed some doubt on how far the mechanical restoration had been taken. Nothing major, but just little signs that some items still needed attention. On getting it home, the first thing that I did was to fit an electronic unit to the existing distributor in the hopes of resolving an intermittent misfire. We then clocked up about 1000km during which time I was almost constantly fiddling about to try and get the timing right. In desperation I eventually pulled the dizzy out for a closer look and discovered excessive play in the shaft, so I ended up ordering a brand-new distributor from MiniSport in Adelaide. The new distributor came with its own set of electronic internals already fitted so the old unit went into the parts bin. This solved the misfire, and we ended up enjoying another 500km of trouble-free motoring until one day the Moke just suddenly cut out and left us stranded at the side of the road. Luckily, we were close to home, so I walked the rest of the way and returned with our Holden ute and a tow rope. After a bit of troubleshooting, I pinpointed a fuelling issue which turned out to be a faulty float valve. Got a new one sent up from MiniSport and we were back in business. Shortly after that the actual carby started playing up - again excessive wear - and we ended up ordering a reconditioned SU from MiniSport. Since then its literally been an annual oil and filter change and the fitting of a new battery and we are now up to around 2400km of travel that we have undertaken since purchase. And that pretty much brings us up to this point in time. In my next update I'll cover some additional maintenance work that has happened over the past few weeks. And no one likes a pictureless update so here is a group photo of our small fleet:

If anybody is going to call @yoeddynz a cunt then I'd appreciate it if you put the word rad in front of it. His embarrassingly lame MS paint drawing dumbing it down to my level worked and I now have a proper shift pattern. Happy days.

One outer headlight (dip/high beam) gave up the ghost during Beach Hop. I installed these when the car came to NZ in 2003, so last 21 years, fair I suppose. The working one looked a bit sad too so I though I'd replace both. The centre high beam set are the ones it had in Indiana and seem fine. Took them out and cleaned up the buckets (I ended up doing all 4) followed by a squirt of Black Zinc. I did the same for the small aluminium trim pieces that go in where the masking tape is, and the blacked-out areas behind the grille that were a bit scruffy. It turns out that modern Hella lights (stocked at BNT) are all semi-sealed and don't have the nice domed shape so I got a couple of 5 3/4 sealed peams from PartsSelect on TM Let there be light! Also picked up some used PP from Trademe.

Quick update. Been busy over the past month so this has taken a bit of a backseat. Got some stickers made for steering wheel/dash. Makes it feel a lot more finished. I’m not 100% happy with them yet but they’ll do for now also tidied up the curly cord mounting. Looks legit now. So the set of pulleys I brought back from the states didn’t fit my alternator (which turns out is from a 1zz fielder). So jeffy came to the rescue and made a bush to suit. For future reference..1445mm belt works with no PS, and underdrive alternator and water pump pulleys. This took quite some time to figure out found a wee molded hose to finish up the heater piping. Still need to 3d print an airflow thing for the dash heater ducts. Cooling system is now sealed and ready for a pressure test (pending a few extra hose clamps!) Also replaced gearbox axle seals and filled with oil for first time in 10yrs. Hope not too much damage has been done from sitting around. Bought and sold another Levin to pay for Link Storm g4x and engine wiring loom. Loom worked out great looks very hidden away. Some small mods to make but all simple enough. next up; 1. fix stripped thread in engine mount 2. replace sump with baffled version 3. remount expansion chamber 4. make headers 5. first start??

Got some paint on them and baked it with the heater for a while Good thing I have some photos from when I took it apart 7 years ago to refer back to for what goes where. Got one side done, looks better with the pipes painted I must say. Had to stop and tidy up the work area as we have a couple of house viewings tomorrow. I don't usually tidy up until either the stage of the project is finished, or I can't find what I need.

Pulled the leaking valve cover, misplaced gasket would be why it was so bad Nothing to see here. Ever get the feeling that your new parts (on the left) aren't as good as the old parts? I think I'll hang on to the old cap, even though it's a bit damaged. Might see if there is a more $$$ option on Rockauto next time I order.

