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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/11/19 in all areas

  1. And we have colour...,
    8 points
  2. Removal of more rusted metal from the 61 Datsun Bluebird left hand side outer and inner sill, 'B' pillar, 'C' pillar and side of seat pan. A huge hole in the car structure is the end result. This gets very ugly and you may want to look away if at all squeamish. No need to panic! Almost of this is going to be replaced with new steel, but it is a very slow step-by-step process to make these parts from scratch. There is nothing here you can just go to your computer and order or even find in good condition in an auto wrecking yard. It is a heck of a learning process that will be applied to the so far untouched right side of the car. I get started by using electric metal shears, slicing and splaying open the outer sill for internal rust inspection and to understand what details are inside with respect to the side of body lifting point. I had hoped at least the upper sill and inner would be salvageable so I cut a relatively clean line against a tape edge at the body line. The outer sill immediately swung open at the lower pinch weld and then just falls off. Notice the slightly bumped out area below the body lift penetration point. This will be duplicated in the new steel panels later even though I may never use the factory lift jack tool. I do still have the jack but it is worn, unstable and deemed unworthy for safe use. It would either lose grip internally and slide downward suddenly, or the small base plate could kick out at the ground and punch the upper shaft end against the door and make a big dent. Maybe the old lift jack can be repaired and improved or maybe not. Sheet metal form detail of outer sill lift jacking point Eventually, the rusty inner sill is to be separated at the left next to the new 16g steel from the previous 'A' pillar repair and new metal lapped in at the back side of the gusset shown. If you look closely, you see the fuel line and wire to the electric pump. That line is soon removed to avoid a fire hazard. Moving further aft, we see the reinforcing structure around the lift pipe, or what remains of it anyhow. And behind that what I call the joggled gusset. This upper gusset, the near one with the three ribs, is heavy gage steel and salvageable. I thought incorrectly, that to remove the upper part of the sill, that the upper gusset would have to be separated first from the pipe. Actually the top of the pipe is not welded to the upper gusset at the notched contact point. Only the side brackets are welded to the pipe and they are weak enough to just pull apart from the pipe. I could have just lifted the upper sill right off once the regular pinch welds were drilled out. The salvaged lift pipe gusset plate. I ended up with a lot of holes from spot weld drill outs that will be used for plug welding later on. This is the joggled gusset plate that is on the opposite side of the inner sill with respect to the body mount bracket on the other side. This gusset is deemed too badly cratered and rotted and will be reproduced. I cut it out before removing the inner sill by cutting around the perimeter after a futile attempt to search out and drill out all the spot welds. Things aren't looking to good above at the base of the 'B' pillar. Lots of otherwise hidden rust damage. I'm going to cut 'B' pillar base off and repair. The damage and repairs needed to the now cut off 'B' pillar is shown in the light. I subject the 'B' pillar to an electrolysis bath to remove bulk rust and identify the salvageable sections. A lot of it is still good and will be cleaned up and reused. Portions near the pinch weld are bad and the flat horizontal section deep inside is shot. Outward facing sections are perfectly good. Jumping ahead here a little bit since I did not have a good pic of the freshly removed gusset plate. As you can see, it was total destruction to remove it. A real light show with all the flying sparks! Shown above is the newly made replacement. The joggle or step was made under force from a hydraulic press and an opposing stack of offset steel bars. The aft end inside the sill is heavily cratered and holed. Thus I go to the extreme of cutting off the 'C' pillar, aka dog leg, for complete repair as the hidden damage inside is total rust out which will otherwise just continue. Where there would be an end of sill block off plate in the far back is really just rust powder stuck to the asphalt undercoat. At the lower pinch weld, the flange of the outer sill moves upward leaving just the inner sill plate poking down about a half inch. Why? Just looks a bit odd. Probably to match and fit the slight difference in contours at the 'C' pillar. The now cut-off dog leg ('C' pillar base). About 60 percent or more is perforated or too thin to reuse. This part proves difficult to reproduce. It is still not quite right after patching it up section-by-section off the car. I tried, and will tweak it a bit more now that it is welded back on the car. I might do it differently when I go to work on the right side of the car now that I know which areas should be cut out. The