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Well now... I have just gone and bought another Viva. This time its an HB wagon. YES!! I have been after one for ages and ummed and erred over the one that was for sale on Trade me up in Taupo about a month ago for quite some time. But factoring in transport to get it south put me off plus Hannah and I then ended up buying a MK1 Triumph wagon from Christchurch, a car we have always wanted for a long long time but had never seen one for sale at a sensible (read cheap) price. Then Shane, my viva HB mad friend in christchurch offered me his one. Its very rusty but with reg on hold plus a set of Cheviot Turbos I was keen. Hannah offered to go halves on it and that was it. So now we have two very rusty wagons, both circa 1969, to restore. The Triumph is still waiting for our collection. So this HB wagon eh?... yeah its pretty rusty. I had no real idea what it was like but for two photos. Shane brought it up from Chch today and we drove over to Blenheim in my Viva last night to meet him. He was unloading it when we got back from a walk in the hills this morning and my first impression when I slowed to a halt behind it was good. In fact great- it just looks so much cooler in the flesh than I thought it would. The shape is soooo choice. The turbo mags really set it off too. The back was filled up with the doors and the original tailgate. I grabbed some photos then we pushed it into my parents yard. Ha- the look on my parents face. 'FUCK' I had a quick look over it then we went for lunch. Shane and I just chatted Vivas and other old cars. He is a wealth of info on these Vivas having owned something like 40 of them and having done many engine conversions. Anything that is missing he'll sort me out with. After lunch they left to go pick up a Chevette wagon that he has had stashed away in the north island some where. I then took some time to go over the new toy with Hannah and see what we have let ourselves into. Yep- rust. It has rusted in the usual Viva places but is also solid in many of the places I would expect to see rust. Luckily the main chassis rails are not too bad. Drivers side has holes but passenger side solid. The boot floor boot and spare wheel well are great. Weird. The sills are shot, comically so with holes right through inside to out. A smear of filler and she'll be right... The floors are frilly along the inner sill edges. Head lamp areas not too bad luckily- these have welded on front wings so repairs are more time consuming there. Shane has supplied me with a spare whole right front wing cut as the car has a pretty dented one. The roof and gutters are good- just surface rust. Bulkhead good but holes in a few places closer to the inner wings. The very common spot for rust n these is behind the bonnet hinges but it looks to be solid there. Rear valence a bit thin. But it does have a stainless exhaust The engine apparantly runs but really I dont care as its most likely going to be swapped out with something more modern. Maybe I might get it going and driving with it first though. Luckily it has a disc brake front end and a servo. These will help haul back those 54 ponies. I have found a few pieces of the missing puzzle... I love these wheels. In fact I looked for a set ages ago for my Viva before I got the widened steels and couldn't fnd any in 4" pcd. Very rare. One of the few styles of alloys that I think suit these cars. So I am chuffed to bits to have these. two have quite bad curb scrapes so I will have to weld them up and machine them back but nothing major. Curves and sweet wheels.. It comes complete with ICE The dash needs a little bit of amourall... It is now safely parked in my parents carport- having relegatted one of thier manky modern cars out. I think it looks tiny next to what is meant to be a smallish suzuki. My parents think Im a bit nutty. But they know I'll sort it out... We wont start working on this for ages yet. The Triumph will be first in the queue and before that happens we have to get our shed up on the land and move out there. So for now the Viva will wait patiently. I am however quite keen to try out those alloys on my HB so I might fix them up soon. Bed time now as I am exhausted form so much excitement. I wont be back to view any responses (like "you idiot!" and "why that?!!!") from you lot till we get back from more gorse clearing on the bush block on monday night. Until then suggestions and mockery more than welcome Btw- we both love the colour so that will be its future shade- but maybe with a cream roof. Discussion