We have owned this little Moke for about 4 years now and since I'm starting to do a bit of work on it, I figured I'd start a thread as it might be of interest to others. So, first up a bit of background. When we lived in NZ, Mrs Flash owned one of those newish 1275cc SPI Rover Minis. It was a Jap import that someone had done quite a bit of back dating on. A lot of the changes were fairly subtle, but the most notable things were the fitting of 10-inch Watanabe rims to replace the original 13-inch units and the removal of the modern dashboard that was replaced with a classic centre mount speedo. The car was a little rocket and super fun to drive. Sadly, we made the decision to sell it before heading off on our Australian adventure and last I heard it was somewhere in Christchurch. So fast forward a few years and we are now permanently OZ based and looking to get back into some classics. We often thought back to the fun that we had with that little Mini and decided that owning another little Leyland would be good. The climate over in tropical Queensland lends itself to something a little more open and so we set our sights on a Moke. After checking out a few we ended up pulling the trigger on a fully restored 1100cc powered 1974 Californian look alike that was going for reasonable money. When I say reasonable I really mean that after doing my own sums I concluded that I couldn't have restored a clunker to this level for the money that was being asked. So, after swapping a few calls with the current owner together with the studying of some detailed photos a "deal in principle" was struck pending final inspection. We grabbed a hire trailer and headed south down to Noosa hoping to be returning with a loaded trailer. Gave it the once over, took it for a quick drive, some cash changed hands, and this happened: In my next update I'll talk about the maintenance undertaken to date and then a little bit about the current work being done. Thanks for looking.

Not too long ago around Xmas I had heard that there was developing interest in my Auntys beetle and so in oldschool fashion I acquired another OS machine to add to my collection. To fill in some blanks we need to go back to 2007, I had a brush with the law lost my license and moved to Surfers for a few months for a cool off period.During my time there I got the use of this thing to commute around I had 2 jobs over there one a part time job at a tyre shop and another washing dishes up in Sanctuary cove at a high end seafood restaurant. The Lil bug was great and I only had issues with fuel delivery when it got too hot. I'd push it over to the side of the road between surfers and Miami and wait a while for it to chill... once I got fed up with part time work I managed to get a fleet job with Baurepairs down in west burleigh. First day on the job being kiwi got the general hazing from the lads and they got it back in equal amounts, they all enjoyed commies and falcons as long as it had a v8, so here we are with the Lil herby puttin about with a raspy exhaust note. Couple weeks later one of the lads had car issues and broke down and was resorting to the bus. I offered a lift as it was on the way home. Needless to say he was reluctant. Oh well suit yourself. Next day I offered again and he decided ok sure. We cruised along and headed up the coast towards his stop. At one of the lights I was waiting to turn right and this guy was beside himself, next to us was a beach blonde in her own bug waving at us. I wasn't paying attention and so I finally had a look and she was alright to look at. I played it down, so the next day he gets to work telling the crew about the ordeal and the bug is now dubbed a pussy wagon. The crew then insisted we do a Roady to Byron Bay via nimbin. It was a great time had by all and a few yarns about nimbin could be told. Better to not sharn on about that too much... back to the main yarn. A few years later... and a few more to be exact Since then it was exported to NZ about many years ago where it got parked in an old hanger and left to gather dust. I developed a curiosity about will it go and maybe putting it back into operation. At xmas last year I headed down to drag it out and see if it was still in one piece. Someone had wired fuel pump on backwards as I heard it bubbling into the tank so seemed like someone had borrowed the fp and then put it back. Got a fresh battery and a while later it barked into life. Dry rotted and coozed tyres were next on the list. 60 bux later we had a set of roadworthy treads the fronts were bad but they held out. 5 Hours later rolled into the 09 and parked her up. The was a mean mission. It's been parked up for the last month just waiting for garage space to accommodate this so we can begin stripping and assessing in conjunction with the viva

Believe it or not i worked on this today. I went over to mums to sell a valiant diff to a rooster off marketplace. While i was there i set about refitting the copper radiator. With a view to giving the block a good flush before fitting the purdy new rad. I got that in. But decided there wasnt enough day left for the actual flush. (We spent ages digging through my pile of diffs, turns out i have three spare VG diffs) I went to start the old bitch up, cos i havent heard it run for ages. But the fuel pump didnt seem to be able to fill the fuel filter. So i gave up on that too. Ill take an electric pump over some time, and finish what i started today. Pic of the pile of diffs for thread.

