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Picked up the clutch MC seal kit from town while there for the weekly shop. Got home, removed the fuel tank to gain access to the pedal box, removed the cylinder and stripped it. Like I said , its been 5 years since I last had it apart. I'd like to blame this time span for forgetting what the main seal looks like. Or I could just blame my own stupidity for not looking up Imp seal kits before ordering what I thought was the right kit in because what I'd bought doesn't look much like what I needed. Oh well. The seal doesn't look too bad, nor the bore too worn. The seal could have sharper edges for sure but it would just have to do because I wanted to go out for a good drive the following day. I'll sort out replacements for the future. I reassembled it all and Hannah helped me bleed the system, again. Seems ok so we got all the blankets that used to be in the car and covered the rear parcel shelf in a bid to quieten down the engine thrum. This morning dawned a bit chilly with high cloud. Since it was about 6 degrees I used that as a chance to further tune the cold start. Once warmed up I tried sorting out the hot start. It would always start but then die unless I held the throttle open and let it settle to idle. If I didn't hold the revs up it would stumble into in the low revs/high load area on the main fuel map and I thought that was too rich. So I leaned those bins out. Got sick of mucking about and we went for a drive. By the time we got near our morning coffee destination the sun was out and it was lovely! We had a date to meet up with another oldschooler and there he was, waiting with his small rear engined noisy toy by the beach. I took some pics. Its one of the few cars that makes the imp look large... Dylan went for a hoon in my imp and then I in his x19. The various folk about the carpark with their dogs and kids must have had a giggle. We both must have looked clown like emerging from these tiny low cars. I'm 6'2" and Dylan is even taller. It was great to try out a x19 with a proper amount of power and it sounds great. I'm looking forward to when my Imp is properly sorted so we can do some spirited cross country drives. My throttle tip in from idle was a bit sensitive and inclined to bog down making it tricky to get used to. After a good coffee we parted ways and Hannah and I went home. On the motorway (Tasman 'motorway' that is.. there's like 3 areas with decent passing lanes) I was able to see how it was at higher speeds. It cruises along effortlessly at 100kph pulling around 2900rpm. Luckily the 'its getting boring now' exhaust boom is not around that zone. I'm going to have to do some work to the exhaust and try to tune out some of the drone. I have ideas already on how. Before getting home Hannah took some driveby vids. Once home I threw them together and popped them up on the tube. It sounds great. This is the first time I have heard it properly as such. Please do it justice and listen to the vid on a decent sound system because phones won't do the low notes any favours. Once home I had a play with the off idle area of the tune. I started by adding fuel back to the area I'd removed it this morning and this improved it muchly. I tweaked it, tested it, tweaked it until it was now much easier to open the throttle from idle without going lean and lurching. Then the hot start issue. Turns out I just needed to add more seconds to the 'crank to run taper time' in idle control. 5 seconds wasn't enough. Just kept adding time until its started and settled gently down to idle. Those who have tuned their own efi projects will understand just how satisfying this shit is and also how frustrating it can be until you learn what needs to be done. So I ended the days tuning on a little high and decided to tinker no further so left it at that. I put the imp on the hoist, up in the air and checked for leaks. But for a tiny weep from one bolt area there's nothing. In fact, touch wood, this is now the least leaky of all our vehicles!

Fixing pulleys I've been pulling the whole friggen motor apart just to get the front timing cover off, and pulleys out. Easy work, but not much fun. I count my blessings that it's a carina and not an MR2 or whatever. The oil pan had a bunch of chain tensioner debris in it. No glitter in the oil so hopefully we're good. New exhaust pulleys have turned up, so will need to spin up some covers for them on a lathe and thread into the bolts. Should be fairly straight forward. Damaged valve seat / head So that little piece of debris that jammed into a valve seat? Maybe not such an issue after I knocked it out of place. Since each valve has its own port, I figure it should be easy to see if a valve is leaking by pouring some petrol down each runner. So I did that, and the level on both stayed exactly equal for about half an hour with no sign of leaks. So hopefully we've got a good seal that'll not cause any problems, even if not ideal. Should I pull the head off? probably. But if I pull the head off and there's some major problem, the head is toast anyway. So I may as well just see how it goes. engine tidy up stuff / more metal printing Mega excited when this stuff turned up! There are a few rough patches from where they had to remove supports, but not much of it is really visible. I'm amazed at how flat the flanges on the manifolds are. The manifolds are 100% usable parts as soon as I've finished tapping threads for the throttles. The fuel rails need to have the injector holes and end holes 1mm undersized, so these will need to be finished on CNC. But honestly this is just incredible. Now with the carbon rails and the printed pulleys/manifold/fuel rails. The total assembly is around 2.3kg per bank. Not too sure what it was before, but it's a fair chunk lighter. This month's car budget was money well spent I reckon. I cant find one of the throttles which has the tab to bolt the fuel rail onto it which is annoying. So I cant put the second bank together. Ahh it will turn up somewhere. I might get the trumpets printed from thin alloy as well so it all looks similar. I'm not so keen to keep the black print on the trumpets as it de-features them a bit too much. When it should be the main eye catching feature. I might paint the rails more of a gun metal sort of colour, and paint the tabs matte black. But this will tidy up the top of the motor by a huge amount.

