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Dyno. yes. all went as normal for a dyno session (read - problems, then fixing problems the more problems) but in the end it did not asplode. made 360kw on 91 fuel and 20psi. engine temps were low and stable, heaps of oil pressure and managed to get a really good tune into it. only one slightly weird thing was the idle speed control but its working fine, its just not responding as accurately as it should. drag day here i come.

Made it to OS drags. Blew an intercooler pipe off on the way there but was an easy fix, cheers @Tumeke for the tools! Then it was in to trying to figure out how to launch this thing. Spoiler alert - i sucked at it. Anywho, first pass was 13.99 and i got better from there. Unfortunately I had to leave at lunch time so I only got 5 runs in. Best I managed was a 13.0 whilst still driving off the line like a geriatric with a zimmer frame (foreshadowing) but all that aside the fact that I got the fucking thing there at all is still sinking in. What s fucking battle. Anywho, here we are. I'm to ashamed to tell Dick how I disrespected his 10 second legacy in this car so I'll just have to go back next year and do better.

After a bunch of hectic late nights I got everything sorted and car on the trailer for drags. Passed scruitineering and ready to roll! I had a whole bunch of hectic late nights and was starting to question my sanity for trying to get to drag day. But I did it, and that in itself put a big grin on my face. Cool stuff first... Banged out some big rpm! Almost got to my initial goal of 10k rpm and nothing blew up. The quarter mile times were slow as I wasnt trying any launches yet, and gear shifting was still a little problematic (or maybe the driver was) But made some cool noises! My main problem of the day, and what made me call it a day after only 3 runs. Was that the ethrottle motor on one side was shutting down sometimes. What makes this doubly bad, is that this was the bank that has the TPS that my fuel map runs off. So when the throttles start to shut on that side only. The other bank runs lean and gets a bunch more timing pumped into it. Not good. So decided to call it quits before I damage the engine for unfun reasons. I suspect that the reason it had a problem, is my ethrottle motor bracket started warping. This yellow bracket was only meant to be a dimensional test piece. I finished printing an incredibly solid version from PETG-CF, that finished mid day, on day before the drags. Unfortunatley I found that the only reason the yellow one actually fit, was because it could flex slightly. As it was actually 3-4mm out. So there was no way my other one would fit, and I didnt have time to print another. So I was lucky that it still ran at all and I could get some passes in. For my 3rd run I tried putting my drag slicks on, and had the launch control setup. But ethrottle packed up almost immediately so it bogged off the line and just died. I definitely need to put a better final drive ratio in. First gear was going to 70kph, 126kph in 2nd, then crossing the line at 8700rpm in 3rd. I'm not making use of any of the good gears in a J160 box! I dont think a 4.7 will make enough of a difference so I'll look at ordering a 5something at some point. It will probably pay to get some brand new driveshafts made when doing this, as the shaft speed is going to become considerably higher. On the whole though, super stoked to have made it there, and made it back with a car that still goes. I've got some problems to sort, but they're all sortable. Keep plugging away it!

Finished and out of the machine. Had the Sparkplug cups machined at a place in China Ive been trying out. Really good and only $20 each. From ordering to in my hand in 8days! They will be press fit I just need to decide on the fit. Took 20+kg out of it!

I swear by now I've redone almost every single thing on this car about 5 times. The carina of Theseus Anyway, My e-throttle woes. The cable pull setup and these TPS sensors just isnt good enough to get the car driving as nice as I'd like. I read something that made me realize that these TPS sensors are not "sprung" and thats probably half of the problem. If you put a screwdriver in and turn the center, it just stays where you left it. That means, if there's any play in the TPS on the shaft. Vibrations can potentially make it wiggle or whatever. These TPS are from/for an E36 BMW, which doesnt use the TPS for much - likely just accel fuel and figuring out when to go into idle condition. So its likely only looking for very large broad changes in throttle. I'm trying to use it as the load axis for fuel/ignition, and also try get ethrottle matching to 0.1%. Which it's just not good enough for. One of the problems that the above situation causes, in conjunction with my cable ethrottle setup. Is that sometimes when the system lands at home position. It might report 0%, it might report 1%, it might report 1.5% or whatever. Give it a blip on the gas and the number changes, despite landing on the same end stop each time. Which I think this is due to backlash and the TPS being unsprung. The problem is that if my idle target is 0%, and it cant reach it. Ethrottle will try "push" the system closed, which it cant do with a cable. So it just feeds out the slack of the cable. Then when you next tap the gas, and it pulls the cable in a bit and nothing happens. It then gives it a big yank and is twitchy. So, sticking with what I know and have. I've decided to adapt it to the Toyota TPS sensors. These are sprung, and since they're designed for e-throttle. Have presumably a finer number of windings that give a more steady output down to small %. I've only got a plastic prototype on at the moment, but seems like the concept will work and fit well enough. The gearboxed ethrottle motors turned up, that I can connect directly onto the end of the throttle body. Even with the shitty TPS still in place. The performance is way way way better! The response is good. These have around a 30:1 gearbox ratio. I can now significantly ramp up the PID settings and it's all a lot snappier. i dont like the rigid coupling, but it was good enough for testing. So I've bought some flexible ones. This will work a lot better, and fits nicely in space I've got available. I setup a test routine where it cycles through different throttle positions on a timer. Which is handy for setting up PID but also to see if it's getting too hot at all. After a few hours running, it gets to just under 50 deg when it's in ambient conditions with no engine heat. So I'll probably try to get some cooling over these to deal with engine bay temps. But also keep a few spare motors on standby in case there are any issues. One win that I've had today though. The car has been very hard to change gear, ever since the engine swap. One of the things I've done, was a short shifter kit install. I pulled the shifter off, and found that the plastic bush at the bottom was broken. The short shifter kit has/had a larger ball on the bottom than standard. So I've gone back to standard throw, and a brass bush to suit. Hopefully it changes gear nicely now, that was one of the last major concerns with drivability. It will be a big relief if that's fixed. I've also printed some trumpets which are about 20mm shorter, as seen in yellow here. Hopefully these will move the powerband bump slightly north and we'll see some good peak power gains next time I can get up to KPR's dyno. On the whole, pretty good progress and my list of issues are getting smaller and less critical. Fingers crossed it continues on this trajectory!

