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New step in place, was a tight fit but we didn't have to chop the plug off the power lead. First part of the new draw bar on, part of the old one for comparison. Glad I made the decision to replace rather than try to repair after seeing inside the old one, didn't seem to look that bad when it was still in one piece. Huge thanks to Chris taking time away from his busy schedule when he had so much waiting to do back home, appreciate it man.

Almost finished tacking all the firewall bits in.

I heard that mixing two inert gasses will make it flammable and corrosive.

Just recently purchased this beauty off trademe from Auckland Had 73crownwagon & 64 valiant check it out for us at BeachHop and it they said it was all good so we purchased it. Then Denham & Peter picked it up for us on the following wednesday and then went over the van to make sure it was up to the big drive back to Christchurch. Cant thank Denham enough for sorting it all out including picking me up from the airport on sunday . Hit the road about 2pm with my buddy Vety who just brought a 06 Feilder wagon and we started our journey home. Took a few hundred Ks to get used to the Left hook. arrived in Welington to catch the 2.30 am ferry at midnight then boarded and crashed out in the sleeper cabins and woke up 6am when we arrived in picton. Carried on thru to Blenheim to have breakfast with my folks then back on the road for christchurch. 1080km later and $360 in gas and we are super stoked. The Van is super tidy with only a couple small rust bubbles at top of windscreen and a couple on the bottom of the doors Interior has been re trimmed when it arrived in NZ in 2010 when the late Ewan Gilmour brought it in. heaps of paperwork with it which looks like we are the 4th owners of the van ,3rd kiwi owners. The paperwork says its a 351 V8, C6 Auto but the guy i brought it off seems to think its a 302. Will look into it when i get underneath. We have 70s styling in mind for the interior and some factory spec stripes on the outside and some lake pipes.

Ordered my Mizuno Works Octopus legs. Only set to be sold outside of Japan afaik ? perfect equal length so paired with 50 straight pipe will be lethal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1WS-dYknf4

i like all of this. also, i should post some pics of bubbling setups at work. they look like shit from the movies, all twisty pipes and spirals and bubbles how bout i fill a villiers tank with argon, WOT and blow co2 down the throat..? the resulting gas mix will be unburnt and clad in tweed.

Guys it's been found in one piece. Stolen by some little hood rat called keiran mcGeorge.

So today we made some hard tail struts for this thing so it's sitting a lot lower and fashioned up a shitty foam seat and wrapped in it an old flannel shirt I had lying around. Looks a little bit better now.

I'll come, will be my first one.

Next meet Sunday the 19th. I'm thinking we should do a bit of a drive somewhere. even if its just a small run over to the governors bay pub or something?

wheres an old wives tale we can find to make everyone scared of trying this

manu radio, manu radio, manu radio. this is dave j, zulu-mike-gulf ten-seven requesting a shitty idea tranmission, over. you have pure argon anyway right, make a y pipe and connect your argon and co2 for home made argosheild. end of transmission. dave clear. also you need to incorperate some sort of gas bubbling thru water feature inline.

Measured some stuff and things and did some doodling still have to work out where this puts the coilovers exactly, and bear in mind those numbers are not at an estimated ride height but just for definition of the relationship between the locations with respect to axle centerline which can then be played with to describe whats where with varying tyre size and ride height

What a little cunt.. pleased it is OK

Shit that's lucky!

i did a bit more tonight but only an hour or so because i wanted to watch top gear. so the drivers side sill was a disaster of fucked up mongrelisation which i cut off. iside i found mystery and woe. and a comb. Untitled by sheepers-ra28, on Flickr Untitled by sheepers-ra28, on Flickr thats the shit that came out of the sill. i reckon its never been cleaned out and that pile of garbage has been building in there since it was new. the thing that really boils my piss about how this thing has been repaired in the past is that it must have been pretty good on the whole with a little bit of rust but not to bad. why do i say this? because when you get rid of the awful repairs and the rust that should have been removed the last time round you find that the car is actually in very good condition. this is inside the sill once i cut the hammered in bit off. its better than my blue car looked. Untitled by sheepers-ra28, on Flickr so anyway i folded a new piece for the sill and began fitting it but didn't get to far with it. ill carry on tomorrow night. Untitled by sheepers-ra28, on Flickr

Hello. Bit of background first i guess is the place to start... Me (mtbtimr) and my mate (Sammy1222) (both 20 and relatively inexperienced mechanical engineering students) recently bought a 1972 Austin 1300 in bold but original magenta. The aim is to restore this little beauty to its former glory (classic), and learn some about cars etc along the way. Since this is a first for both of us we chose to start with something which was already drivable (WOF and reg). So here she is! Her name is Maggie. Couldn't resist taking it to uni day 2

Damn, tied up this Saturday with coffee meeting with guy to discuss um..... How coffee beans are better on the ground and techniques for planting them there.....

