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Hoodie was mine j5, now your latest shop rag / cum rag Ok so video is up. I opted for middle ground of extended ride footage and but not too much boring ride footage, small vids of cool shit are cool to watch but dont show off the ride so much for how awesome it is. excuse the music, i dont do music that well, unless its made via pushrods. also whoever paid for a patch and didnt get one off me PM me your address and ill post ya useless fucks.

In between working on a very sweet little Chevette with a Mazda 12A I have I have been whittling away on the Imp radiator placement, fan mounting and shrouding. What started off as simple ideas turned into more complex shapes as I wanted to make it all easy to take apart for servicing, plus be super strong. Its now very beefy up front and those mount points aint gonna move a bit. The radiator mounts, fan mount and exit point and shroud have so many folded over edges that its all really nice and stiff. To start with I lobbed a hefty chunk of RHS connecting the front rails and welded to the front suspension bracket points... Then I did some CAD work and started building up a radiator support panel.. This was made so much easier by our new tool- a guillotine we bought and picked up from my Uncle when we got our new lathe from him. I will never miss making long cuts with a cutting disc and all the associated dust mask, googles, ear protectors etc. Its made in England by Pictorex, is originally for paper but good enough to do 1.2mm steel so ideal for most car work.. Once the radiator mount was made I had to sort out where the ventilation system was going to get it air from. I had cut the hole in the front large enough to allow for an extra pick up. I built a tapered box behind it and angled it take the original hose ducting, making sure it was ot going to foul either the headlight or the fan shroud later on... I went to the local radiator place for a bleed nipple and drain tap that I was going to solder in myself. He said he could fit them while I was shopping and so he did, then cleaning it and pressure testing it all for only $30. Awesome. I'll go back there once I worked out pipe placement. I had cut a hole in the support panel so I can drain the coolant out the front.. Then onto into the fan and shroud. I wanted it to flow air through well when the fan was not on so made side supports with holes and little stainless hinge bars... These were welded to the fan frame like so... Mounted in place with alloy flaps hung on those bars. I tested them by blocking the radiator intake with a well fitting piece of hardboard and firing up the fan in reverse... Works really well. Happy with that. So I started framing the outlet hole. I added a new Lada Niva tandem master cylinder in position so to make sure I would build around it to suit. The M/C was given to me by good 'ol @NickJ ( I owes ya!) and he gave me the newspaper that the box came wrapped in which had these two likely looking Russian characters on it... Framing the hole.. Then I had a point to mount the shroud to. I welded the shroud on the inside of the joins so it cleaned up nicely. I made it as swoopy/smooth flowing as possible to make the air flow out cleanly (again... most likely getting a bit carried away a bit.. but its is fun this ). It can be removed easily, two screws, without moving the tank and then the fan with its shroud can come out, two screws. Then the radiator. So to finish this lot I need to swap the top inlet position on the radiator to the other side and add a baffle on the opposite side. Given how cheap and friendly that 'Rad' fella was I'll go back there... I reckon if I touch it with my current unsuitable gas torch I'll probably end up melting all the solder away from everything! With that done I can add the channel I am planning to run the pipes under the car but out of harms way. Then I'll make some seat mounting points for the MX5 seats now spare from the Viva.

Mental note for next time: Buy bushes that fit a std thick wall tube size! So I bought the bushes because they were close to the dimensions I wanted for engine mounts. But then I could not find any thick wall tube even close to the right size. I can make some. I have a tiny lathe. How hard could it be... #FirstRealThingMadeInLathe The bush diameter is 47mm. The closest size bar stock I could find was 65mm. It took a while to cut through with the power hacksaw. The saw would also walk and the bar fall off the shims fucking up the angle of the cut. I sorted that out! I did the first cut with a blade with quite small teeth and it took fucking AGES! I broke that blade later, so when I cut the next one I used a blade with bigger teeth(it was all I had), it cut quite a bit faster. But it still took a really long time. Then I whittled it down in the lathe. The deepest cut I found I could do was 20thou/0.5mm any deeper and it would jamb and break the carbide insert. ELEVENTY BILLION HOURS later! Actually the first one took 6-7 hours including cutting it off the big bar. The 2nd one I spread over several days. So glad I didn't fuck up the sizes and have to start again. Bushes fit perfectly.