After settling down from all the excitement I had a little break from the car for a day or two while I got some other stuff done. Plus it was raining cats and frogs outside. We ended up getting 160mm (6.2" for those imperial folk) of rain in two days. I made a rough plan on what I'd do next to iron out some of the issues. The leaks and clutch were the most urgent. We bled the clutch again. It seemed fine in use on the hoist with Hannah in the car working the pedal in and out while I turned the rear wheels. Bite point still roughly in the middle of travel. But I'm still going to look at the master cylinder because from a peek under the dash it doesn't look that flash... It has been playing up (bite point getting low) with the Datsun engine and it's not been touched in the 5 years since first getting this imp on the road. There's a seal kit waiting for me in town and I'll see how good it comes up. The leaks next. I had a suspicion that the little vent hole in the filler tube was letting oil squirt out as the oil splashed up the tube. I wanted to work out where the majority of oil was coming from before taking the next steps. Plus I wanted to drive the car some more before mucking about taking things apart. So I folded up this oil shield with a folded edge that hopefully catches the oil... 'The oil shield 2000' bolted up below the cam belt cover... Now I can go for another hoon. But I need to easily spot my revs (because until tuned I'm not going to blindly go bouncing it off the limiter). My rev counter wasn't working off the signal from the coil pack. I'm not sure what kind of signal that puts out or if indeed its working properly at all. So I swapped the signal wire over to the one from the megasquirt. Still nothing though. The rev counter, being an old cheap thing ($7 from the swap meet) needs a high voltage spike like it gets from the negative terminal of the ignition coil. Enter stage left a spare relay. I took it apart, removed switch plate leaving just a little coil... Made this little harness.. Ignition voltage flows through the relay coil to the ecu tach signal wire. The rev counter tach signal wire is connected to the ecu side of the coil. Each time the current is switched off by the ecu it creates a voltage spike to the old rev counter so emulating an old ignition setup. This was a fun little job made nicer by having 'driven' the imp out into the sunshine. The ground had already dried nicely after the rainy weekend, the sun was hot and it was nice to be working in natural light. Fitted the little 'Ignition spike generator 2000' in place and now I have a working rev counter... I'd also folded up a bit of alloy, stuck some double sided tape on and remounted the water pump controller angled upwards so I could read the bloody thing ^ Note how generally untidy that lot is. I really want to remove the lot, put it in a bin and rebuild my own dash and instruments. That is future Alex's job though. Time for a second drive. Boy its quick! I let it get up to about as hot as it could and did a spot of auto tuning. The tune was improving all the time as I tried to drive in as many areas on the fuel map as I could. I still didn't want to drive for too long because I was aware that the oil leaks were no doubt covering the whole back of the car with a fine mist of muck but I gave the throttle a bit more jandal (actually bare foot) and took it up to 5k. A mix of genuine surprise, shock from going that quick in the imp and mechanical sympathy held me back from going any higher. Its wicked! It really snarls. Very much looking forward to getting better footage including some drive by clips so I can give a you all a better idea. Its much quicker than I was expecting from what should be a stock 100bhp (but could well be less or maybe a little more) and I figure its the 115lbft torque that's making it feel so punchy and fun. Once back home and into the workshop it was up into the air to see where the oil splatter was at its worst. Sure enough most of it was around the filler cap area. That vent hole. Luckily its very easy to undo one screw and remove the filler neck. See the little hole here, above the screw hole... I filled it in with some quiksteel epoxy putty and refitted it with a smear of sealant around the joint and screw head just to be sure. I also made this. Its a cablestay 2000. It stops the O2 cable from going for a sneaky wander across the top of the oil filter pedestal and straying too close to the exhaust headers... One other issue I have been thinking about (too much) is the coolant system not getting hot enough. From extensive sofa residing google searches there's a few Davies Craig pump/controller combo owners in colder climates who can't get their cars up to temp, or at least not very quickly. Interestingly it was often Triumph car owners. Stags and Dolomites etc. The controller chip runs the pump through 3 main settings. At warm up runs the pump for 10secs on, 30 off until it reaches 20 degrees below the user defined target temp. Then it goes to 10 on, 10 off. At 5 degrees before target temp it has a lineal ramp up to pump on full time. Ideally it should be able to pump slower or for less time when its cold outside because on these colder days (circa 10-15 degrees) takes quite a long time to get up to even 80 degrees if the target temp is say 90-95. I was getting a bit too thinky about all this, doing lots of frantic googling and getting ready to type a strongly worded email to Davies Craig. I was also prepping to build a thermostat housing, just as some had on various threads I'd read. I even bought some alloy. I wasn't keen on this happening though. Adding restriction is one of the main reasons for premature pump failure (according to other threads..) plus it was going to be adding more ugly things to go wrong. But common sense prevailed... Goldwing engines seem to sit at around 87-90 degrees when cruising right and while they can happily handle more heat I have no need to chase it. Its pretty cold here. About as cold as I'd normally expect to see when I might be out in the car. Summer is bloody hot. Be happy it stays cool easily. Finally.. up the target temp a few degrees higher so the controller sits in the lowest flow rate possible. Rest easy me. So we went for another drive this evening. A good strop. Up some hills. Did more tuning. Tried to see as much of the fuel map as we could and let the program do its thing. It was getting better all the time although the fuelling will only end up as efficient as what I have set as targets. If I have that wrong then it'll always be wrong. Lots of driving to do so I can tune areas more by the seat of my pants and what feels right. But it was already much better and I was getting more confident and it was fun. Not so much for Hannah who was trying to hold onto the door and the laptop at the same time though. Clutch seems to be holding ok and the bite point seems ok but I'm still replacing that seal. At one point we heard a sound and saw something bouncing on the road in the cars wake. I stopped and checked the engine bay. Nothing amiss. Then I looked at the oil level (that little light under the cap never gets boring..) and the level was down. Hmmm. No signs of oil mess on the rear though. Maybe its just the oil level when the car is idling and hot... We drive up the road again and spot that the thing I must have clipped with my wheels was a bit of roadside marker. Go home now. Play is over. Its getting dark. Onto the hoist... No signs of mess at all on the back like the last two drives. Have a look under the car.. Clean as. The slightest hint of oil on one rear sump bolt. But no drips. Result !!! It must have been that vent hole. The low oil level? I checked it with the car on the ground again hoping it had risen as the oil drained back but no. Then I released the cap and the oil level in the filler tube rose. Ha. It's that well sealed. But really it needs a vent so there's no pressure changes. I'll have to look into it because I don't want oil pissing either. Going to be tricky with such a low cap. Other things I have done is go on more romantic dates with Hannah to the wreckers where we looked for bits. I got these to try out for the basis of my custom instruments. If I can get the speedo head working fine with my Toyota speed sensor then I'll strip it further.

So when the mk3 Zephyr v8 project fizzled, the hunt was on for a rat rod body. She works at a V8 shop so we tend to hang out with older gents and the lively ones have rats & traditional hot rods that mostly cruise around the shows or let rip at private paddock racing and dirt track events which is our speed too! Half of the affordable bodies and projects on the market were rubbish on ute chassis, 4drs or British. My one stipulation was that it had to be of American lineage.. a real hot rod! Then this came up on TM, dollar reserve or something silly. The owner used to have Moorehouse Muscle Cars so he knew what’s up, but had decided to liquidate and concentrate on a couple of cars. The fact is was complete, going and local was huge for us, and for me.. Flathead Ford! I went and had a look one lunchtime and it had a good vibe. It was built by all the well known rodders in the area in 2006 for the upcoming Muscle Car Madness show but sat for the last 10+ years. The bidding got a bit furious and double what it had been sitting at for a week, but she got it for 12.5! The bloke said when building it, they stopped counting at $25k! Plates are dead but we got the ownership papers from the 70s! - cab stretched 6in so fatties can fit in - engine from 37 Tudor, 24 stud - rad and grille from 37 pickup - V8 3 speed and diff - leather re-used from 39 ford seat - trued ‘35 wire wheels (went through 30 odd rims to make a perfect set!) - 39 Ford front end, 30 Model A chassis - hydraulic brakes - 12ft aerial with flags - exhausts & RR shocks off a Harley - lots of funky old accessories, gauges work and good oil pressure. It fires right up with a tiny amount of choke (a push- pull from an aeroplane) and rumbles away like a fucking champ. It’s like driving a farm implement, way back to basics! The steering box had so much slop it was using both lanes so that got replaced! Means we had to run a different steering wheel, it’s off an old speedboat. It had no brakes when we got it. I tried to save it ( new master cyl) but it wouldn’t pump up. Its mounted below the cylinders so I had to make a sealed raised bleeder thing. Didn’t work, pulled it apart and found it hadn’t aged well just sitting. Got another and started getting somewhere but still fuck all pedal. They don’t have an oil filter so I got some flash Penrith shelley mineral oil made just for these old donkeys. once I finally got the huge 2in hex sump bung off, felt about an inch of sludge in the sump! Couldn’t put my flash oil on top of that so off came the sump. These things are simple as, but there bloody awkward and tight to work on. Foul words were said. Sump gaskets were almost fossilised but there was a swapmeet that weekend and managed to find a gasket and seal set! All back together and it was time for its first outing, Rust n Dust! We’ve been for a few years but never drove the track. A-framed out behind the XD, we had a fucking ball! Did everything it should, no damage and drove up the driveway afterwards. The brake pedal came right after some use too! Has been in Petrolhead and NZ Hotrod mags June/july! The community are great and always willing to help. The grille proportions are off and we picked up a factory grille shell but it’s tiny so we’d have to do a new radiator. I’ll trim are re-position the grill shell with the smaller radiator so we can chop and change styles. She wants it lower, which isn’t as easy as cutting springs.. but its really handy not having to be careful, plus Irishman’s rally requires some clearance.. pipe dream but would be a fun trip. The exhausts are a bit wack so some headers will make their way on when we find some Its Running 12v coil and bulbs but 6v generator so doesn’t charge..might pick up a later 12v setup one day but probably not.. dont drive at night!

