doullama

Probably, 2 foot was a common gauge for small rolling stock. In the day you could buy pre-made track sets and switches to put together like an oversized model train set! There's a few old industrial wagons out at waikino just sitting on "display" that are begging to be restored and run on the tiny mainline

Note to self - the original motor did 2200 rpm flat tack. Thanks british narrow gauge foamers

Here is a picture of the complete, identical engine at waikino for reference.

You have to love the internet, how else could you find the reduction ratio of the final drive of an obscure british mining locomotive in 2 hours from the comfort of the couch. Ratio is 31:1. Now I just have to measure wheel diameter and I should be able to figure out necessary RPM for 3.1mph/5kph, which is plenty for what it is. In its original form this would pull 16.5 ton on the flat, down to 3.7 ton on a 1:50 grade. I'm hoping to achieve at least 300kg towed at 1:20 or greater, the line at waikino is very steep..

What a brilliant watch, mine will of course be much wetter, crudely shored & poorly lit

Yeah absolutely, though I thought i'd try to find out for idle planning purposes without having to put it on blocks haha. Some barry on one of the narrow gauge pages reckons he has a final drive in pieces and will count the teeth for me, its just a single thread worm drive. Have been looking into 48v forklift motors, pretty cheap secondhand and they look similarly sized to the original motor.

So as was bound to happen eventually in my terminal spiral of railway barrydom, I have scrounged myself a tiny 2 foot gauge locomotive. It is the same wheelbase (and length with the operator stand folded up) as a minecart, so it can be put in a liftshaft in my future illegal underground goldmine. Its a "battery electric vehicle - winstone & rogers model 5" and could have been built anywhere from 1937-1982. It has been stripped of all its electrical gear, and has nothing but the final drive left. The final drive is a worm gear reduction box of unknown ratio. I intend to get it running and stopping, using either battery electric (forklift?) gear or petrol hydraulic. I would rather electric just for the silent operation aside from the flanges screaming and joints thudding at a thundering 3.1mph..

Felt cute, might delete later idk. Surely this is nz's most hilariously cool marina van

Not me, but i'm fairly sure it was mandatory at the time for each town to have one vehicle with "SLAYER" sprayed onto it in a local park by obnoxious baked teenagers at midnight

Added some more decals and cleared over them, I was a bit unsure about the slayer but it hearkens back to a period where this was hamiltons official "slayer van"

Decals are a bit small, but far better than suffering the enduring shame of having a panelvan with zero barbarian content

So I know many of you have been losing sleep, wondering "whatever happened to that british pos van". Well wonder no more, for an update is forthcoming. I felt sorry for the van, forlornly keeping the mower company in the shed, so dragged it out and gave it some tlc, consisting of a good thorough greasing, and bending the fuel pickup down as the tank had imploded somewhat in the past and left it high & dry when 10L remained in the tank. I then painted it (again) in the driveway, this time in Leyland "black tulip", with some aliexpress purple pearl thrown in for good measure. As usual I could only be bothered removing a couple of dents. The back doors are pretty rough, having been hit and repaired twice that I know of, so slapped some stickers on there to hide all the ripples! I'll take it in for a wof when I can be bothered, should be pretty good (for a Leyland product)

Have been driving this fine automobile daily just for a change, has been pretty neat. important upgrades such as a new radiator cap and hatch struts have been performed - I was a bit sad to remove the o.g hatch struts, while useless they did have "indecipherable Cyrillic CCCP" on them which is always a redeeming feature. Am yet to figure out how to turn on the headlight wiper/washers. Found another Lada in the wild today, no owner nearby but if I see it/them in future i'll let them know I have 2 rattlecans of mixed paint for their car!

Cheers gents, that would explain the bits of steel tube in the bolt-holes, to overcome a previous owners lack of shouldered bolts! will get some hub-rings also

@azzurro & @Sunbeam can I please beg some wheel info? I have a set of 13"x6" +30 wards in 4x98 I wish to fit to my lada, I have test fitted one and can see I will need longer wheelbolts. what I am concerned about is the hub fitting - the lada steel wheels have a centrebore of roughly 58mm and the wards are roughly 65, they do conveniently have the little holes for the mounting tabs. Will I need a hub ring/spigot ring or is it not so important on these cars? Chur. Also I ordered some bits from lada moscow on the 14/8 which turned up today and look good, I thought prices & shipping were pretty reasonable (got hatch struts, pair of rear wheel cylinders, front pads & a radiator cap) Though sending cc deets to russia was inherently scary haha

@kws please accept my humble apologies for not getting back to you re marina bumpstops, I had a cursory look and can guarantee I have at least one. I see you may be in need of some other bits & pieces, I'm in putaruru (south waikato) and you would be more than welcome to have a sift through my assortment of marina parts if its not too far from home for you - save my next of kin from some of the hassle of dumping them someday. from rough memory I have 4 front doors, 2 of which are in great cond with black mk3 cards, maybe a whole mk3 diff/spring assy and driveshaft? A decent looking radiator, mk3 bumpers? lots of headlights including a pair of 7" lucas spotlights with lucas covers which would look great on your coupe, knowing lucas they probably put out 0.5 lumens, providing they still contain the vital smoke. Plus multiple bins of random crap/treasure - all sorts of small parts, mainly from mk3 wagon or mk2 commercial.

