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Diff housing, with spring pads and other assorted unwanted giblets removed

I finally did some stuff on this today. I finished off the headlight wiring and they work, I still have to align them as they are on the piss. Looking at that pic I need to re do the battery positive lead so it sits nicer I pulled out all the barry spec wiring for the radio, cd stacker, and fuck knows what else Check out the battery box

New caster arms have arrived with the most recent container shipment. So that was today's task.. pretty straight forward. So the reason I needed to change the driver side one was.. well as you can see it's bent. Looking at the area surrounding the front mount I would say it's taken a punt. If I had more time I would've done an oil change too.. oh well maybe in another year I'll get around to that

Gutted I missed seeing your ute thursday @tortron, wanted to foam over its champagne gloriousness

use flickr is easy and works. I wanna see pitchaz

Nothing wrong with that rate of flow in my (super amateur spec) experience

May well do, usually take february in its entirety off anyway. Probably take actual station wagon haha

I would like to see an upright piano, stripped out and converted into a tool chest for this, colour matched obviously

Man I fucking love these things, no idea why but I pine so hard for them over the more popular escort vans.

Sounds like a tractor right now but least it sounds healthy! https://youtu.be/jMt_PyWnPLw

Sussed out my interior light tonight, and plugged in the heater blower switch. Flicked the switch and plenty of current draw but no go.. After staring at it thoughtfully for a bit, gave the heater box a judicious kick and with a Whrcrunchsqueaksqueakwhirrcrunchsqueakwhirrrrrrrrrrr It came back to life, meaning that at this point EVERYTHING WORKS. Place your bets on what will break first now

Bam, 2 minute job but I'll count it as a win

In other news, I just paid for a copy of Megalogviewer HD. As you can import .CSV files from most other ECU types into it. The main feature that I'm interested in, is the ability to do maths on measured fields to calculate new ones. So for example, my ECU currently outputs CC per min of fuel consumption but you really need to factor the vehicle speed into this to get a true measure of economy. So you can do exactly that and then see a log of litres per 100km or km per litre or whatever. Which is cool. But then secondary to this, you can use the histogram function to generate a table which shows you what economy values you are getting in each cell of a table. So you can make changes across a map (say globally add or remove 2 deg timing) and then see how that changes economy really easily. The UI is just generally speaking disgraceful but it goes hard for what it is. But the table generator thingy and a few of the other calculated values will be awesome to use, I can see there are already some pre-existing calcs for working out coast down losses and power estimations and stuff like that.

So as a few of you probably know. Beth had a little car crash and no longer has a golf. We said we would buy myself a cheap run around and she can have the Subaru and put the rest of the money else where. So I brought a ea coon. I brought it cause previously I had one I brought for the globes and I then sold it. Kept the globes though. I rang a couple of places to get lowering springs... Scratch that Ill get them Compressed at spring town in Frankton. Time to lower the the bad boy again. Had to roll the guards a little bit. Chur to the help of @Mrs 64valiant Still got factory radio in it. The battery went flat last week. Luckily I still had the owners manual with the code in it to unlock it. The interior is in pretty good condition. Hahahahahahaha They sure don't make them like they used to any more. Currently scrolling the net at turbo set ups. And I need to lower the rear a bit more.

Having sold my last VL to fund taking the Belair to the next level, I had told myself that once the Belair was done I would get another first gen Commy as there was lots of things I wanted to take the Royale too but sold it before I had a chance. While I had actually been looking for a VK, noting of any worth was out there, it was all over priced rusty shitboxes, or it sold before I had a chance to look at it. And then I thought to myself, my old mate Jimmy has a nice VL Calais that's gathering dust, maybe I'll see if he is interested in selling it, turns out he was, and he was happy to sell it to me at a very good price. it's genuine V8 Calais, 150km on the clock, one previous owner (before my mate) who had had it for 18 years and was a mechanic who did a fair bit of work to it. It's got: ACL flat top pistons Crane "group a" camshaft 1.6 ratio roller rockers Double row timing chain with adjustable sprockets Big valve cylinder heads Port matched manifolds Brock VK SS Electronic dizzy Rebuilt Rochester four barrrel carb Holley fuel pump an reg PAcemaker headers with 2.5" exhaust, backed up by a built Trimatic with extra clutches, a shift kit and 2400rpm torque converter. Hardest part is that I have to wait until the 16th to pick it up.