Alright so a few things learned from the printed manifolds. The throttles are held on with M6 bolts, and an M6 metric thread needs a 5mm hole to tap the thread into. So I made these holes 5mm diameter in the model, and had it printed that way. Unfortunately though I ended up fully stripping one of the threads out while being a noob tapping it. Thanks @flyingbrick for helping to do the rest, after I lost my tap before getting to the 2nd manifold... I've been a bit concerned that given the way these are printed. Any outside surface of the part is right on on the border of "stuck together" or not. Any surface layer might be a little weaker than the inside of the print that is fully printed on all sides of that material. So when I have a 5mm hole printed, 5.25mm or 5.5mm might be "weak" material because it's close to the edge/surface. (Not actually sure if this is true, speculating) But if that is the case, it's horrible news for tapping into a hole that's already the right size. So next time I will print the holes at only say 2.5mm or 3mm. Then drill to tap size, then tap. Also, although my flange is fairly thick at the point where the throttles bolt on. Which is good for overall strength. Since there are recess needed for the dowels in the throttles, the actual threaded portion is only about 5mm thick / half way down. Which I dont think is enough for aluminium that is going to have bolts winding in and out of it, on a semi regular basis. For the sake of a few extra bucks, next time I will run any threaded sections for as long as possible, ideally right through the model. To put my mind at ease for these existing manifolds, I've loctited in some threaded rod, and have added a nut to the underside to add a little more stability to the thread. Yes I will tidy up the cut ends... I still need to get the fuel rails machined. We can use the same programming that was loaded onto Dad's CNC for the previous rails we drilled. However the CNC is out of action at the moment, some sort of power supply problem which is a pain. I also almost forgot that I had printed a little throttle cable bracket as well. I nearly threw out the box while it was still in it. With everything all together, I think its looking a bit better. that before. Definitely need to swap out the black trumpets though. Oldschool drag day is 144 days away, and I'm determined to make it this time. Need to get some of the critical remaining parts (like the firewall) started/finished before then! And hopefully no more engine blow ups... Will most likely be taking it to get tech inspected, it's unlikely I'll have a wof/reg/cert by then.

The car is still sitting outside while I've needed the garage space for other stuff. So I've not made any further progress on pulling the engine back apart. However, seeing how well the metal 3d printing went, how expensive it wasnt, and how strong the parts are. I've decided it's time to make some ITB adapters that are a little less delicate than printed nylon. Printing manifolds from nylon is awesome, and I'm amazed this is a possibility to get usable parts this way. However it takes a lot of care. It feels like I'm one poorly timed fart away from over tightening a bolt and stripping threads. Since everything can be super thin if it's printed from metal, I've started my model again from scratch. About 3 billion hours later: This version now has balance tubes between the throttles. As eventually I will need to connect up PCV / brake booster and maybe an IACV if needed. Also improves behavior at part throttle a bit. I've tried to make the tubes structural-ish to help support the top flange. Then the underside of the flanges have as much material scooped out as I think I can get away with. Then same goes for the main flanges. I have added some cross bracing that I hope will add a little strength, and a raised perimeter. I'm really just guessing on what will add strength, as I dont have any of the stress analysis tools available. I could get these with the paid version of F360, but there's no point spending $200 a month (or whatever) on software that is going to save me $30 on a one off print. ha. I'm tempted to just pull the trigger and get these orders underway. However I know I should really print some plastic ones from PLA just to test fit everything and be 100% sure. So will make a start on that tomorrow and maybe a bit of progress on getting the motor apart.

Picked these boys up today, 185/55-14 Kumho. Turns out there are very few options in this size... They are pretty much exactly the same weight as the CD58's. Now it turns out that the hub is a bit thicker on these so the bolts won't work, there is only a few mm of engagement. Stink. Now if I was the sort of boy who were to research the fitment of these rims relentlessly and thoroughly I would have realised this early on and come to the party prepared.... Which I am and so I did. These arrived from Midwest Bayless a week or so ago. I also drew up and printed some centercaps with the 'Fiat' logo with a nod to @h4nd's ever useful input into things. So then I simply bolted the boys on, although as per my research I removed the front factory 5mm spacer. The previous tyres were a bit bigger at 175-70/13 so must have clearanced things a bit cos there is very little rubbing. I may need to heat the inner guard a bit and push it in but Ill wait til the rubbing shows up well. Anyway, that shit looks fucking goooood. And it feels much tighter on the road, so a complete win.

A kindof boring and wordy update now You may have seen the discussion thread for this where I noted that the car had developed a light rattle/cyclical vibration somewhere in the engine. This was disappointing but not surprising, in reality I should have stripped it right down to check shit when it was out. But at the same time it had only done 6000kms or so since I sold it, and it basically had a new engine, and it looked ok when I pulled a few things. The noise was weird as it had a cyclical quality every couple of seconds, like something with a wee bit of weight was being slowly rotated while undergoing vibration. I couldn't think what that could be in the engine, and otherwise it sounded like a roller bearing gone bad. @GregT suggested excessive camshaft endfloat, I checked that and the most I could see was 0.3mm, so probably not that. So then I loosened the cambelt to check the tension bearing, that felt ok. Then I took off the v belt and checked the water pump and alternator, they also felt ok. But as I was reinstalling that I noticed some fuckery with the long lower alternator bolt, it looked like the head wasn't sat in its little recess. When I looked I saw that there was no nut at all on the bolt. So I found a suitable locknut and put it back together. Tonight I took it for a quick run to check things and the noise appears to be gone. I will check again but I am hoping it is as simple as that... Also as discussed elsewhere @yoeddynz and I did a little drive swapping the other day, I was super pleased to be able to have a go in the Imp, it was a good time and I felt a certain privilege. It goes very well considering its early state of tune/refinement. Here is the only pic I took of it laying rubber into the distance; Alex pointed out that my throttle feel was not all it could be (TBH I thought he liked it stiff and hard), so a few days later I rejigged the mechanism at the throttle to make it seat at idle a bit better. This meant I could remove the hacked in extra spring that was making things stiffer. Then I reduced the amazing amount of slop in the pedal linkage itself, so that all feels a lot nicer now.... I didnt take any pics of any of this so I leave you with it looking rather fetching in its shiny new boots...

All other project have ceased due to lots of distractions. Distraction number 1 has been the cnc plasma, which is an excellent distraction. However distraction number 2 has been my digger requiring one hell of a birthday. It was my old man's, I inherited when he died a few years ago. It had been running hot forever and his solution was to add an electric fan, which is kindof great as we got many hundreds more hours of work out of it. Anyway, inevitable happens and it finally released the smoke, so I found a Kubota ride on with the same little d722 3 cylinder diesel in it, @ThePog kindly collected from somewhere local to him, only 1200 hours on it which was perfect. The old motor was so farked. Cracked head, piston slap, run bearings etc. It actually still ran, surprisingly. So out with the old, in with the new Have then spent last 4 evenings and the weekend prepping and painting. Will blow a fresh coat on this week. The factory paint job was obviously shit as it was flaking and surface rusting very randomly. I'm hopinh it will come up a treat.

