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I've sat on this for a little while. Since things are starting to happen, it's time to start a build thread. So I've always wanted an XY Falcon. If you'd asked me when I was a kid what my favourite car was, I'd have told you it was a Phase III GTHO. When I was growing up, a family friend had an XY Fairmont in Bronze Wine, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. He'd bought it off the original owner circa 1975, who was a customer of the Ford dealer he worked at. He'd use it to tow the boat to the holiday spot we'd camp at every Christmas, but other than that it didn't get out much. It was a factory 302 Windsor car with T bar auto, and over the decades he'd added a few '80s go-faster bits, and those awesome Sampson Industries 'Magnum' jellybean mags. This is it: This car kickstarted an obsession with X-series Falcons - I was probably the only teenager reading Australian Muscle Car magazine. Trouble is, by the time i was old enough to own one they were past the point where they were cheap, and for one reason or another they always stayed out of reach. I had planned the ultimate XY build in my head - Bronze Wine or Nugget Gold, 14x8 Cheviot Tridens, and a 351 Cleveland (or at points, a 250 2V with triple Webers, just to be different). No chin spoilers, no stripes, no shaker. I looked at a few Falcons over the years, but none of them were quite right - really, it had to be a Fairmont. To make things more difficult, it had to be a wagon (because no matter what sort of car it is, wagons are the best). Life moved on, and several other project cars took up time and money. Until one day, this came into my life: It's a November 1970-build XY Fairmont wagon, making it very early in the production run for an XY. Originally a Monza Green 250 six with a column shift Cruiseomatic, it's since been fitted with a 351 Cleveland on LPG, FMX trans and a disc brake 9" rear end from (presumably) a Landau or P5 LTD, based on the rear calipers. The idea was to build the Fairmont wagon that had lived in my head for years. Sadly, the family friend/uncle with the bronze Fairmont passed away a couple of years ago, so this is also going to be a bit of a tribute to him. This car looked good from afar, but up close it was far from good. Like any old Falcon, it's had its fair share of shit repairs and bog over its 56 years of life, and because it needs a repair cert these will all need to be fixed properly. The engine swap hasn't been done all that nicely, and it's also lost nearly all of its Fairmont-spec interior, which is a shame - everything was covered in grey vinyl and early 2000s hydrodip, and someone had swapped the factory bucket seats for some electric couches from a Mitsi Diamante. These, along with the skull decals went straight in the bin. Like I said, it looked good from a distance, but that bumblebee-spec colour scheme was hiding many sins. It doesn't look like it's had any of the rust cut out of it, rather it's just been plated over (so it keeps rusting underneath). Someone has hacked out most of the boot floor and fuel tank area as part of the LPG conversion, and there was a suspicious row of pop rivets along the passenger's side sill seam. There was nothing for it but to start pulling it apart and poking at the flaky bits with a pointy screwdriver. As it turned out, while some of the patches were welded, the ones in arguably the most important parts of the car weren't: This is the LHS torque box, which someone's just pop riveted some roofing sheet over. That was just a prequel, though. Here's the passenger's side sill: It's all fucked, and needs repairs to the upper and lower A pillars, rear wheelarches, rear quarters, tailgate opening, D pillars, fuel tank well, load bay floor, torque boxes, sills, front K-member, etc. Wish me luck...

Finished machining the last two castings. They are dimensionally the best ones so far. Surface finish not as great. Need to tune the feeds and speeds since its a harder grade material. Did billet Cam boxes and Follow Fingers. The followers are from EN36A and need to go through a few more processes. I need to have cams made. Theres guys in the UK that have been working on developing cams for this engine for the last 20+years and have a good profile to use. So ill go with that. I also used their high lift follower profile rather than the original. Once I have cams I can line bore the cam boxes to suit. Ive sent out the Follow Fingers for copper plating. Once theyre back I can remove the copper from the running faces the send them out for case hardening. Then ream and hone. The 'Follow Fingers' are cool. They're not a rocker as such, theyre a 1 to 1 finger that is basically taking the side load from the valve. Seems to be what is done on sports bikes and F1 engines. I was originally thinking I could so Valve Buckets but once I got into it it was pretty obvious they would be too heavy due to the spring diameter. That would mean changing springs, how its oiled etc, it was starting to re invent too much.

I've got a weird old car and now a weird engine in it. This is fine, but sometimes it would be nice if there were a whole bunch of other people with the same thing so we could compare notes. My existing process has been a lot of trial and error at trackdays to get the car handling nice. The problem being that over the course of my ownership, at best I could probably get to a track event 2 or 3 times a year. So it's hard to get a feel for the effect of subtle changes. My new engine (not track tested yet apart from drag strip) revs a lot higher than the old one. Which is problematic for my existing gearing. I've got a 6 speed box but now 2nd gear will run right to 130kph which is fairly stupid. So I've been considering my options for changing final drive ratios. It's all well and good looking at the graphs and numbers, but I dont think this gives a particularly good idea of how the car might feel. So I've setup my car in a simulator to try and get a general feel for how various changes might impact it. The PC game called Assetto Corsa is very highly moddable which is great. There's no Toyota Carina model in the game. But each car essentially has all of its important stats set via a series of text files that you can edit. I've taken the base model of an AE86 coupe and then revised it to the known details of my car which are slightly different for wheelbase, weight etc. What's cool though, is that using Chatgpt/codex I can have it sift through a whole bunch of real life data, to input into the game to refine the model. I figure that if I can tip as much real life information into the simulator as possible, I'll get a baseline that is as close as possible to reality. So any changes that I make from here, will have a reasonable chance of being realistic. I've got four pretty good sources of historical information about the car. Corner weights, Dyno results, ECU logs, and GPS data. I've fed the dyno results image into chatgpt to build the power curve of the motor in the game. Then it's used the corner weight info to set the weight distribution and overall weight. I've fed my ECU logs into it, as these have a very good record of gear shift times, engine free revving rate, coast down rate etc. Then I've fed the GPS data in. From which it analyzes average corner speed, low corner speed, high corner speed, braking rate etc. To develop a tyre model for the car based on real life data. Then also total braking force. I had a really good laugh when the best lap time I've managed after about 30 laps in the game so far. Matches my PB in real life. How this has been useful: I was initially thinking that I would need around a 6:1 final drive ratio to make all of the gears usable. But with some testing it was actually incredibly annoying, as it needed a lot of mid corner gear shifts. I've found that my diff size (Toyota F series) has an off the shelf 5.3 ratio that is commonly used for off roading. This is looking like the best overall compromise and gives a top speed of around 220kph which is plenty enough for an Toyota made out of bean cans. My car has always been very softly sprung compared to what other people run. I believe this is because I've had an excessively stiff front swaybar, and I've just made the rest of the car work around that. So I've been using the sim to get a feel for what sort of front spring rate might pair well with a softer bar. It looks like going to around a 200lb front spring will work really nicely. Or at least be a very good starting point compared to a stab in the dark. I cant wait to finally get my car back out there again, and see how the new setup works out. On a more modern tyre and with the new engine, should be a few seconds quicker than a 1.21 hopefully. It's felt well worth the effort of a few rainy days inside to get the car setup this way to test some iterative changes and see what's worthwhile or not. Unsurprisingly, putting a grippier tyre on seems to be exponentially more beneficial than any other slight fiddling of suspension settings.

The sumps came out of the molasses and were clean as a whistle. Exposed MANY patent numbers on the bottom of the trans pan, lol. Ordered black diesel-heater ducting for the other sizes required, installed sweet as. The Bailey channels showed up, was a perfect fit on the divider side, had to spread the latch side channel out as it was too tight but lush AF now. Ordered exhaust gear, one of the multi-bends is due tomorrow..never got close to chance to get started but was nice to have it for the long weekend? Right, rust time again. The sill was creased and with no good way to get at it, I had to chop it out. Thats the crummy stuff I can’t get at with the chassis under’er. Hoicked some pieces out of the rear wheel tub to replicate after work. Id say that should be dialled next weekend.

not bad

Finished.

