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I bought a 3" Adrenaline R muffler, and I've been hoping that just 1x muffler will be sufficient. So welded a flange on and bolted it up to the end of the 2-1 section to test it out before committing. I'd say its probably still a weeee bit too loud (Still need earmuffs on when it revs out) So I'll have to try stuff something else in there too. This one was filmed with the camera bit further back, and the audio recording level turned down so it wasnt clipping. In person it's still ear splittingly loud. Currently the ignition timing is all very conservative, as I'm not sure what the motor is going to like with port injection and the 12:1 compression. Overly delayed ignition timing means more exhaust energy (noise) comes out the back. So it will quiet down a bit as the timing gets dialled in. Currently there's no VVT advance happening, everything is just at home positions. So from experience the intake starts getting a LOT LOT louder when you start introducing some overlap. As much as I do love some incredibly obnoxious intake noise. If it's so loud that it's melting my brain. Will need to make an airbox to calm it down a bit. Ha. I am still chasing an issue (by which I mean I havent investigated it yet) where the reported voltage to the ECU drops off, when the rpm goes up. I am suspecting this relates to a bottleneck at my fuse/relay box. So will do some troubleshooting. I have officially run it to the 9k mark now, and valvetrain has survived. Haha. So hopefully a bit more left in it yet. It feels tantalizingly close to being drivable! I need to make some heat shields in quite a few places. As there is a huge % of the engine bay that is line of sight to the radiant heat emitting from the exhaust manifolds. This video is probably a fairly good representation of how the car will sound when it's finished and driving.

Cleaned them up today. Did a bunch of inspection and measuring and I havnt found any issues. Really happy with the results. Not going to jump straight into machining them. Going to go hardout on all the castings. Will do the T59 sump next.

Have a couple of full sets of valve gear now. Valves, springs, retainers, guides. Dad machined up 2 sets of guides. Just need to ream them to suit inlet/exhaust clearance etc Fitted out the small shed as the 'foundry/pattern making' shed. Getting back into sand making with a new foundry which is exciting. We just made 4 cylinder block halves and starting on the water jacket and cylinder cores at home now. Im hoping to have them all assembled next week and head up to Auckland to cast them. The plan is to machine inhouse so I might need a couple to get it right!

Ethrottle? No. Tuned decently? No. Exhaust hung properly? No. Car finished? No. Skids on lawn? Yes

Its been a busy couple of weeks getting the whole sand making process up and going again. Got 2 cylinder block mould assemblies off to the foundry and poured yesterday. Now that I no longer live in Auckland I have to head up to Hamilton to make sand, take it home to assemble, then go across to Palmy to pour. Massive gamble driving sand moulds for hours on NZ roads but they survived and I have 2 great castings! Pretty stoked