now fully exposed inner sill plate. This was a bit of fun. Before drilling the spot welds and removal, I cover all the step contours with blue machinist paint and scribe on the metal the intersection points to permit accurate measurement of the sill. The inner sill steps out about a tenth of an inch where the flange of the floor is butted against it for nested fit. In addition to recording measurements prior to removal of the inner sill, I make a paper overlay as a secondary backup to sometimes flawed note taking. I've also made a full size drawing on mylar as yet a third method to help reproduce the part. Key measurements at the 'B' pillar overlap (O.L) and inner sill. It's starting to look pretty messy and getting worse soon. Inner sill is drilled of the spot weld connections to the floor flanges and removed. The underfloor brackets are cut off at their flanges because these brackets are severely beat up from impact damages. The bracket for the body mount is planned for reuse, if it is good, so the flanges are left intact. Not reusable! As final act, the side of rear seat floor pan is cut out. Is there a name for this thing? This proves to be a relatively easy and fun part to reproduce because of the straight bends and box shape. Just a little challenging to butt weld into the side of the seat pan later on. A rust hole big enough for a mouse to climb through. And they did, sometime stockpiling grass seed and such here and there. And now the huge ugly hole in the car! A preview of making new parts and closing this chasm up. Making left and right hand parts where possible. I'll probably focus on the inner sill next post. More later.
    7 points
  3. Finished all the mods to the engine bay for the brake booster and the bolt in battery tray. Seam sealed and reprimed. Have done a few more small jobs such as sand blasting and painting the pedal box and battery tray. Just need to get some paint samples now.
    6 points
  4. So some of you are really into programmable ignition and electronic sensors. I tried to make my own electronic ignition. After 3 seconds one of the MOSFETS running a coil shorted out. After 7 seconds all of them had. Each mosfet was rated at 20 amps. But considering they were dealing with the primary and ... lets face it. some of the secondary output (These old timers are like that) i don't think they were up to the million volt task. At least 2 hall effect sensors survived. Barely.
    6 points
  5. Tell him to block off the BOV, then he can Phil Collins Su-Su-Sututututu around
    5 points
  6. Made some subframe connectors out of some 75x40x3 rhs and glued them in
    5 points
  7. Car is running and working on making it drivable. Huge thanks to @Roman answering all my stupid questions. Ran the first log tonight, hopefully the changes I made work
    3 points
  8. This might be a little bit of a hack job but i needed the O ring on the MAP sensor to sit nicely and one of the best spots I could find to use without to much work was directly into the intercooler. So armed with a stepper drill bit and a set of taps I managed to make something work. Fortunately it only required 3 washers either side to space the sensor nicely so that the o ring seated. Ideally i would have made a new aluminum part with the CNC and welded it on but I didn't really have the time and the skills for the aluminum welding so this was a nice simple solution. I installed a larger Brake MC for more brake feel as the standard one was so soft and you had to do a lot of work to make something happen. Ideally I would like this car to be able to be taken on track days and drag meets (drive ability is pretty key/vital as this is not some show car) so I need some effectiveness from the brakes. Also spent a lot of time position the electric throttle pedal for a good heel toe operation. I had spent a lot of time trying to make this Clutch MC work (its from a Pajero) as people spend a lot of money getting a specific pedal box just to make it work and getting one hard enough let alone paying for it to get to New Zealand. I was convinced that armed with a brake line flaring kit and a bit of thinking I could make something that would be effective. In hindsight this was really not the case and after a bit of research and failing miserably I found that i actually needed to do a lot more bench testing. I think that i mounted the MC inline with the pivot point of the pedal making the clutch have a incredibly light feel, it seemed to function but did not feel anything like how a clutch should. I also think I needed to spend a lot more time researching throw/movement lenghts of the MC vs the Slave. It might post something in a technical thread as i really would like to know what to do next time but I ended up buying a bolt on solution for the time being. (above picture is not it this is my pajero mc with a spacer made with the CNC at work. Meanwhile that fail was going on I was atleast able to work on my welding skills. If i can say anything as i come further through this project is that my mig welding is getting so much better even just with the flux core. This is a little brake line bracket i made and tapped with two pieces folded and welded together.
