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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/10/17 in all areas

  1. Dont think this car is old enough for the main forum, 1989??? So I decided to get another project to muck around with to stop me pulling things apart on the 280Z plus Craig is building lots of cool shit and I am jealous. Requirements were it had to be Nissan, be cheap, have 4 seats (the 280Z is not overly family friendly) and be cheap. I have always liked the old Z32 300zx's so decided to go down that path, they are a love it or hate it car but Im cool with that. Upsides of the Z32 are obviously you can pick them up for next to nothing these days, there are lots of spare parts available for them and they are quite a lot of car for the money. The downside is they are are a bitch to work on due to engine layout/space restrictions, you have to pull the engine to change the washer fluid. Plan for this thing is just a fun budget build, use cheap or second hand parts where possible, take to the odd track day and drive it. So knowing it was probably a stupid idea i started looking around and found cheap semi tidy 2+2 NA manual in Christchurch. So site unseen, Craig and I jumped on a plane flew down, met the guy at the airport, dropped some cash on the thing and road tripped it back to Aucks which was mint. When we picked it up Mean trip home The car has over 200K Kms on it and leaked oil from every seal imaginable, interior was filthy and it had an horrific pitstop special exhaust system that was stupidly loud and totally shit. Good points were body was fairly tidy, came on some rough 18x9.5s, gearbox felt ok and car drove pretty sweet. At home with the 280 When i got it home the first thing that needed attention was the bio-hazard of an interior. It was disgusting, the drivers seat was torn and the dash was lifting around the windscreen air vent which I believe is fairly common. Every old 300zx has a torn drivers seat which looks crap, i wanted to keep the seats as they are cool 90s retro with motors in them so decided to re skin the drivers seat. I found a tidy passenger seat online then proceeded to strip it down and swap the skin over to the original drivers seat. This was a mission that took forever, I dont recommend. Spare passenger seat I found after ripping it to pieces lots of scrubbing out years of filth, ended up with two fairly tidy seats with no rips etc. They are still wet in this pic One non torn drivers seat back in the car Rest of the interior got a full on scrub down, it was unreal how much crud came out of everything. I also pulled out the dash and glued down the area that was lifting around the air vent. Another job I did was to tidy up the vinyl trim on the rear quarter panel interior trims that were torn. Next job was address the ride height. The car was rocking full on 4x4 spec stock suspension which had to go. Cheapest option I found was some dodgy ebay style coil overs, yep they are probably made from recycled watties baked bean cans but they were cheap so they were in. Threw them in and adjusted height to something that looked more respectable There is still scope to go lower but looks better for now The car came on a set of 18x9.5 +15ET china spec Cosmis wheels. They were were in a pretty sad state with some curbing and stone chips etc. In an ideal world I should replace them with something decent but thats not happening so decided to tidy them up as best I could. You have to be a mogul when you are racing modern...WTF Spent a fair but of time sanding down all the chips and marks. Then sprayed gloss black to hide the evidence. They look 100 times better than they did so they are staying for now. Need to change the wheel nuts to something non chrome Old mate Craig had a super legit set of Defi gauges gathering dust on his shelf so i stole them, hacked up the center console and made them fit. Gauges are worth more than the whole car, cheers bro! Next thing to address is the engine. The tired VG30DE had to go, it was leaking oil real bad and is slow. I had initially thought of throwing in a RB25 for something different but by chance ended up getting hold of a supposedly low km VG30DETT twin turbo motor for super cheap from the Mrs uncle who randomly had it sitting around in his shed. Fitting a VG30DETT into a NA Z32 is meant to be relatively straight forward, you can use the NA loom etc. My car is factory manual, the NA and TT gearbox internals are identical but the TT version has a slightly larger bell housing, the internet told me it should all fit somehow... The turbo engine had been sitting in his shed for years so was looking a little worse for wear. It turned over freely so figured I would take a chance on it. This was how it looked when i got it home. I also tracked down a complete stock intercooler plumbing kit I gave it a good de-grease and waterblast then started stripping things off