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  1. Oh I forgot to mention a while back that I managed to get my Mum to do a spot of sanding to when she visited. I doubt she would have lasted log though but I think she did like the fact she had a trapped audience to waffle on to while she did sand... However- that was obviously before paint. Now we are right into the fun jobs of piecing back together the big kitset. The trickiest thing is trying not to get too carried away with cleaning things but it always does seem such a shame to put messy, rusty or dirty items onto a clean shell. I think in the future I'll try to stick to ratty cars like the Viva wagon. Saves time when things can be messy So yeah.. cleaning things. First the bumpers. I straightened both as best I could and Hannah then cleaned the backs and painted the surface rust in Por15... I then trial fitted the front but once bolted up it was slightly wonky. I ended up having to whip up a bending tool to straighten out the slightly bent mounting points... All straightened I mounted the bumper and stood back to admire the first bit of bling... We then hauled in the other two Imps and went over them like a team of car stripping Piranhas and removed all the last morsels of useful bits... With bits removed they then needed cleaning. Hannah quite enjoys these jobs and did a stirling job of making things all shiny again... I filled the roofline and inner wings over the rear arches with cavity wax. Much more enjoyable this time round then the first time I ever used some back in Blighty on my Rx3, in winter on a very cold day. This time round it flowed perfectly... Together we fitted the head lining we removed from Imp 3- the one rescued from Christchurch. Its a bit discoloured around the edges where the contact adhesive that the original factory worker had brushed in place has stained it right through. Not much we could do with that. But its rip free, pulled up nice and tight and looks better then nothing. Its in keeping with a 54 year old car... I then made a engine cover stay. Because the cover is fiberglass and had no mounting points for a stay I had added some before painting along with a suitable point on the car with them further apart then the standard imp placement to take away extra leverage over a flexible f/glass lid. Now to connect the dots. I had a rough Idea of what I was going to make when I added the mounts and just went with it. I had a piece of stainless the right size and used a plastic knob from an old broken cafetiere I had stashed in my bin of 'might be useful one day' bits. I bent the stainless rod in such a way that when the lid is opened it slides up and drops over a stainless bolt then cant go further. To drop the lid you have to lift the knob slightly- this way a gust of wind cant lift it and make it drop. It works sweet as!... Next big job was to get the wee car back on its wheels because I had some work coming in that required the hoist. I refitted all the suspension and luckily had collected 4 decent shock absorbers with good shafts. However the springs were going to be too long. I'd happily pay the $200 for some Montie Carlo springs. For those not aware they are the popular lowering spring set for Imps that most people fit. However the freight costs for a set to NZ is too much for me to cope with and anyway- I have 3 full sets of springs I can play with for free. I like free. So out with the Makita... After doing a heck of a lot of web browsing I deduced that one coil off the front and half off the back would be a good starting point. Totally aware that I'd be raising the effective spring rate I reckoned this would still be OK. The car is going to be a touch heavier all round anyway but too much extra stiffness to the coils without adding extra damping would be no good. I definitely cant afford new posh dampers at this point so I played it safe... I then heated the cut ends up with the Tig in several zones, flattening the coil as I did. This worked well- the heat didn't travel very far. Its not optimum. Optimum was what I used to do back in the day when I spent 3 months of my apprenticeship working for a Blacksmith resetting leaf springs and shortening coils etc. But I dont have big furnace at my disposal nowadays so Makita it is Then cut the ends flat and they came up sweet. It will be really interesting to see how it sits on these and this I wont know until the car is fully built up to full weight. I reassembled the struts and finally I was able to fit the minilight wheels from the racecar on and lower the Imp to the ground. Ooooooohhhhh. I dont know when this car was last rolling but I suspect it was a very long time ago! It felt so good to roll it away from the hoist, stand back and admire it. Plenty of premium positive camber to come out as the weight piles on. I'll soon be ordering some better sized new tyres and getting them onto the rims. While the car is off the hoist Hannah can continue assembling interior bits and I'll be attending to some work on other peoples cars.
    34 points
  2. This car has been a long time in the making acquiring, but being the descendant of an original Datsun foamer, it could be said it was my destiny..... The car being a 1972 Datsun 1600sss, the back story? well, take a seat..... 20 years ago the car in question was owned by a young man in Palmerston North, being an easy target it was stolen and taken on a joyride, thankfully once they had had their thrills it was abandoned to be recovered by the boys in blue, but the good luck didn't last, while in impound some scrots jumped the fence and stripped her of all the fancy sss interior, with the badges, steering wheel and dash board gone, there was not much left to identify it as the performance upgrade intended by the factory. Being the Datsun man he is, when my father got word of it being up for grabs he beelined for the impound yard for a nosey, even though the interior had been stripped, the body was in fairly good shape and for a price that we'd all love to pay now, he loaded it onto a trailer and tucked it up under a tarp in the back lawn. At this stage he had a standard 1600 set up as a track car for competing in classic classes at Manfield & car club sprints, but with a teenage family, i'm sure restoration of the sss was still a long way off. Here's a younger me in the 1600 race car in the early 2000s during a carclub motorkhana, most likely the first time I drove a 1600 too! Somewhere in the mid 2000s the race car got close and personal with the tyre wall at the end of the back straight at Manfield, coming out very much second best a donor shell was required, with the sss being in pretty good shape it was quickly fitted out with all the bits and went on to serve race duties for a number of years, thankfully my father realised that sss body shells were getting hard to find and so when a standard shell popped up cheap, he brought that to convert to a more modern safety standard and the sss was reunited with standard parts and retired to weekend road duties. As all this unfolded, I left home, traveled the world, invested heavily in Ladas, eventually to settle in the Datsun capital of NZ, Christchurch. Two years ago the stars aligned on a SAR training exercise and while stocking up on pies in Fairlie, I spotted this wee beaut Sparking a deep down affection I followed it around the corner to where it stopped and of course I started chatting with the owner, turned out its been in their family for quite some time, and the lovely lady informed me that there was a Datsun club and that they had nationals on in Ohakune, even better was that year's theme, 50 years of the 510! Looking at dates they lined up and before I knew it I was hitching a ride north with our very own Datsun barry Runamuck to meet my father and other 510 foamers from around NZ. After a weekend driving around the central plateau I was convinced I needed a 1600 in my life and a plan was struck to purchase a dereg but complete vehicle that was tucked away, sadly after discussion with panelbeaters over the required rust work for re-vin the costs looked a bit daunting for my current plans. A few months later my father slipped up and offered the road legal sss to me, I rapidly agreed before he could back down, only downside was I had no leave left and a work schedule needing much attention, this meant I had to wait until Christmas break to pick up the car! For now it's late, but I shall dig out some more pics and tell more about the car itself and the mini and major plans ahead. Discussion thread here:
    23 points
  3. A couple of pics of an old bike I found on Trade Me recently. Crappy old Roadster with flat tyres? Nope! BSA Track Bike from the teens or 20s, with an awesome BSA Adjustable stem and original paint! Pine!