I've now clocked up 3200km since fitting the flat six. 1200 of those are from the weekend just past but I'll get to that in a later. First off - more exhaust box modifications. Adding that sound deadening mat around the pipe had made it too quiet and the exhaust note had lost some of its character. So I cut the box open again and removed the stuffing. This time I riveted a lid in place in case change my mind..again.. I also cut a hole in the bottom of the box and made a bolt in panel that has a folded over, wedge shaped partition splitting the main lower chamber in two. The idea is to stop the exhaust pulses from each side hitting each other and creating that hum. I don't really think it will work as such because they are pressure induced sound waves and the partition isn't a perfect seal. But it does help guide the exhaust flow up through the plate of many holes above. I didn't take pics so you'll have to picture it. So the box is sort of back to what it was like when first made but in theory better flowing. It sounds nice enough though, not droney at all, no fumes and sporty when extended. It'll have to do until I start exhaust box number 3. With that bit of exhaust fettling finished I double checked my tool box for anything extra we might need, packed the car up and cut some thick foam up to make a cradle for the UE Boom bluetooth speaker so it doesn't slide about on the parcel shelf. We headed to my mums place in Blenheim, Hannah driving convoy in the van which was filled with the last of our K11 micra bits that were getting picked up from mums by the new k11 owner the following week. She had Kevin the cat for company as mum would be baby sitting him. Pic from a stop at Pelorus bridge on the way over.. Kevin.. The drive over was great fun. I was lucky enough to almost get a clear run up the Whangamoa hill climb until I caught up to a Suzuki swift sport that was not living up to its name. For those that don't know the Whangamoa hills its a decent climb out of Nelson that's got loads of great corners where you can see well ahead. The whole road up to the saddle was resurfaced a few years ago and its a sporty drivers delight. The following day we headed south to Christchurch. Hannah had a weekend long fire fighters conference to go to. I would be free to catch up with family and friends down there. Lovely drive south with perfect weather. We've not been down the east coast for a few years and this was the first time in a very very long time we'd driven anything interesting on this road. Pics.. View from cafe stop.. Had a very nice posh hotel to stay at in Chch. Car was now plastered in fly road kill.. The next couple of days I hooned about chch city, caught up with friends. First thing Sat morning I popped in to mag and turbo and got my front wheels rebalanced as I could feel they were out slightly on smoother roads. Big thanks to @CUL8R for sorting me out there, getting the right fella (a mini loving barry) on the job. Was nice to catch up for a good old chat. The cars front end was much improved. Sunday was especially good as I managed to get some really good driving in on the Port hills and Lyttleton habour area. Good coffee, great roads, clear sunny day. I have not driven a lot of these hill roads for years and the last time at speed was in the 90s in my supercharged Mr2, brothers TVR or a bit more recently a mates WRX he lent us for a week. Great roads and luckily actually really quiet on the Sunday morning. I discovered whilst hooning through the Lyttleton tunnel that if I hit the red line in second then button right off so fuel cut activates the car does a wicked backfire. Second time back through the tunnel was hampered by someone who insisted on sitting at 40kph. Late morning whilst parked up looking at the maps on my phone six Triumph TR6 sports cars raced by. I dropped my phone and took off after them. For the next hour the convoy raced about making the most of really good hillclimbs and twisty roads. Damn it was fun. What glorious sounds! The Imp was in its element and by now I was really getting the hang of making the most of the rear engine configuration. I was bloody loving it. I just kept following them until we ended up out over in Charteris bay and they pulled into a cafe car park. They all came over to check out the Imp, wondering how I managed to keep up Lovely cars TR6's - my brother almost bought one that we'd test driven before getting his TVR. The Triumph 6 connection for me is having owned 5 TC2500s over the years. Turns out I had met one of them a coouple of years previously when they were doing a nationals meet up our way. I was invited in for lunch with them and had some good banter. Late Sunday afternoon after Hannahs conference was over we drove to Hanmer springs. Another nice Hotel and this time the Imp had company more its age.. That evening we spent several hours in the thermal springs right over the road from the hotel. Cool clear night. Tickets now include the water slides so we made the most of those too. On Monday morning we left Hanmer.. and headed back to Blenheim via Waiau.. and the inland Kaikoura road. It used to be gravel for quite a big section and I've not driven it since it's been sealed. Looking forward to the twisties but it was quite a let down. Actually very rough, lumpy and bumpy. It was not really suited to a lowered imp. Would be far more fun in a peppy Citreon or something with really supple suspension. In fact I had more fun when it was gravel. Kaikoura for lunch.. Back to Blenheim for the evening. Got to play with mums border collie puppy .. Following day it was back home. This time I was even more lucky on the Whangamoas because there was a traffic stop due to tree felling. I was at the head of the line just behind a large truck. Passed him after the lights went green and had the whole hill to myself. Fantastic. Gentle 4 wheel slides balancing that rear weight overhang on the smooth tarmac. So fun. Once home I did a final check over of the car. Needed a tiny bit of oil, 200mls, due to a small drip from the sump I have now fixed. We clocked up 1280 kms (having accounted for 3% speedo error) and across all that driving averaged 6.6L/100km or 42 MPG in old money. Of the fill ups the best was 5.9L/100km when just cruising with the traffic down the east coast, worst was 7.4 after a lot of fast driving. I'm bloody amazed. We kept re-checking the figures etc and its legit. Its just so cool that such a smooth, nippy little six can also be so thrifty. The Imp is also really comfortable (the Recaros help) on long trips too. Its the only car I have owned to date where I don't get a sore right ankle from the throttle on long runs. So I'm pretty bloody rapt with the outcome and look forwards to more road trips. Also looking forwards to cracking on some more modifications I have planned.

More exhaust tinkering. But first I decided to make some new front caliper brackets. The race car I first bought came with a set of 80's CRX sliding calipers and vented rotors. 231mm/17mm thick. They work really well. However the brackets they bolt to are only held on to the uprights with two of the original drum brake mounting holes. This is actually the way many of the disc brake conversions sold for imps over the years are done but I've never been super happy with it. The holes they mount through are spot faced and quite close to the edge. My fear (yes possibly a bit paranoid but) is that the casting could break and the caliper bracket get pulled away under heavy braking, jamming the caliper in the rim and locking the wheel. You can see the setup in this pick I took not long after getting the race imp... There is better, more fail safe way to do it using all three mounting bolts, which is also stiffer and also modular. I bought some 10mm steel flat and got to work. Drilled and bored the centre hole to exactly match the axle size.. This way the brackets will always sit perfectly central and even if all three bolts let go (is a very super paranoid way) the bracket would still stay in place concentrically. I didn't take many photos of the build, a process that ended up taking way longer then I expected but hey, that's car projects. Here's the bits on the bench as I'm measuring out and marking etc etc.. The finished parts before paint... Only down side is the extra 380 grams of unsprung weight per side However, on the plus side I do get to inform the various Hillman Imp doomsayer Barries out there that I have added more weight to the front of my car so I wont end up in a hedge next time I attempt to corner it I shimmed them up to suit ( for the final install the bolts are reversed and lock washers install btw) Test drove and its all good. I really need some new pads though because old pads are worn to suit the old brackets which I had noted were slightly bent. The new setup is far stiffer. The original pads are rock hard anyway and have always really only start to bite once there's some heat in them. Keen on suggestions of pad brands to try within NZ. The basic TWR ones from Repco always seem to work fine though so I'll go that way first. Luckily these discs, calipers and pads are all still readily available new and cheaply. I think they are used on many different earlier Civics and CRXs which helps. Stuff from Rock auto is insanely cheap for example. Next up was my ongoing exhaust sound experiments. Upon suggestion from one of the fellas on a 911 forum I cut the box open and added a deflector to help flow. Here's another exceptionally well drawn image showing the science behind my modification... The red arrows show the exhaust gas flow. Now please humour me and lets just pretend its flowing like a lovely consistent river of lava. As it flows out from the exit it will follow the curve around and into the bellmouth of the next pipe which shoots in a straight line through the silencer and out via the tailpipe. There will of course could be pressure pulses created by the tail pipe exit so if they come back they, as depicted in yellow, should create a vortex, do a perfect swirly thing and get pulled back into the pipe. In theory. I welded a lid over my master piece of fluid dynamics and then cut open another bit of the box. This time I filled the cavity around the perforated tube. I'm hoping it might quell some of the 'hollow cackle reverberation' sounds. It didn't. After welding a lid back on, splashing some paint around I took the car for a hoon. Its certainly quieter and from my seat of pants o'meter I think my gas flow mastery has added at least 1 small pony into the mix. But there is still an annoying reverb sound at around 2700rpm (which happens to be around the 100kph area in 5th) I think I know the cause. Its the exhaust pulses in the lower chamber matching each other. In fact Wikipedia has a section with more detail on this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humming So with that result my exhaust experimentation will continue.