After run in, it was clear that new nice oil had dislodged all the rest of the carbon shit. This filter was a bit scary (but current one doesnt have a single flake so problem solved) Decided to finally paint headers. They are E36 modified to meet E30 downpipes. Used the POR15 manifold paint. Holds up well, seems to have flaked off where prep was sub optimal. I think sandblasting as prep would give great results. $70 a can or something nuts. Anyway. Thats a summary of what was fucking long and annoying build, with everything going wrong.Kinda. Doing this post in a single day doesnt really convey the pain and suffering but oh well. Car goes real hard. Much easier to drive than the E36, and in the real world just as fast around twisty road. Miles slower on track if I had to guess. I think current diff is 4.27. I want to put an LSD in it because it loves a one wheel peel out of a corner. Total smoke show. Looking at small case 4.44 or medium case 3.91. The short gearing currently in it makes it so much fun. So fun that I want to put a real short diff in the E36 too. Original plan was to put it on bags. Tyre size has ruined that for now, and the spending needs to stop anyway. But maybe one day, or maybe just run it low on soft BCs. Needs sump guard asap - sump sits forward of wheels, and is lower than anything else.

After a little more work to get it ready, it was time for Nuggie to venture out of the garage and onto the road, for the first time since at least 2012. The first job was to torque up the hub nuts and stake them. I jammed the brake pedal down, and then torqued them to the required 200NM-and-a-bit-more (the spec is 150-260NM). I then used a punch to stake the nuts so they can't come loose Whilst there, I also jacked the hubs up and torqued the swaybar end nuts too. Another quick fix was fitting three new wiper blades. One of the front ones was missing, and the rear was perished. I went with 450mm and 350mm for the front, and 350mm for the rear. Moving to the headlights, I wanted to remove and replace the brackets that the light units attach to. The RH side was OK, but the LH side was rusty, and the corner garnish was holding on by hopes and dreams As it turns out, the dreams were dashed, and the bracket came off with the garnish when I removed it The bracket is held in with one bolt on the slam panel, one nut in the engine bay, and two more nuts inside the wheel arch (liner needs to be removed or the front loosened). With it removed, I could wire brush the surface rust and give it a quick shot of black zinc The new bracket was then fitted into place, without the lamp or its mounting hardware. The bracket for the garnish is on the bottom right, sticking forward. I cleaned the bracket up and gave it a coat of black zinc, to hopefully keep the corrosion at bay. I replaced all the headlight adjustment screws and the plastic blocks they go into. I didn't replace the springs, and I probably should've; they're a bit ugly. The garnish was refitted. I had to recover the plastic grommet from the old rusty bracket If the mounting screws are good, the light actually just slips over them and then twists into place. This one on the car was wrong; the washer goes behind the light. There's no way to remove the light unit to change the bulb. This is the correct fitment After replacing the other side too, I gave them a quick setup, but I really need to align them before I try to take it for a WOF, at least to get them in the ballpark. With those replaced, I could refit the bumper, once and for all this time (or for a while, at least) I sourced some of the correct screws for the top edge. These have a step in them, so the head of the screw doesn't crush the plastic This is what happens when someone has replaced them with normal bolts in the past, the plastic splits With that done, I could finally install my new wheels and get the car on the ground for the first time since I got it, way back in October. The new wheels came with some Nankang AR-1 semi-slicks. They're a tad wider than the old 165 width tyres... They'll stay for a bit, just because they're near new and do the job, but longer term I'll get rid of them and fit the correct size Yokohamas. The 175/50R13 has slightly too small a profile, and the width is a tad extreme. Not to mention, an 80 treadwear tyre is madness for on the road. I won't lie, I'm pretty happy to see it off the stands and on its own wheels The Suzuki Sport Type-C wheels are perfect for it. I like the original mesh wheels, but mine are in very poor condition. The car was completely covered in thick dust, and still needs a good clean, but I used some waterless wash and got the worst of it off. The glass all got a thorough clean too It looks better than it is. I really need to clean it and then give it a machine polish. This is also the first time the engine bay has been completely together As a small side note, having looked into what the solenoids on the firewall are, one is something to do with the auto trans (only fitted to autos), and the other is the idle up valve for the AC. Neither of these are fitted anymore, so I tried blocking the pipes off to see what happens I'm not sure if the ECU will throw a code if I actually remove them, but we will see. So far, the car starts, runs and idles better than it did with them connected. It's no longer trying to fight the idle up solenoid, and relying on the cold start valve for the cold start idle up, and then the actual idle screw for warm idle - how it should be. Anyway, I connected the battery, turned the key and away the engine went. Good oil pressure, no noises it shouldn't be making. I jumped in, and for the first time, I drove my C-Chassis Alto Works. Because the engine, brakes and clutch are all minty fresh, I was taking it easy, keeping the revs down and minimal boost (it's hard, it comes on boost at the twitch of the foot), and lots of engine braking to seal the rings. Despite trying to give it an eye-lignment before I left, the alignment is well cooked, so the car was a little wayward to drive, but that is an easy fix. Everything did as it should. The gearbox is a little noisy, but nothing I wouldn't expect for its age, and it might get better as I use it more - No grinding through. The engine responds well, feels nice and strong, the turbo makes boost, and it makes all the right noises. I'm very happy with how the initial shakedown went. Now I need to pull it to bits again, replace the rear arm bushes, give it an alignment, touch up a couple of spots on the body, and then I think we're ready to go for a WOF and see how badly it fails. Of course, we got some shots of the car out of the garage. The last time it was out here, it had no engine and was being pushed into the garage. I'm hoping the reverse rake gets better over time. I'm hopeful that it's because the front springs haven't had any weight on them, probably since about 2012, when it came off the road. The lower profile tyres won't be helping the look either, but I can't do much about that right now. What a cool wee car.

UPS van came through with more goods from OldBuickParts Starter relay, battery cable junction box, steering coupler, heater duct in a diameter I couldn’t get here, + some body mounts. I was going to make some mounts work from off the shelf rubber pads but soon realised that was stupid and to just buy the thing.. Didn’t want poly bushes which are easily available and cheaper. In other news, I made some rubber gaskets for the lock and handles from some nice sheet id hoarded..last few cars I’ve assembled these seals perished really fast, ‘don’t make them like they used to’ etc. Started rust repairs! Have finished RH front of sill, opened up the LH + made the thick sandwiched reinforcement, along with the inner. (When I say finished I mean 90%, the other 10 happens when I take the floor pan out and replace, giving full access). I need to hack off the outer sill and planish it..it’s been a bit smooshed, then I can zap it all together. Made a piece for the kick-panel area but ran out of weekend. Have done some homework on the Bailey channel situation for the doors and I think I can make something from Basis work. Fine print on the proper stuff ex USA reads ‘comes as a rigid strip 72in long’. Fuck shipping that. As fate would have it, a rusty 57 Buick super 4dr HT showed up at work so now I have an excuse/opportunity to make duplicates of the repairs and I’ll be sorted at home too.

I GOT WHEELS!!! It did come at the cost of realising I forgot to get some bits sandblasted Redeemed myself with a quick after work turning jobby, some adapters for the factory diff breather bore to push fit connectors. Managed to sneak them into both diffs, gearbox and transfer case.