    8 points
  4. Friday update. Dropped car off at certifier the day before Waitangi day. The car only got pulled up on the way the rear brake hoses were run. (I guessed it would fail on this). Everything else was sweet. The certifier was so happy with the way it was done he brought forward the Compliance check which was done last Friday. Compliance guy had a slightly bigger list but nothing major. - Align headlights - RH wheel rubbing (center steering rack) - Bride seat fouling on seatbelt stalk (there is some adjustment to clear this) - Repair gouge on inside of LF wheel So in short nothing major! Seeing as I'm back in full swing at work I gave the guys at the cert place the go ahead to remedy everything but the wheel. I dropped this off to a trusted repairer yesterday and should get it back next week. So depending on how long it takes for the cert plate to arrive the car should be all legal within the next couple of weeks, happy days! Goal of making Toyotafest this year is looking good.
    7 points
  5. Been riding this old girl for the last week during Munro challenge, and forgot how much I enjoyed it... Sadly the oil situation is getting out of hand, so might put rego on hold and start the work that needs done. After sitting for any length of time the primary case fills and needs draining before I can change gears, suspect a leaking main shaft seal. Primary should hold around 900mls from memory, this pan was half full when it finished draining to correct level, so a good 4-5 litres of frothy goop came out... Once drained however the old thing ran like a champ, and a good time was had talking bikes with the many visitors. I did have some starting issues due to failing pushbuttons, and the smoke and oil leaks are getting a tad embarrassing, so my list of tasks goes: Fix main seal leak Fix other oil leaks, stripped threads etc Replace starter motor contacts Replace starter rubber seals Replace horrible HD switchgear/master cylinder Re-lace front wheel with twin disc front hub Fabricate caliper brackets, fit and fettle brakes install electronic ignition Install kick starter Re-route oil lines Fabricate rear sets Change to RH shift (reverse pattern) and LH brake General tidy-up Snapshot of oil leaks, it's everywhere man... Before I parked her up I did a warm engine compression test, had a moment of panic as first test was only round 100psi, till I remembered to open the throttle, both cylinders were just over 150 psi, which was pleasantly surprising (has leaked down a bit before pic taken)... And plugs were a nice light brown... So seems there is nothing too wrong with it, only really concerned that once I start it'll sit in bits while I faff about get on with life. With decent brakes and switchgear, and not having to drain/get covered in oil I would probably use it much more however, so that's the incentive. Plus how cool would it be kicking this beast into life next to all the overly chromed, catalogue Hardleys... So that's the plan, as of Feb 2019. I already have most of the bits required, and have just bought an engine bench stand, so that'll help...
    7 points
  6. I just couldn't help myself but take this photo... Having fun stripping remaining bits from the other two Imps, cleaning and painting bits and generally playing about with what is a big model car. Proper update soon.
    5 points
  7. It's the little things like this that make the difference to this food trailer. Not just a traditional caravan shape but style as well. I payed a visit to Boss Powdercoating and dropped my rims off to get cleaned up. Once they were done i headed to The Bling Company and had my white wall tyres fitted. The before and after is unbelievably good. Before after shot ow @Geophy
    4 points
  8. OK so I was thinking I was not far from painting the shell when I realised my repairs to the rear guard behind the drivers door had a slight bulge, maybe 5mm outwards in relation to the edge of the door shuts. A classic case of working up close and not standing back to look at the complete picture. It showed up worse when I sat the door in place. I thought I had taken a photo but alas no- trust me when I say it would have done my head in noting it each time I looked down the flank. This panel had been badly bashed in at some point we had popped it out. But obviously too far sadly I never realised until now. I tried beating it back in but no luck. It had been previously repaired by someone else and was full of lots of sharp dents. So this happened... Following that I did a super careful replacement of the steel, butt welded in, with very slow careful welding so not to warp anything. In pictures... It turned out great. I still needed a skim of filler to get it spot on but considering what it was like prior I'm happy with it now. It lines up really well with the door... I then gave this and most of the rest of the shell another coat in primer, smoothed it all back with 400. Oh yawn. Helps having beer and loud Reggae playing. Hannah just loved sanding... With the sanding done I then preceded to turn the workshop into something resembling a Smurf murder house. If there was a song to be played afterwards it would have been this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68ugkg9RePc We masked it all up and I painted the door jams, door backs, engine bay, interior, frunk, door bins etc. Next day, re- masked the shell and painted the rest. On the first days painting it was so hot at 34 degrees... The following day time I started as early as I could but it was still about 28. Luckily a very dry heat. Not fun in all the gear... I never really considered how far the blue mist would travel. It covered everything. Great fun. Now we have a blue floor which luckily is slowly going to wear off I think. I hope. After it was finished I shut the doors and let it bake in the oven that was the shed, drank a cold beer and went to the beach for a long swim. Here is a blue Imp. Its very similar to an original Imp colour I like so I went with this. Not sure of the name of the colour. Its very bright and changes from a mint blue to a aqua blue in different light. I'm so relieved to have finished the painting. It'll need a flat back to get rid of the orange peel and shine so it looks more like a original paint job. But I'm going to ignore that job until after the car is road legal. Enough body work and painting!!!! Its time to bring the other Imps inside and play musical chairs with all the various parts. Pick the nicest bits and reassemble one car from them all... It certainly is a fair bit better then when we first looked at this shell a year ago and I'm pretty stoked to be at this point in the restoration
    4 points
  9. Couldn't help myself, kumeu swap meet provided just about everything I needed to make another one of these...so it'd be rude not to really? Going to roll with the red and black theme. Got this all done after work today...but still a bit to figure out.