Pretty wild that Regan was riding one handed on the Motu so he could take vids with his phone...

The bit when @Rookie comes in way too hot into that river crossing and crashes into 2 other bikes parked in the middle of the road is my favourite

Aaaannnnd this past weekend was a year since Eastcape OG. Judging by the weather I think we picked a good weekend to do it this year.

To be fair, that crash was a rookie move...

Anyone (other than the obvious) own this mug? Hoodie still up for grabs too.

How the conversation about valve lash went last year. me "hey john, the top end on the loan CT is pretty uhhh..." john "shhhh" me "k"

Man watching this again I can appreciate how fast that “vx50” motor makes a st90

Unfortunately you can’t here @Rookie saying “lash ya fucking valves John” on the sweet shot of you at Waihau Bay. Fuck that thing sounded like a typewriter by then

Oh yeah and old great uncle Lin had taken the head off around 1988 to fix the spark plug threads (apparently pretty common/easy to cross thread) dont know why but he never put it back together after installing helicoils? He died early 2000s so it’s been sitting in a shed for 30yrs, so there’s a bit of work to do gave it a couple of washes today and wheeled it into the car port will start making some room in the shed to store all the bits/sort out if all the motor bits are present

So late last year we got a call to go visit my wife’s uncle who was on his last legs Sister in law was trying to sell me one of his boats... yeah na how about a big D..... wife and I had been looking for a wagon, but as this one was the one she used to get driven around in as a kid and it was bought brand new by her great uncle figured why not he ended up dying and we had to wait for probate to do its thing fast forward to today and it’s just been delivered DiscussT

If no one claims that mug J5, and you don't want it for a shadow.garage coffee cup, stick it in my helmet for drag day. it can remind me of that time I didn't stay at the hicks bei motel, and I slept on a Kmart bed roll in a Kmart tent. With rekt ribs. Mostly.because any reminder of this trip will bring the broadest of smiles to my face.

HIghside Dave.

Diagnosing circuit boards is an art, need to have full access to the board and circuit diagrams and then understand what the circuits are trying to achieve, add to that test equipment to generate signals/voltages and read outputs to really do a decent job, thats $100/hr territory, 2-3 hours just to set up and confirm a fault rapidly hacks into kitset price or a new factory ECU. For me I like building circuits, and then troubleshooting is good fun, bugger having to charge for the time though.

I think this is a very relevant point to why MS has a bad rep. You cant compare factory based manufacturing and QC processes to some dude in a garage with a soldering iron. (no offence intended to any dudes in garages with soldering irons) No big manufacturers offer ECU as kitset because they'd probably receive a similar level of criticism for failures, which often just come down to something out of control of the company. Regardless of who causes the fault, it damages the brand. If you're a tuner and you need to be quoting jobs and hoping to make some profit at the end. It only takes 1 or 2 megasquirt jobs where you spend hours and hours chasing a ghost because of poor assembly or similar. To just get to the point where you say "okay fuck this" and just avoid them. Which I think is the point that a lot of tuners have reached already, based on some historical MS setups that were a far cry from what's currently available. Id imagine most tuners arent electronics experts prepared to diagnose internal ECU faults. And megasquirt itself has gone through a bit of a transformation from being completely open source to locking things down a bit and actually selling assembled products and so on. Possibly relating to reasons above. So in some ways its present day reputation is undeserved considering a modern prebuilt MS3 seems pretty legit, as much as most other things. The number of people running Megasquirt plug&play for MX5s in America is staggering, its like they established market dominance and now it's just the community go-to. If there were systemic issues with it, there would be a lot more foot stamping than there currently is.

When 10-5 first got his ITB EFI setup running on his skyline we tuned it in the Taupo Motorsport carpark about half an hour before he took it on the track. I think he ran that tune for a couple of years without touching it haha

Nah its a piece of cake with ITB. IMO punching in numbers into fuel and ignition tables is the easiest part, tuning full throotle is the easiest part. A big part of the time people pay to a tuner is all the background config. A car with less than say 300hp is super easy to road tune because you can do some full load pulls without it being dangerous or high speed. A dyno is a great tool and its main advantage is that its a shitload quicker. I gained nothing on dyno session vs my road/track tuning efforts.

The point of contention here is the tuner in Tauranga, who just so happens to sell a whole bunch of megasquirts. What he does isnt megasquirts fault but it doesnt help its reputation.