Couple more shots of it further to above post

StreetWeek 2025 Day 0. Summer has been super busy so I haven't had time to sit down and tell the tale, but now that it is snowing and miserable some reflection is probably worth while. Leading up to the event things were pressed as always but we managed to sort most things. as previously mentioned there were a few changes this yea, but nothing crasy, the only big physical change was the intercooler, so with that in mind it should be all good....right?!! 2025 was the Southern Swing, around the bottom of Sweden, but the starting point was Mantorp Park like last year. So the journey begain like last year with a pilgramage from Denmark to Sweden. I packed up the camper and tools and hit the road to Copenhagen to pick up my team mate, then head on up to Mantorp. Within the first 20 minutes it started raining and the wiper fell off, I joking messaged Philip that the repairs had been done for the trip and we would not require any more work from here on out. (Foreshaddowing Dave indicates that this was indeed premature and factually incorrect.) The weather cleared up and we had our cowboy hats on, Merle on the radio and spirits high. We arived without a hitch got all the paperwork sorted. While going through scruitineering, the guy pointed out the amount of oil splashed around the intake tubes and inner fender, we thought nothing of it and agreed to clean it before racing the next day, everything was under control, or so we thought... We found a spot in the pits, unloaded the camper and got out things setup ready for the morning. We decided we should go to the gas station and grab some fuel for the generator, so we grabbed the jerry can and headed off. The entrance road tor Mantorp Park looks a little like a shorter version of Rodneys Driveway, and as we were coming down the hill through the forest we completely smoke screened the whole lot, acknoledging that there was a problem we stopped just at the entrance and with the truck pouring out with white smoke, turned it off to figure out what the hell was going on. After inspection the oil in the engine bay had got even worse and upon attempting to restart the engine and being met with hydrolock, and I immediately jumped on the idea that the Holset had shit the bed, so I threw a post up in the streetweek facebook group and got to figuring out how to get the car back to the pits, as the was happening the event photographer drove past so I flagged him down and he agreed to tow us back to the pits, I didnt have a tow rope with me, and neither did he, but we tried with some undersized strops I had with me but no luck there. He drove me to the gas station to buy a tow rope (and fill the jerry can), and we tried again, this time success. With the truck already broken before the competition had started we had to figure out a plan, so we pulled the Holset off and inspected it. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortuately, it was fine. So I hooked up the small turbo to the oil lines and pulled the glow plugs out and cranked it over, this throughly rust proofed the enginebay. I put the glow plugs back in and started it up, and there was oil puking out of the compressor housing of the small turbo. This was bad, as it required getting hold of a stock 320cdi turbo from somewhere, and unlike the holset, which every Swedish Volvo dude has sitting on the shelf, are hard to come by. It was evening by this point and and we were trying to get the car together so we could race tomorow morning, so we decided to investigate what actually happened, we got to pulling it off and it appeared that the 4 screws that hole the compressor backing plate on had come loose, so we rtv them, and torqued them back up, and reassembled everything and fired it up at this point the turbo wasn't leaking and it was 3.00am so we packed up and went to bed.

It didnt It didnt Swapped out the gearbox for a spare. New ethrottle setup is working well so far, very snappy! Just bleeding coolant and sorting a few similar tasks, then ready to see if box is any good. Looking on track for drag day, so long as gearbox is fine and no other major issues

However, i found the perfect sticker, that I didn't know i had, to cover it with.

So that brings us to Coronet Peak Hillclimb Weekend. Hard to believe it's been a year since the last one! @GARDRB, @Roman, @Rhyscar and Josh flew down from the North Island for a dirty weekend in Queenstown supporting me and apparently driving my Legacy through terrain most people would think is impossible for that kind of car. I really enjoyed having people in town for it and they seemed to enjoy themselves too. I'm very keen to push for an OS weekend in Queenstown for next year's hillclimb. We kicked of with the car display on the Queenstown waterfront. Old mate from Luis Vuitton wasn't stoked about having riff-raff out front, but we had a permit so he can GTFO. Then we mucked around for a while, did scrutineering and had devil burger for dinner after 10pm. Check out this weird creation that was at scrutineering. A Smart car with crazy aero and a 1650cc+ modified Hayabusa engine. Competition in the 2L class was pretty tough this year. Brad Rule entered in his impressive K20 EG Civic and Andrew Gibson brought his K20 Lotus Elise along. Both cars had a power/weight advantage over me and I was sure they'd both be a few seconds up the road. Brad's Civic has a very spicy K20 that is rumoured to be from Reg Cook's Nissan NX Coupe land speed racer. I pitted next to Martin from HPA. We'd got him ready for the hillclimb and it was his first ever motorsport event! Pretty cool that he could get started in the wild little widebody B18C City: From there it was into the runs. I had 3 runs with a mildly moist run in the middle of the day. My times were looking good leading into the last run of the day. In the last run of the day I was on for a blinder! My lap timer said I was over 3 seconds up on my earlier run... When I struggled to get into 2nd gear and lost at least two seconds at the tight hairpin. Gah! Here's the video: It was still my fastest run of the day and now I know there's at least a 1.36 in the car next year.... The 1.38.3 sat me in 2nd place behind Brad's Civic and in front of the yellow Elise. The whole day was another great one yet again and I'm stoked to have been involved with organising it this year. ... Oh and after all of the time we spent together over the weekend, this is the only pic I can find that has all 5 of us (you can just see the top of my hat behind the car). Who's coming next year?