    3 points
  10. Enough backstory, now for the car. As mentioned, I picked it up over the Christmas break from the family home up north, being that it has been used sporadically I put aside a few days to go over every nut and bolt to be sure the trip back to Christchurch would be uneventful. First up, a few small jobs... Sort the petrol smell: The original rubber joiner had given up years ago meaning the tank couldn't be filled past halfway, a crowd in the west island have reproduced them so out with old, in with the new Then came a tune of the engine, I had been nervous about this as i've never touched SU style carbs, turns out they're easy, plus my learning was made faster by having a full set spare to look at. The engine also has a mysterious click from about #2 or 3, I have adjusted the valves but it still doesn't change, oddly it comes and goes, is mildly engine temp dependant and there is good compression on all four, for sure something that will need more digging..... The eagle eyed 510 spotters will notice the brake master setup is not correct, having be swapped out for a different style for race duties. for now I will run with these until I get the original rebuilt and cleaned up. With mechanicals looking ready for a drive I moved onto the interior, how about the stolen dashboard you say? well as luck would have it, a history of writing off Datsuns racing had left my father with just enough bits to kit the car out as required, he even produced a full set of badges that I now have tucked away awaiting some modern technology for reproduction. The carpet was very much in fine race spec consisting of two or three coats of red paint, in order to prevent my girlfriend from running off halfway back I needed something to muffle the road noise, once again the family parts warehouse presented a front carpet in the most delightful shade of poo brown, matched with carefully positioned black mats to cover the tears a more suitable environment to conversation was produced. Yup, white interior, far better suited to summer! With everything packed and a torn bit of envelope to suppress the steering wheel vibration we headed south, we both held our breath over the Cook strait as the Datsun met salt air and stumbled on start up leaving the ferry, incidentally some muppet had forgotten to fully set the distributor after resetting the timing and had come loose, sorting that we drove on to Marahau for a bbq with Alex and Hannah. On stern advice we reluctantly drove over the Takaka hill, well actually I have been fizzing to do this for a long time and boy was it fun, even with 50km speed restrictions and road works its gotta be one of the best drives in the country polished off with an epic view. And that dumps us back home nice and safe. So plans from here? I was planning on a full restoration beginning this winter, the paintwork is pretty rough from being done for the track but i'm just enjoying driving it too much to take it off the road for any considerable time, there are a few things to start with: The engine tick, it may just be me but I want to dig further just in case I have a side draft manifold and throttle bodies, efi was also on the plans, but SU's just drive so nice and the fuel economy is pretty reasonable. Replace a broken shaft spring on the rear carb - this is causing the idle to not fully drop occasionally, no biggie, but sometimes irritating. Complete the CAD models of the badges and get some replicas made, this way I don't have to cry if they fall off/get broken. Get around to picking up a 5 speed or fit the 3.5 diff in the shed, 3500rpm cruise is a tad loud for my increasing age! Repair the split dash, irritates me a bunch looking at it Paint up a few potential rust spots. Actually decide what colour the carpets should be and source new front and rear Polish up the chrome Clean up the wheels Source new window rubbers so the window trims can be installed. While the list is long of potential performance upgrades, I'm not keen on going too far from factory with it and any modifications that can't be reverted to factory are off limits. Long term it really does need a repaint, but the BRE colours are growing on me and the aged look is reflective of why I brought it, for driving!
    3 points
  11. Might have found an ae95 axle, will hear back over the weekend. They are 1325mm wide, drum face to drum face, which would mean it would stick out roughly to here: So it would work if using fwd offset wheels (easy enough being 4x100) and some flares. Or some nice negative offset alloys and bigger flares. Then I'd change the front to 4x100 using gen 2 Civic knuckles and have disk brakes too. Would need to have spacers on the front though. Hopefully having a look at a bike engine soon because I can't help myself.
