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Well the last month has been full of late nights, early mornings, massive hours and a fair few km's for the car being towed around, Made it to my deadline of Beach Hop 16 JUST. Had the car dyno tuned the week before and made 260kw ATW with only 80% throttle and a 6k redline. Need to change the TPS from a toyota to a LS1 as the Toyota wasnt talking to the ECU after 80% throttle, with this change they tuner reckons I should get around 300kw which will be a laugh, Once it gets a few revs into her it pulls so well, so much fun/scarieness ha. Greg at Midnight Upholstery worked till 6am Monday morning before having a hours sleep and heading over to put it in/finish it, we got it done by 7.30 pm to get it on the trailer and off to Whanga by 8pm. Having only driven it for about 15minutes prior to Beach Hop this week would be its first real shakedown after the nearly 4 year build. Had some minor electrical issues on Monday night/Tuesday which we got sorted by Wed morn thanks to the Auto Sparkie in Whanga. Got it done just in time to leave late for the run to Waihi Beach Hop cruise, a clear road, mint day, car load of the crew and top down with some sounds made for a epic trip. Its first real shakedown/drive which was a hell of a lot of fun and I couldnt stop grinning! Car went well for the rest of the Hop and was in all the cruises without issue! Very very happy with the end result and now its time to get legal and clock up some miles. Heres a few photos for you guys of the end result, Will be getting my brother to take some sweet shots once its had a proper clean up and we have some time! Pic courtesy of FazyLuck Interior shot Heres a pic of it and my mates 64 SS Impala also as well as a mates airbagged Commer at Beach Hop Talk some shit! http://oldschool.co....westpala/page-7

Bout a year and a half ago i managed to score a 89 gx81 prefacelift chaser 1g-fe, something id been looking for for a while. Was meant to start one of these ages ago but never got round to it... Here's what it looked like the day i got it: Managed to get it a wof and some rego and started looking through every facebook page about this chassis for things to buy Mate of mine hit me up seeing if i wanted to buy a w55 manual conversion, I obviously said yes and got it all switched over a couple weekends later. Best decision ever. What happens when your mates want a go... Next on an impulse buy i got some 17x10 mesh reps and cut the springs asap. Also around that time i stumbled across a facelift chaser at a local wreckers for $300. couldn't believe it, bought it, and towed it to work. Stoked to have a front bar that wasn't completely warped, i swapped the bar and lights over so nice not having the front end on the piss then scored some xyz adjusties I put some sounds in went for a drive with the girlfriend to rotorua a couple weekends later. Was a real nice roadtrip everything was mint. Came back sunday night and stayed at mums just for the night. then my car got stolen........... mean.... was watching tv then just heard it drive off into the night. Drove around for 2 or 3 hours, got pulled over in mums swift for speeding, so just started frantically showing the cop pictures of my car saying we were trying to find it and gave him my number in case. Was the most gc cop ever. found it at 5am in onehunga and called me straight away. ruined ignition, bunch of tools gone, wheels gone and sounds ripped out. could've been so much worse though. got it back from the cops a week later and the cunts had taken one ignition lead so had to drive it home on 5 cylinders.... Having that parts car was the best thing ever. Decided i didn't want big wheels any more so bought some 14x6.5 and 14x7 5 stud SSR Starsharks which i didn't think i would ever see for sale. so happy. so so happy Have since swapped the front guards to ones that haven't been pulled to africa. Progress is slow. very slow. but it's going the way i want. Next on the list is sending 2 of the starsharks to pine for a full rebuild with 4.5 or 5 inch lips. then when i get some coin send the other 2 down. I've been hunting for a 1gge for a while but whenever one comes up its been shit timing funds wise and location so thats still high on the list. Also panel and paint is very high on the list. Those are my realistic goals. My unrealistic goals are Mizuno Works itbs and extractors.

It's next week ish. I was thirsty for an answer. shhhhhh This is what a shitty picture of an open thermostat looks like, one step closer to being water seals. Step 17 is to buy largest fan you can find and gently place it onto the radiator. Magic! I'll see what adhesive foam I have and try seal the edges as best I can. Tomorrow I may even see how much it doesn't fit.