So anyway I bought another one.

Got the intake manifold welded together and finished. Doing some rough maths, have halved the turn in the port. from a 67 deg turn to 33 ish. Along with making whats left of it a bigger radius gave the outlet of the throttles a bit of a zing also, as outlet isn't round and kind reduces in diameter fast

I’ve been paid in full, and it’s heading to Southland to hang out with a bunch of other cool Mopars! Thanks for all the support and motivation; for serious, this is an awesome club to be a part of. Tune in for more as I dust off my Escort and get it out of storage shortly. It’s been pushed to the back of the line SO many times in the 21 years I’ve had it, enough is enough!

Well shits been happening. Ryan at OCD Performance in Te K banged out a full new loom with all the bits and pieces i was after. Was after a clean hidden loom in the engine bay which he bloody nailed i reckon basically cant see anything once the airbox is back on. Cars home now to strip down and send body to the painter and then sort someone to build the engine.

Other than the regular updates ; This has obviously been sitting for 10 years or so. Since i cant choose what other engine to put in it. its getting another 4age. Plan its to make it run and drive nice. Because I already have a rattly kp that will always be faster I could just turbo a stock engine and it would do those things and also be faster. but done that and would be boring and too easy. So the only logical thing was to get a smallport head, and cut the inlet ports off in my lathe mill Insert stuff i dont want to show yet lots more butchery, welding and stuff I basically had to cut way down into the port and add a bunch of material and cut a bunch out in other places. So it actually makes the short turn radius better. I'd looked into doing it many times before, but seemed pointless unless went full ham. originally i was going to weld the pipes below directly to the head. but they ended up so high on the head, that it wasn't going to be possible. so welded a flange to the head instead, for a bolt on manifold. More work, but better for many reasons High port vs stock port Is a bit more port work to go, but the basic shape is roughed out. Angle looks pretty aggressive when in the car. Will be running 48mm bike e throttles, same as what @Roman ran on the 1nz. the outer runners/ports are tweaked in a touch to line up with the outside throttles, otherwise line up good.

If you've ever painted an engine bay you'll know how much work it takes to get to this point. (Spoiler : it's fucking heaps) But anywho I got some paint on it today. I'll give it a quick sand up tomorrow then put a bit of fresh seam sealer in it, then I'll paint it again, maybe with some colour.

Crankshaft: I haven't mention my crankshaft, probably because it depresses me. The original was crack-tested at the Workshop, and like most Bugatti cranks of a certain age, it showed some cracks. This isn't necessarily the end of the story though, because the bottom end of the T49 engine is VERY strongly engineered, with main bearing caps on every journal between each cylinder, and cracked crankshafts can operate very happily in this environment for decades without causing any problems. In my case through, there was extensive cracking seen across a couple of the big end journals. This meant recommissioning the old crankshaft was deemed inadvisable, as it would perpetuate an avoidable weak link in an otherwise strong engine. So the CNC experts in Geelong South have bent their considerable expertise to fabrication of a new Bugatti crankshaft, or in this case, to fabricating the two crank halves that meet up in the middle, where a skew-gear on the crank actuates a vertical shaft that further drives the camshaft-halves, similarly arranged.Here, one of the crank halves has been roughed-out and is now undergoing further lathe machining to bring it to finished dimensions. Oil-ways are yet to be drilled. Further processes of dynamic balancing, journal hardening and stress-relief will require weeks more work, it's important not to rush this bit. Bugatti fitted a rather crude vibration damper to his T44 and T49 engines, as there's a significant period of vibration that occurs naturally when the engine hits around 2800 rpm. Sandy Greene, a very clever chap in the USA, commissioned vibration damping experts to undertake computer studies and design a modern unit specifically tailored to the dynamics of the Bugatti straight 8, and I have been lucky enough to secure one of these dampers from Sandy. It will be fitted onto the nose of the new crankshaft. At this rate, it appears that the engine will start to come together around the middle of the year.