to tidy it up a bit. I didnt know anything about VGs so was going to be interesting. I ordered a timing belt kit, water pump and rocker cover gasket kit from the states. Then proceeded to pull things off, clean, sand, prime, paint, refit, repeat... Fitted new timing belt, idlers, water pump, thermostat etc Painted up the timing covers so they look a but different, every VG i have seen has the stock black covers. The stock T25 turbos looked in fairly good condition, no large amounts of shaft play and rotated nice and freely I ordered a set of dump pipes from ebay in the states, they were ridiculously cheap and seem OK. Painted the water inlet and outlet pipes black just to mix things up from the normal alloy finish most are Pulled the injectors and replaced the o-rings and pintle caps Painted the fuel rail gloss black Nissan engineers were on acid back in the 90s and decided to try and include lots of crazy technology into the VG engine. The engine has an exhaust recycling system to reduce emissions on startup. It is known to fail over time so I deleted it and welded up the pipe on the manifold. I also removed the PCV plumbing and welded up the ports on the rocker cover. I will be using an external oil breather tank. I also deleted all the additional water cooling lines that run under the plenum. Again these apparently begin to leak over time and arent needed. I stripped down and painted the plenum exoxy gloss black to match the rest of the engine colors. Also painted up the heat shields and other small bits, waste of time really as you will never see any of it. The factory NA engine mounts from my old engine were shot, they had cracked right through. I found some cheap nolathane ones online, I made some alloy heat shields for them as some threads online said the nolathane mounts can fail due to heat. Also replaced the rear main seal while everything was apart I reused the flywheel from the old NA engine, it is smaller than the one that comes with the TT motor but it fits with my gearbox so had no option there. NA VGs use the same clutch layout as RBs so I fitted a heavy duty Clutch Industries RB25DET clutch. Out came the tired old DE, getting at some of the plugs was a real bitch. You really need to be the size of a leprechaun to work on these engines. removed the gearbox and its 20+ years of grime Used degreaser and oven cleaner to clean it up as best I could Engine and gearbox mated up, ready to go in car In goes the DETT Boom Factory twin turbo cars have a stock external oil cooler, NA versions dont so raided Craigs parts bin again. Added a few AN fittings and sorted. I was going to used the stock intecoolers that I scored but ended up buying a dirt cheap ebay split front mount cooler for some stupid reason. I think it is a copy of the Greddy version? It is a tight fit, had to cut away some of the plastic bumper support to make room Then I made up a set of cooler pipes to fit by cutting up the stock ones I had, combined with some silicone joiners it worked out pretty sweet My car came with a china spec Greddy copy twin mushroom intake pipe I needed to fit an oil breather tank somewhere in the engine bay so decided to run with a small batter setup and combine that with a breather. Knocked up with this disaster Painted up and installed Will do the job Next job was to make up an exhaust. The dump pipes i bought off ebay included mid pipes so i was one third of the way there. Picked up a bunch of 2.5 inch bends and mufflers etc Started piecing it all together, just tacked in place to suss out the layout Went with a crossover section and two small mid resonators Once i had the layout sorted welded it all up and painted. Fitted the NA loom up to the motor. Some of the old coil plugs were broken so replaced them with new ones. I had to relocate the lower radiator mounts as the TT radiator is narrower and thicker than the NA version. I had one small issue with one of the loom grounds resulting in no power to the coils but once I sorted that the engine fired up nicely which was awesome. Used a consult cable to make sure everything was working as it should. Adjusted CAS to match engine timing to ecu timing. Oil pressure seems good, temp OK and idles nice and smooth so fingers crossed. I am waiting on a few small parts to arrive, alloy radiator as the factory one I have is a bit sketchy, factory fan shroud and radiator top mounting brackets. I have taken for a few drives up and down the road an everything seems OK so far. Car is only on wastegate boost at this stage (7psi) but I have a profec boost controller installed so will have a play with that and turn it up a bit. Washed it for the first time in forever, was such a mint weekend 280 got a clean also Next step is tidy a few small things and get a new warrant for it. Then I will fit a wide band to it and may have a play with the ECU using Nistune software or romulator. I will need to upgrade the injectors at some stage and it will need a bigger fuel pump also. Fun times