Decided to get a few bits and pieces tidied up. Starting to miss driving so looking forward to getting her back next week all shiny.

Nice purchase man. Keep it clean no rice.

These are exactly what I want aswell. I hate the seat belts I have in mine Oh let me know when vw shoppe mission I wanna come have a wander/rummage

depends on the NDT method. visual inspection is important too. just because it doesn't have a crack doesn't make it adequate. no NDT is not fool proof, it's not the kind of thing fools should be involved in though.

so i went with the hole me and a mate can do the king pin situation goes something like this smash old bushes out clean up parts press new bushes in and file little grove in it grove is for this washer then we spent like 30 mins fixing his reamer............ (was not happy with his workers) then reamed a hole he then had to go home and cook dinner for his other half. so i went back to work and put some underlay in the vw pulled out all my scraps of nice cut pile carpet to make sure i would have enough to do my car got HEAPS!!!!!!! oh also yesterday i cleaned some shit up like this cleaned up my roof as well choice of weapon was made a huge mess and i got covered in so much crap

if only we had to design drag cars at uni I would have used them all up

well, thank you. i need to get this thing done and at the moment im still enjoying what im doing so ill keep at it.

Next big change was for the 2013 datsun car club nationals in christchurch, panel and paint was the name of the game, 3 months out the car was checked over and booked in, 2 months out the car was in for wrk and after 8 of the worst weeks ever without my car she was done paneled then painted in fords chilli orange, the bumpers were to be chromed but sum pissing around happened and everythng that was chrome was painted in the silver from the door handles of mitsubishi outlanders (good place to get a colour eh?) it cost me a mint but it was worth every penny.

Ready to reunite it with the bike and get the damn thing back on the road. Didn't repaint the crankcase/head etc because a] I'm lazy, b] kinda like the fact it doesn't look rebuilt and c] paint would mess with heat dissipation apparently.

Un-Be-Lieveable!!!! Unreal resto bro! Going to be awesome when finished. Two thumbs up from me. Mind is currently blown.....

seen this irl it is fucken rad as shit

Nah fuck that. Better get a massive QCR stencil on that bitch.

I feel you should inspect the back of your van with a blacklight and report your findings

It is also a load of shit.

umm yeah.. it is not perfect but it will do! Rear hatch next, then the doors! It is amazing how an hour or 2 a day gets it along! Start the new job tuesday

Give karlos at steel surgeon a call. Last diff I had shortened up was when I had a commodore head fitted to an escudo housing. He cut and welded the axels. Cost $450 all up. Worked a treat. Did lots of burnouts with that diff. Infact every time I took off I did a skid in it. I only lived 5ks from work and I would use 3 sets of tires each day just getting to and from work. That's how strong the diff was. Pretty strong eh.

So with these datsun engines the power is truly all in the head, what i wanted was a fast street car that sounded aggressive but wasnt super hard to drive round town at low speeds, what i ended up with was this, a peanut head as we call them skimmed 40 thou, 2 mm oversized valves from a 2 litre engine, a stage 3 cam grind from franklin cams and double valve springs to suit, i didnt want to go into porting at this stage as i wanted room to grow later on.

Got some louvers off trade me the other week came with everything even rear quarter louvers and mounting kit so stoaked i don't have to find all those individual things came up really good with a cut n polish They just make it look much better with the added bonus of keeping it slightly cooler inside think i need a dash mat now

Couldn't find the pics of my mates one but found these of one I saw for sale on the side of the road in Auckland somewhere, rough guess of 8 or 9 years ago. Cheers Matt

So theres a drive in movie happening at Smales Farm (Takapuna) on the 18th of April and its my all time fave, Grease Maybe this could be the OS goes to the movies, as it is drive in too

Here are some pics of my super rangi turbo seutp I threw on my other shuttle

dont you worry, this shit be pulling the bishes once welded!!

I got the flanges for the hubs finished today and got the hubs assembled, I am extremely pleased with how they turned out. I will be sending them off to be nickel plated this week. Big pic dump of machining the flanges..... First rough out one side Then flip it around and use a boring bar to machine out the inner step Machine the 13 degree taper Drill the hole for the axle and bore to size Flip it around and holding it on the inner step with a live center machine the rest of it down to size Machine the radius in the corner Drill all the holes, I was lucky that the guy in Oamaru lent me his drilling jig All of the flanges finished And press it all together, i made the fits size for size so it didn't take much to push them on And all finished!!! Next is the rear forks

You may remember we were having issues with brake fluid leaking down the brake pedal and this recently got a ton worse.. resulting in damp carpet and a lot of worrying. We quickly got a new brake cylinder from the guys at Minibitz and swapped that in (a very satisfying little job). Luckily when we pulled up the carpet, the underlay had taken all of the brunt so the floorpan was completely fine. The carpet might still have a bit in it but should it be ok to let it dry and leave it (we've heard mixed things about whether brake fluid attacks metal or not)? We dropped the door off at the panel beater to get welded up so will pick that up tomorrow and visit our good friends at the wof shop for our monthly meet up. Had some fun driving from mine to Sammy1222's with no door - pretty breezy inside. Looking good for beach hop this weekend, planning on taking the Waihi road from Auckland to avoid the big hills - what's the traffic normally like that way?