    3 points
  9. turns out I need more than half a day...... Everything is off the shell (apart from wheels etc) except fuel and brake lines and a few odd's and ends, so I'm almost happy....... Hopefully should get it done this weekend. I've set myself the goal of having the car fully painted by the end of the year.
    2 points
  10. This is 'painted' now. Pics when I've figured out the best angle to hide how average the paint is.
    2 points
  11. Repairs to the 61 Datsun Bluebird left hand side 'A' pillar (or post) The starting situation. More than a little rusty. Several portions are completely gone. I started by making reference measurements Cutting the remainder of the forward sill stub off Reinforcement was added before cutting the inner sill plate out. Making a paper template for an inner sill patch Cut it out Sizing up some 16g steel sheet Finally the patch, gusset plate and body mount bracket (on inboard side) is welded. Had to do it twice as it was placed crooked the first time. Still learning how to weld with the MIG. I should have turned up the heat for these welds against the 16g, still a bit cold with too much build up. The rest of the inner sill going aft will get cut and replaced later. Inboard side Did some sketching and cut out some flat bits to make the rest of the pillar They may not match perfect, since some of these cover undefined areas, but they are better than empty air space! Beginning of the outer sill forward stub Forward sill stub inside Initial fit checks, and adjust and fit and repeat Added the floating nutplates A view of an original style retainer for the square nut. Bent over 180 to get a wrench on the nut after torching a hole in the inner panel. Notice only one tab is welded to the metal. From the right hand side pillar that is toast. The area is phosphoric acid etched and prepped for weld and protective paint where it can't be reached later Another viewpoint Beginning to weld it. Finally I'm getting the plug welds hot enough to penetrate well and lay flat. The reproduced upper bits. Didn't like the pie cuts but it worked Same as above, flipped over This metal work was getting tedious. For a diversion, I located a Nissan rubber grommet to replace the rotted rubber on left. This is the typical state of the rubber parts all over after nearly 60 years. Okay, back to the business of welding the parts onto the Bluebird... Prepping more of the soon to be hidden innards Get it welded! It's taking shape Getting there Now to just grind and sand the welds flush It looks not too bad. Solid metal again! The rest of the outer sill will be reconnected at the stub joint much later. Next posting will be removal of multiple parts, including; outer sill, 'B' pillar bottom, 'C' pillar (or dog leg) and remainder of inner sill.
    2 points
  12. Took my mate for a spin just then and the exhaust flange ripped off a catseye on the road hahaha. Thats low Looks like the exhaust needs lifting up a tad innit FML
    2 points
  13. That guy has no understanding of electricity and needs to be told so.
    2 points
  14. Have i tried to sell you on the merits of LED lights lately? Even on high beam the amps draw is maybe... 1.2 amp? According to a century old gauge anyway... much less than the 10 amps they were previously drawing. And other people can actually see the lights now.
    2 points
  15. Someone had deemed these "junk" and left them in a fish bin full of water outside for a year. Some time ago i cut open a dead RB25 coil hoping to see what was inside. Such fine wire, so many windings. About a million of the finest wire windings i had ever seen, trapped in resin plastic, sealed and unable to be unwound at all. At least by any methods i could see. These 100 year old ford ones remind me of the same thing, except the wire is slightly thicker and there is 2 lots of 1million windings. 2 per coil around a heavy primary winding. Accidentally put a chisel into the primary and is still works. Not for 100 years anymore as it'll corrode now it's damaged but still... not many ignition coils you can pull the windings out of, involving chipping away or melting the tar they were packed in. Those brown paper things are capacitors. Condensers effectively, like you have for a distributor. While i'd heard of old timers making their own from paper and chewing gum wrappers back in the 1940s when they were poor kids fixing their first car... i'm not that keen. These had real tin foil, not the alloy foil we have today so they solder really nicely. A couple tested within spec' so i re-used them. Others i replaced with orange things. Mix and matched the wood. And going ot do the same with the burnt out windings so i can turn 8 burnt ones into 4 good ones... hopefully. Had some burn up after 10 minutes of driving because i didn't realize how keen they were to have inch long sparks jumping inside the box if i didn't put the glass plates and tar back in. Opps. Bit marked up, some have clear borer holes in them but not too bad for 100 year old ignition parts. How many of you are still running original coils and points at 1/3rd the age?