Making the switch to 17's with 17x8 +30's Just bought some 215/45r17 snow tires in prep for hampton downs next Friday. Cant wait.

Yeah the only way to drive this, no plates and pesting around hah

@Beaver They all seem to have these - sorry for the delay and subsequent shit pics - im stripping the car just haven't got the motor out yet

Put galant plates on lada and Bring that

Exhaust shop booked now turbo flange arrived.

Looking good Eric I recommend you book some leave for the premier OS vehicle camping event.

With British car inside

I haven't built it yet but was thinking of copying @- i5oogt -s setup with a TD03. I think a T25 is a bit larger so more lag, roll coal, and boost. All of which would make the car more awesome. I might be keen on buying a T25 off you when the Cedric is running.

Okie doke, bit by bit the checking starts. Just checked the fuel flow through the tap. The black line on the measuring cup is 50ml which it takes about 10 seconds to reach. Not sure on actual flow rate required but at 300ml per minute it'll empty the tank in about 17. Once my new plug cap turns up the next will be to test it with the engine running to see if it is the same. In the mean time I'll dig out my stash of sweet yellow Tygon fuel hose and shiny new clamps and replace both vacuum and supply hoses.

A oldschool, house.

It certainly was!

Keep an eye out for this legit barnfind just past tikitiki https://goo.gl/maps/ttUYMRii3r62

Sooooo, I may or may not have got a little carried away while browsing Yahoo auctions for r30 parts... It all started when I found this: And it quickly escalated And as a bonus (which I didnt realise at the time, the side skirts have rear corner caps too! FIZZING! they should be here in a month or so! Unfortunately now I cant afford any wheels... Would people hate me if I ran widened steels for a while?

right this minute the dog has a whole bunch of paint on her. I foresee it getting worse.

So I did a thing. I saw another VL listed on trademe and quite liked the look of it but didn't really think too much more about it as I couldn't really justify spending anymore coin. Watched it for a week or two and then the E36 I'd been dailying packed up again, parts for the Bimmer are bloody expensive and I loathe the thing anyway so that will be for sale soon and this will be taking its place. It's RB30E auto, paint is a bit tired but it does everything I want from a daily with the bonus of being something I actually like driving. The main selling point for me was the interior. Madeira Red is my favourite of the interior options, maybe one day it'll get Calais headlamps, an LS and a two tone respray in Tuxedo Black over Asteroid Silver but for now I'll get a nicer looking set of wheels/chuck my cop steelies on it and tidy up a few odds and ends and just roll it as is. Also included in the sale was a rather stuffed parts car. It belonged to the son of the seller and they were sick of it sitting in the yard so asked if I was interested in it. It's powered by a 3.8 out of a VP (I think) and has a 5 speed box and a V8 LSD diff. I'm going to pinch the diff for the Royale although I'm a wee bit concerned about the effect that changing the diff ratio will have as the RB30ET doesn't produce quite as much torque as the 5.0L Maybe not enough difference to be an issue? Also need to look into whether I can swap the crown wheel and pinion from the original diff into the LSD head to keep the same ratio and keep the speedo working correctly. That's a problem for another day though, current priority is stripping all the decent parts off the crashed Vacationer so I can get it off my long suffering parents driveway.

Tonight I replaced the front crank seal and cambelt. That's the old one. Ya can't see it very well in the pic but it was pretty sad looking. Oh yeah and while fixing that leak I found another oil leak and two coolant leaks.