Dipstick. I didn't have one with the engine parts and I had to move the location. The 7M Dipstick location is right where the 4M engine mount goes so I had to drill another hole in the block. No drama the boss is cast into the block, just had to drill it. Then I set about modifying a jz Dipstick tube to work. I drilled the hole to big for the jz tube so I had to weld it to build it up then machine it to size. I fluked the size and got it perfect, its a good tap in fit. I cut the stick to length and used the 4m in the crown to get the oil level marks right. Then I put the sump on, probably not for the final time but it's on.

It’s been awhile since I built a hot rod. my last one was a ford pop that was chopped 3 inches and channelled 4 inches running a 302 Cleveland. i ran it in black primer for awhile and sold it to a guy in Aussie who painted and upholstered it.

I ended up pulling the whole loom out to check things on the bench. It took a few hours to figure things out, I had made a few mistakes. Since I have pullup resistors on all of the cam angle sensors, the 5v supply on that loom plug splits 4 ways and joins to the signals. However I'd swapped the 5v supply wire with one of the 5v/DI signals on one half of the plug. So looking with a multimeter it still showed the correct amount of resistance on that DI, but, it was the wrong way around. Then I also found a broken wire at the plug end of one of the other DIs. Then I also found one of the pins in one of the plug halves was pushing back out when you put the plug together. So replaced the plug. I've got all of them responding on/off when holding steel against the sensors. While I was there I also changed the supply to 8v instead, hopefully less chance of trigger errors. Hopefully it'll all work okay now.

Well this ran with a misfire upon entering boost since i got it, now its really started being undriveable, i checked tps, coils, all the things that could cause that miss and came up with nothing definitive, it always smoked a bit but i thought this was as a result of being rotary and then i noticed the oil looked cloudy on the dipstick, changed it for fresh oil and filter.. The oil looked like this after 10min run time and smells kinda like coolant, time to rebuild, im guessing a water seal let go or something... I should be sad about this or something but im actually looking forward how a rotary engine looks inside, especially a 'worked' one.

The bits I need for that Wof have arrived, the wheel bearing might be a mission, but we will see. In the meantime I have been hoovering/relearning what I need to know about DCNF carbs and have had some useful and enlightening conversations, some of which can be found in my DCNF thread.. I also decided to replace the expensive oil in the tranny with fresh expensive oil. Mostly cos I drained it all out to put a bit of sealant on the drain plug as it was dripping a tad. When it came out it was kindof murky which I guess is the new oil washing out and interacting with the old. So I did that and it resulted in a pretty significant drip from the drain plug regardless of my sealing efforts. I did a wee bit of investigation, which has had this slightly annoying result; I have a spare box which I stripped enough to get that housing off, pretty much for practice but to see if I could just use that. But unfortunately they are different. This might mean enlisting @yoeddynz in some dirty welding duties if I cant find someone slightly closer. If it welds ok I will tap it out with a parallel thread rather than taper and machine a flat face so it can use a washer for sealing.

I lifted the rear subframe off. Feels like one of those photos showing off the big fish I caught... With the car like this it made it really easy to measure between the front and rear lower ball joints to find the wheelbase on the drivers side was longer than the passenger side. I suspect it's because I built the alignment jig for the two front mounts on the yellow car, not this one. I had oversized the holes that the studs come through to allow some wiggle room, but I need to take a further 4mm off both sides. Once I can get it on a wheel alignment machine to make sure it's straight the studs will get welded in solid. I've started cleaning off the last of the underseal. I've got to also remove the remains of the original spring seat reinforcement.

1000km post run in oil change time. Then I took it in for some surgery on the exhaust. I got sick of playing around with it so like a coward I farmed it out to a zorst wizard. There was much choppy chop and a quieter centre muffler was grafted in. Still sounds good but is now bearable to drive. Wizard made multiple angle adjustments to clear the diff and brake bias valve and torque arm. One problem to report: Whiff of antifreeze when the heater is on. GROOOAAAN!! Looks like dash out in my future.