Day 2: Emmaboda We were a little late but nothing too serious, got a pit spot, unloaded everything. I jacked it up and pulled the axle out, and tired to warm the lock collar up so I could drive it home, all this resuleted in was fucking the seal on the new bearing I just put on. I then had the bright idea to visit Lennart from Gibb performance, as he has a small semi truck that drives around with us and sets up shop at each track so we can get fluids and rear end stuff if we need it, he has a press in the trailer, so I roll over there and borrow that, and we press the whole lot home, all while he is laughing his arse of when I told the story about the night befores goings on. andy way I slam that all back together and I'm pretty sure I even made it to the drivers briefing. I have a look in the tune up and think I'll take a bit of boost out of it, as Emmaboda is a virgin airstrip, and everycar I saw was just doing 200m burnouts, I dropped it from 3.8 bar down to 3 bar, then queued up and let it rip: Shitty 60' but a PB and it picked up 4kph in the big end. Hot damn, one and done... Pack up and get ready, while waiting for the check points to get released, we snuck in a bit of spectating which was nice, and smokey. The drive went well, but we took it pretty casual, also we had Dan and Steffen with us in the Landy pulling a caravan so we were limited to around 80kph, we arrived at check point 1 for the day: Just as a percautionary I looked under the back end and say that it was pouring out with oil from the side that had caused the issues, I guess the oil seal wasnt that good after all... Anyway we got to jacking it up and changine the oil seal in the parking lot, thankfully when I was using Lennarts press I grabbed a couple of fresh seals, so it wasn't a crazy job, I borrowed a slide hammer and bought some diff oil off the guys who owned the checkpoint and within the hour we were back on the road. We hit check point 2: And then rolled into Malmo Raceway at around 2am without too much trouble.

TWO JOBS IN ONE DAY WHAT THE FRANK! Fitted the tail light I bought in Japan. The one in the car was cloudy as fuck. 900$ well spent.

Did this.

That is all, thank you for your time

So we have been super busy on the car! Motor and box is in the car, new diff also. Full loom is back in the car, had Ryan from OCD come and put it back in. He nailed the brief of it all being hidden in the engine bay. Can barely see a wire which was what i was after. All the fuel system and 90% of the plumbing is in. Engine bay is very close to being done also. Front guards, nose cone and boot/bonnet are due to turn up from flocoat any day as well as all the steering bits from the painter. Not tooooo far away from rolling. Those on Insta may have seen some of these already! But heres some shots my brother did before we started assembly.

And of course the gunk at the top of the arch also gets into the bottom of it as well. For some reason i didnt do this area on the drivers side, and its not becasue its good! Drilled the dog leg out to reuse, its been patched (with braze) already, but i need to reuse it Doesnt look too bad but all these panels had sections with pitting and pinholes Didnt take many photos of the process of making patch panels and etc, but there is a lot of new metal here it was just easier to cut it out and remake than try to patch the rustholes. this is just after installing the lower third of the dog leg patch panel. Now the new sills will have something decent to join to. and cleaned up - ive left the original brazed patch in as it was still good, and i think cutting it out and letting in a new bit would have made it worse. Also for some weird reason it makes me smile to think that someone in the future restoring this might think this has only been repaired the once, way back in the day The back of it all got rust trated and primed etc before going back on, whcih is way better than it was so it should last another 40 years. and then a pic of round 27 of 58 fill 'n sands, still a few wobbles to smooth out... Apart from the drivers side rear dog leg that will need more or less the same work as this side, we are pretty much at the point now where the next step is to have the (bonded) windscreen removed to make a start on working my way down the A-pillars starting with the plenum corners, which i have patches for the outer - the inner will need some work too but ill make those. Anyway I dont think the rust has got up behind the windscreen and the surround and inside the door jambs looks good, but having the screen out will make it much easier to both know for sure and make a proper job of the repairs i already know i need to do. One bite at a time...

Launch went well although the current was mental. I don't think the little 4hp is going to cut it sadly. Also in any kind of swell it really needs a rudder so I'll sort that next. Really happy to have that ticked off the list. Thanks for all the kind words, fellas.

Have done a heap on this. Despite the lack of updates. Shocks were mounted months ago. The inner fenders have progress. The rear bed floor also has progress Have since remade the hinges, without all the speed holes. As the gas struts ive since added bend them out of shape.

fucking 2 years between updates whathaveibecome etc. anywho, highlights from the last two years, drag day 2024 - ran 12.7's all day and i had a fucking blast launching the shit out of this thing. day after drag 2024 - diff wine........ some time after that - E throttle had a massive whaaa in the ECU and there was a fucking seemingly untraceable power supply issue with the e throttle circuit. various times between 2024 and now - fucked around with relays and shit without fixing the problem last weekend - discovered that the ECU "e throttle relay trigger" was turning itself on and off for reasons that i cant figure out. bypassed that and we're golden. drove it to work today. still haven't fixed the diff.......

A mere 11 years after finishing this car and 1 year after finding the right badge for the boot I've finally fitted it.

Intake and intercooler pipe done. I'll probably paint the inlet pipe. Water feed and drain is done, oil drain is done and the oil feed is basically done. Tomorrow night ill start on the exhaust.