The time has finally come, I need to put on my big boy pants and see if all the blood, sweat, tears and money actually worked. I started with a big milestone - I filled the engine with the startup oil. The temporary filter got binned, and a new, prefilled filter was fitted. I also poured 10 litres of the finest 98 octane fuel into the tank and flushed the lines. The final thing that needed to be assembled was the cooling system. The radiator that came with the car was from when it was auto, and unknown to me until a few weeks ago, the auto and manual radiators differ in one critical area; the lower hose fitting is on the wrong side between them The auto radiator that came with the car And the new Manual radiator The lower hose on the auto goes under the transmission up to the back of the engine, and crosses close to the bellhousing Looking from the front, back. Engine on the left, transmission pan on the right. Coolant pipe indicated. This is the absolutely wild coolant pipe used on the autos The previous owner butchered that pipe on my car to make it work with the manual setup. This meant he could retain the auto radiator. The manual cars have the coolant hose from the radiator go straight up over the gearbox and into the coolant pipe I mentioned in one of my previous updates Anyway, so once I found out that my radiator was wrong for my whole convert-to-OEM-MT parts thing, I frantically scrambled to see if I could source a manual radiator locally. Allegedly, one of the local radiator places could order one in for me, at a reasonable price, but I had this niggling worry at the back of my mind where putting a cheap knockoff radiator into the car was asking for trouble. Was it suitable for a turbo car? Would it cause overheating issues? Would it handle a track day or two? Not something I wanted to deal with. So, I spent a shocking amount of money to import the correct Manual Transmission Turbo spec Koyorad radiator from Japan After a quick clean and test, I transferred the fan to the new radiator Much time was spent wrangling the hoses into place. There is very little room between the radiator fan and the gearbox But finally, the radiator was installed and filled with demineralised water Wanting to be able to monitor the oil pressure in an actual figure and not just the idiot light, I quickly wired up the gauge and mounted it. I tied into the power feed for the 12v socket above it. It's pretty bright. I'm going to need to wire in the illumination, I think. It's one of the reasons I removed it from the BRZ Finally, it was time. I had disconnected the ignition coil and removed the fuel pump relay. I needed to crank the engine to prime the oil system and build oil pressure. I jumped in and turned the key for the very first time. Yes, the oil pressure gauge was useless since it turned off when cranking... but on the third go of cranking, the oil pressure light went out, so we were ready. I was getting a little worried with how long it was taking for the light to go out, but thankfully, the pump primed itself, and it wasn't an issue. Now it was time to connect the coil up and refit the fuel pump relay, and go for real. The first start of this engine after a complete end-to-end rebuild, and the first time I have ever heard an engine run in this car. It started like a champ! I had to cut it off earlier than I wanted as the revs were too high, but after some tweaking, I managed to get that to come down, and it idled fine. There was some lifter tick, which is obvious on the video, but nothing to worry about. Oil pressure was very good when running, dropping to about 20PSI when idling at operating temperature By some miracle, even all the gauges work, including the fuel gauge. I'll need to pull the bulb for the cat temp light, since I removed that wire and don't have a cat anymore. It didn't half smoke though, burning off all the various oils, paints etc After running it up to temp, I drained the engine oil and the water from the cooling system The coolant went brown from dragging old gunk out from the heater core and various other hiding places I filled the engine with proper run-in oil this time, and a 50:50 mix of coolant, which I spent time properly bleeding I checked and set the timing to the required 5 degrees, with advance locked by shorting the B and C terminals on the diagnostic connector After the oil change, the lifter tick got a lot better, and with the other tweaks I made, the engine ran and idled quite nicely There's still some setting up to do with things like the TPS and the weird idle valves, but for now, it'll do enough to get it driving. Speaking off, I need to reassemble the front of the car, get the wheels on, and give it a string alignment, but I'm pretty keen to take it for a closed road drive as soon as I can. I really need to start bedding in those rings. A huge milestone. The engine runs, and runs well. It seems to do everything it should, with no odd noises and no real leaks (only a small weep from the oil drain on the turbo).

Heads back from shop getting intake seats cut done a diy head skim on the mill. this old junker head was surprisingly straight. .04mm pretty much cleaned the whole thing

Alright so this is the final in my punishing Car is up on stands series of posts. (maybe) Video first then nerd stuff second After all of the headaches and frustrations I've had from persisting with ethrottle. I'm finally starting to see some of the rewards. My ethrottle tracking is stable and reliable enough that I can start doing some part throttle tuning decently. Ethrottle makes it super easy because you can make it so any pedal travel over 20% limits the motor to 20% throttle, if you want to tune the 20% row. This engine has been real fiddly in a few areas at low rpm and low load where it goes atkinson cycle and/or transitions out of it. I've also got some bank to bank imbalance. Although that's annoying, it's at least consistent now. So I'll just build a compensation table for it. It might seem silly having the car up on stands compared to driving it or going to the dyno. But using the wheels and gearing as a flywheel allows you to reach some low load and low rpm spots that are very hard to get to otherwise. I spent some time going through the 3%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50%, and 100% rows and the interpolated between. So it's good enough to take it for a drive without any surprises. It hasnt had any issues with vibration etc causing problems anymore which is great. Some of my previous VE improvements were a little misleading, because it had jacked up the injector spray time to pretty much fully open. Which doesnt flow proportionally as much as 85% or whatever. So with the new intake, diddling the ports a little bit, bigger injectors and the new exhaust setup. This is the full throttle VE table differences now that the motor is tuned back to target. Pretty hectic at 6500rpm for reasons unknown! But it does the same thing every time. Maybe adjusting injector timing or VVT angles will drop the number there to something more realistic. Supposedly you can estimate power increase by taking between 50% and 90% of the VE increase as % of power gained. So splitting the difference and on the basis of 75% of VE increase = power increase, it's probably maybe looking something like below. I'm guessing the 6500rpm thing is some sort of weird VE oddity and it wont actually make power peak there. I will be annoyed if it's peaking at 6500 on the dyno next time haha. Will be weird to shift to the next gear and end up with better power... If the rest of it is somewhat accurate, will be happy. I'm circling the drain towards having smaller and smaller problems to resolve which is great. I'm currently mucking around with the VVT PID settings a bit more, as one side is still oscillating slightly. Then both exhaust pulleys are a bit sluggish to reach target. This is what the intake is doing while cruising: PID stuff is annoying to figure out, so I've just taken a log of the results and dumped it into chatgpt along with my existing settings. It's given me some new numbers to work with, hopefully it'll hone in on some good settings in fewer iterations than using my potato brain to guess at it. I took the car for a drive up the road and nothing fell off, and all of my rockers sound like they are still in the right place. So, in the context of this absolutely snakebit project that is a huge win. Haha.

As per usual with this cursed machine, some good and some bad. Haha. My ethrottle bits turned up, and they had accidentally printed them out of stainless. So they're way heavier than expected. Not only that but they were absolutely impossible to try and drill or tap holes into. I broke a few taps, then just tried drilling. Ended up melting some drill bits. Anyway, they're going to reprint them for me from aluminium. But in the meantime I fitted them up so I'm not stuck for another 6 weeks waiting. Looks kinda weird but they are working great. Next thing, I finished doing a 1-2 pipe over the diff. Was a bit fiddly making space for 2 pipes but everything's good. Then checked for leaks and what not and back to the usual jack stand hoons. Doesnt sound quite how I want it yet, but I am sick of doing exhaust work and just wanna go drive it. So thats the next plan! While its up on the stands I just need to add a few heat shields and move some lines to keep fuel stuff a bit further away from the hot pipes. But hopefully not too long until it's good to go.

Did some skids, went down a bank. Was going good until it wasn't towards the end of SS3. Anyone have a spare roof or guards? Car looked mint in the morning. New smaller cam went good, handled waay better on the flowing Waitomo roads than the slush we had at Daybreaker. Blind tight right hander caught us out after a particularly fast flowy section. Rally was blind (no notes). Speed was OK, corner too tight. Still had smiles afterwards which is the best part. Tried to catch on fire multiple times upside down. Very lucky it didn't all go up in flames. Both the crash and the fire was my exact worst-case nightmare playing out - we survived both so can get past it now. hah. Melted a few things, but overall not bad - got it going and drove it onto trailer at the end of day. The recovery crew did a great job. Didn't even put an extra scratch on it. Was 10-15m down the bank, upside down and trees/branches holding us from another 20m+ drop to the stream below. Sketchy. That is rallying - crash it, fix it, skid it, repeat.