Finally a trial fit for the left hand side, every single panel has been replaced and it feels like I've spent many nights cutting profiles. I pre-drilled every single hole on the new panels to match the existing chassis holes so I wanted to see it it all came together, couple of slight adjustments (0.5-1mm) here and there but in all it seemed to come out OK. A bit more shininess with a splash of etch primer.

So went to drive out of my awkward (steep+tight corner) garage entrance on the way to the panel beaters to get the right front guard pulled out and the bloody slope did half the job for us! A fair bit of burnt rubber later, and she was off to the panel beaters.. Pulled it out 15-20mm or so, which would be enough to get the tyre snug under the flares (which went on a treat). A bit of a mission getting the car out of the garage again (front flare is a bit too low causing some rubbing only when turning sharp up a hill haha), but no problems on the road as yet. Think we will look into pumping up suspension a bit as the front now looks a little too low. Otherwise we were thinking of sanding a bit off the bottom of the flare? not too sure yet. By no means perfect but a nice temp, woffable (hopefully) look at the moment. Next job, wof. Discuss

Wheels are on and looking awesome! Had to pick up some new wheel nuts because the old ones didn't have the same taper as the rim. 165 60 R14s ended up looking exactly like we wanted them to - a teeny tiny bit of stretch and a reasonably meaty profile. The back end could do with a bit more low, and we could just let a bit of hydro fluid out but i think that would end up slamming the front. Is there a way to do them separately? When we put the front wheels on we realised that one of them poked about a 10mm more than the other... We started measuring control arms and tie rods and even considered that the whole subframe might be off... ...But luckily for us it looks like its just the fender. Will have to pull it out a bit anyway because otherwise the flare doesn't quite contain the tire. It seems like we are sooooo close to a WoF but keep doing the old 1 step forward, 2 steps back. Suuurely this weekend.

Bought 2m of carpet from the warehouse for $50. Not sure how durable it will be but it was super easy to cut and shaped to the car pretty well. Pretty stoked with the way it came out, took us a good couple of evenings to get it all chopped up right and it's by no means a concourse job but that isn't really Maggie's vibe anyway. Little teaser of the new wheels, more coming about them in the next few days. Do they look WoFable to anyone???

A little something to nibble on before bedtime. Tyres on Sat. Running like a champ atm, lets hope it stays that way. Discuss

She's road worthy! theoretically hopefully Finally, after much frustration and fiddling, we got a brand spanking new wheel bearing in. Which meant that she could be on all 4 wheels for the first time in ages. Sammy1222 has been away for a week so haven't had the chance to take her out, but hopefully will trip over to the tyre place either this weekend or next. In the mean time, if anyone is in need of a weird (and cheap) tool, I highly recommend having a look at the Sunday Avondale market at the racecourse, there are several guys there who just have piles and piles of old tools. I made up a replacement shelf to replace the crappy cardboard one we pulled out a while ago. Looks great out of the car, but squeezing it in is proving to be a bit of a huffing-puffing-swearing affair. Doesn't help that the steel sheet we picked up for free is damn hard to cut - we are blasting through cutting discs like crazy. Might end up just buying some aluminium offcuts from trademe and redoing the whole thing. Have also had a crack at the sound system and carpet, but that's a story for next time. Discuss here yo.

We finally got the axle nut off! We managed to track down a socket that fitted and had to use the large pole you see to crack it (aren't they meant to be reasonably loose?). Now we can get at the bearing and get her one step closer to a WoF. In other news, with christmas, Maggie got spoilt with presents and the to do list is slowly piling up... Picked up a head deck/speakers combo for $100, a set of gaskets, a nice toolbox and socket set, and an angle grinder that we accidentally bought from Bunnings when we went for something completely different (oops). Looking to put the speakers under the seats like we have seen most people do... They're a tad blingy to have sitting in the window. We used our newly acquired toy to cut the bumper bolts out and fitted the new shiny one. She's actually starting to look reasonably tidy. Does anyone know if it is easy to get small dings out of chrome? Last little job we've done is to take the radiator out, we are gonna take it to get a new cap fitted. The radiator itself seems pretty clear so we are slowly crossing off potential reasons for overheating. The shelf that goes under the dash is falling apart so we are going to use it as a template to make a new one. Just need to decide whether we go with what the original one is made out of (glorified cardboard) or if we should make one up out of sheet metal with a bit of carpet and a lick of paint...

all nighter last night paid off kinda... until the rear tyres came off the bead in huntly, didnt quote make it to the nats ah well. looks tough as.