Today went pretty smoothly, managed to solo tow the old girl off the lawn and onto the driveway and waterblast 2 years worth of lichen off. Found lots of cancer had spread but not as bad as it could be. 15 yard test is still a pass. Also found lost of lifting bog from its life before me, will make for interesting times ahead. Had to use the quad with a bare tire on the front to push it into shed as the brakes were binding on, got wife to steer it and it went slowly rolling into the jack, axlestands and compressor. She hops out 'i tried using the brake but it didn't work, its not my fault!!' Calmed her down with 'if i told you it had no brakes would you have hopped in it?' Prolly no dinner for me tonight lol.

Triggers for the ecu. I couldn't use the stock 5M dizzy because it sits exactly where number 1 throttle needs to be. So after a bit of indecision and fucking around I decided to run a crank angle sensor off the front pulley. I machined the inside of the pulley to an accurate size then I made a boss to press into the pulley. The pulley is cast so I can't weld anything to it. She's a fucking tight fit in the pulley so it ain't going no place. By pressing this hub into the inside is not affected by the rubber isolation layer which can cause erratic triggering. I'll laser cut a trigger wheel and use it to accurately drill 4 mounting holes. Then all I have to do is mount the sensor off the front of the motor somehow.

One the plus side I labelled the plugs On the minus side they have mostly faded. Dug out the intake piping, surprisingly well made I thought considering that I did it, but needed a good clean up Inside and out. I don't think I had roloc discs back in the day, they are good for this sort of job. Squirted some good old black zinc inside, will do the outside tomorrow then look at my silicone tube and clamp supplies. IIRC the radiator needs to go in first.

Coffeepot only just fits on the gas cooktop and disasters have struck, a few solutions have been tried but didn't really work, a stainless sheetmetal idea has been floating around in my head that holds the pot up and directs the heat to the pot but with only basic cutting tools I never managed to get far, having just managed to get my cnc router running on sheetmetal, this was a golden time to put a brew on. As @ajg193 asked about my process, I've taken a few photos along the way. First up draw a sheetmetal part and create toolpaths in Fusion, I also make the stock as a seperate body so the machine can place workholding holes in useful places: The idea of this design is the smaller tabs project off the cooktop grill to support the pot while the skirt and larger tabs direct the heat. First machine op, g clamp 0.55mm sheet to the bed and drill 4mm holes: Second op draw fold lines: And finally cut out: This was bit of a disaster, personally I hate working with stainless but I also want coffee, now! Knowing plenty of coolant was compulsory, I got ready with a can of crc, of course this turned into a flame thrower after 50mm of cutting and by the time I hit stop the cutter was toast, I gave it more cutting depth to shift to undamaged flutes and went back to the messy option of heaps of cutting oil, the mdf spoil board was getting pretty smokey by the end of the cut but we got through. Clean off the burnt mdf, add some folds and done: Test run confirms the idea works, but I think improvements are possible. Turns out the tabs didn't quite like the weight once the heat came on and I think a change to the wider tabs could maximise the surface area for heat transfer....... Well, at least the pot won't fall over so easy now

So because I have a big job to finish at the moment and am under immense time pressure, I got distracted and had a fiddle in the shed after staying up late last night doing research. This is my 2TG pile. First I had a fiddle with throttle bodies and TPSs. On the left is a TVIS Redtop 4age throttle body and on the right is the 2tg one. The 4age has a potentiometer TPS vs the switch type of the 2TG The 4age inlet manifold is on the left, and the 2TG one is on the right. The bolts are the same width apart, but the 2TG ones have a smaller spacing vertically. There is also a 10mm difference in size between the two TB holes. The nerd that can't weld alloy in me has been working out how to design a bolt-on adapter plate to bolt the 4age throttle to the 2TG inlet, but the logical option is probably to make a weld-on plate that the 4age throttle bolts to. We looked into switching the TPS over, but swapping the whole throttle seems to be less fiddly and results in a bigger throttle, and bigger is better right? The next little mission was trigger wheels. We searched through the shed for old Toyota distributors and found an AE101 5AFE one and a Blacktop 4AGE one. I pulled them both apart and decided the 4AGE one on the right was a simpler setup, but will take them both to Max and see what he thinks. I've read about how ideally you want to run your trigger on the crank due to distributor slop etc, but this seems a whole lot less ugly. Hopefully, we can drop these guts into the 2TG distributor and get a cam and crank signal off it. It will be easy right? (This is what people say when they come to me for website things that don't turn out to be easy). I've found this discussion https://speeduino.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=495&start=100 that relates to a 3SGTE that seems to use the same style of trigger wheels.