Head is basically done, needs to go to the shop to get the seats cut, before can test run it. as valves are all wacky after putting the guides back in. Any 3sge (non beams) people on here with some intake valves hanging around? thinking about trying some in this head if it works on the test run made some fancy cam sensor mounts Put a digital scale on the mill, thanks to aliexpress.

Several people told me that the older head bolts are likely fine to re-use. I couldn't really find anything concrete on this, but it was fairly commonly repeated by various internet people, who said that the 105mm bolt length shouldn't exceed 106.something. I took both the original set of head bolts and the new bolts and compared them with bolts from the same set and across each set. The threads all lined up perfectly with each other, no light through them, and all 20 bolts measured 105mm on the dot. They're a lot wider than the >115mm 4g63 bolts and I think that spared them from plastic deformation. I took the new set, the washers from the old set, and sent it - but this time using the original torque specs for these bolts. Head on. Done. No pic because it looks the same as above. ~ In the mean time, I started on the oil pump and cover. The cover has a few seals that needed replacing, and a fair amount of gunk to clean off. This is after a first pass. A scrub-a-dub and few harrowing hammer strikes later and we're fresh and ready to start the new day. I REALLY like the 3m bristle brush on the mating surfaces <3 The oil pump itself got a clean in petrol ($$$) inside a glass container in the ultrasonic, which definitely gets the best results and is safe as heck. Drawing from my bolt bins, I gave the bolts a clean (also put some degreaser in another jar for comparison. petrol still wins) The oil pump got packed with vaseline as best I could, probably went overboard, this earlier style of g63b/4g63 pump doesn't have one side sit flush with the gears so there's more vaseline than there looks. I wiped as much off the gasket surface as I could, but not pictured is wiping off all the excess that schmoo'd out anyway. With the silent (balance) shafts oiled and in place, it's go time. The paper gasket gets a brushing with permatex liquid gasket sealer, which was recommended to me over Hylomar. It's definitely easy to use and less messy than I anticipated. A plastic bottle lets the seal go over the crank without any issues. I had to wrangle a silent shaft from inside the engine before it was in the correct orientation, but nothing crazy. Then it's just figuring out where all the hardware went and looking up torque specs while I loctite blue stuff in place... That's all I was gonna do for the day but I got carried away. How can I stop there when there's a shiny water pump sitting in a box nearby? First thing first, check that it's the same as the old. It's almost entirely the same: the new one is cleaner, but I'll accept that difference. Nobody ever talks about how much of a pain it can be to figure out which holes have the long bolts. Fortunately the water pump was kinder than the oil pump cover. And of course, why not just test fit all the other stuff :). New idler pulleys! The camshaft sprocket was next, but the camshaft doesn't have any flat surfaces on it for a wrench. Maybe it did before the rockets went in but I don't see it. After experimenting with poking some screwdrivers on some tabby bits on the camshaft, I opted to just put a crowbar in place. The scratch on the casting adds character. With the sprocket in place, Girlface was summoned to help set the valve clearances -- the engine recon guys recommended that we do so after the head was torqued down. I went with the cold values of 0.10mm intake, 0.20mm exhaust, and indeed, there was a spread of gaps, some too tight and some too loose. That done, the timing belt 'B' can be installed and torqued down (it just drives one silent shaft - this one was missing when I opened the engine and completely bound up!). Then timing belt 'A' for the camshaft, oil pump and other silent shaft. Annoyingly, the new head has no mark to line up with the sprocket. All I really have to go by is some old photos that place a mark about a cm down from the surface. Fortunately the springs really want the camshaft to settle right there which adds confidence. Of course this pic's angle makes it look like the mark is totally off. Whatever. There's just one thing left to torque to spec and that's the crank doohicky. My trusty Alto Crankshaft Angle Iron tool came out of retirement, with the perfect bolt hole spacing for this crank as well. Hell yea. Not much left before this is a long block! The rocker cover has some missing paint and I feel like it's the law that you have to paint it when you build an engine. So, that's one of the next things. Before I packed it in for the day I took the bristle brush to the bits of the raised turbo lettering that it could reach with the breather connector in the way. Aw yeah.

She's all legal again 10 years later.. Failed a wof on a reverse light, loose bumper bolt, handbrake adjustment and a noisy front wheel bearing. Took it in for a recheck today then drove it to golf. Pics of the the exhaust work, think Alex took more than I did. You can also see in the below pic that the drive shaft is rubbing on the tunnel which is annoying, it's slightly offset and touched the side lightly, there is a provision for a bump stop on the body right at the front of the diff head so I'll look at putting one in there, prob means I need to stiffen the springs more also.. Had to paint the drive shaft twice to hide it from the wof man then drive it gingerly to the appointment.. Couldn't find someone to cut mirror glass all so I ended up polishing some 304ss plate to "mirror" kind of, I mean, you can see a reflection but it's textured slightly.. Glued then in with 11fc which worked till it didn't and one fell out while driving, lucky it bounced on its edge then landed on the back not scratching the face at all.. So I stuck it back in with extreme tape, see how that goes. Wheel bearing shot.. Water got into one when it was being blasted and did it's work over the last year, I thought it might have been just some discoloration when I cleaned them out but it ended up being damaged, no biggie. Ended up getting it a wheel alignment just to be sure, old mate says I wasn't too far out.. Half a degree or so.. Not bad for a tape measure.. There's a bunch of other things that still need sorting (like the miss matched carbs) but I can now do them whenever..

For completeness... Still needs door cards and a few tidy up bits inside. Mostly done tho - is road legal and doesnt break down much. Its come a long way from this $2k auto poo spec whip, some might say in the wrong direction!

Did I get a fair bit done this week? Yes. Did I start but not finish WAY more aspects? Oh Yes Got an organiser and sorted nuts bolts screws washers etc as opposed to piled into tins as they were; flash. Fuel line ran, had a shit of a time trying to find the route down the chassis, and the hardware to suit the holes..turns out they had rubber hose front to back with special clips that never made it to me! That won’t do in NZ anyway, ffs Never too late to start saving weight is it? Nutted out the heater and vents, hooked everything up and made a list of the (4!) sizes for the flexi tubes to track down. Found homes for some of the random brackets. Picked petrified sealer, dumdum and some corrosion, then brunox sprayed spots to put a halt to that until paint O’clock. Got up in behind the dash and cowl too. Chopped out the second row body mount braces from the floor to gain access to symmetrical rotten bits on inner sill. Have dumped them in the molasses to chooch. Measured up and Templated the pieces I need to make. A couple of mousepads provided the right thickness for replicating tail lamp and marker light seals. Pulled the tail lamps apart and cleaned, polished etc along with spiffing up the biiig outer housings. New screws This was the exhaust outlet side so was fairly tarnished in comparison. Got into the front markers too, split the whole assembly down to polish shiny bits, scrub lenses, mend some broken hardware, metal backers in molasses tank. Doors got a good scrape and vacuum inside then brunox’d, did any surface rust in jambs too, nothing to hide from repair certifier. Pulled the vent windows apart and polished, fit new rubbers and back together they go. Turns out the iddy biddy strip I was supplied needed bonded to the OE steel backing that has hold-down tangs, so had to snap off the plasticised old rubber first. Went to Rare Spares and pickApart looking for suitable Bailey channel but didn’t score.. vent side has polished beading on each side and the striker side is uber wide as the window has bonded chrome frame running in the channel. Basis might have something or I sack up and get the real, much darer stuff off ROCKAUTO. Also got the main outer weatherstrips fitted. whipped a door handle out to have a key made for them as too, the trunk lock. Motor dropped off to Frontline to see if she’s a contender. Front UJ and output housing dropped to MS Coombes to see if they can make a bushing work and see about sloppy staked joint. Left the spindle with them too incase they can make me a new LHT nut. Had some OK shock bushes in the hoard so stuffed them in the top of the rears. One was torn and dog-eared, looked ratshit. Quite a spot to get to when assembled so. I’ve just spent another weeks wages on more bits from OldBuickParts I simply can’t shake this ‘do it factory’ mindset I’ve got and fuck me, it’s hard on the well-being. Eg, run fuel line front to back with some P clamps like a human, or spend a day searching the internet and online manuals to see how it goes for the absolute fear of squashing it or having to do it again..sandblast and paint some clips that sorta work and find matching nuts and bolts small enough to clear the clip but not pull through the OE holes.. only to simply pop rivet them. Shrug Cummon you dysregulated cunt, stop making big jobs any bigger.