    3 points
  12. I meant to log this build while it was happening, but life sort of got in the way. Still, it’s a work in progress, so all is not lost… I bought an old ironhead sporty a couple of years ago, just because it was local, the numbers matched and it had live plates. No real attraction for the things, more a case of buy it, patch it up and see how it goes. If it was as horrible as they say, I’d just flick it on… Then I thought of Café’ing it, for a laugh, as it seemed the most unsuitable bike as a base, so I chiselled off all the eagles, dropped the front end 8” and fabricated a few bits and pieces while sorting out decades of neglect. A year or two later and I’ve fallen for the oily old thing, and now she’s 40 and rego is a realistic cost I’m using her more often, so some more work is on the cards… As I got her, mercifully there were no tassels… Front end drop… Tank mock-up… Seat and tail piece trial… Mechanical/wiring work… Getting there… And pretty much in current form…
    2 points
  13. 2 points
  14. Basically an Italian FJ.
    2 points
  15. lel thats my old one. i must have omitted to remove the QCR sticker stoked to see it still alive and most likely on the same tyres and condition i sold it in
    2 points
  16. Had a blast in this so far, travelled many miles. Huntly Burnouts, WRCC Spring fling, Rocket open day, Tokoroa drags. Heading to Rebel Roundup this weekend Accuair is the business, Highly recommend. Get into it. I like the stock hubcaps but wanted options. A mate of mine had some Detroit's on an earlier Buick Super, but he didn't like them. So I chucked them on to see if they would suit. I think they look pretty cool, so deal was struck.
    2 points
  17. Cheers Truenotch. Had a great time at Leadfoot, so good to get the car to a motorsport event again. A few teething issues including the problem that i thought i fixed with the new diaphragms. I think the crankcase seals are toast and its lacking in crankcase compression. There was a lot of oily mess around the engine and i think the seals are the only place it could be coming from. Also missed one run after i failed to make it out to the start. Fired up the motor on the dummy grid ready to drive out to the start line, selected first gear let the clutch out and oh shit i'm going backwards........ Bit odd as it has no reverse gear. It was making some bad noises in the gearbox and i thought it had done some major damage somehow. Pushed it back to the pits, had a think about it and started it up again. Turns out it somehow backfired on startup and started running backwards, all of the noises from the gearbox was just the gear set spinning in reverse..... 2 strokes eh, Dennis had never had that happen to him. Yeah a few people made that comment about it not being as loud as they though it would of been. One of the theory's is that it was quite loud but nowhere near the level of some of the other cars going up the hill. A couple of those rotary's were extremely loud. Cheers man, Yeah i brought Dennis along for the event. He had an amazing time and was awesome for him to see it going up the hill, was probably the first motorsport event hes been to in 20 years. Yeah its miniature, all done to keep the weight down. Oh yeah got it on the scales, only 330kgs!!!!! I see a camera on the fire wall, you better post some videos young man! Also, where did you get that hat? I must have one. Unfortunately the camera didn't work VG so no hill vids. I was yarning to this young american dude at the event about the car and he was wearing the hat. Turns out hes super into 2 stroke dirt bikes in the states. Asked him where i could get myself of those epic hats and he took it off and gave it to me. Complete GC, said he had got it at a motorcross event somewhere along the line. Wise words to live by.
    2 points
  18. I really think you need to keep those racing colours Engine tick- exhaust gasket? I had that on the samurai.
    1 point
  19. Haha, funny you say that, many years ago my father wanted a 125, turned out they were too expensive for him and he had to settle for a 1600....
    1 point
  20. More palatable than a rotary I guess
    1 point
  21. Twin cam fiat conversion?
    1 point
  22. I really like this bike and glad you still enjoy it. Its the only bike I remember from Burt weekend about 5 years back
    1 point
  23. Yeah. Pretty keen to come down for either or all events... not sure about street sweep. Maybe go for first park, a little cruise and leave them to it... still working out what I’m doing though and if anyone is coming with. Will keep you posted!
    1 point
  24. Thanks very much mate, I appreciate your support. Just for future reference, we don't post on each other's build threads here to help keep down the clutter and make each thread easier to follow. By all means, head over to my discussion thread and have a yarn though. There's a link in my signature.
    1 point
  25. Yep all of the tiny weight savings Dennis did seemed to of added up. The body alone only weighs 30kgs. For sure, it did fell like it was a lean issue. Will pull the motor out and chuck a new set in.
    1 point
  26. Oh shit yeah. Main hoops all done. Had to cut about 250mm out of the height but fuck yeah. This is the two hoops welded together, ready for some structure.
    1 point
  27. They gave me another WOF, can't believe it has been a year since the last one already. Still plenty of things to fix though, too many cars and too little time..
    1 point
  28. Crank seals / leaky crank case issues can be hard to diagnose too. Apparently it can make an engine appear to be running rich (and sound like it's 4 stroking), when actually it's leaning out. 2 strokes can definitely be challenging little things! But we definitely need to see more of them out there .
    1 point
  29. 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.
    1 point
  30. Haven’t done much over summer, but I have just about finished the mounts. I’ve had to give the engine a small tilt away from the steering box, I’m hoping any torque twist will be under 10mm, that’s about all the gap I’ve got. I’m getting the driveshaft lengthened by 110mm next week, it looks like the A series auto has the same yoke as the W55.
    1 point
  31. Stop putting ideas into my head bitches.
    1 point
  32. Havent done fuck all. Some cool shit turned up though! 5 days from china to nz how goods that on the new 5m carb! My pallet from the parts car matt n i stripped in chch has also arrived! It really is like Christmas Badges, facelift headlights, bezels and sweet grill, a much needed fuel tank. It appears the travels has bent the fuel fuller stem but hopefully i can straighten that out. Factory shroud although i still havent got a radiator.... all the chrome that was salvagble including complete sill chrome. A tow bar. Took the twin pot calipers. The GT verion of my rt104 corona had twin pot so ill eventually get around to checking that out. Rear qquarter vinyl panels with lights and the twin pully crank Also got the power steering smaller "T" bottom steering collumn piece, Power steering pump bracket out of a ms112 from will, the Power steering pump is in Hamilton when i get that ill send the power steering box and pump away for a rebuild. Any auckland suggestions? Thanks for looking
    1 point
  33. The Imp is finally all painted, after first sorting out a bulge in a panel. It looks great and I'm stoked with the colour. I'll do a proper update soon. But in the meantime here's a quick peek at the colour. But which one is it?...