Done abit more.. finished blocking back the roof n continued to sand jams with 320 grit. Sprayed all the rub thrus with some epoxy primer. Decided to tackle the engine mounts to have a break from sanding. It needed doing before paint anyway as i scratched the firewall getting motor in. All trimmed up. Will grab the welder again tomorrow and tack it n my mate will weld them in for me as hes a much better welder than me! Cheers

So time has finally come to find a place for my barely interesting, mildly entertaining diy thread. It is definitely old and I'm sure you have seen one dropping the kids off at school. Oldschool.co.nz it is. This car has slowly brought me back down to earth from my 'Big Plans' (What motorcycle engine?). Learning the basics outta my parents (now mine) garage and basically getting it back on the road. Born in 1968 she managed to escape the city grind and found her way to NZ shores, finally residing in Wellington and for many moons sitting in Continental Cars as a parts shelf, then up to find a comfy tarp to rest under plus get a healthy dose of fresh salt air in Waikanae. After convincing the elderly lady to relinquish it I began about slowly restoring it. (Learning as I went of course). Before I owned it anything further forward of the windscreen was chopped and shaped, suspension included. I'll post more about this further down the track. I'll post an original front so you get the idea. Annnd away we go.... Original front: Any Q's get at me

Your bike from last year was fine*, mine developed some noises I may or may not investigate. *fine is a subjective term

Dakar Dave not rookie

Just FYI, the Fraser radiator is quite 'square' in shape so that it is a good fit in the nose cone, you might need more than just some tape to close yours off. I will keep an eye out for your Dad, I also have a Healey 3000 so go on a few 'old' car runs that sometimes have MG's

reeeeeeaaaaalllllyyy?? cool ill have to have a play. havnt noticed it rescale before

Oh lots of Skullduggery - Pretty sure Ray Hall who originally released the Vipec was heavily involved in the EMTRON Appears to be a few new brands filtering over here as well now from Europe and America now, specially, MAXX ECU and FUELTECH

Tech info for matching sender here http://www.veethree.com/temperature-gauges.html

I'm not worried personally. I'm a big fan of seeing other people tinker no matter the setup. Nothing like some @Roman graphs and science to go over my head but impress me.

I've done close to 20,000 km (14 months) with my microsquirt so far. The only ecu caused issue I had was when a resistor burnt out in the first 5 seconds of operation, but that is a known common fault with them and takes all of 5 mins to repair. There are people out there that have done 300,000+ km/10 years without any issues using megasquirts - in harsh environments like off-roading too. All other faults were my own doing (like the loom being melted on the exhaust manifold on day 1 or my injectors leaking (don't use old injectors)). That being said, I'm still running it in a fuel-only mode so it is a fairly basic setup. It is all wired and ready to go for as soon as I want to set up ECU controlled ignition, just need to stick a CAS on the flywheel but I don't feel like doing it at the moment. The other day I started the car with the MAP sensor plumbed to free air instead of the manifold (I forgot to reconnect it after dealing with an exhaust leak) and the car actually ran, albeit way too rich and super lumpy. I would have thought it would have just flooded and not ran at all. Took a minute or two before I diagnosed the problem. /If I did it again I would probably just design and build my own ECU from scratch for my specific application, or just fall for the marketeering and get a link. But there isn't really anything wrong with megasquirts. I probably saved about a grand by doing microsquirt compared to a link atom. Also, stay away from Innovate LC-2 controllers for oxygen sensors. They seem to have a fairly poor reputation. The 14point7 or whatnot are supposedly good?

They ain't BHP. @dattoboy had has standard one on a hub dyno a few months back. an earth shattering 37ATW!

Nice. I like the part with the sweaty guys.

come on, we are in the DIY fuel injection thread, this is about testing shit and learning, and theoretically not paying people to do stuff on your car and megasquirts are great, I have had minimal problems with mine, I just had some good knowledgeable dudes help me with it Also, this stuff is actually fairly complicated, no matter what an experienced person tells you, and requires hours upon hours of research and faffing around, with probably the wrong bits giving you the wrong info, but thats all parts of the learning experience innit

I noticed your 1963 Bluebird build with the many photos and also the parts car purchase in late 2014. Do you still have that other Bluebird parts car? If so, I'm looking for a couple of Bluebird body parts, namely the right side A pillar (mine is smashed) and the rear filler panel between the body and bumper (missing). I'm restoring my 1961 PL310 Bluebird that I've owned for many years, Right now I'm working on the floor which is totally rusted out. A couple of photos from many years ago. And then a pic of the current build situation.