Nothing much else to do, so here's a bit of an update on a few good and some not so good things. The good: Finally got the the full bump clearance sorted on both sides. After a little bit of an Estwing massage, everything fits with minimal clearance. but I'm happy. After a decent wait, I finally got my custom pistons back from JE. 9:1 comp, gas channels, heat coating and while the valve reliefs don't look big, I specced them to be much larger than the stock valves and accommodate for larger lift than my current cam, with the expectation to have a billet cam made up some time down the road. The head is now with Harris Performance for a port and polish and valve enlargement. Seems like I'm going to have to buy blank Manley valves and grind and cut them down to get the sizes I'm looking for. Once that's all done I'll bring it back to Taylors who will assemble the short block. A big thanks to @slacker.cam @alfalfa and @Abarth for bring super bros and helping me heat and scrape the grossness that is bitumen off the underside of the car. What a shit ass job. I tried the slow wire brush but it just pushed it around, so scrapers it was. I hope to never do this again. You can see one side that I cleaned up and one side I didn't. Thankfully the blaster told me that they can get it off! I've been working with a mate in Aus to design an inlet manifold. I'm designing the runners and he's doing the rest. The project has stalled a bit, but this is where I'm at: I also finally received the Minilites I ordered ages ago. They were moving factory so it took a bit longer than expected. I always wanted some 8 spoke banana wheels (remember I had those Konig Rewinds ages ago) in a dark colour. These are 15x7 ET20 in anthracite. The photo makes them look a bit funny, but they look great IRL. and FINALLY the shell is off to the blasters to blast and epoxy the underside, floor pan, engine bay, sills and around the windows/screens. This is a major milestone. It'll go straight from here to Topline Panel & Paint to get started on the respray. The biggest problem with this is that I've recently been made redundant, so I hope my savings cover it! Or I get another job ASAP. Who's hiring? And now the bad: With a free garage I started to go about figuring out my rear brake brackets now that I've moved the discs from behind to in front of the axle flanges. I always thought there was a bit too much muscle needed to get the axle hubs to centre on the housing and I came across an issue where the distance between the existing brackets and the disc wasn't uniform. This prompted me to reach out to @RXFORD who had shortened the diff prior to the 4-linking. I took it into his workshop and he threw the bar in it. Turns out that welding the 4-link and shock brackets on had warped the housing, putting it about 5mm out from straight on each side: This is a massive fuck up as the warpage is where the brackets are. We are going to try and heat and straighten it but I will say that I'm pretty pissed off. I called the shop that did the 4-linking and they basically said they couldn't help me - which is pretty shit service if you ask me. Best case scenario is that we can bend it back straight, worst case is that I'll need to build a new diff housing and I'll be out several thousand dollars for the inital work and then again for building a new one. FML! All that said, I'm pretty happy with the progress. The aim is to be driving next summer, so hopefully that goal will still hold true. Oh, and I discovered that because of my new coil over turrets, I'm going to need to have a custom gas tank made. Yay!

Been down on power lately, nothing left in the tank after work and needing weekends to rest…it turns out it’s some rheumatoid arthritis sort of gig. So when I actually had some vim, I achieved some low-key stuff. Contacted a dude to measure and machine engine, he’s keen but haven’t had any timeline suggested. Have mostly massaged dents out of the stainless trim and hubcaps, pushed and pulled the car off the lawn with my wee van and got it under cover on concrete so I could have a bit of an investigate,measure and make a shopping list. The rear UJ is wasted, this was known, but comical with the cap off! This is what’s inside a torque tube..really just a driveshaft in there with a bearing one end and a seal the other, both replaced now. The drums are all fantastic and with a little radius to freshen they will go through compliance, thankfully. The rear brakes are lovely, can still read part numbers on the shoes and cylinders move. All got stripped and cleaned up, seals pass the test for now. Front shoes are aged but still alright for some cruise miles.. Brake pics are before shots I’ve chipped off the original underseal along the rear tub seam and uncovered some rust, cant blame it! RH wasn’t too bad. Wire wheeled all nuts/bolts/washers for the engine and some trans ones, sandblasted the crossover pipe/thermostat housing, waterpump and timing cover along with oil filter housing.. no polishing this time, just some clear coat.. Should pop with some greeny-turquoise paint on the steel bits. ^ thick old oil caked inside there! Drained the trans and gave it all a scrub. The pan was full of congealed gross, I hope it’s not too shagged but needs to go to the shop. There was a piece of cast iron in the pan too..Didn’t appear to have broken off anything/no fresh cracked face..perhaps a pawl or keyway that has dislodged! A discount code from the thread and a 6 day turnaround had the first of me ROCKAUTO parts arriving. How good are they! A bunch of wheel bolts, a fan belt on clearance, bearing + seal for torque tube, sway bar bushes, brake hoses and a set of shoes. The ignition barrel and keys were $25, probably cost more to match and cut a key to my original, which has the faceplate pop off regularly. GM run that setup for many years I could, maybe should have ordered engine stuff too but something deep down says hol’ up..just incase this motor is a flop, or a runner shows up, etc.

I took the day off work today so dad and I could put things back together. I found a burnt wire in the engine loom that had melted its way out of the loom. It was disconnected at both ends but always worried me that it might have damaged other wires in the loom. So I started the day by stripping it out and re-wrapping the loom. It’s nice and tidy and I have peace of mind now. The engine and trans went in with no drama, welded the exhaust back together where I had to cut it, hood back on and a few other small jobs ticked off. Its starting to look like a car again! I also found a huge rats nest in the heater box, just by chance as the fan resistor block fell off while I was taping the loom and revealed a mess of carpet underlay and grassy shit.

It seems I have totally underestimated how awesome a quality set of brakes pads can be. just bed in the winmax pads, like holy shit, it stops like a motherfka now, and pin straight, no pulling etc. this thing is insanely fun to drive now knowing I can stop when I need to. pedal throw and feel is so perfect. $271 worth of pads and a change in master size. Worth it

Job done. Came out exceptionally good

Day 4: Tansport Day Part 3 Check Point 3: The day was mint and the roads were good. Check Point 4: From here we headed to Gibb Performance, Lennart had extended the invite when I picked up the driveshaft cross, it was 15 minutes away from the race track so why not. After a beer and some yarns we made it to the race track and set up camp.