    2 points
  16. Just read back over this tread. Funny thing about this photo is that 3 weeks later my arm still hurt... 4 weeks later I got it x-rayed...yip - broken wrist!!!
    1 point
  17. @flyingbrick yeah my dude, looks OG 68-77 https://www.wolfsburgwest.com/wolfsburg_new/interior/headliner_seats/seat_covers.cfm Looks like you are having fun. How good is being able to get parts for a car eh
    1 point
  18. Lol. Unless your mate is going to the effort of putting a cold air box around that filter, he's going to lose power. It may sound a bit throatier, but no performance gains to be had in that application.
    1 point
  19. Wow! Slow down you maniac! You put the rest of us to shame.
    1 point
  20. Correct. The factory valves don't last forever. If you here a fluttering noise when lifting off on boost it will need replacing. Genuine ones are not expensive
    1 point
  21. It will have a diverter valve that recirculates as if you fit a bov that vents to atmosphere it will cause running problems as you are dumping air that the ecu has measured
    1 point
  22. Current manifold lengths as follows: Valves to end of adapter: 205mm Throttle body height: 74mm Trumpet length: 83mm Giving a total current length from valve to bellmouth of 362mm Which is surprising! A lot longer than I expected. The standard intake manifold is approx 40-50mm longer than this (with a bend) Can easily go another ~70mm longer if I put about a 30 deg bend in the runners to avoid the bonnet. So will give this a hoon.
    1 point
  23. Had a few minutes so visited the lockup and wifey helped me pull the seats out. The seat mounting brackets that are welded to the seat bases are weird. They look kinda factory but also super unprofessional-10mm thick flat bar, with extremely tight bolt/frame clearance. Does anyone know if this seat fabric is factory? And check out the before and after cleaning pics. They got a soapy scrub (brown water, yuck) and then an actual waterblast.. the vinyl has a very deep texture which was FULL of human filth.
    1 point
  24. Third consideration is that I want to retain a manual gearbox with a column shift. Anything else would compromise the look that I am trying to retain. Current column shift selector looks like so.
    1 point
  25. In my opinion trying to widen the box will compromise the current seating arrangements as these old vehicles aren't very wide. I also need to shoehorn the radiator into the same space or risk compromising the state of the art cabin ventilation system which consists of a hinged flap in the floor that picks up fresh air as it enters the chute leading to the radiator. It works surprisingly well.
    1 point
  26. Pretty excited. Had the beetle running and let it do its own thing for a solid 30mins just sitting in the shop. No water trying to escape and make a mess in my shop, no oil leaks, nothing out of the ordinary and the oil cooler is good and the radiator is working well. Old mate matt said "all we need to do is get it starting when hot" and then it started up easy as normal start up. Fucken so happy! Such a good feeling.
    1 point
  27. well then, 3 years has flashed by. in that time the 51 has been in storage a bit and ive driven it a bit. done a few things to it but nothing major. it continues to run well despite it having a 4M for an engine. things done to it are, re-valved the shocks to give a better ride (was a bit "bouncy" before) rebuilt the driveshaft uni's because they were fucked replaced the front tire that had a lump in it and caused a vibration on the motorway. new set of plugs coolant flush the standard oil and filter changes new battery and thats it. drove it to leadfoot over the weekend and it went perfectly. here are some pix of the adventure. last minute warrant, 2019-02-05_07-29-27 by sheepers, on Flickr played chicken with a truck, 2019-02-05_07-29-36 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-02-05_07-30-00 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-02-05_07-30-16 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-02-05_07-30-28 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-02-05_07-30-58 by sheepers, on Flickr
    1 point
  28. You mean XJ-S, this one here? https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/jaguar/auction-1935049799.htm A British racing green coupe with tan leather and a V12 for under $4k. In a couple of hours you could have it looking a lot nicer (from a distance) than in the photos. That pre-HE V12 is meant to be the thirstiest engine in the world, but you can fix that for more than $4k with manual conversion kits or Chev V8 conversion kits depending on what shape the V12 is in. You should absolutely purchase that rough, underused V12 XJ-S which has no history, no WOF and no reg, and then you should bring it to oldschool Nats. This would make you the grandmaster lunatic.