Then I found the brakes were shit so decided to do that before warrant. New disc, hoses, pistons, bendix pads,caliper kits, hard lines and fittings. Also had to cut the shocks out to get the springs out to cut a bit off as it was really high. Still locking up wildly when applying minimal brake pressure. Fuuuuuck! After much pissing around and bleeding and shit, decided to do the brake master cylinder. Broke the remaining hard lines so replaced them too. Same shit. But isolated the lockup to the right rear. Thought it might be because it was a diesel so wasn't getting vaccum for the booster? Turns out it has a vaccum pump so that wasn't it.. I know next to nothing about diesels and since this was a conversion didn't know what was supposed to be there and what wasn't. So it was to pull the drum apart. Couldn't get it apart because it was wildly grooved. Stole a puller from work and popped it off. Oh! Replaced the cylinder and bled it up again. Found that the spring clip on the front had failed and the hose had been turning and chewed off the flare on the line so dumped half a litre of fluid on the drive. Sourced a flaring tool and hit that, bled it up again. BRAKES! In between doing this I had a good sunny day so decided to scrape the old underseal outta the boot and hammerite it. Poked holes all through the floor aye. Zinc'd it in and out, hammerite on it too. My huge sub box fits in the area under the boot floor!! I also attached the boot garnish that's broken in 3 but it looks boss as even though the tailgate is rough as fuck but don't care. Replaced a bonnet hinge that wouldn't sit down and managed to get it sitting better but need aligned better. This is how it looks at the moment, ready to go for a wof check. I'll adjust the height later on. Lots left to do but i need it as a daily ASAP It's taken 2 months to get to this point working outside in a carport with a headlamp on between 6-9pm and Saturday after work and all Sunday!

Long over due update. Sent the car over the road to a mates and he ripped into a few bits I wont have time to do. Goal is to have her revinned by the end of August. Replaced front struts and rear springs to put it all back to factory. Also all the front steering parts have been sorted now. Diff mount fitted to. Had a bit of trouble getting her started but mechanic went to get his torch out of the car while it was up on the hoist. Looked up and saw a kill switch.(Probably shouldn't put that on here haha but she will be alarmed anyway) Pushed the button and she fired into life instantly. Purred like a kitten. So yesterday I drove here home across the road and around the paddock for a bit. Few steering column things to sort, chrome and mirrors on etc. Bonnet should be getting dropped off to get painted soon and also drop the car to panel beaters to fix the chassis rail( bit crushed). Then time for a revin. So will keep this updated now as we are on the home run. Plans will be to manual, lower an longchamps on with bigger tires for the summer.

http://www.performancecar.co.nz/news-5900/feature-trial-and-error-mazda-626

Extracted all the bits out through the rear doors and found that someone had done a mint job on the guards, blasted, repaired, etched, bogged and primed. Pine! Found all I was missing was the splash guards under headlights, the outer surrounds and the filler panels between the bumper and grille. Pulled out the rottingue carpet And cracked underseal, cleaned and reattached shit. I replaced the rear shocks but found the top mounts broken on one side so welded up and did the tailpipe at the same time. Took it to work one day and on the way split the rear brake line. So I made all new lines and fittings. Then I hit that rust: Doused everything in black zinc then the weather turned to shot so I couldn't prime and bog it up nice for a week or more. While it was shit I got the tailgate motor working and put a new switch in. Was a cunt and took ages. Wasn't as rusty in there as it could have been but still needs replaced. Wire wheeled and hammerites the floor once they had dried out. It was ready for a warrant check but the front was just too rugged. It was rusty and a whole operation just to open the bonnet so It had to go. I had been cleaning, painting and polishing all the bits up as I had time or waiting on parts/ weather. The rusty shit hadn't been protected from the start so I pulled and broke most of it off by hand. Soaked all the bolts and clips in CRC so I could clean and re-use them. Shit started to come together! The spare radiator support was much better so used that one. I sandblasted the bonnet and sealed it up mint, knocked the worst of the bog off and threw it on. Fuck it's heavy! Got some stainless bumper bolts real cheap.

It was a disaster in his rocky driveway and the cars kept trying to fall over so I said fuck it, the cars not as you described it so I'm taking your mags too and need to head off ASAP as it's getting dark/this things dodgy/ there's an epic gorge to cross/dunno if it charges or anything? Sweet as, put all my gear in, strapped the spare bonnet to the racks and headed out on dusk. About 200m down the gravel road there was a few decent thumps, a bang and the LR wheel fell off and jammed in the guard! It's worth mentioning the wheels were 15x10 with HUGE mcCreary tyres. There was one broken stud and nothing else! He didn't try and swap tyres on that wheel and I didn't notice any missing nuts nor did it drive weird on the test drive so I don't know what the go was there. It was full on horror movie rape scene spec, middle of nowhere, dense bush, dogs barking. Mrs went ballistic and Walked off to find nuts/ go back to their house. I put the tridents on the rear. She came back with 2 nuts. Then we gapped it! I was made to pull over and check all the nuts and the roof load every half an hour. Had trouble selecting 1 & 2 because the shifter bushes were gone so ended up starting in 3rd a bit until I got used to it. Because of this, we stalled on deaths corner on the steepest part of the gorge! I just loaded it up and rode it until we got moving, clutch smoke everywhere but crisis averted. Had some smokey lock-ups coming up to one lane bridges but no stress. Then the tailpipe broke off so wired that back up and carried on. Made it home, had whiskeys! Was shattered. Woke up to this:

Drop a 1256 in it - max power! Good on your folks for supporting the viva sickness.

Diffception

Will come check it out too

Housings are interchangeable, word is they are the same internally strength wise but just the fd ones have double syncros (also newer). I brought a series 4 box broken for the bellhousing along with the tail housing and will swap this onto a batty box as soon as I find a reasonably priced one. Imput shaft has to be shortened and a selector shaft lengthened to make the reverse sensor work. Be worth it to end up with a gwarbox the same length as an old school rx gearbox but 20 years newer

For fuck sakes bro!! Hope you get it back!! Iv shared to fb. Will keep my eyes peeled!! Good luck!

Russian automobile sound fest . Volvo + girls : My good friend Alex wis his wife and their Kadett C : Sunbeam Stiletto : Ladycop :

Pictureless update 1) GOOD- I got the heater going again 2) BAD Missus was sqwaking about something, Felixx Jnr was in car yakking away. I was backing down the drive and door was not closed properly. I caught it in the fence paling, ripped 2 palings off the fence and buckled the door skin by the handle Im slutted, got 99% of it out will do the rest when Im clam. Oh I scuffed by new doc boots kicking shit around the yard

Hello fellow oldschoolers just a update for you. Sorry it been so long but was unable to log in for some reason. so as you recall I had cleaned alot of the underbody down for resealing. I gave it a etch first and thought it wise to give it a brush seal on the seams before I underbody seal. And I couldnt resist putting the diff in and wheels on And im doing the front now and my front struts ready and waiting fully restored. I did a couple of changes to them. I got 2 brand new camry inserts and some toyota corolla strut tops which bolt into the original strut holes. O and lowered springs. [url=http://www.iforce.co.nz/View.as That is all

Dry ice worked a treat on the floor! Managed to lift out all of this shits worth of floor stuff The floor is all awesome and rust free so I stopped clearing this stuff out after I'd done the foot wells. The stuff under the back seats and the tunnel looks like it's just been laid in there. So I thought why mess it up, just leave it as is. However, this thing was cramping my style.. Get outta there turkey Thaaaaat's better Now I'll be stripping the engine bay, sandblasting and refurbishing the brake boosters/master and taking the subframe out as well as continuing to do the trim and the interior. Mean.

Car is ready for blasters, then panel man and paint. Pickup tonight or tomorrow, progress again!

Radiator is all welded up and inlet plumbing fits well, onto the outlet next. Intercooler inlet mods are all tacked in to checking, needs a minor tweak with a BFH or similar, bit pretty darn close. Outlet to the throttle body also fitted up nicely. Just waiting on a oil cooler (OEM) delete fitting to arrive from Oz and I can start one the new cooler & thermostat and plumbing...

Picked these up today just painting to go now

its more bending the rules. cheating is putting a rwd fxgt engine in a kp starlet.

Everyone should purchase a powerade before hotpools. Play vodka roulette with security

Big difference in size.

Turns out ya cant just swap tail section of Gbox over as the selector part on the box doesnt match... was worth a try. Picked up Hilux axles from Engineers today tho. New Bearings 4x114.3 restud and machine to fit S14 discs Chur

$100 NOS panel, plus $20 for it to be delivered to my door. Bargain.

Went for a cruise today. got stuck before even getting to river bed. dodgy track leading down to river which is on the outside of a bend = soft as shit gravel, massive dropoff into roughly 3 feet of water, plus corrsaxling and not picking a decent line AT ALL = me stuck. got a super easy pull backward and I was off. runs like a champ. only other issue to note was hitting a body of water flat out in 4th Lobox, which turned out to be way deeper than engine liked. sucked in a guts full of water and shit. thought, goodbye rods/headgasket/everything but it doesn't seem to have hurt it at all badass