Similar state on the passenger side. Epoxy primer and seam sealer. Hopefully no more leaks! I learnt you shouldn't feather seam sealer edges because it will pucker up when painted over. I treated a load of light surface rust around the engine bay & under the radiator supports. Repainted everything. Stoked to have the rust repairs complete! Now it's time to start putting things back together and start on the exterior.

More rewinding, I was put in contact with a nice fellow in Auckland got in touch about some black leather bits he had available. Now that the car is going to be grey, I'm even less enthused about a grey interior, so I snaffled it up. The leather is in decent condition, or at least MUCH better condition than the cracked and damaged original grey leather stuff. The catch: it must have been introduced to a flood at some point in time, because the metal bits in the bottoms of the seats are absolutely fucked. Fortunately, the grey leather seats' metal stuff is in good condition. So I get to add upholstery to my list of fun things to learn and suck at. I disassembled the black and grey passenger seats early on and set about restoring the bits. It immediately started to pay itself off. The top half of the seat is alright. There's corrosion on the bottom brackets, but nothing crazy, and I didn't feel the need to disassemble much here. Just the back of the seat, which revealed further rusty bracketry, but not enough to really do much about. I simply painted what I could see with rust converter, and the main brackets got wire wheeled, masked and painted black. The rails are all riveted together, and I just don't want to deal with that stuff (yet). So I simply dunked it all in evaporust, cleaned, rust converter'd, wire wheeled and painted it. I made sure to move the bits around after painting so nothing bound up, and vowed that I'd fill it with grease later. The black seat leather was then carefully extracted from the base. The leather at the site of the bolt holes etc is pretty rough. Mostly intact, some thin or ripped bits. The rust impregnated itself quite well to a lot of it. I used a combination of careful evaporust dipping and some soapy scouring pads to remove the crusts. You can see where some of the internal seams (where wires once laid) are torn, I'm curious as to what physical stuff went down to cause that. There'd be some mechanical forces involved, after all fabric doesn't like moving across jagged rusty wire, but I don't think that explains all of it. Fortunately, theres very little of these places actually visible once all the trim etc is on. The... uh... leg thingy also got some treatment. I was going to use the grey seat's bracket but it was such a straight-forward hunk of metal that I just re-used the black one. A long pause happened here because of life and procrastination, but eventually I put my A back into G... and pressured girlface to help. There are a few wires that run through the seats in loops to pull the centres of them in, and these loops had mostly been destroyed by the rusty wires. Girlface fixed these by hand-sewing new fabric in. Gorgeous. The black vs grey base, uncovered - I was really impressed at how good the grey base was. I didn't do too much to the grey base; just slathered on some rust converter and used our steam mop to restore the foam. Then it's time to use my aliexpress upholstery set! Was not looking forward to this part but it was probably one of the easiest parts tbh. The clips are surprisingly non-fiddly. I managed to re-use stiffening wire from the grey seat and get things buttoned up okay. The hardest part was actually just wrangling the leather (which has shrunk with age) onto the base (which i'd fluffed up the foam on). Getting this lever into the hole took half an hour alone. Eventually, after a lot of cross-referencing the other seats and some repeated steps, the bracketry was on and lubricated with lithium grease, and the top went back on it. Looks great I need to fix up a couple things, the leg thingy lever is a bit tight and doesn't want to disengage. Also the slide-everything-forward-for-passengers-lever is a bit touch and go. For the driver's side I might just be a bit more frugal with the paint as it could be adding extra friction, but I'm hoping it's just a spring or something that I've mis-configured.

Day 5: Vågårda Raceway We had Pretty high hopes going into the day, 2 PBs in 2 days will do that to you, so we got to thinking about suspension setup and how to improve the 60', which despite the faster time had been significantly slower than it had been previously. A bit of an AHA moment; Last year I setup a 2 step, and due to how a diesel works, ie fuel control, a 2 step works by cutting fuel, this in turn cuts power, so basically while the launch is much more consistant it is slower. With that disengaged and a bit more preload on the caltracs we queued up, the day was scorching hot, so we decided to try and get an early run in so we wouldn't have to wait in the heat all day. Also, maybe somewhat foolishly, I had the truck idling to warm up before giving it hell. I think I was the third car to run that day. It left hard but then fell on it's face, I quickly jumped into the logs while waiting for the return run, and nothing was really wrong, weird. Anyway, it was time to head back to the pits, so I started it up and low and behold there were some unwanted noises coming from the engine bay. BAD Noises, Bugger. Anyway, here we were a long way from home with a termanlly broken motor. So we grab a beer and have a think about how we fix this mess. We start scanning Market Place looking for another motor, we asked a few of the other racers, and came up empty handed, so we started figuring out plan B. I talked to Lennart, and he said we could stash the truck at his place, so we got on the blower to roadside assistance. They offered to deliver it to the nearest Chevrolet dealer, which I politely declined without trying to give the game away, but I offered that there was a local mechanic that was closer and potentially more suited to the job, they jumped at the offer to save money, so the tow truck was on its way, Phillip and I quickly packed up camp, ripped the stickers off and got to waiting. We loaded up the truck and headed to Gibb performance. With the truck unloaded at Gibb, we got to drowning our sorrows and planning our trip home. We were looking at a pretty reasonable train ride home, so with that in mind we crashed in the camper and decided to tackle it the next day. I let Lennart know that I would find another motor and be back in a couple of weeks to do a motor swap so I could get the truck out of his hair.