So I got another jalopy, I was searching for a decent triumph sedan when I saw this Lada for sale on marketplace. I thought "Hell, I haven't seen one of those for years!" so promptly went and got it to ensure I wouldn't miss out on the soviet driving experience. My impressions of the car are that it is great - for a car from 1970, by the time this one was made in 89' it was woefully obsolete. I understand they kept making them until 2010 in russia, and 2012 in egypt! The car had been in one family from new, and had been outside most of the time - very little rust and the interior is fine, but the paint was sunbleached to almost white from its original dark beige. I am rather enamored with its factory tool kit, with the tools all stamped cccp. I scoured the oxidation off a bit of the paint and found a good match, repainted it in the driveway, now just need to paint the windowframes black, swap the tyres onto a sweet set of fiat ward rims I found, then have some sweet proletarian adventures.

Oh choice mate, I saw a while ago it was spotted during certification for the 8. Great to hear its still getting about, you will probably have to sort the RH sill and rear quarter one day - did the left hand side but let sleeping dogs lie on the other! Pretty good van compared to most - not that there are many left, and it is solid in/around the roof where they usually rust out. I would like to personally apologise for the shithouse paintjob, thats totally on me haha

Anyone know much about older commodore utes? Am looking at getting a series III (01') VS to replace my AU wagon (obviously it doesn't need replacing, just bored of unrelenting reliability and class-leading style + want a year long wof) . Its ecotec 3.8, I know the automatics don't last forever but any other pitfalls for new players? Rust spots to look out for etc? Chur

Sorted that lot out, just need to present it for a wof now. Enjoy a tour of the block

Have painted the floor & boot of this thing - in suprisingly good condition. Went for a burn around the neighborhood - went very hard for what it is and is quite fun to drive. Makes me wonder what is lurking under the rusty rocker cover - decidedly quicker than an alpine I drove a couple of years ago, and sounds vicious for a shit british 4cyl at idle. Found it was getting a bit too warm - thermostat was jammed, don't know why I have such awful luck with them (actually I do, cars don't get run enough) - binned that and let it idle for half an hour, the next run around the block it ran like a pack of bsa's - the rear two spark plugs are fouling terribly due to overfueling at idle and don't clear easily. Investigating the strombergs it seems something is awry with the rear carb - even with the mixture screw up tight it is still far too rich - a little black smoke etc. Ancient fuel in the tank probably doesn't help. Needle looks a little pitted so will remove carb from car for further investigation. I tend to avoid taking carbs apart but the strombergs seem simple enough to be worth a tutu, may as well learn how to centre the jet, check the diaphragm & float, lose tiny parts & ragequit etc. Did consider changing to a mysterious but clean single carb from parts-heap but the accelerator setup has been modified for the twins so a bit hard to justify at this stage. If it behaves itself the car may just get its first oil change in two decades. Other things to do - replace leaking heater bypass hose, new fan belt & swap some perishing fuel lines + filter. Maybe rig up a pcv rather than road tube

I found these gems in a pile of parts, are covered spotlights ok for the road? Obviously the vehicle wont be driven at night. What are the odds of them working I wonder

Weaselled my way into a few weeks in the sunshine, have rudely awakened the slumbering British cars. Just about finished tarting up the avenger- have ordered an essential buffing machine. Am now thinking of getting better seats - the dash is rekt, wonder how much of a c*nt swapping it would be - would transform the car

This thread is great, such fond memories of the computer my grandparents bought for us kids in 1992 - IBM 486 33mhz, 4mb ram, 128mb hdd, soundblaster, win 3.1, dot matrix printer, a single speed CD ROM drive that you had to put the disk in a caddy, then into the PC. Cost $7600, and more importantly ran wing commander II. Still have a dot matrix printer at work, its screaming always hits me in the feels. The (second hand) cyrix 266mhz that replaced it sometime in the 2000's seemed like such a huge jump forward in technology

Thought I may as well start a thread on this raging beast, a friend of mine (may have been on here once) moved from hamilton to dunedin and abandoned it on my doorstep. He had had it sitting for quite a few years. Is a 1600 with twin strombergs & extractors - the motor has had some unspecified work done, apparently from a rally car. Body is in pretty decent condition, original paint is extremely worn and has surface rust for dayz, only welding required is in rear arches due to 3/4 inch coating of oil everywhere else. interior is 5/10, seats & dash have seen better days. lots of new suspension bushes in it which is nice. bodges required: weld rear arches where needed, sand & seal surface rust fill old badge, aerial holes etc muck around with ignition, it is totally pre-bodged and doesnt turn off with key until an electrical load is introduced i.e brake lights, horn (which to be fair is pretty funny) ideally obtain electronic ignition from chrysler. minimise ridiculous oil leaks put seats and dash cover on to cover wrecked originals wof treat with disdain as not proper leyland product. feel free to question my sanity on this thread, updates will be fairly slow as im only home a few days a fortnight!