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed a steadily increasing stiffer steering and during last night's burger cruise it felt particularly bad. Figured I'd do a bit of fault finding today. First step was to remove the intermediate steering shaft to determine whether the issue was on the steering rack end or the column end. With the intermediate shaft out I fired up the engine and waited the few seconds for the Astra pump to come online. What a relief it was to find out that the issue is not on the rack/pump side of things. So turned my attention to the angled steering gearbox and the steering shaft itself. Pulled out the angled gearbox for a closer look. Popped the cover off to check the lubricant level. Turns out it uses grease - or at least mine is filled with grease. I'm hoping that is factory and not some previous owner's bodge job. Anyone know ? Anyway, I neglected to take a photo, but it looked like some of the grease had shifted leaving the top half of one of the gears dry. The grease looked to be clean and still in good condition, so I just topped up the level and fitted the cover plate back on. At the same time I spent a bit of time fine tuning the little adjusting thingy till I got the mechanism turning smoothly: While I had the angle box out, I pulled off the steering wheel and dropped the shaft so that I could grease the upper and lower bushes. They were pretty dry. With the steering wheel off I figured I'd tackle another annoying little issue. For a good while the indicator self cancelling feature on left turns hasn't been working. Works perfect on right turns though. Really aggravating as I keep forgetting to manually cancel the flashers and also pretty unsafe. Anyhoo, I took a closer look at the mechanism and it was visibly okay. There are two little "ears" on a spring steel collar that press fits over the inner steering shaft. Looks like so: Each little "ear" engages with a double ended lever attached to the indicator mechanism. One of the "ears" isn't visible due to the angle of my photo, but I've marked up where it is supposed to be. With a visible inspection not showing anything untoward I enlisted Mr's Flash's help to watch what was going on while I turned the steering shaft from below. Turns out the little "ear" on left turns was not triggering the self-cancelling lever. Pulled it out the collar for a closer look. Both "ears" are showing signs of wear with noticeably more wear on the left one. Thought I'd try and give it a tweak, so clamped the offending "ear" in my vice: Chucked an appropriately sized punch down the centre of the collar to maintain its shape: Then gave it a little bit of loving with a hammer. Popped it back on the column for another test and ... success! With the self-cancelling issue sorted I reassembled the steering and dropped the van back on its front wheels for a quick steering test. Nice and light once again. Loaded up my ratchet with the appropriately sized socket and headed out for a road test and also to re-centralise the steering wheel. It took a few goes until I got the steering wheel perfect, but I'm happy that things are now back to normal. Thanks for looking.

Panel Barry is a stickler for door gaps. Suppose he wouldn't be panel Barry if he wasn't a gap commander. These dogleg panels (his words) which cover the front portion of the rear arch were not lined up well with the doors and it was throwing off some other things. These little panels have always been messed up since I got it, probably since 30 years ago to be fair. So out comes the cutting and welding tools again. The doors also weren't perfect so fixed that up on both sides. I'm happy to hear, and his words "This is the end of the real time consuming type of repairs". We'll see about that I suppose as he works the front.

Following Kelvin's success with his lowering rails, and girlface's "well it's a quality of life improvement, not a performance upgrade" concession, I nabbed some as well. I wanted to get some adequate before and after's but I was on my own so... we'll start with me failing to fit an upright Suica card above my head. I started with the passenger side - also using Kelvin's patented "do it in the back seat" approach (hmm phrasing) - and I had a couple of brain scratchies around the belt buckle that took things later than I wanted but figured it out eventually. A tricky driver's side before and passenger's side after the next day. Riveting On to the driver's side... and well, there's not much more than to show some before and after's. There's more than a whole Suica card's height now! I kept the driver's seat in the same angle while upgrading it to try and keep these two eye-level shots as close as I could. I can actually adjust the wheel down! You can see my hair! As Kelvin said, "it really does feel like you're IN the car now", as opposed to riding on it. It no longer feels like I have a vertical blinder on. I can more easily see under the front-view mirror. My hair doesn't scrape the head liner, regardless of seat incline. I don't have to recline the back slightly past where I'd prefer it to be anymore. And at the other end my butt's position in the car feels more planted and nestled. Overall 10/10 upgrade. I can't wait to drive it again.