And done . I'll weld the tip on once the car is finished in case I need to move the tip around a bit to properly line up with the cutout in the rear bumper. Just needs a coat of paint.

Update from palmy. Somewhat straight already. Roof is savable.

It's been a long time between posts. at the end of last year I thought it was time to do something about the sponge suspension. I went to see Anthony at race shocks specialist in penrose and let them work their magic on some new struts. The logo is a super unique strut design. So it had to be custom made. (BC do sell coilovers but very expensive just for fronts when you include shipping from the uk.) We came up with a plan to make bilstein body's fit the logo knuckles. I've decided to drop it a further 20mm at the moment to try 5kg front springs and got some cobra springs made for the rear also in 5kg. I can't recommend cobra springs in chch anymore. Their service is exceptional and super fast turn around for a custom part. Subaru legacy rear shocks I'll start at the os drags. Car obviously ran fine as it's basically the same as hoping on a motorway on ramp. Last minute decision. I decided to run the new wheels I purchased, the aero disc with a a539 175/60r14. One thing I noticed on the drive to the track was that when de accelerating at motorway speed the car felt really twitchy but when accelerating was fine. Ended up going a tiny a bit faster than last year with a blistering 18.1. Did well in the dyo but played it too safe and lost out to Simon in the Cortina. The following weekend was the last hd auto day for the year. Didn't do much more prep other than adding a bit more stiffness to my adjustable sway bar mount, cleaned it again and put gas in it. I decided to take a van load of spare wheels because I wasn't feeling super confident in the new setup. First time out was crazy. The lift off over steer with the narrow 175 on the rear and maybe a combination of new stiffness basically a completely new car. I was trying to work through it driving wise picking up my balls and no lift but boy that got me into trouble. I had a big oh shit moment on turn 5. That was enough to make me re think and change set up before going back out again. The decision was made to put 20mm spacers on and the 185 nevovas on the gram lights. Which made a world of difference back to more controlled. After that I had parked it up over summer, hit a few coffee and car meets and that was it. Until just recently it had been living outside I finally got the ute out of the garage and gave the logo some time in Dry storage. It had always had a soft brake pedal. Eventually it worked but always once you where at the bottom of the pedal. with 13/16 master I can only assume it was soft for the old nanas that drove them. Honda hrv came with a larger 15/16 master cylinder that bolts directly in. So down to my local friendly pick a part and pulled a master and got a rebuild kit from repco bolted it up and tested it. Big difference, feels great. a lot firmer and more up top. So last minute decision to go to the track and test it out. Once again needed to gain confidence in the car so didn't push it super hard. Didnt even check lap times just went and had fun. Ended up having a great day with an awesome set up with Rhys and the family. For me growing up as a track kid watching my dad race, its cool now seeing the circle of life repeating. Now it's at the stage where it feels like it needs more power. Ive got a few months till os drags so a re power is on the cards. To be continued...

So, about that pile of windscreens. The original or windscreen #1, last seen intact about the time it came back from the sandblasters, (who took a considerable amount of care to keep protected from blasting) met its end at my fumbling hands when I decided to remove it to be sure a rust patch wasn't creeping into something larger. This really stressed me out as I assumed finding new one may end up being a high dollar import. In a stroke of luck, the local auto glazer got me a new one for what could be considered pocket change compare for what I was bracing myself to pay. Feeling relieved but also cautious, that was installed with new seals and trim. Unfortunately...... while excitedly trying to seat the trim which did not like seating fully in the new rubber I pushed just a bit too hard cracking it in almost the same spot as #1 but from the other direction. #2 seen in the naughty pile over the back got a whole lot worse due my very lack of fucks to give removing it. Queue a very embarrassing phone call to the glass man to ask for another, but yes, they did have another I could pick up, write that down as stupid tax I guess. This made me much more cautious and observant the second time around, what I think happened is the new rubber wasn't shaped to the bottom of the frame like the old was that I had removed a number of times, this meant the screen was pushing hard against the top and in a position it didn't want to be in all made worse by me trying to push a seal into a grove it couldn't fit in. Second time round, noticing this and taking care to seat the screen down, everything went together just like in the youtube videos. Stupid rushed mistakes make for good learning? I did get to enjoy one moment from this episode, windscreens make a wicked noise when tossed into the concrete pit at the dump.

Hey team, small useless update. My boy is now at the point where he hardly fits / doesn't like being in the rear facing seat so he's been upgraded to a front facing and my daughter is in a booster seat. The consequence of this is now the whole family can fit in the Jag. You wouldn't believe it but the rear seats are basically useless for any human with legs so this stage will only last a little bit, but weekly family drives are on the cards for the next little bit. Which I guess is the whole point. Apart from that I took it out for the night recently, and somehow started it then locked the keys in as we were loading up bags into the boot. Very awkward. In the city with no tools and an old english car sitting idling in a underground carpark, locked.... With some rapid googling I came up with a plan. I went back to the hotel too and stole a bread knife and a metal coathanger. I managed to undo and remove the passenger side mirror, this gave enough access with the coat hanger to manipulate the lock mechanism open. So there ya go, jags are reasonably easy to get in to in a pinch! 👌 Cheers

I've been looking for an ideal first CX since selling my Goldwing a few weeks ago. I was tempted by some fairly spendy ones in the 5k range. I was chatting to a mate from the next valley about bikes, mentioned cxs and he said his brother has a couple... ...and he is planning to sell them. Cool. One of them is a CX400E. Not sure on the other and I would have to wait for 10 more days because he's away. So I've been counting my sleeps and then on Monday another cx popped up for sale locally - for only $500! But it has a seized camshaft and is in bits. In other words a proper project. Within a couple of hours four different mates had sent me the advert link. I contacted the seller asap. I said.. "I'll buy it! Can I collect it tomorrow?" "yeah man, no probs" Great. So on Tuesday this old thing followed us home.. Off the trailer and inside. It might only be 'late summer' here in sunny west Tasman but its fresh enough to get the workshop fire cranking. Bike has been lightly cafe'd but came with all the original parts included along with a few new Honda bagged spares.. Original speedo matches the recorded mileage that shows up online.. I was blown away by the brand new fan.. Following morning I freed up the sticky front calipers which luckily had nice clean pistons. Nice to see bike already fitted with braided front hoses! I plonked the seat and tank in place and took some pics.. Hannah helped me remove the engine and lift it up onto the bench. I had to get this pic.. I started looking into this 'seized' camshaft. Previous owner said it started leaking oil out around cam seal and making awful sounds. After turning the bike off they couldn't turn it over. They took it to a mechanic who tried to remove the tacho output/camshaft front bearing block. He got it to spin round but it wouldnt come off and broke the casting. He decided the job was going to be far more involved than they wanted to spend. The bike sat a few years and now its mine. Damage here... Picture from FSM of parts.. I managed to spin it round but I could see the spiral cast into the camshaft that turns the tacho gear is damaged. You can see the spiral here.. My guess is that on of the teeth had broken in there and made a mess of things. The camshaft was forced sideways and made a mess of the bearing bore. I tried everything thing to remove it without having to resort to further disassembly of the engine but no luck. I'd got the tacho pinion out but the alloy housing was all burred on the engine side of the cam spiral. there's a good visible .5mm (.020") of movement on the cam so the clearance is far too much. So I will pull the cam out. Hopefully the bearing journal is ok. I can clean it up in the lathe if just scuffed with alloy. I'll fabricate a new cam bearing block and bore it to get the exact factory nominal .0015 I've popped the rear cover off and this is where I'm at as I'm now away visiting mum. Great news is the rest of the engine appears in good condition. Very clean inside suggesting regular oil changes. The cam chain looks in good condition with plenty of life from what I can tell. I'm hoping I can carefully remove the headbolts, pop the top rockers off and replace the bolts with some spacers i'll machine up. Then the heads are still clamped while I remove the pushrods and flip the engine upside down. The cam followers will swing away from the cam and I can extract it. Ultimately if the engine is a good runner I'd be happy to give the heads and valves a birthday clean but I really dont want to pull it down further until I get a full gasket set. I'm also waiting to find out about the other potential cxs on offer.