And assembly. As these things are so robust, it was really just a case of taking the best bits and putting them together with new bearings and grease, a couple of repairs, the odd replacement part and a bit of a polish up... And it was successfully used in the surf to city by my 4 yr old a couple of weeks ago (this was in the park afterwards, she did wear the lid during the event)... I've since found a period tool bag that straps on behind the seat, and some Winkie decals to attach. All the neighbourhood kids love riding 'speedy' the chain bike, and I've found if you lean it over you can do burnouts as the driving wheel skids it up. Win...

So Cazz's old man picked up a coffee roaster. It's all in parts, it's a big bastard and it looks like a chooch crossed with a horror movie. Here's what it's supposed to look like when it's in working order: We're unsure what brand and/or make it is but it's similar to a 60-100kg Probat roaster (the biggest commercial version you can get). We're also unsure if everything's there too! The roaster was in a fire and tucked away in storage for the better part of 10 years which adds to the choochiness. Here's some detail shots: So keen to get grubby with this. THE PLAN: Figure out what brand/model it is, clean it all up, buy/replace parts as needed, put it all together, chooch some coffee and sell it on to some hipsters. So next update will include heaps of wire wheelin, acid dipping, rust fixing and broken bolts! Woo!

Damn that's sweet. Name the roasts after rubbish old cars.

The split level internal access basement is almost finished. LOL. /It gets dark bloody early now which is a PITA

was a good excuse for a long weekend away, lots n lots of sweet old cars.

Who would have thought standard E30 'bottlecap' wheels would look so good on this?

The chevette has now done a wedding (My sisters) . . . and still going strong . . . when its not killing condensers. So trying to work out why, why why. I have a new Bosch coil, and the unit the suppliers computer said it required was an external ballast coil. Got it home and I cant see an external ballast resistor unless its hidden in the loom? Anyone able to confirm? I don't really want to install it if its the wrong one so I can return it for the correct one. I will read the manual tonight. and try work out myself but if anyone is a vox nerd drop us a line Have done other stuff too: Re-cored radiator New Dizzy unit from UK Ram-flow air filter Cleaned up SU Carb Replaced Water plump And its running better than ever, when the condensers are not failing. I really should lower it and get steels widened!

Took Maggie down to the Beach Hop over the weekend. Ran like an champ the whole way - only issue was the gross old heater hose finally gave up (nothing a quick trip to ripco couldn't fix). Got plenty of love despite having half the number of cylinders. Cool to see a few familiar OS faces too. The cops decided she didn't have room for 4 people across the back...

finally got all the beadlockers on after getting the rears to fit over the brakes short vid bro took on the weekend.

5 days till gumboot HyperPak as mentioned before I purchased a Hyperpak ignition module for the timing. reasoning was price for $330 I would retain electronic ignition. (thoughts were by the time I got a 4k one and converted it to electronic it would be a similar figure and the 4age dizzy looks nicer. So when you get the hyperpak its a simple hook up. 6 wire hook up. 3 to the dizzy and the colors match (easy) 1 to negative of the coil\ 1 to ignition and positive of the coil. 1 to earth we hooked it all up and went to start the car and no spark. The Hyperpak got thermo nuclear hot and I was quite frankly shitting my self with the dead line looming. back to the instructions I checked one bit that I hadn't given as much notice of than I should have "coil should be 3 ohms static resistance is less than 2.7 ohms will cause failure" a quick check revealed my coil was in fact 1.2 ohm not enough resistance and I cooked it. I sent it back to Wayne at Hyperpac and now I must plug the guy I have read people saying that e is bad at communicating and hard to deal with I had the complete opposite with him. He emailed me and then followed up with a phone call to see I had his email he worked over easter to repair the Hyper pack that I had blown up and returned it to me quick smart. I really can not be more impressed with his service and his communication is fantastic. So got it put it back in the car (with the correct coil) and boom. Possible the smoothest idle I have seen in a carb car ever you almost want to change something to make it sound tougher. Starts first touch of the key idles without chokes on when cold and I have only reved it to 5500 but it jumps up there like its been munching on blue pills. will road test tonight and report the result. also got the dash back in and the front seats (factory ones) bolted up. All left to do is. top up radiator with coolant wheel allignment a couple wires mount chilli bin because a update isn't right with out a photo I polished it while I was waiting for the Hyperpak to return. looks great