It's a serious bit of kit (death wish).

with the shed building getting towards the finished stage i started working on my fancy Datsun. the first thing i need to do is tidy up the rust under the ABS pump and the master cylinder. im going to assume that all the R32s rust here, anywho my car wasn't to bad, just surface rust. i did cut the side out of the chassis rail to have a look but it was not as bad as i thought it would be so im pretty happy with that. i used a little hand held sandblaster to get right into the narrow gap between the firewall and the inner guard and it worked fucking mint. ill clean up the other side them splash some epoxy primer on everything and weld the chassis back together. the rest of the engine bay is just sand and prep. oh, excerpt for the huge hole that's been cut for the intercooler piping, ill make a piece and weld that up. i will need a hole bigger that factory to fit the pipework on my motor but i can at least make it look tidy.

That's right kids, a variable speed grinder is a must when stripping the goo off your automobile. I run the wire wheel at the number 2 setting which is pretty slow. It'll dig all the shit out but it doesn't melt it to make a worse mess then when you started and it also doesn't grab the panel edge and bend the fuck out of it. This is especially useful with underseal. You've probably had a go at underseal with a wire wheel doing 1500000000000rpm and it's been an absolute cunt. Try it at 600rpm and see what happens. Hope this was of some use to someone. Like I say, I thought everyone knew this.

made these today. 2-1 collectors, merge and transition to round all in one, with diverging cone. probably dont need a cone here, but it works in other places, so why not They took just as long to make as getting the whole bit above tacked together Think I said most of this in the discussion thread; they will be 4-2-1 with the primary length being similar to all my 4-1's. will put a flange just after these collectors. so can try anything from merging to 2-1 directly after the 4-2 merge. to stupid long. made tapered die on the lathe to shape the outlet, welded them with the die in place and they held there shape pretty good Look like this before shaping and welding after, cut to length

Exhaust ports Relationship between the intake and exhaust

So it seems that time flies and not much gets done. It must be time for my biannual update. Where to start... After at least 5 years of changing my mind on how to achieve it, I've finally finished my "restomod" dash. I've swapped the locations of the tacho and speedo, made a new tacho face from stratch that mimics the factory option but has a GaugeArt CANBUS panel gauge in there. I've also changed all the coloured warning lights to white symbols on black with the appropriately coloured led behind them. E.g.: The rear is looking a bit more complex: Also finished the dash switch panel. I didn't take enough pics of all the development to make this work but I'm pretty stoked with how it turned out. I also finalised my front brake caliper adapters and had them machined: Seem to fit nicely: ' Next thing to do is finish the WSS sensor bracket and pickup ring. My 3d printer is out of action at the moment so I'm a bit delayed there. I got Kelford to regrind my cam in lieu of the bigboy billet cam that is still seemingly in hiatus in Aussie land: Bought a clutch: Lastly I've been working on a new heater system. Need to have the vents properly printed in carbon-nylon or ASA or something, and have the heater core mounting plate cut and folded. Other things that happened: - I had to redo the axles as I wanted to have the discs on the outside of the flange, rather than the inside. So with some help from @alfalfa on the tools at the New Plymouth pick a part to get me some Surf axles and Brian at Howatt Engineering, I've now got new, way nicer axles, ready to be reinstalled. - I've stipped a bunch of suspension components which are currently at the powder coater, including the axle bearing housing that will mean I can put it all back together soon. - I'm currently doing the thankless task of removing the underbody sealant so I can have the shell blasted - aiming to get it to the panelshop in June. - The engine is at the machinist and I'm having some custom 9:1 CR pistons made up by JE. Hopefully getting the head to the right people in the next few weeks for a port and valve upsize - I bought a hoist which I need to install in my garage. Requires some new concrete but also to be able to move the car, which I can't do right now... watch this space. That's about it. I've probably missed a lot of things, will update as I remember.

This lil peach was aquired two help save the red car and another green Bugeye, had a pair of og bugeye fender mirrors which found there way onto the red car, it may or may not have been driven 30mins home on this condition……..

Apparently getting the motor and box into this thing is a right massive pain in the arsehole so I did what any sensible celica owner would do and cut out the radiator support panel. If it works for a celica then it's more than good enough for my fancy datsun. The gtr rad support has a bit in it where the sheetmetal necks in by 1 thickness, fuck knows why but it looked like a good place to cut it so I did. Folded up some bits that match the bigger profile then a couple of captive nuts and some welding later she's all back together. Looks factory I reckon.

Starting on the sump patterns. Using the big printer for the basic parts and the small more accurate printer for the loose sections. The small printer is good enough for keyways so Im gluing in keyway sections to the rougher/bigger print. It should save me a lot of work because the big printer is really quite rough and takes a lot of finishing. So this finer print will be bonded into the big print. Onto the second half now. Its a 35hr print.

Intake ports almost finished can see how much the ports have moved compared to the picture i stole off the internet below / update

Fuck, what a day. Got there in the end though. Welded the patch back into the chassis then used some actual not shit seam sealer then it was time for paint. I used my new gun and it's fucking epic, you should get one it was cheap as.