    1 point
  34. Ive also mucked around with the tyre pressures and it rides so much better now feels normal smoooth and strangely safe and boring possibly also helped by the extra gussets and near zero flex in chassis..... you give it berrys it quickly gets terrifying and exciting though the brakes then sort that out! Stopping power is more than ample now for the engine.
    1 point
  35. Update. I hate paint prep. I could never be a car painter. Ugggghhh- so boring. Sand, fill, sand, fill, sand... luckily I have a belt sander... (Joke) Then cover the whole lot in white filler primer and spot all the bits I missed. FFS.... In between all the filling and sanding I did a few other bits. Just to take a break from sanding really but also because these jobs are ones I cant do once its painted. The engine lid (bonnet at back?) I'll be using is the fiberglass item from the race car. It fits OK and is very light plus its the much nicer looking sport item with extra vents. However it was fitted to the race car on pedestals and held down with sprung latches (I dont know the proper term for these so I just made some names up) I wanted it to fit like an original lid so I had glue some steel brackets to it. Plus it sat flat along the front edge so an extra bit of steel welded between the brackets with a curve set in would fix that issue. I welded some m6 bolts in so making captive studs. The job in photos... Brackets bolted to hinges and ready for glue.... Lid glued on and taped in place over night... It works! Yay... Now to hold it down with original style handles. I had a set of handles on one spare lid and some working latches on another. I cut things up, broke rusty bits, oiled this, wire brushed that, ground this, drilled that and other fettling until I had some working bits I could glue onto the F/glass lid. Photos of the process... Again leaving for a few hours until the glue set (which btw is Sellys 'The One' adhesive and sealer which is really good stuff for all sorts Of jobs I have found) and once I fitted the handles in place they worked a treat. Panel gaps are ok too for a F/glass lid... Part of the body prep was spraying Resene Industrial 440 epoxy primer over a few bare steel parts and the roof. I sprayed the fan assembly and radiator shroud while I was at it. Looked much better for some quick spraying and will be nice and durable... Then back to sanding. Finally I had it at a point where I could slap some primer on. It took a long time to sort the side out that had the massive cave in and dents. Its still not perfect and never will be. The bonnet too- given I had rebuilt most of the complicated front edge in steel I was not surprised that it needed a skim of filler and its still not perfect. Show car it wont be... Now this was to be the first time I have used 2 pack paint. I have previously painted cars in single pack acrylic (lacquer?) and they've come up OK but not very durable. Shane who owns the paint shop, Custom Colors, next door to where I used to work, gave me some advice and helped sort me out the right stuff for the job. This stuff is nasty and I was not going to risk breathing in vapours filled with all sorts of crap for the sake of painting an Imp. So I bought a decent full face mask and an air feed kit. I also splashed out and spent big monies on a Hvlp spray gun too! $60 at Supercheap in a sale. It'll do the job fine for the amount of work I'll be doing. I appreciate the lovelyness of all the Devilbiss and Iwata guns but not the $500 plus price tags. Also- big thanks goes out to the friendly helpful fella, Mort, at Patersons paint supplies in Nelson. So to the paint booth. Well actually to the workshop in which I had thrown some sheets over the pushbikes, strung some clothesline across the width from which hung some the doors and bonnet and shuffled things about so not to trip over whilst waddling about in my stormtrooper white coveralls making Darth Vader sounds from within my airfed mask. Its summer so I am pretty much always barefoot as is the way in NZ. However in order to not end up with primer covered tootsies I wore some old socks. I dusted everything down this morning and swept the place out, blew the car down. I opened the roller doors to an exact amount to allow just enough flow to pull the mist out (which did not work...) and preceded to very carefully and patiently clog my spray gun up. Some paint ended up on the car though. It was certainly a big lesson. This paint, a heavy primer, certainly goes off quick in the pot and at first I had not thinned it down enough. Combined with a 1.4mm tip size more suited for thinner top coats and I ended up making a mess of my bench as I frantically cleaned out the gun, tipped away one pot of paint, cursed a bit (a lot), turned the music up, and got back to spluttering my primer all over the place. I got there in the end, muttering to myself the whole time 'not to worry..its only the primer stage' and the car now looks resplendent in white. Amazing how a lovely coat of uniform colour makes something look so much neater. Also amazing how a lovely coat of primer shows up all the little pits, chips, dents, edges. Fcuk. On with the sanding. Luckily there is really only one part that I don't like which is on the horizontal swage line near the 'big dent job'. Its too flat and needs the edge building up with a bit more filler... But screw that for now. I cleaned the gun, turned the lights off and went out for a bike ride.