    23 points
  2. I will now rummage through all my fading memories the happenings of the last few weeks since the wagon became legal, weeks of holidays, drinks, sunshine, fettling of various old car things. Hopefully as I type it will become clearer.. Since getting the car back into life I have just kept using it for all sorts of trips and its been fun. I love the looks it gets. Often I get thumbs up, usually from young folk who might not even know what it is but certainly like the fact its shabby. Older people often smile too. Many comments But it was never 'right'. I felt it had better potential and didn't believe that the engine was knackered. It was not using much oil but enough to make me look further than just the patches it left here and there. Every time I drove it Id discover afterwards a new fresh coating of oil mist over everything. I checked the rocker cover and sure enough that was loose. But still the mystery mist kept appearing.. hmmmmm… Finally I worked out that it was spinning off from the front pulley. Luckily my stash of Viva spares had a new seal. I popped off the timing chain cover and swapped out the very very hard old seal. The nice soft new one stopped the mist. Yay. But that rough idle was annoying me. More so the engine shal=king about and making the exhaust knock the crossmember. This I had to fix. It was too close and sat quite low as well.. So I cut off the down pipe and while it was off I repaired my previous ‘repair’ to the manifold joining flange which had started to leak. Knock be gone but still the car idled rough. I checked the compressions and they were all good @ 150 psi each (which is way higher than the 130 Mr Haynes tells me to expect so I either have a gauge that lies or someone in the past has skimmed the head?) But still the car ran rough. I finally bought a new timing light. A self powered one. So good not having to plug in the battery leads! With my new light I was able to check the timing which turned out to be only about 5 degrees out. So I was happy that Id managed to get it so close just by ear but not happy that it was obviously not the cause of the poor idle. I checked the valve clearances. Now things got messy… the manuals all say check them hot and many sources out there say the best thing is to check them with the engine running….. NEVER AGAIN will I try using feeler gauges on a idling engine! What a kerfuffle and resulting mess! After I had spent many clean rags clearing up the oil from everywhere I set the clearances hot. They were all pretty good actually. I screwed the rocker cover down and started the engine. TINK TINK TINK TINK TINK…. WTF?!!! Where’s that coming from. Oh no.. have I dropped a valve? Sounds like piston slap or a broken piston top but higher pitched? Oh dear I thought. I popped the cover off and started the engine. Sound has gone! What? Looked at rocker cover and I could see marks underneath from where a rocker was just touching my altered breather gallery… Oh OK. So tightening the cover down further on a new hot cork gasket just pulled it down that bit more to touch. One swift smack with the hammer and the sound was gone So what is causing the rough running then. I had been pulling the plugs after every few runs to look at the condition. Always the front 1 and 2 plugs were clean and borderline lean. The rear 3 and 4 always a touch oily. Hmmmm. Then I looked at my servo and breather lines heading into my inlet manifold- remember back when I changed the positions?.. I popped off the servo one and sucked on it. Hang on… no resistance! What? Bugger me.. I have a split diaphragm in the servo causing an air leak. Which also explains the hefty brake pedal ( I’d just put that down to poor brakes bedding in or not being manly enough..) I plugged the tee on the manifold and started the car. Wow!! What a difference!!!! So smooth. I was able to lower the idle speed right down. Then double checked the timing, tweeked the carb jet a little and it was heaps better. Next drive was way smoother, engine had more pull and no lurching. Heaven. But I knew it could be even better. So I undid the breather pipe from the inlet and re-routed it down the back of the block, holding it in place by the bottom of the bell housing with a zip tie. I plugged the remaining takeoff on the tee and started the car… even better! Yes!! Having got rid of another ‘air leak’ helped no end plus was also explaining why the rear two plugs were constantly oily. I will source another HC servo and for now just put up with a harder pedal. The brakes work well but just need a shove. As for the inlet take off I will move the position to just after the carb in the middle so its even across all cylinders. The breather can remain to atmosphere. Now I knew the engine was actually OK I gave it an oil change. The old oil was not too dirty but it