Didn't need it, but too cheap & enough of it left, to leave it where it was. Dead reg NZ new 1955 Chevrolet, 6 cylinder manual. Probably equates to a 210 model offshore. The last rego label reads 1979, was a donor for a 57 being put back on the road since the 90s. The door cards, rear plate, air cleaner and gearbox are in the boot. The floors are poked, as are some corners, sills and roof. Nothing horrendous. Under all the shite there are GM rubber floor mats which will have accelerated the rot. My brother reckons he has a freshly rebuilt Blueflame 6 he inherited from a job years ago so thats what shall power it. Plan is to just source all the missing parts and make the exterior look complete, make it start and stop. In the meantime it’s garden art! Have scored tail light surrounds, front and rear badges and surrounds, some interior trim and a front flasher we weren’t missing but the guy didn’t want. Ive got a few things on, so while it’s hard.. I’m trying to keep it at arms length. Some cool rubbish found so far:

3d print all of the things! Fuel rails, at the best of times, are about as interesting looking as soviet era apartment blocks. If you're lucky theyre tucked away down low somewhere mostly out of sight. However mine are right in your face up top and currently they're pretty ugly. Despite me using the smallest fuel rail extrusion I could find, they ended up huge and surprisingly heavy. Not the end of the world to have ugly fuel rails, and hardly a top priority to remedy the issue. However its the first thing you see in the engine bay. So it mildly annoys me that they suck. Back to the drawing board for a new version. I wanted to tuck these in a bit closer to the throttles and have a bit more of an organic shape. Fingers crossed they work out good! Hopefully this stuff turns up in a week or two, and I can sit it all on top of my broken engine.

Well today was a big day.. slab is done! Mate started at sun up prepping for the arrival of concrete like setting up the rebates and conduit locations while concrete pump guys were there doing hose things. Ordered 20m3 and it used all of that with only what was left in the hoses as leftover. After 3.5 hours of pour and laying, mate and his son spent the following 5-6 hours doing concrete magic to the slab.

When in context with modern cars you realise that this thing is absolutely tiny. I was 6'3' the last time I checked, it must look like a fucking clown show when I get in or out.

First Rally completed, some what successfully as well

I'm still slowly ticking off jobs on the whiteboard, and although this wasn't a "pre-wof" job, I wanted to get it done before a couple of other jobs in the queue that were. Back in Feb I reinstalled the refurbished and tested heater box, but I never actually connected the heater core to anything, presuming that I would do it later. I'll tell you now, I wish I had at least fit a pair of 90 degree hoses off the heater core when it was out and easy to access, instead of doing it in the car. The plan here to was get the heater connected and working, before installing the carpet into the car, just in case it did decide to spring a leak, it won't damage the carpet. A while ago I ordered 1 meter of 51mm flexible ducting from Aliexpress to run from the outlets on the bottom of the heater box and up to the windscreen vents, this will allow me to direct air to the windscreen to demist it. This fits inside the plastic 90 degree joints on the bottom of the heater box, and on the outside of the dash vents, as per factory. I installed the vents into the dash first. These were a real pain in the backside to get into place, and work out which one went on which side. I got there in the end, and then cut some ducting and slipped it into place, using duct tape to seal and secure it. The driver's side is a bit less fun as there is less space to work and more wires in the way Unfortunately, after all the faffing about getting the dash vent in place, for whatever reason, it turns out the vent doesn't clear the speedo on the three-dial cluster and no amount of forcing it was going to allow them to share the limited space available. I don't know if this is because the car originally had two dials and the vent is different, or if I was doing something wrong, but in the end, I removed the dash vent, and zip-tied the duct to the dash structure. This still blows out through the slot in the dash, it's just not as directed as it should be. It's better than nothing. Speaking of the dash cluster, once I refitted it, and the steering wheel (since I removed it to give me more space to work under the dash), I refitted the steering wheel center pad for the first time since I got the car. This wheel is only until the car is on the road and then I have a nice aftermarket one to fit, but it's a milestone nonetheless. Who doesn't love a good plughole of despair? Testing the vents with the functional two-speed blower showed ample air being blown in the general direction of the windscreen. The next step was to actually hook up the heater core to the cooling circuit. This required me to obtain a couple (2-3) meters of 1/2" heater hose, and a pair of "Z" hoses (universal hoses that have a 90 and a 45 degree bend with a couple of straights, for cutting to fit). I also obtained a brass joiner, and brass "ball" valve. The Z hoses are to give me a pair of 90 degree fittings out of the heater core. I'm not running the standard heater valve that mounts to the box and is controlled with the cable, as I don't have a good one, and replacements are expensive. I don't care much for needing to change the temp often, so I chose to regulate the temperature with a ball valve in the hose instead. Winter mode, and summer mode. Because I'm not running the standard heater valve, I needed the hoses to clear the brackets immediately in front of the heater core outlets and then exit through the hole in the firewall. A normal hose would kink when trying to bend that sharp, so it had to be a 90 degree moulded bend. The upper heater core pipe is above the one visible, completely blocked by the bracket Z hoses are perfect for this sort of thing. I found these Aeroflow silicone ones locally at a reasonable price I cut the 45 off and shortened the 90 so it would fit I then proceeded to fight with the hose for the next half hour or so, trying to get it fully onto the upper pipe. The space is limited, and the visibility is zero, so it was all done by feel, and I sure felt the sharp bits digging into me. I was very close to just giving up on fitting the heater, it was fighting me that hard, but eventually, with both hands up under the dash, my head on the trans tunnel and my legs hanging out of the car, it finally slipped into place. The next fight was the hose clamp, getting that into place and tightening it, but we won't go into that. The lower hose was much easier to fit, it more or less pressed into place and the clamp went on without much fuss. Now that I had both stubs of hose poking through the firewall, I sprayed some silicone spray on the rubber grommet and pressed it onto the hoses and into the firewall. I had previously looped the heater hoses at the engine, as the previous owners had too (albeit their loop was a lot longer and had a joiner in the middle of it) A bit of research showed that the top heater hose was the one that went to the standard heater valve, so that's the one I fit the tap into I had also seen in photos that the hoses are usually secured to the inner wing by a pair of P clamps. I located a hole that would've been where a self-tapper went into I hate using coarse threaded screws to secure things, so drilled it out a bit further After coating it with some Rover Zircon Blue paint, I whacked an M5 Rivnut into it This allowed me to use a pair of P clamps to secure the hoses in place, keeping them tucked up nicely I then quickly juggled the old loop hose, spilled some coolant, and connected the two heater hoses It's quite a nice tidy setup, and I'm quite proud of how well it has worked out. When the red lever on the valve is in line with the hose, the coolant is flowing in that direction, turn it 90 degrees and it's closed. While I was there, spilling coolant on the floor, I also removed and swapped the coolant temp sender. I had never seen the coolant temp gauge rise, even when the coolant was warm enough to cycle the fan, so I wanted to see if replacing the sender helped. I believe the old one was original and is marked Smiths. The terminal was wiggly, which I'm not sure if it's meant to be The replacement went straight in without issue. Before firing the car up to take it outside and bleed the cooling system, I quickly filled the hole in the floor for the shifter. Originally this would've had a lump of foam around the shifter shaft and covered by a nice "leather" shift boot with a metal ring I have all these parts, but the boot is so manky you wouldn't want to touch it, let alone install it in the car. I plan to remake the shifter and handbrake boots in the same tan vinyl as the door cards, but in the meantime I just wanted to block it off so the WOF man wouldn't be looking at the road during its test. I bought a MK2 boot from a nice fellow Marina owner, and figured I could make it work. This is the less attractive once-piece rubber deal, which was also used on some UK MK1 cars I removed the surround plate from the floor and inserted the rubber boot. It turned out that almost all the holes in the boot lined up with the surround, so it screwed in nice and easy It's not perfect, I suspect cars that are meant to have this boot will have a larger opening in the surround plate, that locates in a ridge on the bottom of the boot, but mine has a smaller opening to support the metal ring of the standard boot. It still works though, and seals the cabin from the outside world. And with that done, I topped the radiator and expansion tank up and started the car. It really needs some nice new fuel, the old stale fuel makes it really hard to start, but the replacement starter is bliss to use and the engine turns over quickly every time. Eventually the engine fired up on all cylinders and settled into a nice fast idle. I jumped in, popped it into gear and headed for the garage exit. I didn't quite make it the first time before the cold engine bogged down, so I rolled back and gave it another go, with more revs, and a bit of a run-up to get up my steep driveway. Apparently, this also meant that I did a nice unintentional single-wheel burnout in the garage Just can't harness all that OHC power! But make it we did. Once outside I got the hose out and gave the engine bay a quick hose down to wash out all the coolant I had spilled (and all the dirt and muck from years of sitting). This little burst of "cleaning" ended up in the Marina finally seeing the first "wash" of my ownership. Yes, it was only a hose down, but already it's a lot cleaner. It's crazy how much dirt was washed away, after 20+ years of sitting and 3 years of me cutting, grinding, and sanding. It's no show car, or even clean, by any stretch of the imagination, but at least I can touch the panels without getting filthy now. Even with me blasting the car with the hose, the interior was reasonably leak-free, except where expected. The front windscreen leaks like a sieve (expected, the seal is wrong and doesn't fit), the rear windscreen has a tiny leak in the bottom corner, and the front quarterlight windows leaked a little too. Once the windscreen seal is replaced, the others should be fine to handle a little rain if I happen to get caught out. The whole time it was outside the engine was just happily ticking over at idle, with the fan cutting in and out as needed. On a huge plus, the temp gauge now works. So what of the heater? well, I can confirm it blows nice warm air around the car, and if you leave it idling with the heater on, the blower on fast, and with the windows up, it becomes uncomfortably warm inside the car. Great success. As far as I can see, there are no coolant leaks and everything is doing as it should. Next, sound deadening and then carpet.