dude's famous, will be hanging on walls next to that short thing before ya know it hah NZV8 Magazine 1 hr ·

This comes to mind when I see this! Well done man. A great end to a long road!

Yeah weekend was epic (i had really low expectations and was proved wrong) As for the Police, Sure they were busy as fuck, didn't have to go far to see some poor dude gettin a talk. but it seemed to me that if you were actually entered for the weekend and didnt do anything to draw attention to yourself you pretty much got left alone. So if you were the dude with no entrants sticker 9 peeps in the car and were running open headers whilst deciding to do a skid in front of 30 cops, pay the price. we had two cars there that were no way near legal, got to cruise the runs and drive around a bit, got followed by cops a plenty and didn't have a problem, They checked out our cars at the start of one of the runs (even got the note books out), Im sure that there were plenty of stories which oppose my point of view but this is what i saw, (fuck there were some cops for sure... never seen so many). I love open headers and skids but the beach hop is not the place for this as it once was, times have changed. Awesome to meet up with the ol school guys there, Mr West you are truly a fine gentleman and you car is nothing short of spectacular! a credit to you, Tried to catch up with Nominal over the weekend but missed and to whoever was driving the purple land crab.... big thumbs up you was looking cool. And as per usual the great to see the Adams family in their wagon. CHUR!

Used heat gun to remove stubborn radiator hose last night - makes it so easy!

I had to drill water passage holes in the block to suit the new heads, which was a little daunting. Older (pre-72) blocks have steam holes at the 12 o'clock position above each cylinder (I think they were relocated as people were overtorquing the intake and gaskets were blowing out at this narrow point). Looking at old vs new heads you can see the old arc shape that catered to a few locations, while the new heads have a triangular recess the block hole has to line up with. These correspond to about the 1:30 position on the block... I put the new gaskets in place and centre punched the location of the new hole... Interestingly the old gaskets had the holes in a slightly different position to the new Felpro set. Both located ok on the new heads though, new ones are more centred, old ones are the lower mark right on the edge... I taped up the block and used an old speaker magnet to catch any loose swarf... And they drilled ok. I used new 1/8" bits, kept the revs down and only snapped one as it caught on a protuding bit of casting as I broke through into the water jacket. Gotta admit I was getting nervous on the first one as I had read the thickness was between 1/4 and 1/2", and I was 20mm into it before I broke through. No dramas, just tapped the broken bit through with a nail and picked it up with a magnet. Rest of them went much easier, and I gave the holes a slight chamfer to tidy them up afterwards... And they line up well, pretty pleased to get this over with, next step is sliding in the new cam then putting bits back on...

Found some pics I took when I did up an old chain bike last year. I'd picked up a couple of wrecks on the tard in a job-lot of rust, and thought I'd have a go at building one good one for my girls. Unfortunately my eldest was riding a proper bike by the time I got started (oops) but the younger one has got some use out of it. As bought, came with a Triang Jeep pedal car and scooter (that are also in the project pile)... These things were built over decades, and are pretty well made... Yep, that is the gangly and slightly racist old Duke of Edinburgh leading Prince Charles on one...