did smell. It burns a little oil at start up past the inlet valve stems. I have found out that this earlier engine doesn’t have stem seals but a friend who owns many Vivas said they used to slide an O-ring down the stem so most oil ran over the o-ring rather than down the guide. Nifty idea I might try if I do pop the head off. Im now a little reluctant to take the head off as its running well..but I am a little curious to see how carboned up it might be?. So my once rough running Viva is now a very smooth little car to drive. In fact its an utter joy to drive, allowing for a general lacking in power. My fears about driving up hills have been removed. Yeah it’s a bit slow but only on one very steep section do I need second gear, otherwise its third gear and cruise. Its ideal about town and fantastic for popping to the beach, a trip it has done many times now. I like it. I like it a lot. I just cruise. Windows down. Chilled out. Lifes a breeze. I love the way the car handles with the tiny engine up front. Steering is very light and it fun to flick around. Many more little things to tidy up now and make it a nicer place. Hannah’s mum is over from the UK on holiday so I made the most of her baggage and got her to bring over lots of stuff I got cheap on ebay Uk. See here… New dizzy cap, rotor, a full set of mint Vauxhall service manuals (only £1.50 ), full head gasket set (cheap), a few magazines, adjustable electric fan controller, a chrome air filter which doesn’t quite fit but I’ll sort that. So that’s where I’m at now. Just using it. Transporting mountain bikes (easy pesy).. Going to the beach.. Sitting pretty in the afternoon… Taking me down to my local village for moonlit strolls along the beach.. Just generally being a very good fun wee classic daily
    13 points
  3. So, around a year after I started, I've pulled the guts out of her again. It was going ok, been using it a bit, but the puffs of smoke and red puddles were embarrassing, so I'm gonna hopefully fix those properly. Since I've got most of the gear and done all the painting etc it shouldn't be too much of a mission. (I was sooo close to putting a 5-speed box in though, just can't justify the hassle/expense). Plan is to strip engine and get block checked, and put her back together all tight and perky... Also gonna fit lowered springs and have ordered a set of rubber suspension bushes and larger sway bar to tidy up the wallowy front end. Bit of a bugger redoing a lot of this work, but I took the gamble last time, and at least I've got a garage buddy to keep me company... meet Jagger, the 9 wk old Border Collie, great wee bloke - already knows to sit there out of the way while I cock things up, bleed and swear...
    6 points
  4. doooooorts were made https://www.instagram.com/p/BQRF_jhg-rM/ Cant be bothered putting it on youtube sorry. So had reasonable results at the dyno, motor (even tho its stock bottom end) is super super tight so just put a safe tune on it until it loosens up a bit. Pretty happy though as it has bucket loads (405nm) or torque (aided by the 5.1:1 diff) and it is a super flat torque curve and comes on pretty easy. There is a funny dip in the power curve at about 3500 so we are going to go up a choke size to 32mm next time its in, change the ETs to .6 from the current .7 which will then require the mains and airs to go down a bit. so hopefully there might be another 5-10hp in it i would say. but even if not im super happy with how it drives now, its fun on tarmac so should be a laugh on gravel. first event tomorrow, watch this space.
    6 points
  5. I don't even know what motor you are checking the oil pressure on but if its British, then any oil pressure is better than no oil pressure.
    6 points
  6. Wow. So much has changed with this. I'm just going to drop these here for now. Ignore the block of wood the gauges are on. Not sure what I'm going to do there yet.
    4 points
  7. TMac was a super generous guy and killed most of his saturday tigging these up for me, it took 11 rods! did not expect it to be such a monumental job but it certainly was Super stoked with how the tuned out, week of the 25th we are doing a full stainless exhaust to replace the rusted heap of shit thats in there.
    3 points
  8. Picked up a Radio Flyer wagon as a new project. I still have my daughters hot rod but it has small and narrow wheels so car meets on grass are a no go. Still fits and I finally added the "lake pipes" Scored this on gumtree for a bargain and looking at some secondhand go kart wheel this Friday. Pulled it to bits Plan to copy this style chassis Hopefully end up with something like this
    2 points
  9. I'm just waiting to hear back from richard about looking at his race car shed But it's.looking like it's.going to be the 12th Sunday. So we have 5 sheds. Vapour shed papatoetoe Tumeke Papatoetoe Bigfoot Papakura Richard Alfreston(yeah I know) Neal Ardmore.