    1 point
  36. Got a driveshaft sorted until I can get something made up, so went on a roady to test out the dash. Drive up to Uretiti was good! As expected I really need to put some KMs on it and get a feel for what's good or whats annoying or so on. Very quickly a few things became apparent that they are fecken annoying! Also this thread has been severely lacking MSpaint so here we are: So on the plus side, the ~250? Nit screen seemed decent enough even with backlit conditions. I've got a 1000 Nit screen here to try too if I need to burn my eyeballs out! Most of the annoyance came from values flickering. Because you might be hovering on say 89.9kph and then 90.1kph... So it will flicker between 89 and 90. Options here are either that I take a rolling average of the last XYZ amount of speed results and smooth it. Or maybe only change the speedo value if the number goes up or down by 2kph or more. With the tacho, this was annoying for similar reasons in that it can read from the ECU down to a single RPM, so its a constantly moving number which is distracting. I'm thinking that I'll filter it so it only updates the screen in 100rpm increments, so will go 2400rpm, 2500rpm, etc. Because again, does it really matter, do you really need to know that the engine is doing 2451rpm? Not really. Maybe I could make it read in 50rpm increments below 2000rpm or something like that. Also when it was bright you cant actually see any of the outline lines, only the numbers and labels. So will make more sense to move labels closer to the values. I also realised that although a monochrome sort of look is nice. I setup some cruise control displays so that one button goes Red when you've activated CC, and then goes green when CC is turned on. With the colour differentiation you could instantly tell what status the cruise control was in. So I think more colours will make things easier to read. In fairness though this is essentially a low contrast colour scheme that is probably better for night time. Using a white or yellow or whatever text and it's blazingly brigher even with the same backlight settings. I'm also starting to question the merits of having the triangulated sort of face over the screen, when you're driving and it's bright you cant see any of it. Just the values on screen. So may as well just use the extra screen real estate. Good to be making some progress anyway! I'm looking forward to designing some of the more contextually aware screen functions now that the basics are sorted. First on the menu is a secondary screen for when Cruise Control is turned on. Then I'll look at some trackday related stuff and a few diagnostic pages to make life easier. It's cool having all of the standard dash info coming into this, because I can set it so (for example) if you flash the high beams, or push the brake, or whatever, in certain conditions (like while the car is stationary without engine running) you can use those car controls to navigate through menus or switch screens or whatever. Pretty chuffed to have reached that milestone of driving it with a fairly "finished" prototype though.
    1 point
  37. Good news, I got my opto board all wired in and my dash computer is reading all of the on/off signals from the standard loom. Woot! But what sucked is that I cracked my LCD screen while trying to fix an issue with power wire. Damnit. I had to order a new one which has just arrived. I'm mostly ready to test the dash buuuutttt after investigating drivetrain issue from the Drags, my driveshaft is busted! The rear UJ on the rear half, is now totally stuffed. Quite lucky that I managed to drive it home from Meremere like that, although, since it would just break the shaft off directly at the diff at least it wouldnt make the same sort of racket like when the front broke. So! Obviously I need a better plan than taking out a flogged to shit 35 year old driveshaft, and replacing it with another 35 year old flogged to shit driveshaft. As this hasnt worked out too great so far. I've had some good recommendations for where I can get a new one made, which I will follow up on. But, also, I want to test my dash in the meantime and hopefully take the car on a camping adventure this week before work starts again. Does anyone have a stockpile of driveshafts kicking around? If so please let me know! Here are some deets of what I need
    1 point
  38. Crikey its hot here! Perfect time to spend hours in a workshop filling and sanding then, with the occasional bike ride and swim to keep my sanity. I don't really get too excited about paintwork. In fact- really posh paint jobs, all shiny and bling just dont suit old cars imo. But I realise that if I want to sell this car down the line (to fund the Viva project etc) then its going to need to look nice. But going back a week from now I finished a few tiny welding jobs and added some much needed seatbelt mounting points. This car being a really early one only had diagonal belts and the positioning was horrible along with mounting points that were only holes through thin panel steel. I welded long sections of 20x10 fms inside the A pillars for the top mounts and then some plates to the floor and inner sill in all the appropriate size steel and nuts. I also cut and shut the rear seat base frame so it would clear the radiator pipe tunnel.. I then had to sort out the removable rear valance/cross member. I have three to use. The race car one was hacked about and rusty. A spare one I'd collected from the Christchurch Imp graveyard was rusty and dented. The original one from this shell was just rusty. I chose that one. I started by cutting out the unneeded and quite heavy original engine mount part. Then rebuilt it all, removing the rot, adding in a length folded steel along the width to support a small bit of box section. Why? Well because I like bicycles and I like to travel to places for nice bike rides and why would I choose to do such a thing in a boring modern car! Much more fun to go on road trips to biking places in a interesting old car... So, just like on my Rx3 and my previous Viva I added a mounting point for custom made bike racks to suit each car. For this Imp though I wanted something that will be hidden by the number plate when not in use. I'll make a basic rack to suit. Then together Hannah and I painted this and any other remaining bare steel with industrial 440 epoxy primer. It already started looking better... Now back to that filling and sanding. Its been a week of many 30 degree days here, often hotter at mid day. According to our thermometer yesterday was 34 ! Our place is like suntrap and we don't get the wind that even our neighbours over the road get. Great for winter but can get very hot in summer. Luckily the workshop faces directly north to the sun and with both doors open we get good light and a gentle enough breeze through to keep it from turning into too much of an intense oven. Plus it takes the filler dust out! Inside the 'not so hot' oven... Still a yucky job and to stop giving up I have to keep reminding myself that 'a good paint job is 95% preparation' etc etc. Yawn. pffff. I'll report back in a week or two, broken and covered in dust.