A bit more progress with a fillet piece welded in and the sheet metal replaced covering over the fish plates etc. I have also replaced the section I had to remove in the rear seat for the top trailing arm on the drivers side.

So the above teaser was me dropping the ute off to a panelbeater near palmy. this is his update pics. i just didn’t have the time or mental energy to grind my way through the stitching phase, or attacking the mint bonnet with a grinder. he has made up new flanges for the front of the guards , he won’t use the rx3 guards on this set up, all new steel. have also tasked him to fill over the fuel filler hole as I can’t utilise that once I drop tank it out the back anyway. So now I’m forced to drop tank it now instead of when I bag it. it means that I can carry on with the tubs when it’s back. I will end up using push button bonnet pins, hopefully they’re ok as a bonnet pin for road use. I’ll also fit a check strap as a secondary safety measure happy days

Continuing on with my how much can this thing carry series. Realistic flag added post production to avoid legal issues down the track.

When we purchased the little Moke it had only travelled 1614km since being restored born witness by the odometer reading on the brand new Speedo. The story goes that a father restored the Moke for his disabled son. The son was wheelchair bound and old mate had even fitted 12 volt rams to the rear hinged fibreglass roof so that he could get the youngster in and out of the passenger seat. Problem was that the youngster didn't have much upper body control either and nearly fell out of the Moke on the first outing. The family got such a scare that the Moke got parked up for a while before they sold it on to a young fella from Noosa. I think that the new owner fell in love with the idea of owning an old classic without realising that it isn't like driving a modern hatchback with all the mod cons. He was also not mechanically minded so he ended up farming the maintenance out to a local mechanic and after receiving a few repair bills the novelty of owning the Moke wore off. And its at this point that Mrs Flash and I stepped in to take over the reins. So, both inwardly and outwardly the Moke looked absolutely immaculate as borne out by the below photos that I saved from the original advertisment:

I took it for a lap of the cul-de-sac, made a couple of wee adjustments. Tuned the idle a wee bit, and then rode it to work. Had to hide out at a mates workshop to escape a rain shower, but i made it. It comfortably does 55km/h on the flat. Its otherwise quite slow haha. The tires are a little larger than the originals and the rear is rubbing on the screws for the little mud flap, so I'll whip that off for the trip home and get some countersunk ones.

While I've got the underside of the car right in my face, I've been using the hammer to close up any gappy seams and straightening edges. Because I can. The seam at the front end of the sills were a bit squashed from jacking so I knocked and pried them back into shape. While doing that I noticed some pinholes in the flat panel that joins the bottom of the front wing to the seam on the bottom of the sill. I decided to remove that panel. It's basically an 'L' shape so real easy to make a new one.(I've made the new ones using slightly thicker metal) The drivers side sill end was quite pitted under that flat panel because debris gets stuck between them. I cut that out too, it's also flat. It was in AMAZINGLY rust free condition in there. It seemed to be evenly coated with a dark grey primer, this shell must have been dunked in a vat of this primer at the factory for it to be in there. Just for good measure I flooded it with Zinc primer. I did the passenger side too, just to check it was in even better condition. A little pitting, but no pinholes. I tried to take a photo inside but my phone didn't want to use the flash.