38hrs later the second half is done. The new extruder is way more reliable, since its extruding at 0.8mm nozzle and 0.5mm layer heights. But the trade off is its quite a bit rougher. Ill take that over failing prints any day though! Fill it with bog!

And so now, folks, IT'S SHOWTIME! To get the steering box position finalised and the steering column rake & length sorted out, we need to test-fit the firewall. And to test-fit the firewall we need to try out the body-tub on the chassis. For starters, we located the radiator in its predetermined position (dictated by the need for fan clearance in front of the cambox and the frontal upper chassis cross-member. Then, working backwards, we positioned the bonnet onto the radiator and located the firewall which meets the rear end of the bonnet. That in turn provided the locating reference-points for the body-tub, which thankfully went just where it was supposed to. As previously speculated, there are issues with the steering box proximity to the firewall, as my longer T57 'box doesn't provide adequate clearance for positioning of the flexible leather joint that is used at the junction of the steering column and the steering box. We may need to craft a shallow recess into the firewall, or slightly reposition the steering box. Or maybe a combo of both. But we'll sort this out, then get on with setting up the steering arms, drag-link, tie-rod, and all the clever sprung ball & cup connections that make Bugatti steering so light and direct. There had been some trepidation about how the chassis and body might fit together, as the body was constructed about 40 years ago by the coach-builders called "Black Arts", and they built up the body using the chassis frame prior to the straightening and alignment it endured a couple of years ago. Anyway, both the body and chassis-frame have demonstrated that they remain on very good terms, kissing in all the right places. As the body tub has never been previously seriously attached to the chassis, there will be some inevitable fettling ahead, but it's very encouraging to see the project beginning to resemble the lovely tourer it will become, one day.

So after a full day's hand sanding I can tell you that I'm fucking fucked. And so are my fingers. But she's ready for some colour tomorrow so that's ace. In put new seam sealer in where it needed it , all I gotta do is weld in the patch on the frame rail then I can paint it. That's tomorrow job

Bumper arrived today thanks to @Stu for hustling to get it here. Someone left me a few notes on the packaging 🤔 I had a good giggle! Anyway... Now to do some jigging, poking, mounting and repairs to get it looking like the last one.

Good progress despite lack of updates. Front lower A arms cupped and top sprint pocket plated over ready for the slam speciality air bags. Rear suspension is mostly together. Have just been told that i need Rose or johnny joints on one end of the 4 links. As this wont pass certification anymore due to the lack of flex/twist in the poly bushes. Have the engine in, with custom engine mounts. All the chassis cross members/braces tacked in and transmission supported. Floor Cut out of the cab for the transmission. Since the front end is lifter 2.5inches. Got the steering back on today. Trimmed the Radiator support panel to fit the Z'd frame. and checked clearances on everything. Everything seems to be working as planned.

Fizz levels are high but as always I've got problems. Haha. My throttle pull cable system isnt working well enough to synchronize the banks. It will do weird shit like... Both throttles start at 10%. Blip it up to 30% throttle, one will land at 10% and the other at 12%. One will land at 0% and one will land at 2%. Then blip it again, and both at 0% (or whatever) Then the imbalance ends up different depending on things like how quickly you push the pedal, and whether throttle angle is increasing or decreasing. weird. So its not like I can just make a compensation table for it. After a bit of head scratching I think it is because of the springyness of the cable itself. I'm trying to wrap a springy cable around 2x tight radius pulleys by varying amounts. The more wrapped around it is, the more it wants to try unwind itself back out straight. So this does chaotic sort of things to the TPS position of the second bank. In terms of full throttle tuning/power, none of this stuff is really too much of an issue as I could simply set end stops that both sides bang into. But it causes an unacceptable level of problems below that. I dont want to spend a massive amount of time chasing my tail on this when it comes to tuning time. Especially if I'm trying to make my 2025 deadline to take it to @kpr I could switch to using dyneema rope for the linkage cable, so that there is zero springyness and zero backlash. This would likely all work fine. BUT Cable throttle was all just meant to be an interim measure to quickly get the car going, before changing to ethrottle later on. Now that I'm balls deep in pondering the many complexities of cable based bullshit. I am looking back in the direction of ethrottle again. Ethrottle will just keep moving each side until its exactly on target (or very close anyway) So just for a refresher for what I've unsuccessfully tried already: -Dual Triumph 1200 throttle banks. Would have worked nice, but port spacing wasnt good. -half arsed attempt at pushrod setup -Bulldozer ethrottle. Too huge, lacked some safety features, cables way too long, whole thing way too big -Holden cruise control unit. Looked good, but had a stepper motor inside and complicated electronics. -cable based bullshit I've now found a new set of magic beans ethrottle option that I am hoping will work well to pull the throttles open. Which is the cable based traction/cruise system from an E36 BMW. Which looks like this: The reason I think this one might work where the others havent. The motor has a 2 wire plug, so I suspect that it is a straight DC motor. No brains in it, no TPS, no speed signal, no stepper motor. The motor is totally divorced and just has 1 job which is to pull a cable. which is exactly what I need. I ordered a pair of these from ebay so they're a few weeks away unfortunately. But will be cool if it works. My current cable based setup needs both pulleys on the same plane, which meant they had to go way out front of the motor. But these could instead mount these down the back, or offset from each other if needed. So it's all out of the way. So then the path is more clear out the front for my future airbox scheme. I'll carry on workin on the exhaust and trying to figure out the voltage drop issue until these arrive. If anyone locally has one I could borrow to test with until these others arrive. Would be appreciated!