    1 point
  39. With the pipework tunnel pretty much finished I moved onto the seat rails. I had bought some MX5 seats a fair while back with the intention of fitting into the Imp. However, rather than have them sit around doing nothing I ended up fitting them into my Viva wagon. They were great but didn't quite suit it. I then bought a lovely pair of Recaros, fitted them to the wagon and have the Mx5 seats once again for this car. I had sort of roughed out how I wanted to fit them a while back but not sure exactly where to mount the supports. I needed a Datum. So I scored this beauty... Strangely it came fitted in a freshly imported Hiace van from Japan that I did a load of rust repairs to. The owner didn't like it and agreed to give it to me if I got a decent standard Toyota replacement. This was harder than I thought as most of the old Toyota steering wheels from that era of Hiace have become loose on the top of wheel and so twist in ones hands feeling horrible. But eventually I found a decent replacement, got my prized wheel and promptly fitted it to a boss kit I ordered from overseas. With it taking pride of place I sat the seats in the car and made some carefully measured brrmmm brrmmm sounds and worked out the seat placement... Before work could continue on fitting the seats I needed to machine some locating spacers. But in order to do that I needed to fit the brand new 16mm centre height tools to our replacement lathe of which the stock tool post was set to an absurdly high 12mm, meaning it could only use the little baby 12mm tools available (odd for what is a fairly medium sized lathe). So I needed to machine the tool post down with our old drill mill ... Then I machined these... Which allowed me to sit the seats neatly onto fabricated supports that I welded across the floor, the rear passenger one strengthening the floor where the new pipe tunnel is... I bolted the seats in and was very happy. The seats can go right back giving heaps of leg room for my lanky body but slide forwards more then enough to get into the back. I have mounted them quite far inboard to line them up as best I can with the pedals... I had finished off the pipe tunnel too, leaving it exposed at the back for fitment of pipes. I'll cover those bits with removable lids and will have to modify a section of the rear seat base for clearance. I'll sort out the finishing details once I have welded up the stainless pipe I have bought. Oh also- ages back when I was stripping out the green Imp (number 3 Imp) I found the build sheet. A neat thing to find... I like this bit...
    1 point
  40. Digidash is coming along slowly too. Just need to figure out what to put on the sides. Waiting on some parts so my circuit board can interface with the 12v stuff from the loom plugs like lights, indicators etc. Still might change the design around a bit but I want to look 80s obnoxious / look like it belongs in the car / still be nice and readable. Currently only receives canbus info from ECU, and has an internal bulb to make the alternator work haha. Getting there but a fair bit of work left to do. Excuse the yuck graphics, work in progress:
    1 point
  41. Scrubbed it up today! Came up pretty damn well I think. Still stinks from Saturday night when we were sitting in it smoking cigars though hahahahaha. And I’m super happy it came with the complete factory toolkit in the bag!
    1 point
  42. Ok progress of some description! After grabbing the red wreck from nightcaps I got told of another 2102 in mosgiel probably half a year ago. So finally got my ass into gear and Karl, Harry and I made our merry way down there this weekend and picked up this absolute gem. As always I was pretty nervous as it’s a fairly decent hike to get a car I had never properly seen. But alas she turned out to be better than expected! Still has spots of rust but nowhere near as bad as the other 2. Didn’t take much to get her going as well, fuel pump wasn’t doing anything so we horied up some fuel hose and connected it straight to the carb and then bam, she fired into life and idled and ran beautifully. There was no clutch or brakes though so she was pushed onto the trailer and back to Dunedin top 10 holiday park we went. Shot back to chch today after looking in numerous car paddocks on the way there and back. So yeah really glad I didn’t do anything serious with the other 2 as this one is the main man now, dereged like the others but a much better base to start from! Have some pics!
    1 point
  43. This is my favourite series on YouTube at the moment. It’s such an ambitious project but the dude has the skills. He is almost single handily rebuilding a 100 year old sailing boat. For such a young guy he has some serious skills, both as a builder and a sailor.
    1 point
  44. I've made a great start on lightening my vehicle: Didnt need any of that stuff apparently So swapping a new box in, and I find that once more the Exedy HD clutch that I've got had started to rattle the springs loose already. Which doesnt actually cause any problems apart from interfering with the knock sensor sometimes which annoys the piss out of me. So I am fitting up an OEM clutch plate and cover plate. The OEM clutch plate has rubber bits in it, instead of springs. So they never rattle and cause knock sounds. Also my fuel computer project has slowly scope creeped into a digi dash. woops Shitloads of work left to do though. Hah. Will fiddle with the screen layout / arrangement a bit more and I think I'll have a row of LEDs right across the top for a shift light, instead of a big single light. I dont know. It's actually hard to fill the screen real estate when you dont need to have everything displayed at once. Want to make it look like it belongs. Not easy. Am also still playing around with some carbon fiber stuff but havent produced anything useful as of yet. But results so far are promising. I've got a few vaccum pumps to play with thanks to Tumeke, and I've bought a bunch of vaccum bagging materials so I'll give a few different methods a go and see what works or not. I thought making a wing mirror would be interesting but the geometry is so bloody complex. Will park that one until when/if I know what I'm doing So starting on something a bit more simple, will try make a new MAF housing / pipe out of CF. Have printed half of the mould for the bellmouth part but it will need to be made from at least 4 moulds assuming this will work at all... Using the method of 3d printing with thick outer layers, fairly open infill and then filling with plaster for weight/rigidity. Then coating the moulds with wax and just doing a wet layup. For this shape I really need to plan my cuts so I'll do a few trials with some bits of paper I think. Hopefully works well but its a learning process so not expecting stellar results straight away / wont be too dissapointed if it doesnt work out. This is the underside, from where I filled it up: Much cheaper than trying to print a more rigid mould from PLA.