Mildly uninteresting thread dredge. I nearly sold this. But I didn't try very hard.. I thought I'd need the money to fuel house things but I managed to find the putea elsewhere. So I basically left this in the old shed it's been in while I acquired house and built new shed, did concrete and internal constructions/wiring etc. I'm about to barn find my own car and drag it into the new shed, which is quite exciting. Such was my lack of enthusiasm for selling this I have continued to opportunistically aquire parts as and when they came up. I've picked up the missing rad support panel, another radiator and missing bonnet spring. Also got a triple carb manifold and a set of 40mm dellortos. The greatest score however has been this NOS rear valence panel, which the seller had misplaced then went cold on, but has now confirmed it's en-route. This was going to be the hardest bit to repair as it's a pretty funky shape so I'm stoked to have this piece of the puzzle.. Hoping there might be another update within the next 2 years!

Fun afternoon in the shed sorting out the Homer Simpson spice rack spec battery tray, was a last minute abortion addition back when the twincam went in that I didn't really want returning and new technology makes it much easier to sort. 3d scanned the left side of the engine bay, engine and carbs on top, firewall to the right, inner guard bottom with the front diff and engine mount on the left. Mounting points to pick up are the two studs in the firewall and one bolt hole on the engine mount which is not at all square to anything. Not to mention its bit of a tight fit in there between the engine mount, intake manifold and top wishbone mount. Throw the mesh into CAD and draw up something that misses all the important stuff. Send the pattern over to the CNC router and let a 2mm end mill chomp out a shape. Quick diversion to the bead roller on the way over to the folder, a quick weld on the MIG, fire on some rattle can and there we go Picked up the battery and a selection of oils this afternoon, can't be far off starting up eh?

The car back to a rolling state is one thing but the rusty wheels and balding tyres were always going to need attention. Back when I had the suspension sandblasted I also sent along the original wheels, in a state of no idea which way to run they ended up in primer when I really should have chased up powder coating options. Because of this, they ended up tucked away and deliberately ignored so I could continue kicking that can down the road. Giving up on painting as an option as picking a colour was just too hard, I made the call i'd send them in for powder coating once everything was up and running, easy, no stress for me, future Nick will work out what colour. Then in my usual too many beers on a Saturday night near a credit card style, a set of tyres ended up in the cart and those rusty rims just weren't gunna cut it. New tyres seen here under the 2nd new windscreen (i'll leave that story for another day) Needing new rims I was hoping for something to pop up on market place as its now winter, which used to mean cold weather and less desirable painting conditions, except its 2026 and winter no longer exists. a quick scotchbrite a makeshift spray booth and we have a set of pretty flash rims. As for colour choice, impulsiveness and only one suitable paint system on the shelf really made that easy, the same enamel i've been using for the underbody parts.

A couple more bits for the manual conversion. Have shifted houses, so car resides in a garage at home now, so I’m thinking I’m gonna attempt this at home, with the car up on axle stands. Probably in for a world of trouble and getting in over my head, but I want to see if I can DIY it.

Bit of an update. Bad news: The MGB has been sold Good news: I’m back in NZ so my Anglia should get the chance to receive some love. P.S I’ve moved to Auckland so if anyone wants a wrench hand hit me up.

When you go out when the weather is good, but it starts raining half way there (Waikino rail station @V8Pete)

started making a zorst for the POS.

Next is the sill. Here’s a glimpse of the horrors awaiting. Spent the afternoon removing the sill from the other car which looks promising but that’s it for this weekend.

I've finished wet-sanding ant cutting the shell and fenders. Came up passable for a home jobbie. I also re-vinyled the D-pillars and put in new door seals, new front indicators and polished up the rear lights. Next up is re-painting the doors.

With the gearbox back in, i could scan the top of the shifter bracket and the tunnel to make a boot to stop any potential fire/smoke/fumes getting into the cabin. One of the cool things in having the shifter bracket already designed is I could just import it and align it to the scan so had an easy base to design off. Couple of iterations later, I have the final boot printed in Bambu Lab TPU 95A 1.5mm wall thickness (using PLA supports) which gives it the needed flexibility. Really tidies up the shifter hole in the tunnel quite nicely.

Still chugging away on this project very slowly as fuel prices and work nonsense have drained my care factor. Managed to get the front brackets off the K10 chassis but there have been complications. Namely that the K10 steering box is rooted and is a rare type, so requires sending off to the states to repair rather than replace off the shelf. The transfer case needs rebuilding. Not a big deal as they have the kits on the shelf but it will be time/money. I haven't made my mind up yet but I'm considering just keeping it 2wd and getting a winch on the front for when I get stuck as well as an LSD or locker (if I'm feeling rich) for the boat ramp. The 14 bolt diff has a whine in it now owing to it being full of water when I rescued it from a 1980's square body so eventually it will have to be considered. Haven't made my mind up yet but if I stay 2wd, I can put the diffs under something else I have in the barn awaiting it's turn. In other news, I have ordered a new cast manifold (the factory ones all crack) and adapter kit in order to move the turbo to the top side. Should make piping a lot easier up that high too. I painted the transfer case so it at least doesn't look like a bag of shit.

Been a while since last update, moved house built new workshop and finally onto fitting up the new brakes, it stopped good before and now its even better plus the added looks factor, next mission coilovers shorten the diff fit the new wheels and get the cert updated

Almost a year later and still no real update but shifting things around is progress, I guess? We are still in our rental as our house build situation has had major delays due to local council, planner being absolutely useless and north power issues as well. So I've decided to look at shifting the 1300 into our garage here. I went through and took all the parts stored in the car across the last month and put them into the shed. Gave the shed a massive tidy up as well, as it's full of the kids junk and camping stuff. I'll look at booking the tow truck to shift it here hopefully in the next 2 weeks. From there I'll make a list and plan where to go with the build as ive got a little bit of money that i can throw at it and get a bit of motivation hopefully. Hopefully it will be less than a year for the next update haha. Chur

Oh and had a minor money wasting exercise The bike came with a crappy fiberglass front guard I ordered a drag specialties replacement one , they have a chrome bracket which I didnt want , and the rivets holding it together were loose and garbage. And it comes bare steel so I dunno how you are meant to paint it fully without drilling the rivets out to get paint everywhere So I thought I'd get a stock original HD one, ordered from a wrecker in Hamilton, asked for a straight one, for $195 i got sent a bent piece of junk , when I emailed to say it was bent etc he would not take it as a return , and told me a painter can fix it, so I guess spend another xxx amount on fixing it is my problem? So I'd suggest not buying anything off 'bears group/usa imports ' So then I had a look at everybody's favorite retailer of treasures from the orient, and took a punt not expecting great things , but its mint, better built than the drag specialties one, comes painted black, bolted straight up, good, problem solved

Rain!! I’m not working in that. To the shed. Couple of small rust repairs and a whole lot of clean up and it’s in epoxy.