    2 points
  10. Shit bag. We miss you also. And whatta mean bad weather. I enjoy using camping chairs as kites.
    2 points
  11. so no posts for a while as i have been a busy boy with this. Motor machinists finished my head cos they are a bunch of GCs. I needed to get the rocker angles all bang on so Jase / ekezetec being the good bastard he is machined me up some spacers. head! The other thing that jase sorted out for me was some offset cam bushes. I drilled the cam gear locator pin to 8mm so it could be adjusted, got the timing bang on then reset with this wee bush . i then decided i wanted some good tuned 4-2-1 extractors to work well and be designed for the cam im using. Cue NZs resident K series expert Sheldon Rush who took a look at my cam card and gave me primary and secondary lengths / diamaters / collector angles etc. So i spent like $220 on mandrel bends and steel, made a wee jig on my bench of critical points of contact using an old head and then proceeded to spend a long time making these. For extra cool points all cutting is done using a 4" grinder with a cutting disc. They all matched up real nice and are within about 5mm of equal length with each other. They will be going to tmac on sunday who is going to Tig them up for me. would really like to have them HPC coated but im to ghetto at the moment so it might happen at a later date. Probs not haha. When we had the car on the dyno last it made an extra 5 hp (huge when you only have 75hp) by having the bonnet open. this showed she was getting too much hot air especially with the bigger primera radiator being in front of the inlet so i made some heat sheilding out of that fancy alloy corflute heat sheild type shit. Peter weir kindly hooked me up with his stealth mappable ignition system out of his escort after it blew up. Im currently installing this and just loaded up the map he had on it, going to do some more research on dwell (in degrees here) but hopefully i can make some more power having a reliable advance curve and will be good to have a rev limiter also also have my 5.1:1 diff in, so just a few things to tick off the list and then she should be good to run the cam in and get it on the dyno, yeow
    2 points
  12. More not so exciting things, I got a super cheap deal on a terraphone professional intercom, 40 bucks mayyyyte. Lush thing about this is it has a audio output, so I can plug it into my go pro for max swearword crash antics. I'm going to mount the go pro on the bottom of the intercom. Got some aliexpress 12v -5v usb converters so I can hardwire the go pro in cos the batteries are super shit. So just for the purpose of form rather than function I replaced the wheel with a sweet little sportline one, makes the car look a bit more period than the rice wheel, again I can't go bigger than 320mm to fit my fat knees.
    2 points
  13. I bet everyone from this thread checking out investments plate's site will put a spike in their visitor count and we'll see a press release next week 'demand for investment plates soars!'
    2 points
  14. for those interested in an already involved project here is my dads 1965 Pontiac Bonneville when it was raced in the 80s it has beefyer swaybar in the front and one put in the rear. the front suspension has been lowered and aligned for racing and good turn in. disk brakes are installed in the front to replace the drums. along with a dual circuit holden hq master cylinder. the motor is the original matching numbers 389 couples with a th400 trans also original and untouched driving a 2.56:1 diff also original. the car is now just giong to be used as a awesome powerful cruiser. with some racing heritage. He has had the car 40 yeas this year. the last 20 of those it has resided in the garage in hibernation. during the new year i set about installing the 389ci v8 back into the car and making it run and drive.....stopping was another issue.....later though as typically an old car does it has some rust so that will need dealing with before i go for a wof nothing to bad just a little in the radiator support panel/cross member , both c pillers around guttering, right rear door shut area and the left rear dogleg . all fixable though. this is how i went about fixing the radiator support panel... just take the whole lot out and put it on the bench....... much easier drive down the road to wals... no bonnet....no reg..... no wof...no worries for those interested i have some old racing photos of the car from the 80s. i will try take more photos of what i do on the car.
    1 point
  15. I'd been looking for some kind of sweet coupe type thing for the last ~3 years or so. 348s were high on the list of ideal vehicles, but I was also keen on 456, 512, 911, Cayman. 348s and 456s seemed to disappear off the face of the earth when I was ready to buy. 911s skyrocketed in price. Caymans seemed a bit too bland, and 512s a bit extreme. I'm still a little bit annoyed for not buying a mint $25k 964 in 2013 because it was a C4 and not a C2, and I'd just bought a Megane turbo. So last year I said "bugger it" and bought this 4.3 V8 Vantage. It's a 380hp V8, 6-speed transaxle manual thing. Goes alright, sounds alright. It's the earliest, lowest power version of the Vantage. Later on, they tweaked the 4.3 to get more power, then went to a 4.7 with even more power, and a V12 version is also available. It has VE SS inspired holes in the front guards, a Ford Mondeo inspired front grill, and a Jaguar radiator fan shroud. The best of all three worlds.
    1 point
  16. Hello Sir's This may or may not interest anyone. Last year i spied a boat hull on trademe. I followed it for a while and the price kept dropping. Sold my boat in a hurry and purchased sight unseen. Drove up to Auckland to pick it up only to be met by a small crowd of Nautical Barrys who had built it as a team many years ago and never quite got her going. Many yarns were had over some fine homebrewed beer. Apparently they all wanted to escape their wifes and decided to build a boat so they could take turns escaping their wifes in years to come. Many traditional barry techniques were used in the construction, such as hiring a tail lift truck to turn it over. Specs are 7m Long, 2.4m wide. Constructed from Kauri Frames and Cedar Plank. Weight- 600kg! I tidied her up, put a 65hp outboard on it, a fabric soft top and use it for fishing and drinking beers. Forgive the name, i let my 5yo name it.