ATF topped up? Took it for a decent drive and checked fluids a couple of times, needed a bit of a top up once it was fully warmed up but seems to be holding its level. Told the gf I was going for a 15 minute drive, ended up just keeping on going, got home 45 minutes later. So much nicer to drive now that the ball joints are fixed. It still needs an alignment, and I'm getting some detonation under load too. Seems weird for a stock motor running 98, I'll have to join the lextreme forums (or is there a better option) to see what it could be. I also swapped wheels with the crown, love the look but I gained 500 rpm at 100kph which isn't ideal for a daily so I need a better option. Steelies and Whitewalls look great on the crown though so they can stay there. Cheers Matt

Keen for "Escort Yourself" and "BM Werks 2002" blend of coffee.

what a week, wrecked..... Good to meet some OSGC's Nominal, Gasser amongst others no doubt!

Found a little bit of rust under the air intake for the heater. Had a fun little 6am Dremmel session. Neighbours love me.

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/52296-uteruss-kp60-pantay-dropper/#entry1676022 BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAPPED THE SPLINE OFF DASH HOLE HOLE FILLER THEN WE CHEECHED

Thats a awesome resto! Also rad your 4 yr old is into it !

And stripdown/paint. Most tin parts beat out alright, even with my rudimentary panel skills. This was really an exercise to practice build skills on, dressed up as being a dutiful Dad...

Teardown, usual rust, bent bits and missing bearings...

Now fly to Ethiopia and source some single origin beans lol. I see lots of learnings in this venture, good work/luck.

super lush, keen for some ultra wanker beans pls

^ Well that never happened...... After the drag day I drove the car to work, which is roughly a 50km journey. 6km into that journey my clutch pedal went straight to the floor and never came back which meant I had to turn the car off when I came to a complete stop and start off in 1st gear and shift without a clutch. This was extremely difficult with the usual shit traffic. Finally made it to work and put the car up on axle stands. Found the issue was a broken clutch cable mount. It stayed in this state for 3 months....... I decided to do something about it and get it running again. If you watch the video in my last post you can hear my gearbox protesting between gear changes. It was so hard to get into gear. With this in mind I decided to replace the clutch setup. The clutch setup was the same equipment that was on the original SOHC 4G63 when I got the car. Had the flywheel machined New clutch kit Whilst the gearbox was out I decided to wire brush and paint it. Cos you know, painting something you never see is a good idea. I also put a new rear seal in the box as it leaked quite bad. Slapped it all together and the clutch still wasnt the best. Wasnt till I compared clutch cables with a few I had and noticed that there was a rubber spacer/grommet that had perished causing the pedal to run out of adjustment. Replaced the grommet with a good one and shes a runner! Out of hibernation Theres still a few things to fix up. Tacho and check engine light dont work, no heater fan etc. Small stuff. Will take it for a WOF and see if it passes with out a cert, but I think cert time is near.

Mate. If you ever bring this to Whakatane, i'll have Barker sing you an awkward song about how nice it is.

When it's finished, can I leave my job/society and come live in your cabin as a hermit.

I saw a big rant posted on FB about police arresting people in Japanese cars because they were uncertified....? It seems like a severe stretch of the truth....

b bbb bbut black plate??

Well . . . the Civic made it into the auto sparky, although not without protest. Half way there, in heavy traffic, and sure enough the engine died. I was just rolling to a stop in the queue of cars, so I let it stop before trying to start it again - fortunately after 10 - 15 seconds of cranking (and giving it plenty of throttle) it started again, but it wasn't happy about it. The engine was running very rough, wouldn't idle smoothly, and I knew if I took my foot off the throttle it'd just die again. So I kept a few revs on the clock and after a few moments it settled down again, and I got to the auto sparky without further incident. Fingers crossed it's easy enough to fix!

i also heard about a lush Landcrab.........

as far as a cert goes, not allowed. you can change the pattern if its done by a wheel specialist, where they press in an insert with an offset hole in it, im not sure how much of a difference in stud pattern that can take up

Hey Bling, I'm a joiner, got access to all the gear you need for timber work. If you still need timber machined let me know. Thanks Pete

Ro-tea-re engine with dilma belt

fuck, greg. Well done sir! that interior and hood lining your a machine! as for the rest, fucken rad! that engine bay is pretty sex.