    1 point
  29. I restored this Hotwheels D Type for one of my boys. It turned out so well we made a "custom" display stand for it and all.
    1 point
  30. ^^^Thats pretty much everything you need! Just need to know which byte of the can frame is the ID, probably 7 if 0 is already info. In other news, read a really good tip to stop those infuriating situations where you use = instead of == If you mean to write: if (engineSpeed == 7) But you accidentally write: if (engineSpeed = 7) Then you're in the shit because it makes the Engine Speed 7. But if you swap the order of your variable and the constant: if (7 == engineSpeed) Then if you accidentally use if (7 = engineSpeed) 7 can never become your variable so the code doesnt show a positive result 100% of the time. I have screwed myself over with this one, multiple times hahhaa.
    1 point
  31. Teensy 3.6 has dual canbus, so what that means is you can snip the canbus wires to the controller. connect 1 canbus to your controller and the other side back to your main bus. Then pass all the info through the Teensy both ways. This way you can tell which direction the signals are coming from and isolate the controller data. You can allow all traffic from the height controller back to main bus so it still communicates as needed. Isolating just the controller will help you figure out what each byte means. When the speed info comes from the direction of ECU you can intercept it and modify the signal before passing it through. This project is a bit more complex than it sounds (do you know the canbus datarate? Packet ids?) Some time initially with a scope would be handy unless you have this info on hand from the manual. Its definitely doable but definitely a learning curve! I can write you a pass through sketch for teensy 3.6 that would get you started identifying can frames. But it would be a learning exercise from there as decoding can frames is a bit like reading tea leaves haha.
    1 point
  32. 14point7 spartan 2 came today. Pulled out the LC-2 and put the 14point7 in, it's 100x better. There is no signal noise now, the sensors that the LC-2 reckoned were dead work fine, warm-up time is like 15 seconds. I am using closed loop EGO control for the first time now, set with authority of 5%. Seems good so far, map is within 1% in most situations anyway. There is no way I could have used closed loop with the LC-2, it was just too unstable. Chinese sensor is still working perfectly. Now I just need to find some industrial application for the LC-2 / from my experience they seem reliable enough in low demand environments.
    1 point
  33. Ryobi now sells generators with EFI. https://www.ryobitools.com/products/details/7000-watt-electronic-fuel-injection-e-start-generator Would be interesting to get my hands on one of these in the future and pilfer parts for projects. / Those small fuel pumps could be quite useful in certain applications
    1 point
  34. Check to see what the quote is for though. From memory the G1 radiators were only 2 core and we used to upgrade this to a performance 3 core. It was 20 years ago so my memory might be fuzzy but it’s worth double checking. As you will know, heat kills Rotaries...
    1 point
  35. It was only a matter of time...
    1 point
  36. Another good day. Finished stripping the larger flat areas, just need to remove a few bits and bobs and get the rest blasted. A few dents and the odd pinhole but pretty dang tidy! Stripped the boot lid.......like my other one, two big holes, but in different places so between the two I should have a good one.
    1 point
  37. 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
    1 point
  38. Got some 3mm ply, some fluffy backing, adhesive, and some white perforated vinyl. Dang she's a tight fit, puffed back out nice and smooth after shoving and slapping into centre. #openmondays
    1 point
  39. Next will be finding somewhere to put the wastegate
    1 point
  40. It's like working on a lawnmower carb' but bigger and no plastic anywhere. Not sure if you can read that but the name plate reads "Holley carburetor Detroit Mich" The whole car is like a mechano set.
    1 point
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