    1 point
  17. So Cert is booked for the 13th Feb and I've been busy working on getting everything finished, All the Airlines have been secured every 300mm or less, ive fixed the leaky exhaust, just have a tailpipe extension to weld on, the biggest thing ive had to do is make my front shock mounts, I had to get a spacer machined up to space out the bottom mount as it would've fouled on the brake line mount, and for the upper mounts i got a bit of 2x2 box section, cut it diagonally length ways, boxed the top, and welded them into the car, ended up having to trim the leading gusset as on full drop the top of the shock body fouled (Simon from Airride NZ said he uses right angle and now i can see why haha Car is booked in for a Wheel alignment on friday so i think we are as set to go as i can be, will see what Cletus finds, and fix that too haha
    1 point
  18. how she looks now. Photo care of Steelies
    1 point
  19. If were in 'straya I'd suggest Barry-mundi instead of Goldfish. But yeah, build pics...
    1 point
  20. Mate she's a beaut Rename Barry please
    1 point
  21. Today didn't really fire like I'd hoped, spent ages with the Knick putty and sanding wee spots, re-did the bottom of drivers front guard and primed it all, carbonded the gutters and the boot and bonnet webs-to-skins (great product), bogged and sanded the upper inner of doors, finished the nose of the bonnet and some repairs on the scuttle vents. Moving forward is still acceptable no matter how fast
    1 point
  22. Havent realy got a lot more done over the break, I did buy this though. Should help with the glueing back together!
    1 point
  23. Finished up the other side today and took it for a spin. I also took a couple extra pictures as a future reference potentially for anyone who needs this info as it took me a while to work this out. So in order to remove the brake disc from the hub took a bit of trickery for the average Joe. I suppose if you had a press handy you'd use that but this way is just as easy. First step of course is removing the bolts. Not too hard with an impact gun. Then bolt the hub to your wheel like shown above. Get a piece of wood or something similar and use it to hammer down on the brake disc. Moving around the disc eventually it should slip off the hub. I found this was quite an easy way to do it. Still took some decent hits but worked out good. One assumes you're replacing the discs at this point so risking damage on them isn't really a major concern. Then you end up with this, as you can see bearing and seal removal is not required but it's good to check them while you're there. Springs have settled a bit and actually look really good, about the same height as it was before. Still getting clunky noises and I'm fairly certain it is the springs as I can twist them by hand when the car is in the air but they are still captive. So perhaps just missing something more to push down on the top. The alignment is fully out of whack and almost certain it has positive camber now! It got quite wobbly on the motorway earlier at about 80-90kmh, so definitely need to take it to alignment shop. Although I'm not entirely sure how much adjustability will be available. The ball joint looks like it is OK but when it's on a lift I could check it better.. or more likely someone who knows what to look for can check it better. Also, the new discs work very well. Might just be my optimism but feels like it pulls up a bit better. Shit yarns: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/49704-mlracings-hakosuka/&page=8#comment-1773147
    1 point
  24. Back to fixing the lower cab corner rust. Look at that nice 1950's welding!
    1 point
  25. The rear cab mounts/ front deck mount things had rotted through all along where they were welded to the chassis. Various patches had already been done and the only option was complete replacement. (Lol..Cat added one extra brown hole to this photo.) Probably mentioned these heaps but had them laser cut out of 3mm steel (significantly thicker than factory) and then folded at work during smoko. I cut the old mount off on one side and used it as a template to mark cut and fold lines on my new pieces. Have acquired a TIG welder to use at home. The GOOD body guys use Tig to weld up their panel steel- the benefit being far less material to clean up and a much softer weld that you can hammer (I'm told MIG will crack) The professionals don't even use filler wire- their gaps are so minimal that they can fuse the panels together and planish the seam out so that virtually no grinding is needed! I'm nowhere near that skill level but made my first decent part for the driver's side patch that I stuffed up earlier. This part is a front corner and it is a mirror image of the factory floor on the passenger side (I have nothing on the driver's side left to copy) As I don't have one of those fancy contour tools I used very low tensile bent wire (I think it's gas welding filler wire) to transfer and check shapes.