Also; after work I took it for a quick drive to see how the gearstick felt and sounded which was way better all round. But when I pulled in towards the shed I could see what looked like a largish puddle of oil on the shed floor. I got out to check and thats exactly what it was I park up and look under and there is a small flood of oil falling out of the engine. I tried hard not to, but I couldn't help but feeling a bit disappointed... I then tried to trace it back to some sort of source that wasnt the main crank seal and I can see traces up quite high on the engine. So I start the engine to see if a bit more pressure won't force more out and voila, there is a bit of a river coming out of one of the tappet cover bolt holes. You can see the culprit right there, my last noise source check must have split it when I tightened it down. Fortunately I had a spare handy that I had ordered in case my cursory investigations when I first had the engine out meant I had to replace it. I probably need to find some degreaser to wash off what remains but basically that was another surprisingly easy fix.

So back to fixing this problem: The simple thing to do, is use a lathe, make up a small round disc, drill the bolt, fit a cap screw and job done. I measured it up, and there's about 6mm clearance from the front cover to the face of the pulley. I definitely do not need to do any metal 3d printing to fix this basic problem So I drew these up, since they are quite tiny parts it's affordable to get them printed from titanium. 3d printed titanium seriously! What a time to be alive. This shit is crazy. Be cool to see how they turn out. Exhaust VVT pulleys are 1.2kg each which is stupidly heavy. So unless they're giving some exceptionally good power or economy gains, they'll likely go in the bin for some lighter fixed pulleys at some point. Definitely do everything possible to keep the intake side VVTI though, which has been well proven to earn it's keep.

Getting that bracing out of the way meant I could get back onto the list of pre-quarter welding jobs. As a refresher, this is what I mean: - Pinch weld seam repairs IN PROGRESS - Repair Cert IN PROGRESS - Properly paint inaccessible areas NOT YET STARTED Getting the last little bit before the repair cert done was a doddle. Because I used a home-made spot weld drill to unpick the majority of the seam welds along the quarter panel, the resultant holes were a bit scruffy, and the second layer had been a bit munched in a few cases. To sort that, I opted to replace the outer edge of most of the affected panels. It's not a flawless metal-finished result, but it's well within a coat of high-build primer. In some cases it was easier to outright fabricate and install a replacement panel: With that though, all the pinch-weld seam repairs were complete. Nothing stopping me now but a close-out inspection by Rod, my repair certifier. I flicked off an email to organise a visit, and no sooner had I done that, that I thought "maybe it's worth just sorting out that little bit of rot in the windscreen post before he turns up." I figure given how cramped my workspace is, it's in Rod's interest to come and look at the car as few times as possible. I relayed this through to him and he encouraged me to sort that out first and get him around afterwards. So windscreen post rot then. This is the rust in question: Given the structural demands placed on this panel, and the inaccessibility to paint the inside of any repairs, I decided early on that I want to replace the whole thing à la the original factory design. That means cutting down into the previously replaced A pillar panel, as well as the cowl patch I put in way back in 2017. This is not actually the end of the world. I was very (let's say) naïve back then, so the A panel repairs (and indeed all the fabrication work) were pretty rip shit and bust and have been playing on my mind for a while. They could all do with ripping out and re-doing if I'm being honest. So let's embrace the scope creep again. First step was to cut out all the offending panels: I used a spot weld drill again where appropriate and a slitting disk as required. It was quite validating taking the A panel off seeing three or four plug welds had not penetrated at all. I was right to redo this work if even just for that. Next step was to start fabricating the replacement panels. First up, the inner A panel: This came from a paper pattern off the old panel and extensive use of various hammers, dollies, and a cheap bead roller I picked up a while ago. Next was the windscreen post itself along with a small internal brace. These were produced in the same fashion as above; paper pattern, cut out a steel blank, then a tipping wheel and various hammers and dollies. I also was recently gifted some clecos by a very generous workmate. Can you tell? On the home stretch now. Last big panel to cover is the outer A post. Same deal again: Paper-steel-tipping wheel-hammers-swearing-hammers-etc. This one was bloody tricky I don't mind saying. The big shrink on the top left corner took a lot of beating and perseverance to get to come round. Got there in the end though. I threw the door and guard back on to make sure I had the lines close enough to correct. Pretty close. There is a section that I assume is part of the factory roof panel that overlaps the top of the windscreen post and is leaded from factory. I made a small section to replace it that I'll weld on near the end. The windscreen post panel and outer A post were (as far as I can tell at least) all part of a single piece that included part or all of the sill from factory. I intend to emulate that as best as possible which means joining my new A panel to the previously built windscreen post panel. Pro-tip: an orbital sander makes any weld look excellent and makes you look like a great panel beater if you lack actual talent. I've also made the doubler panel that goes on the inside of the A panel and mounts the door hinges out of 2mm sheet but I didn't get around to taking any photos. Rest assured, it's there. The final panel I'll need to close this section out is a patch panel for the cowl. Given the slightly medieval methods I resorted to to remove the old one, it's harder to make a paper pattern off the existing panel. The existing one was already a hand made patch as well (see my posts from 2017 on page 2), so it's hard to trust it in the first place. Knowing that, I opted for a wire form buck in this case as a starting point. It's made to match the profile of the back of the bonnet, guard, and door skin. I took the shape of the dished section from a series of flipped profiles from the driver's side, granted with some eyeball smoothing involved. Using the form, I was able to start with the paper pattern and continue in the normal fashion. I was actually pretty shagged at this point so I left the roughing in to the sprog this time. After a day of fine tuning and planishing, I got it looking pretty close. You can see how much I've been struggling with flash rust in this damp wee garage in that last photo. Well that and how long it took me to make all these panels. I keep meaning to spray over stuff with some Zinc-it but I never get around to pulling the panels off the car and getting the wire brush in there to sort it out. I'll get there before it turns into an actual hole. A closing thought here: If you have the means, I definitely don't recommend doing it all this way. The replacement panels for these sections would be a few hundred dollars shipped from Palmside. When you tally up all my hours to hand make them, and translate that to an equivalent hourly rate, it makes absolutely no sense to do it the way I did. I would have been better off doing a few hours of overtime and welding them all on over a weekend. However, I spent essentially $0 (if you excuse the material cost of the steel which I had already) which keeps the bookkeeper happy, and now have the job satisfaction of knowing I made every panel in this assembly. That can't be worth nothing. With that cowl panel done (or near enough. I'll do the final trimming and fitting once the structural panels are back on) I'm finally read for Rod to come and do his inspections. It's a very exciting feeling knowing I could be just a few licks of paint away from getting this side of the car totally ready for close out. Then I just have to do it all again on the other side. Thanks for reading.