Right. Let's quash this right here. There is a dude on mx5 pages who is very vocal about megasquirts on mx5s. His name is Daniel heaphy, he may be on there, I don't care id say all this to his face. He bashes on megasquirt like you wouldn't belive, yet has never owned one. Just read stories online and 'has mates who blew up their engine cause of megasquirt' He speels off all this bullshit and then when the large amout of mx5 megasquirt runners and supporters steam roll his arguments he deletes the threads cause he's a moderator. He does this all while running 272 cams on a stock ecu/engine. He's not a smart man.

My tank bag and sprockets arrived just in time for east cape.... 2019. These were in NZ for 3 weeks before NZpost delivered them. Looking forward to testing a few ratios once the engine is back together.

There’s not much chance of restoring this now the main rails are gone. hopefully get the trans mount welded up this week then it’s time to drop the body on to see we’re we are at.

There are some stories of skullduggery which could explain some similarities in the software between Links and Emtrons, but like it or not the Emtron is a different product from a different brand and a definite level up from the Link... while Vipec being "very much a Link" is actually because they are Links.

I think I'll go for this reddish one. Still a rusty pile but in slightly better condition.

Spotted in Blenheim. @Nominal might know where abouts haha

FFS long story short spoke to a fellow in know in my small town about how I was rebuilding a jet boat. He then mentioned he had one for sale lol went and looked at it and it's the style of hull I'd prefer and it's on a good trailer with a jet unit lol. So this might end up for sale after fibre glass stage cheap cheap cheap.

A little update, got the engine back from the reconditioners! So all should be well! Got it sat back in the car on Friday. I got a case of the man flu so that's all that happened. my new (new to me) inlet manifold arrived today, so that now means the bonnet will close! Succses!plans are to fit the clutch and gearbox on Thursday. Hopefully it should be all up and running by the end of the weekend! I had a thought regarding the wheel arch issues, I could cut them off and fit some universal 50mm flares, and paint them black? Thoughts?

Hah no one wants the gn. Can't say I blame them

Great success on the water this weekend! Did a couple of laps around the bay, initially she was running rich so dropped the needle down in the carb. Power picked up a lot after leaning the mixture. Goes mint for a little engine, had three guys in the dinghy and towing two other guys in Kayaks, moved along ok. Went out to a fishing spot and caught a Kawai. Smoked it for dinner. Success.

Ops posted from my phone and the rest despaired, I am making a spot welder

I pulled out the washer unit back when I moved the aircleaner up a little. Unfortunately I need a WOF so have to put it back in. I picked up a washer unit from a 2nd gen at a wreckers (mine was not a mitsi or Holden, and was cut up and siliconed together for some reason) Finding somewhere to put it proved the hardest part. I also don't like the position of my overflow bottle, it kinda overflows onto all the electrics.... So the current solution is to relocate both of them. A little clearance needed to the inner fender for the washer (where the recovery tank was)and then mounted a bracket off the current battery tray for the overflow. Pretty happy with it for now, it's going to go through another few evolutions probably. I quite like those metal recovery tanks that bolt to the side of the radiator. At some point I think I will relocate the battery under the tray, and maybe move the washer unit with it to really clean up the engine bay (to say nothing of getting rid of all that wiring....)

Old and lame New and improved To make the booster fit I had to relocate the oil filter housing, this meant I could use the oil bath air cleaner anymore, At a loss as to what to do, and struggling to find an air filter with a 63mm neck size (that wasn’t a ramflo filter) I figured I could make something work with the oil bath, I separated the top and bottom halves, and found that that would just sit above the oil filter. I made some measurements and found a round air filter that would fit inside, made a lid to stop air bypassing the filter and worked out a mount, and happily it all works, and the engine bay still looks kinda factory. Pics will follow tomorrow.

Not quite finished, but too cool to wait still needs a couple of poles on each side and then il add some eyelets and shock cord to the tarp and figure out a cab end and a tailgate door flap Truck camping this summer hooooooboooyy