Well, someone else is carrying on and waving the 1NZ flag which is great. Marino from Whangarei took his vitz to the Garage1NZ workshop for some dyno tuning today. It's an iterative improvement on some things that I did. So its an earlier 1NZFXE, with the mechanical waterpump. The innermotive 264 deg cams and valve springs from Thailand. (about half the price of JUN/BC stuff) 20v throttles, 4-1 manifold and a 3" exhaust I think. Sneak peak at @kpr's new youtube channel logo: Made a delicious ~160whp at 8500rpm And deserves honorary oldschool.co.nz membership for adding some 13" wheels and slam. Good shit Marino! Love it.

I just bought this. It's got "some rust", but it's not terrible, I think. Pretty much every interior panel is broken and most switches don't work. It's lovely to drive, even thou it's a bit fucked it still feels fancy. My plans are to sort the rust out, DIY respray, fix all the broken things and enjoy it. Discuss here

With several major components completed, we fitted them up in the chassis, and finalised the positioning, before disassembling the bits and sending them off for painting and plating etc. The handbrake cross-shaft has been fitted, but the positioning of the pedal-array will be determined by the location of the clutch withdrawal mechanism and also the firewall, yet to be fitted. Nonetheless, the chassis is starting to resemble a Bugatti - Very exciting!!!

Well, lets rip into it eh? Engine out Only took a few hours which was quite enjoyable, where's the catch I wonder, ahh, there it is Seems someone didn't want the cross member bolts coming undone, bit of an awkward wrestle eventually giving way to the 3' breaker bar Steering arm thought it would try a similar game, I had a lazy trick for that on a block of wood And then reality drops by, nothing bad, just that old demon scope creep. Plan was to pull out the cross member to sort a flogged out hole, realisation now is that if I want the engine bay painted in the future, it kinda should be done now. This sets the scene for replacing more bits, fixing more oil leaks and generally going a bit overboard. Which leaves me today with a very lightweight Lada Some would say not far off a bare shell

Update on this little beauty from the new owner. He's loving it. He's just got it a new COF, has got himself a truck licence and a TSL and is now in the process of tidying it up. New deck installed and he and his wife are currently stripping the old paint off it in preparation for new paint. I'm super happy it went to them and really glad to see it getting some love.

Here is a very late update. A lot of my pictures were removed from the image hosting site and I just gave up on posting. I got her all sorted and running great. She was running and driving for a few months before I finally got around to fitting some airfilters. K&N stopped making them to fit the DCNF carbs a few years ago. After hunting for ages I gave up and bought these foam ones from the U.K. I had them on for 3 glorious days and had just picked my son up from school while stopped at a red light she started to cough and splutter a little. Then the engine died and smoke started pouring out from around the bonnet. I told my son to bail out, grabbed the extinguisher, (best $25 I ever spent) went to open the bonnet and whoomfa.. opening the bonnet let all the oxygen in and my car flashed before my eyes. For a second I thought she was a goner. Luckily I got the fire out pretty fast so not too much damage really. I rebuilt the carbs, New fuel lines, a few wires etc and a massive clean. Now she's all back together good as new apart from a slightly scorched bonnet that I'll one day get around to sorting. So yeah.. I can't say I recommend those air filters.

Found a front bumper in Auckland, so the next game is relaying it to the South Island over the next little while. It's a genuine Uras kit and is slightly cut up already, so will be a perfect base for me to modify without feeling guilty. The corners have been chopped to fit N2 flares. I think this time I'll try to make the bumper 2 pieces, with a separate lip thats easily removable for loading on a trailer etc. It'll also allow me to mount the main bumper more solid since it won't need to be removed every time the car goes on the trailer. Here's an old picture with the front lip split off the bumper. I'll come up with a plan to make the lip lap over the bumper and might make the lip section from carbon fibre... we'll see 🤷

I'm still working my way through the front end. So far I've done the bushings and ball joints in the A-arms, reinstalled them with brand new KYB shocks. I've rebuilt the left front brake assembly. The right one I have had to order a new adjuster cable for, so that's on its way across the pacific at the moment. I also jacked up the rear and whipped the drums off to check if any other parts were missing, and there was a broken adjuster cable there too, so that's on its way as well. The adjuster cables were $4 and the shipping was $34, so I went through RockAuto's shopping list for anything else I could think of that could come from the same supplier without bumping the freight up. So also on its way is: Fuel pump Spark plugs (fuck these are insanely cheap in the USA) Plug leads Wheel bearing seals I was also going to get an air filter, but it must have made the box bigger cos it doubled the freight, so that can stay there for now. I've gone back and forth in my head, and decided not to paint things. It would add a massive amount of time to it to do properly, and I'm justifying it by calling it a "survivor car", whereby it can have shiny new mechanical parts but not paint.