Alongside all the big work I have been doing, there have been a few little jobs that don't really fit into their own post, so I'll throw a few together here Starting with repairing the oxygen sensor wiring. I don't quite know what happened here; maybe it got jammed into the crank pulley at some point? It was badly damaged, though This was a reasonably quick fix. I started by depinning the plugs, so I didn't waste a lot of wire, and then cut and crimped a new weatherproof connector on Next was a similar fix on the coolant fan switch, which had been bodged before (surprise surprise) This is the switch I removed from the housing. At some point, it had soldered on wiring, no plug in sight. Whilst this is the new switch The good news is that after some digging, I found it's a Sumitomo 6189-0033 connector, which was easily available with a tail on Aliexpress This is the butchered wiring, hacked into the original harness to solder onto the switch. The original wiring stops before the green sleeve, the rest is all just... garbage. This is after I removed the insulation tape that the soldered wires were wrapped in I cut the extension off, cleaned the wires up, stripped them and soldered on the new plug A quick wrap in fabric tape, and jobs a goodun Next, the new leads went on. I grabbed some nice NGK performance leads, which fit well, instead of the crappy universal ones that had been fitted Annoyingly, for some reason, despite getting a kit suitable for an Alto with the DOHC F6A, the lead from the coil was too short The original lead had to be patched up for now and will be reused until a genuine replacement lead arrives Moving along, since the driveline was now fitted, I could finally refit the shifter assembly. This is fairly straightforward, although make sure all the slotted bolts on the top and bottom are loose when fitting, otherwise you won't be able to fit the fixed rod onto the gearbox. Bolted in place with the new, correct rubber boot I never had the shift boot, though, as the car was missing it and had some weird rubber thing instead So with calipers in hand, Fusion installed, and a 3D printer, I made a little bracket Which screws into the underside of the console, sandwiching a universal "leather" boot in place I'm not in love with the cheap knob, but I'm pretty happy with how the boot looks and works. Much better than the stock floppy rubber boot that is meant to be fitted, too Next on the hit list was to replace the right front fog/indicator lamp, as a stone had hit it at some point and damaged it It turns out there was actually a chunk of glass floating around inside the light I grabbed a cheap replacement off Yahoo Japan. It was listed cheaply as "damaged" since the park light connector was damaged. The light itself is perfect I swapped the wiring, including my less-damaged connector from the damaged lamp to the new one And fit it to the bumper Finally, in preparation for the first start, I refit the exhaust. I started by removing the old rear muffler, as it was patched multiple times, filled with rust and just not going to cut it. It's a shame, I quite like the twin pipe outlet (there is a nice stainless Suzuki Sport muffler with twin outlets, but they are rare and expensive now) I then moved forward and began fitting the center pipe. Thankfully, the previous owner managed to save this, as when I got the car, it was missing, and turns out it was left with the engine builder who was looking at it, going "wtf does this go to?". I wasn't looking forward to forking out the cash on a new one. It also appears someone has previously cut out the cat, which is a good thing, given it would be nothing but a restriction these days I cleaned up the flanges, fitted a new hanger rubber and hung the pipe from it. Right up the front, I bolted it to the downpipe with a new sealing doughnut and bolts/springs. This was quite fiddly as the genuine bolt was short and hard to get started. I ended up leaving one bolt loose, pulling the pipe to the opposite side, using a jack to hold it there and then installing the other bolt. Finally, I could move to the back and install this glorious piece of stainless steel A Monster Sport Type SP-X muffler. This is one of the few mufflers that doesn't compromise ground clearance and goes over the rear beam, instead of under it. Before fitting, I gave the main muffler and the tip a quick rub down Being a quality JDM product, it bolted up first time, perfectly I really look forward to hearing what it sounds like. I have heard some examples online, but it won't be the same as hearing it in person. I think that's pretty much it for now. I'm waiting on a new radiator to arrive from Japan, and then we'll be going for a first start and run up to temp. Shouldn't be long now. Parts Used Fan Switch Plug - Sumitomo 6189-0033 Ignition Lead Set - NGK RC-SE41 (Coil Lead too short) Ignition Lead Separator - Suzuki 33881-82011 and 09408-00104 Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

Tumble Generating Valves or TGV. This generation was the first to use these, but only in certain markets at first. I didn't think mine would have them, but it does. It's a set of butterflies in the intake manifold just before the heads. So unlike earlier EJ20's the manifold is split into two parts, the last 10cm or so is where it has these butterflies. From what I've read, the first gen TGV's like these are only for emissions at cold start for about 30 seconds the rest of the time they are 'open'. So at cold start they are closed and the air is forced through a small gap, the idea is to create turbulence and a good fuel mixture, then once warm it does nothing....except create restriction... Here you can see the throttle plates and the thin gap that the air is forced through right next to the injector hole: So even when the plate are open, there is a thick shaft blocking air as well as the 'extra' wall to create the restricted path. Now I told myself, Subaru's are fragile, the best thing is to leave them stock standard. Don't modify it. BUT I HAVE TO WAIT A MONTH FOR HOSES.... YOU COULD JUST....you know that restriction sucks.... you could.... remove them right? No don't do it. OK the plates are out, that's enough, if you leave the shaft there it means the TPS's won't know the plates are gone and there won't be any engine codes. BUT THAT SHAFT IS BLOCKING AIR. OK take it out then.... BUT THAT WALL IS BAD. No wait what are you doing? STOP WTF ARE YOU DOING Jesus christ, why do I do this to myself.