Nice, I did see that appear and disappear on the tard pretty quickly I've been meaning to make a bit of an update, but haven't really got anything to report at this stage. All is still looking good, might try and get a better list of confirmed attendees shortly also, and update the first post a bit.

Damn, that's friggen choice, well done.

Bung fizzing up here too. Picked up this fine specimen over the weekend, plenty of time to get it ready for the ride.

Yeh, right from the start we decided to avoid the gorge, not keen on become truck squeezed meat jam.The route should have very minimal traffic most of the way round, and maximal sights and adventures. AUDIBLY FROTHING BUNGUS

Ok so I haven't been documenting this car very well so here's a rundown down from the past year or so. The car blew it's third auto trans, so one night after work I put a manual box in it. Conveniently I had everything I needed in stock so it was a quick and easy job. Later I got bored and removed some coils and fitted the above posted AGX shock absorbers. The fronts are SW20 rears, and the rears are some Ford Focus units. The fronts are shorter than MX73 shocks to they're held in place with some T3 spacer top nuts. T3 RCAs are also fitted to correct the lower arm angles. The engine BHG'd over new years (yeah, yeah..) so I put in a spare engine that I had laying around intended for my MS65. It's a stock standard 5MGE but built on a 7M block coz it's a bit stronger and has piston oil squiters, the guy who built it was gonna turbo it. As far as I'm aware the internals are stock 5MG. I then fit an Altezza LSD. Later my rear tyres wore out (funny that) so I bought some cheap Advante 17x7s in the wrong offset and wrapped them in some 215/45 Nitto NT555s. Bought some spacers off eBay to make the wrong offset right, Manu spun me up some hubcentric rings to fit them all together and now I have plenty of grips. I've also had to repair plenty, the brake master cylinder shat out, the shifter position on the gearbag was wrong so swapped that to the correct one, which cost me way more than the gearbox did, rocker covers were leaking, driveshaft was incorrectly phased, balljoints were shot, windscreen was leaking, seatbelt jammed up, radiator split, radiator hose split, heater core split (what a shit job that was), I attempted to revive the AC but the compressor leaked all the gas out aaaaaaaaand probably some other bits. Still to fix is the a pillar rust, boot lip rust, shot passengers electric window, leaky tailshaft seal, very leaky crankshaft seal, horrible engine vibration (pretty sure it's flywheel / clutch out of balance), some of the instrument backlights not working, excessive rear wheel camber, pathetic brakes, pathetic head lights, cracked indicators, falling off boot trim, worn hanger bearing, worn subframe bushes, worn caster arm bushes, and anything else that fails in the near future. Stupid car.

Big win tonight! Made a big hole... And filled another... Tonight was focused on simply getting the motor out of the car and by the time that happened it was pretty late so I spent very little time at all putting the engine in the right place. That said, considering how worried I was that it would be a tight fit requiring lots of firewall cutting, I'm very happy with the initial mock up. It is nowhere near the final height in the engine bay, nor tilted correctly fore and aft or side to side, but the over all length looks like it will fit a radiator just fine and the sump shouldn't require much extensive modification. I'll have to get the gearbox adapter plate finalised before I can get the engine position sorted but there's still a few steps before that can happen. Still, progress has occurred.

Quickly took the car down for an alignment this arvo to try and work out the pulling to the left situation. Well have a look at the "before" spec below.. haha! As they didn't have a listing for hako on the system I figured Kenmeri woud probably be closest. One of the front caster arms is bent which is causing some of that issue and the toe adjust arms are a bit shit but managed to get them back in line. There is a lot of rust underneath so I'll be loading up on repair panels in this next container! Went to stop in at the compliance place on the way back but it was closed Also I think I need a GT-Kai badge.. everyone thinks it's a GT-R and are crushingly disappointed when I tell them otherwise haha Oh, so result of alignment car definitely feels like it drives a bit straighter, still pulls to the side occasionally but I think that may be as a result of my spring situation. I received a few more bits for it from Kevin san (the aussie guy previously mentioned) so one day I'll get to putting those in and see if that makes the difference.