Some updates.... 1/ Have now confirmed that it can move under its own power, consuming a vast quantity of petrol at idle so a rebuild of the carb is needed as the mating surfaces are probably no longer flat. 2/ Front wiring is all mostly sorted so I now have functioning lights. Last major jobs is I want to replace the rear fuel tank with another one I have here - I have a suspicion that it may still leak after my repair and it has a diesel return line on it I no longer need. Likewise need to sort out seatbelt mountings, I have factory ones here. Also some further fabrication.... the inner wings have basic splash guards which were mostly gone/rusted/bent when I got it. There was a change between the early/late wings for these and as I have 'late' wings with an early firewall it was a whole lot easier (but still fiddily) to replace them from scratch in alloy.

And so there was, a 66 monaco. Different tail-lights extending onto the trunk lid and different grille for 66. The monaco was the up-spec 'fairmont' to the polaras 'series 1 au falcon forte'. Great show, roughly 100 old mopars in attendance, split pretty evenly between aus & yank. I especially appreciated the rainbow array of chargers. Suprisingly there were no ap5 or ap6 valiants or dodge vans in attendance.@Roman came too in order to graph number of antiquated jalopies vs soil hydrocarbon levels.

Cute

Arjen, in Belgium, finished the new rear springs and sent them out. They have been mounted in the repaired chassis, along with the front springs and front axle, and new cast alloy backing-plates from the UK, so the frame is on its wheels!

One step forward and two steps back. Managed to do a couple of things which made it better. I adjusted the carb so that the flat spot off idle was no longer there. On the test drive it doesnt like it at load so I seem to have just moved the flat spot further along. Might have to wind the jet out a little further but I felt like I was already too far if you go by the base settings in common literature. Open to ideas on that one. On looking back I dont recall the vibration being there anymore so that's a positive but with the flat spot I wasnt able to go too fast so maybe it is still there. Welded on a stronger return spring so it doesnt rev too high at idle. Also managed to sort the issue of the overheating problems. The water just wasnt getting to the front rad. I added a T piece (for the eventual heater matrix) where the booster was and just filled it up from there. Was able to idle it for a while and the radiator and fans do a great job. Where the water goes in the radiator is quite hot to the touch but by the other side it is barely even warm. I took off the hose at that end and there is plenty of water so the radiator is doing it's job. Now for the shit part. I parked it on the ramp to burp itself and noticed a big oil leak. Im guessing the rear main seal (that came with the bullshit adapter kit) has shat the bed. Super frustrating as it means the engine has to come back out. I'm up to my assholes in projects though so sadly it'll have to wait. This project simply will not die.

I've been chipping away at a bunch of tasks and tidying things up, after the excitement of first drive has faded. But one thing on my mind which is - Man I honestly hate how it sounds at the moment. It's not right for the car at the moment and not very pleasant overall. This car has only had two objectives... Do a shitload of rpm, and sound cool. I've been fixated on sorting out the nuts and bolts of getting the motor fitted and running. Then dealing with some "shitload of rpm" problems. But the current noise even just idling. Just seems so discordant to the rest of the car. It sounds like a straight piped AU Falcon or lil johnnys RB20DE. Honestly, I have looked up on youtube some straight piped falcons and RB20s and it sounds just the same haha. How to improve? Here's what I'm hoping: -Will sound better once I've got the fuel map sorted a bit better, and some cam overlap chucked in there -Will sound better once trumpets are on (was just bare throttles currently) -Will sound better once it's doing a full throttle nang up the road -Will sound better with big cams in it -Might try keeping the 2-1 pipes smaller diameter, (currently 3") then flare out to 3" -Will try some different muffler options -Might try splitting exhaust back out to 2 pipes -Smaller tip diameters on the muffler (currently 1x 3" in, 2x 3" out) Ideally want to get rid of the bassy exhaust note a bit. Given the variety of sounds that I've heard from 2GR exhausts, I dont think it's an insurmountable problem. If I had a broader vision for the car than the two factors above, I could forgive it for sounding a bit "meh". But this is the one thing that will drive me mad if it's not right. Currently sounds way worse than a prius motor did - Surely that's a fairly low bar to set! haha. Still stoked to do some skids in it, but really looking forward to getting the tune more dialled in and seeing where the torque/power ends up with current setup. Then cant wait to chuck the big cams in and see how it compares. I will go back to listening to Alfa 155 DTM noises while my faith in V6 wavers...