Work and weather got in the way of progress over the last few weeks, but the local mechanic fixed most of the JCB hydraulic hoses before he had to boost off-island for a medical drama. They tell us a ship will arrive next week. It will hopefully have a concrete mixer on it (thanks @nzstato). If it does I only need one more other ship that has irrigation pipe on it so we can get water to mix and pour these deck footings. Shit this is taking a long time... Oh well.

Coming up gold now.

One of the things that has been bothering me is the rattle(s) somewhere in the cabin. It is pretty loud when the right mid range revs kicks it off. I chased it a couple of weeks ago and found that the door pull was loose, the frunk release was loose and the fusebox needed better mounting. I fixed all of this and it made the overall noise levels better but the main noise was still there. After some testing I eventually I figured out that it was coming from the gear stick mechanism. This has always been pretty loose, and in fact the whole gearstick can move up and down by 2 or 3mm. Someone (possibly me) had hacked a spring in there that pulled the main actuation rod upwards which helped it a bit, but obviously not enough. So I pulled it all out to have a look and shit was pretty sorry in there, mostly the light coloured lower retainer had worn away to something pretty thin. Then without realising it I fucked things up by splitting the lower retainer to see if splaying it out would allow it to push upwards a bit further and take up the slack. No, it turns out, and this was bad for other reasons. I chucked the upper part in the lathe and trimmed a few mm off the underside, just enough so the lower cover could take up the slack. In principle this worked, but I needed a spacer in there to give some additional push. I split a conveniently sized grommet to fit, assembled it with a bit of a clean up and grease, then chucked it in. It felt splendid until I pushed down on the gearstick and it popped past the retainer that I stupidly split... Obviously I then needed to break out the 3D printer, how great are these things for making new shit to replace the shit you broke on your car. I made a first guess which took 45mins to print, the took half a mm off the extra height and printed another. Then just grease it up and assemble. Look at that fucking mad gearstick knob, I used to hate it but now it seems an intrinsic part of the dumbfuckery and I wouldnt be without it.

so i realised i haven't updated this in awhile, i thought i had Updated this build thread but its been deleted? weird anyway, j160 bellhousing adaptor and Engine/Trans mounts from Brendan at Niteparts turns out 2zz are much harder to find than you would expect took afew months but this turned up this week. Started giving it a good clean and found some mystery RTV while giving it a scrub down which is scary but hopefully its just a leaky front cover/tensioner. Started chipping away at afew rust spots, I've never really done rust work before but limited tools and only a tig make it harder than it should be, good enough for a race car. also someone had decided the C Piller vents weren't cool so deleted them, so i deleted the delete so i not have piller vents again In between all of this i finally got the rollcaged all ticked off and homologated so i could get on with painting the interior so i don't have to be worried about stuff rusting, Water blasted the underside while it was semi warm today to get it ready for underseal to pretty it up.

16 month update. As mentioned elsewhere, gave it a wash and went for a blast. Thought I'd better do a bit more cleaning,which, as you may have guessed over the years, is not exactly my "thing" but I pulled the interior out and scraped some crap off if. Also, the parcel shelf has been bugging me as it is cardboard & has mostly not been in the car. I got some vinyl & El Danny's Trim Shop was open for 15 minutes. Not much of leap forward, but it all helps. It's at the front of the barn so I'm going to use it as much as poss this summer. Thinking about cutting a coil out of the springs which will drop it about 40mm & putting a big single back-box on. We'll see.

*some of this may be a repost I grew up on a farm, and I'm a guy, so I looooove burning shit. I got the end off a lpg tanker a while back to build a brazier. It was big so I gave it a haircut to make it more manageable. I have been using it to convert everything I can get my hands onto into heat. In fact, my property has never been so free of rubbish. Today I put humpty back together again with the intention of disappearing some dying hedge trees. I welded some tabs to the top half so it locates on the bottom and drilled a 10mm bolt hole in each to keep it there so I can move it easily with the tractor. Should do the trick.

If it has methanol in it , it has to meet all requirements for a fuel system So every one I have certed has 'water only' on a sticker on the tank, passes cert and nobody ever puts methanol in it ever at all because that would be illegal

Gave it a lick of underseal and it looks 1000x better, good enough for a race car anyway. Im on a super tight budget for this car, new sprog popped out and better half at home down to one income makes it tough! Usually would sandblast/powdercoat everything but with budget cuts a quick wire wheel and "subframe black" paint worked a treat! With keeping in the theme of cheap parts i was on the lookout for cheap coilovers on market place and these popped up, off a modern Subaru of some sort a set of Blitz coilovers length looked about right and at $150 the price was right. all tidied up cut off all the tabs/mounts on the lower and ill weld them straight the the knuckle. the camber plates are also have enough meat on them to cut down to suit the ke70 bolt patter on the top. One of the fronts didn't come apart easily and a week of penetrating oil, some big bars/pipes and some hammers didn't make it budge.. a little stumped on how to unseize it without buggering it. I might try a air chisel to try break it loose but if not i will have to cut it off to save the shock and try find someone friendly with a lather to turn up a new one with an internal thread for me. The car has turrets welded in the rear to suit s13 coilovers, no holes are drilled so the world is my oyster really as long as the length is right. the rears seem to be about the right length and hopefully not tooo short for the back of this. For $150 if i can make these work i will be stoked.

All is well in X land currently, I have just been trying to make it slightly more civilised, but it is a losing battle. The raw power and agression seems to break all attempts to tone things down. I made a cover for the gaping hole behind the drivers seat. This has direct noise and air access to the engine compartment so probably best to close it off. The spare goes in there but a standard rim is too thick and pushes the seat forward too much for me. Some CAD and some ACM did the trick. The beading around the hole is fluffy so I found some stick on velcro. Its fine. Also I am again enjoying the mad factory spec camber, this clearly means it is a proper sports car. Fuckers mess around and spend big dollars to achieve this sort of goodness. I want to go out for a burn but it is wet and my paint job will probably not protect it any more than a fat gingers Temu sourced sunblock at a beach barbeque.