Ever since I've had the car the wipers have not been great/hardy work at all so my mission today was to remove the wiper motor because I've been told that S13 ones can fit with some small adjustments. I was a bit worried that when I pulled off this cowling there would be epic rust underneath but actually it's very tidy. The cover has a little surface rust under it and on the car side the rust looking marks are just dirt from the seal being damaged and letting muck in. I've ordered a new seal to replace it. Also, an enterprising fellow the previous owner must have been as the rubber cover you see there above the access hole is actually the sole of a shoe. It worked well so can't complain. I had to cut it up to get in there though so I've also ordered the correct replacement rubber part for when it goes back together. The wiper motor is actually inside the car behind the glove box. Initially I couldn't work out how I would get to it but ended up quite easy once I actually had a proper look at it. That's the thing with these cars, once you slow down and have a bit of a snoop around it's pretty straight forward how things go together. Because of this you can get quite a bit of satisfaction from just doing simple tasks because you can actually do them! Also fun note, the glove box is made of cardboard material. As you can see it's pretty weathered and you can get new ones but at this stage it's not super high on the priorities. I could unstaple it and even make my own one using the original as a template if I really wanted. Got em! The S13 one should be here sometime earlyish next week so it will be interesting to compare the parts and see what I need to change. I've read that the shaft that connects the linkage to the motor needs to be swapped and maybe some wiring needs to be tickled but as I've not actually seen a proper write up on the process (in English anyway) I figured I'd give it a shot and see what happens. Can't get any worse.. Discuss: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/49704-mlracings-hakosuka/page-7#entry1661447

Hey all, on the home straight now, made a gearbox crossmember, got all my V8 front brake parts Got my concentric slave cylinder (I know Kiwibirdman didnt reccomend Howe racing, but after a lenghty conversation with the supplier i decided to take the risk) Got an adapter to go from the VL master cylinder to the braided line for the slave cylinder, Took a perfectly good bellhouse and made a hole for the bleed line, made some measurement to ensure the correct clearance between the clutch presure plate release bearing and fitted everything up, Gearbox is now in the car (hopefully for the last time) Also picked up my driveshaft from Beattys, no picture of that but im sure you can all imagine what a long black shaft looks like, all in all, progressing nicely!!

Clean up trans sump and filter, scrape off at least two attempts worth of sealing without removing previous gasket stuff, including a shitload of clear silicon, put straight edge across strange feeling end of sump, discover that some special cunt has bent the mating surface, tap it back as close as I can get it without a bench (next garage mod), refit sump with gasket goo, realise I've got 3 extra bolts, face palm, remove sump, refit filter, refit sump finger tight, let dry for an hour, tighten properly, now got a 24 hour wait for gasket goo to cure fully then top up through dipstick tube, then drive!!! Can I lose ATF through the bellhousing? It looks like there may be a minor leak around there somewhere but it's to dirty to see if it's ATF or oil. Ummmmmmm I didn't take any pics because it's a sump, you guys have all seen them. So because picture less updates are ultra lame here's the one the gf took when we picked it up. I was happy, but look like a tard. Cheers Matt

Took Alan Mann along to the Brit and Euro Classic Car Show The rest of the Escort Klan

pfft, if it only needs water seals then that's what it gets, gaskets come in a tube these days

Next week I'll fit an electric fan and pretend it's still a cooling issue, not water seals.

Spews water out the overflow at ??? temp and I was hoping it was the radiator or cap, solution was to replace both. Chinas finest from redline. Outlet faces the wrong way. I stared at it for awhile and thought "what would rookie dave do?" then cut that bitch off. Cut other un needed things, drilled some things etc and forgot to take a photo of it in the hole. But don't worry, it still got real hot and blew lots of water out the overflow bottle.

Axle had a bit of a party in here.

For those not on FB heres tonights post, Proper photos and engine bay/interior to come but for now: Talk some shit! //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/34313-the-westpala/page-7

Bit of progress made this arvo! First tip, remove the plastic bungs in the inlet if you want them not to melt in the oven. Engine bay coming together nicely. Before and after pics to show.