    1 point
  26. I have just popped in to give sort of a quick "hey there fella..how's your car working out so far and what do you think of it?" update like thing. Well.. glad you asked. Note one; Its not very fast but keeps up with traffic fine if traffic drives slowly. Hills scare me. In the other Viva, Viva One, hills are fun and something to look forward to. In fact I often plan a passing move on a hill to really put a point across to what ever I'm passing, really lay down the house rules in a quick simple move No such fun with Viva wagon I'm afraid. Now all I plan is where can I wind up the rubber band and how fast can I take a corner so not to scrub off too much speed. Momentum is king. Note two; Its light. Lighter over the front end which makes for really light steering and a throw it into everything, chuckable sort of fun drive. Great for not slowing down *see note one. Note three; The brakes need a lot more effort to stop. Suspect servo maybe not playing its part and has decided its going to just sit in the bay taking space and to hell with assistance. The brakes work fine but you have to push them hard. So best not to bother using them and just hold that speed which is good again for speed.. see note one. Note four; Its only running on 3 at idle but smooths out when revved? Or is it me thinking its smoothing out and its actually only running on three most of the time. I wonder if its the worn dizzy cap and once up to speed it doesnt affect the engine. But I think its more. I will check the plugs in the morning. The exhaust knocks the cross member in a very noisy horrible way when the engine bounces about on three. This totally goes with the style of the car though. Passers by probably just think 'old cars.. aint they so sweet with the clouds of smoke and noise' Note five; Its not burning any oil. This is good. Instead its doing a very British car thing and leaving puddles on the floor. I thought it was mainly the rear main seal but then I noticed I had not re-tightened down the rocker cover since its been run a few times. Hopefully this might help. If the car continues to behave well with regards to oil use then I may well just dump out the 15 year old oil and treat it to new stuff. I really should change it shouldn't I... I'm so mean. Note six; It needs music. The wheezy little four pot struggling up a hill, gasping for air, stumbling and hurting when I try to make the gigantic leap over the hole the size of the Isle of man that is between 2nd gear and 3rd gear is not music. I have been given an 80's tape deck stereo headunit and I have some plastic speakers that cost me nothing. So perfect for this car. I will fit them and then hunt out the best music the local recycling center will have on tape. I will post up the build of this mega sound system as we all like ICE. Anyway- we took both Vivas to the OS Nelson area meet today. It made it there fine and did not have too large a queue built up behind and didn't blow a cloud of smoke. So that was nice. Event went well and I took some photos. There was actually 4 Vivas there in the end. This is a record surely. Certainly for Nelson.. Then we drove back home- Hannah following in Viva one which she now claims as hers..pfff no taste. Snobbery. It was a nice day out and as I drove home to the sound of rattles, bangs and clunks I made my list of things to fix. I will report back as I sort through them.
    1 point
  27. Something arrived to sort out the sky-high front end. Looked at a few options but went with Lovells cos had best ride reviews (plus cos blue)... Shocks coming too, no idea when I'll get them in tho...
    1 point
  28. That wagon looks like as much or more of a money pit than the sports cars.
    1 point
  29. Very few car forum posts would include motel/hotel hardware and connectivity photos. I suspect weirdo french car forums would. Love it!
    1 point
  30. Fucking love it ! Possibly just because it pisses off old men like Alex, But mainly because they own a fucking Ferrari and they can do what the hell they want to with it!
    1 point
  31. in more exciting go fast news OS's resident GC neal / khamal / threeonthetree just collected a second hand but barely used 5.1:1 CWP for me. Same as deeeeeeeeze nuts Hello 4200RPM at 100kmph haha, i actually might use 5th gear in competition now.
    1 point
  32. I never realised Mazda 3s were so enormous.
    1 point
  33. Never heard of any of my mates Ferraris blowing their gearboxes. This could be due to other reasons though.
    1 point
  34. There are still hotrod Barrys out there that want dumb money for mustang related plates
    1 point
  35. tow truck driver must be like, WTF at this guy.
    1 point
  36. It failed compliance on a broken door release cable. There's a surprising amount of DIY resources like workshop manuals, parts catalogues, and forum guides on these, thankfully. The wheels are directional - the thick side of the spoke is supposed to be towards the front. At some point, someone has mixed up the rear wheels. It came with this lush briefcase of Ferrari paint tin lid openers and some flat tyre wind with an F40 on the can. It's quite low. Doors are amusingly thick. Supermarket car parks might be tricky. It feels really strange sitting so inboard of the edge of the car.
    1 point
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