One of the big hold-ups with the Alto was that the fuel tank was... less than ideal. I knew it wouldn't be in good shape, since the car had been sitting for years, but I had no idea what I was dealing with, so I needed to drop the tank. I couldn't risk the injectors getting clogged with rust. I could tell there was some fuel in it, and the gauge said it was "full", but could I trust it? Using a hand pump, I fed the hose in until it was in the fuel (which was surprisingly hard to do), and started pumping But I only managed to pump out about 5 litres or so. No matter what I did, the pump was coming up dry The fuel stank. It was old, but not 2012 old, and seemed relatively clear. Given that, I knew the tank wasn't completely empty, but the only option was to drop it anyway. I carefully removed the four bolts holding it in place, cut/removed the fuel hoses, removed the filter, undid the fill hose and breather and then lowered the tank on the jack. Turns out, it was actually pretty heavy.... certainly not empty. I started draining the rest of the tank by pouring it out through the inlet, and when that no longer worked, I removed the pump and sender and used a small hand pump to pump out the rest. Turns out, it was full to the brim with 30L of fuel. Stinky old stale fuel. The fuel pump gave me my first idea of what the inside of the tank was like. A bit crusty. It's also interesting to note that it's an upgraded DW200 pump, albeit it's seized solid. With the tank drained, I took it outside into the sun and had a good look inside it The pickup baffle was coated in surface rust, and the rest of the bottom of the tank was covered in a sticky fuel varnish There was a rusty tide mark about halfway up the tank. I suspect that for the first decade of sitting, it had half a tank in it, and as part of the previous owner's investigations to get the car running, the tank was drained and completely filled with fresh fuel. So that's where I got up to, for a couple of months. I ordered a replacement fuel pump to suit a Nissan S15 Spec S (non-turbo SR20DE) as I had heard this was a plug-and-play upgrade with a little more headroom than stock. I also rang the local radiator place to see if they could give the tank a clean out, but they were very non-committal and didn't seem keen to do it without "seeing it first". In the end, I ordered a KBS tank reconditioning kit to suit a "large" 45L motorcycle tank. I had previously used this kit on my old Yamaha tank, and it seemed to work well and was easy enough to use. It includes a cleaner, a rust killer and the actual liner, along with some gloves and instructions. I took the tank outside, and using duct tape, sealed up all the holes except the one I needed to pour the cleaner into first. Pouring in the required mix of 1:1 solution and hot water, I sealed the tank and alternated between sloshing it around and letting it sit. It was a lot of physical work to slosh the tank around so much. After the required time, I drained the tank and washed it out. I was pretty darn impressed, almost all of the varnish on the bottom of the tank was gone, and the metal was left very clean, albeit the surface rust was now obvious I did two rounds of cleaning to get it as good as I could. Before pouring in the next step, the rust killer, the tank needed to be dried out. I did this by stuffing a heat gun into the filler and got the tank hot Once the tank was dry, I moved onto the next step, pouring in the rust killer and then leaving it to sit, rotating the tank to a different side every 5 mins or so. I did this for about an hour, whilst doing other work on the car. This was then drained out, and the tank was thoroughly rinsed and then dried again The final step is to pour in the liner and slosh the tank around a lot, to make sure it coats all sides and gets in all the gaps. It took an age to start setting, and it seemed almost impossible to get the excess out, so I had to keep it moving around for a few hours. When moving it around, I had to be really careful as it seemed to have a habit of pouring through the holes at the bottom of the pickup baffle, and I couldn't risk them blocking up. In the end, I got the whole tank nicely coated, and the excess settled on the bottom of the tank. As an aside, whilst the tank was hot and soaking, I gave the top half a quick wire brush and blow over to make it more presentable. After a few days of drying, I was ready to refit the pump and sender. First, I needed to replace the pump and refresh the sender. I stripped the pump hanger The old and new pumps and the replacement filter bag (from Toyota, as this is apparently the same as the original Alto one; interestingly, it's the same as the one that came with the new pump). I should mention the reason I didn't use any genuine Suzuki bits for the pump was that none of it is available separately; it's only available as a now obsolete complete assembly. Checking the pump wiring, and it didn't look that hot. The ground screw was pretty crusty and the power feed had been badly crimped I cleaned up the ground screw and threads, and crimped a new terminal on for the feed wire Using the new little star clip thing, I fit the new filter to the pump This isolator is pretty old and crusty, but I couldn't find a replacement. Annoyingly, I had a problem where if I mounted the pump correctly, with the O-Ring in the top seated, the pump wasn't sitting on the isolator. It's the same size as the old pump, but if I pulled it down so it was seated on the isolator, the O-ring was barely engaged. I couldn't risk the o-ring leaking and losing fuel pressure. Looking around at what others have done, the solution was to cut off the O-ring receiver and replace it with a submersible fuel hose instead. So I ordered some hose Took the victim to the dirty bench And using a Dremel cut-off wheel, whizzed it off. Afterwards, I flared the end of the pipe a little by rolling a screwdriver around inside the pipe and putting pressure on the edge, just to give the hose something to bite into, not that it has anywhere to go if it did slip down This allowed me to mount the pump correctly A new seal was slipped over and fitted in place Before fitting it, I also took a look at the fuel sender. Using a multimeter, I checked it and found some wonky readings about halfway through the range. You can also see the tide mark of where the float was sitting all those years. I hosed brake cleaner through the gaps, and after actuating it, it got a bit better, but I really needed to open it up Using a small flatblade, I very carefully levered up the tabs holding the cover on and removed it You can see some buildup on the wires in the middle Using a fibreglass brush, I carefully cleaned up the wires and the face of the arm that contacts them. Testing showed that it was consistent across the range again I refitted the cover, gave everything a good clean and used a new seal and some new screws, I refitted the sender and pump to the tank As both were fitted now, I could refit the new hoses and wiring I then refitted the refurbished tank to the car Including a new fuel filter and new hoses I haven't had a chance to test anything, other than the pump before fitting, but hopefully I will be able to get some fuel into the tank soon, ready for its first start.

Working through the window hardware in my place. Pretty happy with the results. Phosphoric acid, watered down a bit and a soft metal brush bring it back. Paint gets the stripper treatment as wire brush wheel is too harsh.

More goods from ROCKAUTO.. heater hose and some cheap universal exhaust hangers that were on clearance. Rose-tinted glasses backhanded off by reality of 68 year old car, lol. What id envisioned as a couple of hours in the back corner spiralled to 2 days and more to go… You don’t see this bit when it’s on the chassis… Hmm this corner is soft. No wonder, there’s practically a scallop directing road splash into a wee nook..it was full of heavy bitumen but didn’t suffice. Had to sandwich a layer in there for the future trunk floor (This bit does taper towards the latch, I didn’t F it up) The weird transition in the corner was seam sealed to hell but let go from behind the lead join on the outer I’ve yet to whip out. I’ll seal it up again because it looks goofy uncovered In other news, $3885 for a windscreen delivered here. What in Tarnation!! Have a couple of others quoting, hoping to scrape something back from that. I’m in no hurry at all and with their stock order would be fine, but didn’t seem to translate on the bottom line! Onward

Another job I needed to get around to, was my gauges. The double sided tape holding my boost gauge in was failing. And the afr gauge was shoved crudely in some foam with equally shit double sided tape. I probably should have gone out and brought a 3d printer. But I didn’t. I couldn’t find an appropriate piece of steel in the garage, so an old oven tray now houses the gauges. There’s a handy void under the gauges. So loose coins, pens, etc, fall behind and my fingers aren’t long enough to reach.

I sent rear springs away and had them squished. I also refurbed wheels and went from 15*9 and 8 to 8 and 7. Deliberated for weeks over tyre size, finally got convinced by purists on reddit to go for OE size 205/55R15 in Bridgestone RE003. Nice tyre and drives great but I should have gone 205/50. Oh well, ragrets. If I get through these tyres I'll go lower profile. Looks better on blocks than on tyres. I'll lower front another inch soon. Eventually the heater valve let go, and the engine got warm. Didnt die but at that point I thought more power would be nice. I figured I'd kill too birds with one stone - more power and wreck current tyres. M52 has entered the chat. I bought this engine because it was ex-E38 7 series, so had the right sump for E30 swap. Turns out every other aspect of it was terrible.... Engine was coated in a thick layer of old oil/grease - I'm talking a 10mm blanket. Took days to get clean. Ended up waterblasting the fuck out of it to get bulk off then had the toothbrush and degreaser out. All areas exposed to oil were LOADED with carbon flakes. It was like someone had dumped a bag of coal in the fucking head. Plan was to put on M50 manifold, re-do gaskets and seals but leave head on and run it. Got to the end and then decided that was a clever time to do a compression test, which failed miserably. I'm talking zero, as the valves were so coated in grit and shit, that they wouldnt seat. Out came the socket set again, and took whole thing to bits. Did new rings and bearings. New rings were perfectly in spec, mean. The nikasil coating is amazing, still had factory cross hatching on it. Valves took about 8h to clean up. I should have sent them to the strippers but I did it mechanically. Never again, the buildup was like steel. My budget build ended up being: All new seals and gaskets rings and bearings head check and skim valves ground New valve stem seals M50 manifold with expensive hose kit New head gasket New RHD flywheel and Sachs standard clutch G240 box from M44 powered car Rebuilt shifter New CCV system etc All new rad hoses and coolant lines New big E36 radiator E36 fan clutch with E30 fan on backwards Rebuilt vanos E90 booster/master with F10 reservoir (fits mint!) I used a combo of E36 and E38 looms. Pulling out the auto stuff took ages but well worth it. I wired up alternator wrong and cooked it. Took starter apart for a look and broke planetary shit. So got new starter and alternator. Put an M3 loom cover on firewall to spruce it up. Ran mean but injectors were so loud. I'll cut to the chase - it was a failed cam sensor (insulation) meaning the ECU was batch firing. New sensor solved it.