Seems i haven't updated this since forever. Before the 2024 os drags i swapped in a long rod bottom end. 7a block 4a crank. custom china rods. It was down on power a good 5kw. Bottom end is a bit lower compression, same pistons, but cut the valve cutouts a little deeper. plus running a heavier damper/crank pulley. was also stuck with 95 fuel. Its not knock limited on 95 but it used to make a couple more numbers on gull e10. from memory it was low 160kw After borrowing roman Dave's tyres, still managed to smash previous 13.2 @ 105mph pb with a 12.7 @ 106mph So yeah the gains in power between drag days were essentially lost with the bottom end and fuel change. as only 1 mph faster trap speed, After drag day, swapped in the big 318deg kelford intake cam in place of the 304. which actually worked quite well. as i was able to use the extra piston to valve clearance, to run a bit more advance in the midrange to hold it pretty similar to what it was and gain a bit out the top. Still down on power compared to the old bottom end but getting closer. Basically just stayed like that for some time. Until brought a toda 308 deg cam, to do a bunch of testing with. After trying lots of different combo's, inc full ham 320deg toda intake and 308 exhaust. Ended up finding a combo that made a touch more power Blue new cam combo, red old. Ive been testing this car in 3rd gear hence the lower power reading. as the dyno has a mare at the speed it does in 4th gear, im running it out to 10100rpm now. Was also a very slight intake length change on the blue run. run in 4th. ignore the spike at the end, it doesn't peak to 9700 ish on 3rd gear runs. so the 4th gear run should be just over 170kw, if dyno didnt spaz out up there. would be interesting to see what the old bottom end would have done on this setup. but current should be less likely to fly to bits now its running the toda 308 intake cam rather than the 318 kelford and the same exhaust cam. was junk everywhere other than top end going any bigger on exhaust side. sooo smaller intake cam and more peak power? Yeah that advertised number doesn't mean much. 308 left 318 right 318 kelford left 320 toda right.

zorst manny. Made by Sinco customs in hamilton. Mike made the manny on my blue car about 10 years ago and it still looks like new, its fucking superb and i cant recommend Mike enough. if you need a pipe work thing go see Mike, fucking top excellent most great welding yes. now i need to make oil drain, zorst dump, wastegate dump, oil feeds, water feeds, water return, and probably some other stuff as well. money shot of it just sitting there before the real work begins.

I had the 20mm shorter trumpets on, and since I figured this would make it run leaner/richer in some areas I added 5% fuel in across the board before doing any runs. Then updated it after each run. So was fairly well dialled in by 3rd run. The graph below is fuel table values needed to reach target, before and after. (VE) It looks like I've traded the 7k rpm dip for one at 5k instead. On the whole it's probably a better length because once first gear is done, there's no reason to ever see 5k rpm again. Once the car is better sorted it might want to launch at higher than 5k anyway. Once you're in the right sort of intake length range, it's interesting to see how sensitive it is to trumpet length changes. I've also not done any VVT amendments since having my old intake on. It will most likely be wanting some more intake cam advance. But another dyno visit might be easiest way to figure that out from here.

Took the car back to Hytech for one last visit before Dick closes the doors for good next week. And also I was going to stick a sticker on the oil catch can to cover the logo. But I don't really like the catch can so I'm gonna make a new one. Don't need to waste the sticker in that case.

I took another day off yesterday to finish getting this thing together. I started the day by making up the new hard lines for the transmission, installing the radiator and the new hoses. It was a bit of a session of archaeological discovery. The lower radiator hose that was on it was a real bastardized thing with a joiner in the middle of it, and the hard lines for the transmission had been cut and joined with rubber hoses and 11 (!!) hose clamps holding it together, eleven of them!! The upper radiator mounting clamp was bent, and always annoyed me, so I whipped it off and straightened it. Then it didn't fit any more Aha! Its not the original radiator! Obviously in the past someone has had to replace it, and found one that is similar but not quite the same. This also explains why there is no fan shroud, cos the shroud on the radiator probably didn't fit the car, and the shroud on the car probably didn't fit the radiator. The mounts have all just been bent till they fit, the transmission lines have been joined to the 2 inches of remaining line that came with the radiator when it was cut out of some other car etc. So I re-bent the mount, which has of course made it look worse than it did before. And my new radiator hose doesn't quite fit 100%, but it fits 90% so it will do for the short term, its just a little more stressed than I would like. Hard lines are made and installed: All the ancilliaries, carb etc are back on. It fired up beautifully with the new fuel pump. I managed to get 9 of the 11 litres into the transmission before one of the new flare connections started to leak But of course it was tucked in behind the hot exhaust so I couldn't tighten it up. Hopefully, its only about a half hours work away from being able to drive out of the shed now!

Another month, another batch of updates. things coming together quickly now. Given the state of the shell from when it was first blasted, super happy with how it's all coming together with everything substantial now fixed. Only minor things left to go f1696895-25d5-4ab1-abf0-0bfe5164bdd7 by phillipbaines, on Flickr d56dbad2-5bdb-421b-b3cb-ff398a9cdc27 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 932dba84-1ed1-417b-9984-93b24b2641de by phillipbaines, on Flickr 11d31d39-40f9-46a0-ab2b-445e3aad9d5e by phillipbaines, on Flickr 30eacb2d-d953-45f5-a881-8f87088aaae7 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 0c8dbef2-ecf2-46be-a74f-12cab18432a3 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 7e62f48b-8837-4728-b5f8-5f6ec843e19e by phillipbaines, on Flickr b1feeefe-63ed-4e1b-b9d6-2178101d64dc by phillipbaines, on Flickr 12b25a95-490d-4df4-a183-ca407aaa34ba by phillipbaines, on Flickr 5567033e-75f8-4009-a7fd-6f0c4ae2e11b by phillipbaines, on Flickr 7ed1df7b-b6f4-4d91-ab45-6a80e8875780 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 5573dac3-9078-438f-93a9-c844e28a816d by phillipbaines, on Flickr 7367c64e-f2c3-4306-9692-6b2c0eae54f5 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 1eb5fdcc-434f-45e5-bf01-51fa003883f0 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 53d1e9d0-d7fe-455b-bfb5-7470c86d56ff by phillipbaines, on Flickr 51c001dc-1d9c-4e71-85f7-e01a6fd2cd62 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 7d194afa-0ed3-4590-a458-744377dfbf9b by phillipbaines, on Flickr 71ce1853-209a-496f-867f-bd3a73541611 by phillipbaines, on Flickr a2af51bc-c711-441c-860c-896b46d50f62 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 80de8f22-e9c6-4122-ab11-814e1c35bbd5 by phillipbaines, on Flickr Discussion:

Still here, did another Circle Jerk track day earlier in the year but this time on the 14 inch long champs and it went so much harder. Was hitting and pulling in 5th and cornered way harder. Max revs all day. Recaros are mounted up on their own rails so more leg room and a bit lower. I moved the battery to the boot and de loomed a bunch of wires under the bonnet which has worked out nicely. Scored some Monsoons locally so the rare part bingo card is almost there. Got a p/plate BUTA Booked wire and tune with another local company so will push for legal in 2026. Thanks for reading my dribble

And then I did this. Zorst hangs all lopsided and mong from factory because nissans are stupid so I made a better bracket to take the rotational load off the turbo flange. Which is a V band so not great at resisting rotational load. All finished. Should be able to drive it tomorrow.

Some pics for no reason,more of the same so don't look if you don't like pictures of this motor cycle

Did some tuning on the weekend The carb situation has always been a bit poos for light throttle stuff With a blow thru carb , in very basic terms you jet the primaries for cruise, light load stuff, and rely on the power valve to richen it up under boost, so at bigger throttle openings or coming on boost, the power valve opens and dumps fuel in. The secondaries just get jetted to suit WOT On a blow thru carb the power valve gets boost referenced so it opens at the right time, as it's possible to have boost above the carb but vacuum under it which keeps it closed So the guy that set my carb up had an arrangement of vacuum from under the throttle with a one way valve, a t piece with an adjustable valve that goes to the hat, and this arrangement of bullshit makes the power valve open at the right time in theory The problem is it's incredibly sensitive and hard to get right, the tiniest movement of the adjusting valve makes the pv act differently and can go from rich as bill gates to backfiring lean , and particularly when it's cold if the vacuum drops too much the pv opens and blump blump blumps out black smoke So I got a boost activated power valve instead Normally a power valve is open, until vacuum sucks it shut, so when the vacuum disappears the valve opens , requiring aforementioned bullshit to make it work The boost activated one works the other way around, it's a check ball with a spring and an adjustment screw, so now when there's positive pressure in the bowl ie boost, it pushes the ball open to add fuel It's much better now, went up a jet size front and rear, plus refitted the bowl vent extensions I put an afr gauge on it and it read a bit weird but it averaged out to mid 11 afr under full steam ahead. Half throttle where it used to do weird things is now very good I'd started to think about efi but I'll see how this goes , might not need it now

Apparently there is something with the phot limits so I'll break it up a bit more... Day 1: Transport We gingerly set off from Mantorp, by this point we had decided the cowboy hats were bad luck so they were in the camper and I'm pretty sure we didn't have the radio on for the first leg of the trip, but everything seemed to be working so we cruised into the evening feeling a little broken, but not beaten, from our start to the event. We arrived to the first check point, and grabed a beer, things were looking up! e Stopped for a feed and coming out of the restaurant I was greeted with this sight, which I thought was preety sweet: Rolled on to check point 2: At this point it was getting late, around 12:30am or so and only 10km from the next track, everything seems like it was going swimingly, I was dog tired, I had done a bunch of the transport driving too, so I was half asleep in the passenger seat when I got woken by a huge BANG!!! I look across and see horror on Philips face, and sparks in the wing mirror, and within about 3 seconds we ground to a hault. We jump out and assess the damage, the drivers rear axle had walked off the bearing and lock ring, then the tyre got slashed on the fender lip, causing it to sit down on the caltrac bracket under the leaf spring. We were sitting ducks, in the middle of a pitch black country road in the middle of a forest. For those that don't know, I have 9" style axles that look like this: Some how the shrink fit lock ring that hold the bearin in place had given up the ghost, but hadn't cracked or broken, and the whole lot had walked out of the axle housing. So here we are pitch black, camper stuck in the middle road, immobile, with countless racecars driving past with unknown levels of visability, diff oil pouring all over the road, A shit show. Philip grabbed a torch and headed up the road to act as an early warning device, I started unloading the tools. After last years debarkle with the wheel bearing I had a fresh one in stock, so I jacked the truck up to stop the leaking and pull what was left of the axle and wheel out from under the car, got to hammering the new bearing on, and turned on the stove in the camper to warm up the lock ring, I got the bearing on all good, but I don't think there was enough chooch in the campers stove so when I went to drop the lockring on it shrunk down about 3mm short of where it should have been, but at this point we had 10km to the next track and it was good enough as far as I was concerned, so I check the axle seal, it seemed good enough, and I didn't have another one anyway so back it went together. Everything went smoothly but we didnt have a tyre, we had already made the plan that we were just going to sleep on the side of the road tonight, so I put one of the drag radials on to move the 50m to the parking place off the side of the road. I let the jack down and the damn thing just about sat on the ground! But it was enough to get us off the road. By this stage it had started raining and what we were now faced with was the fact that we had just put 2 litres of diff oil on to the road, and parked about 50m away, I had horrible visions of some Mario kart type event, so we stayed up and waved other racers around the oil slick, one of the swedish guys rang the road side clean up hotline for us and they promised to be there shortly. After waing 2 hours we were getting a little tired of waiting and when a truck driver stopped and asked what was going on, we explained and he had some gravel in the truck for when it get icy, so we threw a bunch of that down, put the warning triangle in the middle of the road, put the camper on jack stands and hit the sack. We woke the next morning to see that noone had crashed because of us, and the warning triangle was still in place, which was nice, but just as Philip was taking a piss on the side of the road, a half asleep commuter drove right through middle of everything completely obliterating the warning triangle... At this point we had a movable car, but I was deeply concerned about just how flat my Mickey Thompson looked under the weight of the camper. Fortunately we were meeting up with 2 friends at the next race track, as they were intending to be pro spectators for the next few days, so we got on the blower to them and they drove out to our camp site and we got to finding another tyre. I think we tried every tyre shop in a 150km raduis to find a 15" commercial tyre of any size, finally we found a pair of slightly smaller tyres, and got the one replaced and took the other one with us so we could get one of the others changed so we had two pairs of transport tyres, and headed back to the scene of the crime. We then did some tyre juggling, got one of the fronts on the back, and the new smaller tyre on the front, packed up and hit the road to the track, the last 10km were pretty nerve racking with the unknown lock ring status and the car on a lean from the mismatched tyres but we got there.