So following on from the last post, I had Rod come round and make his inspections. Overall he was happy with my process and workmanship, with just a request for doubler panels behind the butt welded sections of the quarter/A panel/windscreen post to turn them into lap welds. I'd planned to butt these welds so I could properly panel beat them (the C pillar especially) and eliminate the potential rust trap, but I'll do what I'm told to keep the man happy. That done, I'm ready to paint the inner panels and weld it on. I'm not going to though. Firstly, I'm a master procrastinator and I'm stalling the wire wheeling and acid washing I need to paint it properly. Second, I think it's wiser to leave these panels off for now while I do all the same work on the opposite side for ease of reference. I've got lots of photos, but you can't beat being able to see the actual parts in question. So what am I actually moving onto? I thought I'd go for a change in scenery and start working on the fuel tank. I've known since I decided to put the V6 in it that I'd need to modify the fueling system to use a high pressure pump. Firstly I decided I'd rather not use an external surge tank. I prefer the simplicity of an in-tank setup. There's gotta be a good reason all the OEMs decided decades ago to do it that way. So I set about pulling the tank out of the back of the car where I temporarily installed it for storage years ago. It was strangely heavy and made a hell of a bang when I pulled the last bolt. Turns out, it's sat full of floodwater for the last two years. When I went through the engine and box and drained all the water back in 2023, I completely forgot about the fuel tank. I left it with a rag stuffed in the sender hole after originally cleaning it which had since worked as a wick, pulling water up out of the tank and maintaining a perfect damp breeding ground for rust. It managed to rot a bunch of holes clear through the top of the tank. Needless to say, I was pretty annoyed with myself. Nobody makes these tanks new anymore, so if I've cooked it I'll have to wade into the world of trying to find a second hand one. But instead I thought of it as an opportunity. I knew I'd need to modify the tank for an in-tank pump anway, so I might as well cut all the rust out and make a new top that fits my needs. With the offending section cut out, the inside doesn't look too bad. Plenty of surface rust and build ups, but these crumble away to nothing, and the underlying steel doesn't look too bad. Probably good enough to be salvaged with a tank sealing kit. So I made a start on the replacement panel by roughing in the bulk radii. Then the trick was how to make the raised sections. The best way I could think of was to cut out the inner section of each and gently fold up the edges. Then I cut out filler pieces from new material and folded their edges down to meet those on the parent piece. These could all then be welded together and hammered smooth. You can see I made the semicircular section larger diameter than originally. This was pretty much just a stab in the dark as to the dimensions. I found various jars and pots around the shed and decided which was the smallest that still fit my hand. Then I took the diameter of that, added a healthy margin, and made it the diameter of the flat section. This way I can get inside the tank after welding the top back on to hammer all the welds properly. Next was to make the pump hanger setup. I looked at a few OEM hangers on Google and decided a Mazda 626 wagon unit looked ideal. It's relatively compact, a good diameter to fit my existing allowance, and all steel so it's easy to modify. The sender also allegedly has a similar resistance sweep to the factory Escort one so it might work with the factory dash without too much electrical trickery. Of course there's also the bonus of being the exact pump from the original engine's donor car so I know it will flow enough. First thing was to make a doubler ring with captive nuts. This was a simple enough job with the machines at work. Then I roughly cut out the center of the flat land to eyeball the pump location, before drilling some holes and bolting it into its final position. Once I was happy with its placing I plug welded it in place. Finally I hammered the rough cut edge over and around the doubler plate to give it a nice OEM style radius on the penetration before grinding the excess flush. Very nice. To make the pump work properly, I need to extend the hanger to drop the pump down to the bottom of the tank. This was just a simple little extra section welded in. I've set it up such that it's touching the bottom with no gasket installed. This way, no matter how much the gasket squashes it won't be able to hammer the pump into the bottom of the tank. You'll note too that I've got some non-fuel rated low pressure hose on the pump outlet purely for mockup at this stage. While I was there I extended the float arm too so it should still bottom out near the bottom of the tank. Fuel injection pumps don't handle surge well, so it's imperative I baffle the inside of the tank properly. I'm basically just going to make a little fenced off section of the tank around the pump with some small bleed vents around the base, and maybe a few additional baffles around the tank to hold the fuel near the pump. First I need to clean out all the surface rust and shit from the inside of the tank. Ahh bugger. Turns out the surface rust is actually pretty deep, and there's a bunch of pinholes across a wide spread of the tank. There's not going to be any point trying to fix these. As soon as I patch one section, it'll just blow a hole through the next. Like I said before, no one makes these tanks anymore and there's bugger all second hand ones on the market, so I guess I'm embarking on a tank building odessy next. What fun.

Frustratingly, there were no pedal parts whatsoever in my kit of Bugatti parts, and I was faced with the challenge of getting an entire pedal array fabricated from scratch, as these parts are rarely available - they don't usually wear out or require replacement. Auto Restorations in Christchurch stepped up and accepted the challenge. They were able to remove and copy an original pedal array from the Bugatti Type 44 of Leon and Lois Witte. They had to wait until the Witte's Bugatti was laid up for the Winter, then did a splendid job of replicating all the components. Geoff Walls kindly brought the new pedal array with him when he was visiting Australia.

A massive amount of work was needed to restore the rear end. The two cast-alloy halves of the diff seemed to have originated from different cars, and one of the halves had been broken and repaired at some stage - they didn't match up correctly. A lot of careful machining and filling was required. One of the original "trumpets" housing the rear half-axles had been badly bent and it was unable to be straightened, so we needed to get two new trumpets fabricated from billet steel. You can see them here, mounted onto the completed diff. The trumpets will be removed and painted, once the diff has been fitted up to the chassis.