Dad's cousin married Max, who has always been our family mechanic and panel beater. He's somewhere north of 70 and a full-time menace and tinkerer. This is his Ke70 wagon that he bought off @Dudley (also a fill-time menace) and proceeded to rebuild half the body of before painting it and tidying allll the things. He got bored one day and had a 2TGEU sitting around that he'd got in exchange for putting a 4age into someone's wagon years ago. The loom had been chopped in half, and being older than fuel injection he thought it was a great idea to replace the injection with twin carbs. Yesterday my brother called me and said "Max has been talking to Pete's friend who built himself an ECU for his car and tuned it himself. He reckons you should be able to do it." Approximately 24 hours later I have all of the EFI gear from the Corolla sitting on the floor in the shed and have read half of the information on the internet about the Speeduino. I've been given a generous (for a Speediuno build) budget to work with and told to get ordering. I've printed out the 2T wiring diagram which is comical after dealing with 1UZ diagrams and am starting to make a plan. So far the shopping list (other than the ECU) includes: IAT sensor (probably a Toyota one) Map sensor (also probably a Toyota one) (so I don't have to run a vacuum line all the way to the ECU and can just run it off the AFM wiring) TPS (maybe 4age as we have a couple of motors sitting around) A wideband, probably Spartan 3 I'm leaning toward either one of these https://www.everythingfuelinjection.com/store/The-Micro-p161480124 https://kiwiefi.nz/index.php?route=product/product&path=20&product_id=54 Feel free to tell me in the discussion how far over my head I am. I've wired a 4age, a B16a, an SR20VE, a 1uz and a 3uz and used to do car alarms, so pretending I know what I'm doing.

So it looks like this is a thing. I have entered and paid. I'll be co-piloting the Sigma down from Tga with @MaxPower. The mighty Sigma is being handed over to its proud new owner at Hamner so We are looking for a ride from Hamner to Chch Airport on Monday morning. I think our flight leaves around mid day. @HighLUX will probably be joining us too. Can anyone help with airport transfers?

registered and will pay shortly. "all cars must have a wof and reg" feels a bit fascist

So i pulled the thing apart, good news all the bearings look fine and the rotors as well as all apex seals etc. and alloy housings look to be in good condition...

Not much to see but have flipped rocker covers over so i can access the oil cap wouldn't want to top up hot but you get idea. New gaskets too billet cap so it doesn't melt.... Have started on wiring not ultra complex but coil packs need to move.

I've got extra outputs on the megasquirt. I could set up a stepper motor to open them at set values. But realistically I'd probably just be opening them at certain times for lol effect. Like outside an oldfolks home at 3am or next to a community hall where there's a workshop for those who suffer from ptsd. Joke. I would not do that.

/spam

I've registered, for both the event and the sigma.

Threw some brass and beeswax on the drawbar. Put some big brass screws through the 2 sections, I knew I was saving those for something. I think it looks suitably vintage

But then I got it out of the shed!