moving down a bit, more classic HQ rust, (and some dents). You can tell its classic rust, because the outline of the patch panel lines up pretty good with where i need to patch... yum! Gunk and dirt from the boot, wheel arches and door vents just collects in there and rusts from the inside out cleaning up good, no patches needed on the inner arch on this side, but the rear of the wheel arch panel did need replacing Just underlapped this patch as the outer will cover it and there is meant to be a factory leaded seam there too Patch panels are missing some details, the arch patch panel joins to it but its not quite right either Not that pretty but it is brazed from factory and hidden by the door, and many more rounds to weld 'n grind to go (and then many rounds of fill 'n sand after that) and in.

Day 1: Mantorp Park So with a distinct lack of sleep under our belts and a still questionable motor we took our morning coffees and went for a walk, I snapped these as inspiration for @Testament After we were propperly caffeinated we got to looking at the sorry state of affairs that was the truck, at this point we still had the big turbo and intake piping off, so we got to putting those back on, once they were installed we went to start it again and it hydrolocked again... Turns out the turbo had been puking oil for some time, another racer had loaned us a vacuum pump which we used to empty the intake manifold which revieled roughly a beer can worth of oil, so we made the call to pull the intercooler out and empty it, this negated a trip to Biltema for supplies, so we commendeered a fellow racers tow car and took the half hour drive, this ended up being around lunch time, so we fueled up, us, the car and the supply wagon and made our way back to the race track, by this stage racing was ment to have been underway for 2 hours, but there was some rain so it was delayed, but not so much that the day was rained off and cars had started running (this is what I was secretly hoping for as if less than 50% of the cars run then the day gets canceled and those times dont count for the average.) We go stuck in and its a good thing that we bought a case of degreeser because there was oil EVERYWHERE. After some time we managed to free the intercooler from its mounts and drain it to the tune of 4 litres... We reassembled everything and by this stage it was getting a bit late in the day and the chance for running a time was running out, so we made the call that we weould just line up and break the beams so that we would record a time for the day and stay in compettion. At this stage there were possiblly every running car lining up so it looked like we had a long wait ahead of us, luckily we go chatting to the head of scruitineering and he understood our pligt, and told us he would sort the 60 second slip for the day and we could head back to the pits and keep working on the truck. So with another few hours of cleaning and assembly we figured that we were as ready as we could be to tackle the days drive, tail between our legs we headed ove to the bus to pick up the days checkpoints, and see what the night had in stall for us.

I also just got home from a quick lunch time scooter strop to the hospice shop. That's the red rear seat base and the stained front seat base fixed for $9.

They were longer but I snapped the blade when I was setting the blades, made from ball race bearings outer race.

Wowwee thread dredge from page 8. I do still own thus. Failed its last wof on brakes. I had previously put in a new master but it never seemed to pull up properly so got the factory one refurbished. Threw some new shoes and cylinders at the front wheels too and damn the brakes feel way better. Still driving it a bunch. Almost every weekend. Unsure what ill do with it next year. Maybe move it on. Maybe put something with a bit more power in it. Unsure

Part Two of the Datsun Bluebird fender restoration. Repairing the trapped rust between the headlight ring and fender. Cool view from inside out. Spot welds drilled. Surfaces cleaned and the ring is welded back in. Simple yet very time consuming anyway. Fit Check of headlight assembly with my 53 year old Cibie lamps. All is good. Backing up a bit to the inner support. Viewed after rust removal. Just had to later on cut some small areas out and weld in fresh metal. No perforations in the outer skin though, that eventually got sandblasted locally and cleaned up well. Views of the completed metal repairs. Not shown are hours and hours of hammer and dolly work on the numerous panel dents. And I still have to prep and weld the inner support in. My plan for these exterior repairs is to leave them in bare metal until I'm ready to move on to filler and primer work. I'm giving them a temporary preservation via chemical etch and zinc phosphate coating in the meantime. The lower rear quarters are slightly rotted out and ought to be worked next. So the little project prior to this was an overhaul of the engine cooling and cabin heater repair stuff. I'll post that next.

Painted some bits today and as enamel epoxy takes forever to dry I'd give it a helping hand by dragging her into the sun. Landrover for scale.

Wheee... I've been for a hoon. WOF next week then good for cruising...

Ended up trimming the coaming at the rear. Then got it all covered in primer and have started the top coating process. Only the bilge and under the seats is done so far as the oil based enamel takes ages to dry. I'll do a bit every day so hopefully by the weekend I'll be ready to start on the rudder or the trailer. Not long to go, legends.