@NickJ Golden!!! I was just about to post and spotted your post first. Check out this. It's yet another really useful happy helpful comment on you tube...

Found out concrete won’t be til next Wednesday as they needed to sort a pump as well.. damn tight building site with the bus and storage shed in the way.. shed will be going but it’s handy to keep things dry at this stage. Decided to finish the ends of the retaining wall off in preparation for many cubic metres of top soil for my raised garden bed. A few weeks ago I finally managed to complete a project I had in my brain for months. I needed a temp water supply for the site and also for topping up my water tank/watering the garden. Got a 910 litre tank from dad a couple years ago which is a good size for dragging thru the bush without too much hassle. Set it up at the top of the waterfall with a feed from the creek (takes less than on hour to fill). Ran about 150m of 25mm pipe and hooked it all up. Took just under a minute for the line to purge all the air before the water came thru at a nice rate. Not massive pressure but perfect for my needs. Action shot..

The few remaining jobs to do before assembly have been one. Machined down the head bolt lands, this allows the use of starion ARP head bolts. Added wings and trap door baffles to the sump. this is mostly because the big yamaha head and associated oil pump runs the risk of starving the bottom end, and as the sump was the same for single cam and twin cams, there isnt very much oil onboard. this should add somewhere near an extra liter, plus i always loved the hotrod gold zinc milodon oil pans.. So i gathered up all the hardware and everything else steel that wasnt an actual engine part and sent them in for gold zinc plating. i always loved the gold rainbow irridencent look of the plating. Not pictured - two big bags of smalls and hardware, oil filler cap & front and rear sandwich plates. This weekend i started assembly. Spent a bunch of time filing the piston rings and then installed the now balanced rotating assembly. As per the manual swap i did on the crown a few years ago, the large amount of time spent thinking, planning and acquiring all the bits and pieces before hand has mean the assembly job is going smoothly and not taking much time at all. I also buried the valve cover in 2k gloss black a few months ago and patted metallic gold paint onto the raised edges. It looks awesome. See here mocked up with the gold zinc oil pan and filler cap.

Been thinking about this for a while, was at a warehouse last week and spotted this mouldy old bit of MDF. Got it home and cut it 45 on the skilly. I had this sheet of 1.5mm Ali up in the garage roof for so long, I don't even remember were I got it. I finally had a use for it! I cut a big rectangle dressed the edges and polished up the surfaces while it was flat, was pretty dull and filthy. After a couple hours beating it with hammers and wood and dollies I was fucked and pretty happy with it, will spend some more time on it later.

Decided to mount the rear plate. i wanted this to have a floating look to it. Got the number plate lights coming which are also the mounting bolts. designed for motorbikes. Should do the trick. got the plate perfectly level to the tray which is mint

That is super cool... ^ On the other end of the scale, I'm a leather Barry now. The ~ 15 yr old leather lounge suite was a bit fucked, stitching coming apart, heat, dirt, neglect, colour wearing off, holes. Didn't really take before pics but apart from damaged sections it pretty much looked like this... It's a good set though, reclining chairs you can sleep in and couch has pop up footrests so I wanted to save it. Started by buying a curved leather needle and upholstery thread, watching youtube on how to re-stitch things, and it came out ok... Then gave whole suite a good clean (bought a Pelle leather care kit). Sprayed it with liquid cleaner, brushed in small circles (I used a new soft shoe brush) and wiped with clean rags, so much grime came off. Then before applying the reconditioner cream I looked at addressing the colour and holes. Bought some bits from Temu, leather dye, filler and glue... Glued a small patch underneath the hole and filled with a flexible filler that takes colour apparently, seemed to go ok... and before and after... Then applied colour dye, just rubbed in with clean rags where needed, the dark brown was a good match, and let it dry overnight. This was first coat, I reapplied where necessary... Applied it in sections... Then rubbed in reconditioning cream liberally, it's dark & shiny here cos just applied but will soak in... Bloody pleased overall, pretty satisfying work, looks like a new one, and has passed furry thing approval...

Dear friends of the thread, saddens me to let you know that a few weeks ago, after a nice day surrounded by lots of family and a good feed and a glass of beer, Bill passed away, peacefully in bed at home, 82 years young. Kia ora e hoa, e te matua, e te koroua, kia ora He was a real GC, and a big fan of hearing about our discoveries in and work on the Belmont, so we will keep pushing ahead.

Etch primed and painted in high temp black, looking good..

Lots of progress in a week. Started on a Saturday sorting thru frames.. I got a house lot free from work so just need to make them work for my shed. Took a day to do that and stand the first few frames. View from the top of the frames we were sorting out.. First frame up.. End of day progress.. Following day got a lot more done, then the push for the week was to get the frames plumb and nailed down ready for trusses.. Friday truss delivery day.. got the work truck/driver to hang around and help us stand each truss.. Scissor trusses in the garage area for the hoist, attic trusses over the other end for storage. Timelapse makes everything looks easier than it is.. this was over 5 hours.. Things will slow down a little now to do things like bolting frames and doing all the brackets and tie downs, installing window opening framing and levelling the trusses/purlins ready for the roof.. oh, and the shit weather.

So I did a bit of work to the turbo in preparation of getting it mocked up relative to the cylinder head. Sorry for the photo spam! To recap, the things I needed to do: Rebuild core Weld V-band intake flange, retaining twin-scroll inlet Weld V-band outlet flange Re-install wastegate flapper Figure out twin scroll collector So rebuilding the core was actually fine. I cleaned everything very well, cleaned my workspace (for once lol) and assembled everything very well lubricated. If you pay careful attention in the first picture where everything is laid out, you can see how much of the "extended tip" was damaged on the old compressor wheel. Old turbine wheel was equally flogged. Also comparison of the mangled thrust washer that originally decommissioned the turbo (old on left, the webs are completely gone): Ok so next is cutting off the old flanges and welding the V-bands... The big one wasn't so bad, because the wall thickness wasn't terrible and there was ample room to get the torch inside. The little one was an absolute pain in the ass. The flange was immensely thick so was painful to cut off, welding the inside (including scroll divider) of the flange was near impossible, and then when it was all done the flange was about as flat as a crinkle-cut chip! To resolve the shit welds, I used the die grinder and carved the inside out so it at least will flow semi-well and not get any hot spots (maybe?). To flatten out the flange, I used a combination of the air-file and a jig using the mating side of the V-band which I glued some sandpaper to, and spun around on the drill for about 15 minutes. It came out just fine? Pic of the workhorse of a tool, and how it looks all cleaned up... Removing the old wastegate sleeve was a PAIN. I ground down the flanged face and used a hammer to punch it right through to the inside. To install the new one I basically did the same, except was very careful to not damage it during install. It came out right. Pictures are sort of attached above^. Anyway, heres a pic of it all together (still need to tighten compressor nut and exhaust v-band). Next is to swap the gas bottle over to the AC tig welder and weld the HD clamp to the compressor outlet, then the turbo will be all done. Now for the twin-scroll collector. Reading Roman's Carina posts about his 3d-printed collector really (and him providing very helpful advice) got me thinking "I should just 3d print the matching V-band and collector in stainless". This isn't what it will end up being, but I did a quick model in fusion to see what it would cost. And the answer (for this piece) is about $200USD shipped to NZ! That's practically unreal, as I'm sure if you asked a random fab shop for something similar to this, you would be met with an eye watering quote. So the plan is to mock the turbo relative to the engine, figure out where I want the runners to be, and re-model this collector to have each outlet exactly in the right spot for the manifold. Try to do as little fab work as possible! Then I'll just make the rest of the manifold out of some sch.10 stainless elbows. Thats it for now (hit the 4MB image size limit lol), hopefully I'll make more progress soon!