Well after the last novel length wall of text I'll try to keep this update shorter otherwise I'll never finish the thing. Lots of little jobs starting to pop up on my 'to do' list. Driveshafts. Connecting the scooby shafts to the imp axles. A job I wasn't sure which direction I'd take as there's so many different ideas out there on the nerdnet showing 'the best' way to join shafts. First thing I did was to double check the suspension travel allowed by the stock shock absorbers and then use those datum points to work out if there was any growth in the length of shaft required as the wheel moves through it path up and down. There was minimal amount, like maybe 5mm at the very most. I guessed as much because the stock Imp driveshaft doughnuts dont allow for much sideways travel. I then cut one of my 22mm scooby shafts down in length so I could work out the lengths required with the CV joint in place. This move I soon regretted. I was allowing for plenty of plunge into the CV joints to make sure the whole joint could be removed from the box stub axle with the box pushed sideways when removing the transmission. I was happy with the length and then decided to go visit a local hotrod builder friend for some advise. He's well known about for his many many full scratch builds and has done heaps of driveshafts in his time (a fellow machinist by trade too) I showed him the two ways I was considering doing the join. He showed me a better way. Shrink some bored out yokes cut off from some spare axles. Plenty of meat, will never let go and even if they somehow did loosen and spin they cant come out because there's not enough travel in the CV joint to allow them to. No welding needed. He's run axles done in the same way with some serious big block power and they never let go. Just has to be accurate and luckily its the sort of machining/fitting job I like. But i needed to start with almost full length scooby shafts to do it, of which I was now down on.. Roll eyes and back to the wreckers to see this beauty get pulled from the hedge... Hannah helped me remove the shafts. It was her birthday too so wow, what a treat. She got visit the wreckers and get oily. Got home and the shafts didn't fit my CVs. Bigger diameter end. Really weird because I checked online... ha. It lies. Turns out some late 4wd Leones had even bigger axle ends than the imprezzas. Also odd is that one shaft is 22mm and the other side 24mm, although both the same length. Back to the wreckers. This time I got larger 25mm shafts with the smaller ends from front wheel drive Imprezzas. I grabbed two pairs. Same again, 22mm on one side and 25 on the other. Now I had two of each. Got home and spent some time cleaning them up, outside because petrol fumes. Cleaned up the spare pair of axles in the lathe to make sure I had an accurate clamping spot for the later boring. Good quality steel! I turned them down to less than the 23mm bore size and chopped the yokes off. Made lots of swarf Bored out to bang on 23mm with nice radius. Double checked and triple checked I had my lengths required correct. Chopped the two 25mm scooby shafts down to length and turned a step down on one end of each, a radiused step to stop any stress risers. I went for .0015"~.002" interference. Go online and see the debates between all the barries about what a good shrink fit should be There's many variables as well. I consulted my old faithful machinery's handbook. I wanted it tight, but not stressed. Luckily the axle is of good steel. I also made a sample first, using one of the cut off bits of scooby shaft and some 4340 I machined to the same outer dimensions as the yoke. This way I was able to test how hot I needed to get it to expand enough to drop in place. I'll take this to a local engineers who have a press with a pressure gauge and see how much force it takes to wreck this thing Here's about a one hundredth of a millimetre (iirc) getting removed.. Then things got hot.. photos taken after it was done because I had to move bloody quick! Hannah would grab the torch and I would drop the yoke in place. It was a tense bit of time. If the yokes teetered and grab they'd pull the heat so quick and shrink in place before getting to the shoulder. No removing them without damage and I only had the one pair of spare axles. It went well. I was happy and relieved. The light rust flashing off on one is simply due to that one having been left nearer the front of the workshop to cool down and it was a chilly damp start to the morning. They wired brushed up neat as, got painted with black epoxy and when that was set they had new universal joints fitted. I cant try them on the car until I remove the existing axles from the hubs but it should be fine. Next up was to sort the fuel tank out to suit fuel injection. I brought the blue imp in and checked a few ideas out on what I could do. I don't really have room for a surge tank and I never liked the noise on my Viva from the external fuel pump anyway. Nor did I like the way the fuel in the surge tank heats up. Enter the humble Nissan Micra k11 intank fuel pump and surge container... It actually looked like it was just going to fit into the pressed depression at the bottom of the imp fuel tank.. With enough room to run the imp fuel float sender next to it. Cut a hole.. It fits. I'll cut the bracket off the side at bottom of pic and it'll move sideways a bit more.. Made some metal brackets Welded them in and now I have a cradle that takes two cable ties across the top to secure. I needed a flange.... Made this. Its designed to recess the lid about 10mm below the tank top. I want to keep the tank top as flat as possible. It'll have the usual layer of foam over top but I don't want things sticking up proud when the 'frunk' is being used (cant be tearing those bags of concrete now eh....) Many holes drilled and tapped.. Carefully welded in place. Was a tricky job. Thin steel on the tank that had some sort of (probably poisonous) coating. But happy with result. I made another hole... That takes the sender. Drilled and tapped more holes to suit. Now I needed to get fuel from the outside in and from the inside out. I machined up these in stainless.. Thought of a neat way to hold the little bits together for tacking. Blue tack. Or blue tack tack? welded up.. I made an angled recess into the hatch cover so the fuel hose goes even further below the tank line. Visible in that photo are the cable connections. Again - I needed to get power in. I machined some shouldered fittings in plastic.. Luckily the micra pump so handily just uses a simple connector with 6.3 spade terminals. Under the lid... Tank hard work done. I'll paint bits and cut some gaskets. Speaking of gaskets. One of mine between my oil filter pedestal and the block is weeping oil. Plus one of the bolt heads weeps. Typical. Put a Japanese engine in a British car and turn your back for a minute... I've already drained the oil cleaned it up and ran a smear of paintable sikaflex along it and around the bolt head. I didn't take photos because not really exciting. I'll paint it silver and no one will know. Except you the reader. Next up is the exhaust I think.