Motor is fully assembled, I've mostly been waiting on engineering of some smaller items to be able to carry on Modified primary fuel rail to suit 1000cc injectors. Cut all the 6 port actuators off the manifold, and welded over the holes to smooth it out. Welded a boss into back of the waterpump to accept the autometer sender. Still waiting on the new side mount alternator bracket I purchased to be cut up and modified do as to lift the alternator higher up, the 'bolt on' item as purchased gives about 4mm movement before the alternator hits the chassis rail.... Pulled apart the old blower manifold to find a massive restriction for flow, there was just 4 round holes drilled through Whereas the mani is a much larger oval shape, currently getting it cncd out to match, and maybe a bit more flow into the port. Still won't be ideal, as a lot of the boost still just hits straight into the blower plate, but should be far better than was was there. Also have an AEM water meth kit on order to help control boost temps, and ign stability

All going to plan, there will be a floor by the end of today

It turns out that building your own house only on good weather weekends (when there's no materials to buy, no fuel or water available and limited daylight) is a bit slow. We have a limited amount of diesel now and I managed to get 5 litres of petrol on Wednesday so am feeling a bit jubilant. Progress got even slower this morning when another hydraulic hose blew on the JCB - showering my associate in hot oil and sending the slew into all sorts of convulsions. None-the-less the perimeter boxing for the concrete deck is installed. It was going to be a rectangle but I changed my mind late last night so now it's a trapezoid. It's just myself and one other chap on the tools so we're not quick, are pretty tired and sandy, but keen for more on Sunday morning

The photos just show how terrible the lighting is in my workshop. but anyway I press on.. picked up my CAD templates for the notch bits from Wooles, all looks good except somehow the 200mm centres became 195mm centres on the notches. Which means the bar braces don’t fit. dammit. I can still run the notches at 195 centres and get them to recut the braces to suit. as it’s mocked up at ride height, the bags fit in perfectly above axle. once the new braces are made I can carry on with it. Including bracing up the front link mounts etc then figure out if I’m going with a watts link or a long panhard bar.

Barry activities Cleaning out my grandads garage, I have found a million small engines, many have been sent to scrap but a few have been kind of interesting to mess around with This is one . Villiers mark 10. forgot to take any before pics but it was at the bottom of the pile, been sitting for many years, no compression. Pulled the head off, exhaust valve was rusted open, disassembled, cleaned it all up, got compression back, filed the points, cleaned out the carb, made a muffler. Starts first pull and runs sweet, the governor works I was going to strip the covers and paint etc but I dunno if I can be bothered, I don't have any plans of actually using it on anything useful. Maybe I can be one of those old blokes who has a collection of engines that pump water into a drum for no purpose Apparently they are 98cc and about 1hp.

managed to get the rear end bolted back in, the coilovers above were too short to suit the rears and i had some d3 s13 rear coilovers sitting around so i just used them. just need to finish turning the axles down to suit the new rear brake setup and the rest can go together. also been waiting on this to start some other assembly, the zinc plating got finished up. always nice starting with fresh hardware, got all the door and bonnet hinges zincd too. also got my bonnet and boot catch done which i was wasn't too sure about but they turned out great and still move freely

TL;DR for only two lines of writing? Hold my fucken beer I remember I went to a nightspeed drags event at Meremere maybe 10 or 15 years ago. So there was the usual bunch of evos, subarus, all that kind of stuff. Then there was this one older guy there, who had something like a 70s capri, cant remember exactly what it was. However it had the big drag tyres, skinny fronts, absolutely obnoxious rutting lumpy cam v8 idle. Think it had a big intake sticking out the bonnet, and so on. Smelled like it was running fancy gas. This thing lurched up to the line, barely able to move that slowly. Then did this big burnout, then staged annnnndddddd...... hooked up pretty good but ran something like a 13 sec quarter. I remember at the time having a chuckle, and wondering why you'd bother having all of the inconvenience and hardships of this dedicated drag car when peoples daily driven stuff was easily going faster. However this particular mental image of that moment stuck with me. Because everything about the car was a spectacle. Like how it idled was exciting. Seeing it awkwardly trying to lurch forward with a high stall (or whatever) was cool. Hooking a massive skid was cool. How it sounded going down the track was awesome. The experience for the driver would have been absolutely thrilling. It was never about numbers! It was about the driving experience, and this guy was having an absolute blast doing things exactly how he wanted to be doing things. He could have bought an evo just like anyone else, but he made a decision. He wants that noise, he wants that car shape, he wants that driving experience. Then the performance was secondary. And that's stuck in my mind because it's such a good encapsulation of what old cars are about. If old cars did everything exactly like a daily driven car, there would be no point in having them. There's such a variety of automotive experiences to enjoy, and only 5% of that comes from the fairly narrow set of constraints that a modern standard car can provide.

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Motor in tonight plus, water meth kit arrived.

Hello. So the day came for my wof check. Woke up this morning and put my thermals on, sweater on under my jacket and headed out for my wof check. turned up a few mins early and old mate was under a datsun sunny giving the A12 a oil change. Mentioned i had a wof booked in, to which he was surprised cause his darling had booked in the datsun to be worked on. None the less he said and scrubbed his hands clean and passed me the wof sheet to fill out the information for. Made some small talk and he went over the bike, we made some more small talk and headed inside. During the small talk he said, well you now have a wof, but it runs out at a less than ideal time. So make sure you book in early to make sure you'll have one for summer. I paid the man and went on my way. A celebratory ride to Raglan. Then to my daughters daycare for Matariki lunch. Fry bread is the best. But how cool is that, first wof since 2009 on the old girl. I figured you might ask who done the wof. Well I got a photo of him so you can all use him.

In today's instalment of panel Barry chronicles we're working our way to the front end. This car being old as it is and it's hard life has had accident damage in the front. This caused the chassis rails to be bent as well as some front panels to be twisted. Actually some of this damage wasn't fully known until other things were started, as is always the way. As always, an excellent job was done to fix that and up and make sure it's dead straight with new metal welded in after another session on the machine. I was able to find a hand-written diagram that had some chassis dimension measurements too recently which was quite amazing so have sent that over as well to help with verification. You can see he's tidied up around the headlight area and now working on the alignment for the rest of the front panels. There is another panel that goes behind that lower valance which was totally murked so it's likely he'll make a new one rather than fix up the original one. And this is how that whole area under the front windscreen turned out. Was a major job that one and most of it you can't see. He's requested I send him the front stuff like headlights, grill, radiator etc as well as engine crossmember to make sure we're square and things fit properly before welding in the front panels so I'll try get that arranged as quickly as possible.

After some solid advice from old school I removed the coolant to avoid potential issues with the fresh head gasket. Fortunately the high tide mark never made it to the heads. The frost plug was installed and I had the guru who built the engine on hand for the first start. He’s a bloody legend. This is the second start: Result! So stoked. A couple of small hose water leaks to fix, put some wheels on and take her for a drive.