    1 point
  45. Welcome to... The Age of Enlightenment One of my favourite things about... stuff... Isnt just making something but also optimizing it however possible. Kerbal Space Program is a good example, of the benefits of optimizing things. (You build space ships) You can have a ship that works well, but then doing things like reducing the amount of fuel in each container to just how much you need for that particular stage of your rocket, reducing thruster power to the optimal speed to minimise drag, and so on. Can make a ship that looks the same massively faster and go massively further. In terms of how this relates to my car, currently its at the point where I've just slapped some shit together and seen that it works, which it does. But some things suck for a variety of reasons, or are okay but could be better. It could benefit from some time spent optimizing stuff. For example, I have these fucken massive vented rear brakes, which I then need to use a bias valve to turn them almost completely off in order to not lock up the rear. Do I really need a 5kg vented disc on each side of my live axle, and a big steel caliper that's probably about the same? Probably not. Switching to an aluminium MX5 caliper and a non vented disc, I can drop a fair chunk of unsprung weight annndddd my brake bias will actually work better. Cool. My goal is to lighten the car in a way that doesnt make it any less useful as a street car, or any less useful on the track. I want to try and get somewhere into the 6 litres per 100km mark, do a 13 second quarter and do a sub 1:20 laptime at Hampton. Making the car lighter helps work towards all of these goals. So essentially my plan is to just make a lot of tiny iterative improvements everywhere, (Which may seem like a waste of effort when viewed in isolation) that will add up to a bigger picture change. (Maybe). And learn some some new stuff to stave off insanity a little longer and keep my brain ticking over. Before I started doing anything I weighed the car with approximately a quarter of a tank of gas, full interior, all of the seats, etc. Came in at 1020kg without driver. So it will be super easy to get it under 1000 and I think closer to 950 or 900 will be achievable. So here are a few things on the to do list: -Swap in dual VVTI engine, (for better fuel economy thanks to exhaust side VVTI, and more power thanks to slightly higher CR) -Swap to the 2NZ Alternator which saves ~4kg for same amperage. -Cast some aluminium engine mounts instead of the steel ones with sloppy old rubbers. -Downsize rear brakes. -Remove blower assembly, heater core etc from under the dash as none of it works particularly well and it's quite heavy. (done) -Depending on how engine mounts go, possibly cast an aluminium gearbox xmember as well. (I will 3d print a shape for the local foundry to do these) -When I had an oil cooler, when I had the oil cooler fan going the radiator fan NEVER needed to come on. Even on a hot day. Since there's a water to oil cooler on the engine, I've removed my oil cooler and my large radiator fan. I have put the oil cooler fan on the part of the radiator with the highest temperature differential (Right by the top hose) and surprisingly enough the car doesnt overheat with this tiny fan. Even on a hot day. Which leads me to... -Remove the radiator fan entirely and use a radiator sprayer bar. Since I need a washer bottle to spritz the window for WOF, I can have a valve on it which uses the water to mist the radiator instead when needed. Currently its only in stop start traffic or moments below 35-40kph where needs the fan at all. Also, at high speeds where a fan cant actually assist to cool your car, evaporative cooling can. (Still tossing up this idea but it sounds fun to experiment with. Will leave fan in place as a backup while testing) -Remove rose jointed t3 Castor arms, and go back to standard ones with stiff poly bushings. The weight difference is ridiculous and I'm not convinced they're particularly better than standard configuration. -Remove the rear muffler and cast an aluminium rear part of the exhaust pipe that has a butterfly in it which I can control with the ECU. This has the benefit of making the car a lot quieter when cruising along, annnddd, I can introduce pressure to the exhaust system in order to increase EGR effect of VVTI at cruising conditions. Which I believe may help improve fuel economy, as counter intuitive as it may sound. -Reduce idle speed as low as possible to save fuel (Already done) With MAF based tune I can now get a stable ~670-700rpm idle, but I've used a few tricks to make it more drivable and not stall. Such as increasing goal idle speed above 5kph and when the engine is cold. -Find a way to optimize cam timing at cruising conditions for best economy. This one has been on my mind for a long time, it seems very difficult to quantify how to best set the cam angle. So I have been working on an arduino based canbus project which can communicate to the ECU and show a live fuel economy value. I can turn knobs on the box to increase or decrease a trim table that affects cam timing, fuel, ign, or injector timing, or whatever else and get within ballpark this way. For version 2.0 of this, I am planning on having a closed loop ignition timing control that turns on when cruise control is active. It will float the ignition timing a few degrees eithe way, find the most economical value and then update a trim table in the arduino. Work in progress... I'm also considering having an overlay trim table in the ECU that changes ign timing based on current AFR seen at the oxy sensor - A leaner mixture needs significantly more timing. So it can do this dynamically. -3D print all the things! Lately I have jumped on the 3D printer bandwagon, and this will be an elemental part of the process for some of the stuff above. Not only can I print PLA prototypes, or ABS/Nylon functional parts. But I can also make molds for making other parts out of fun stuff like Polyurethane or Carbon Fibre. I made a test mold to see how Carbon Fibre would work and it turned out friggen awesome: So I'm going to make some more carbon parts, it's such a fun process and seeing the results is exciting. Stuff is so strong and so light, cant wait to make some more stuff out of it. -Digi Dash Tying into some of the above (3d printing a new dash housing, and using ARduino knowledge to build the screens) I will put together a canbus based digidash that will be cool. Will try and make it look like an 80s spec digidash as much as possible, but also have some context sensitive functions in it. (So screen will show different values when cruise control is on, or if you are at a trackday, or whatever) This isnt strictly something that makes the car better, but I'm already 90% of the way there by building my fuel tuning box thingy anyway so why not. -Get rid of heavy battery and move it closer to the engine bay. It's currently in an annoying spot in the boot space, so going to a gel cell battery or similar and moving it closer will save a non insignificant amount on battery weight and thick cables that run the length of the car currently. (ha) -Rear seats? I can only name 2 or 3 occasions on which anyone has ever sat in the back seats of this car. The seats, belts, and rear parcel tray arrangement are over 40kg worth of stuff. So I'd like to ditch them completely but dont want an ugly looking bare rear half of the car. For privacy reasons I want to keep the rear parcel tray so I'll remake something from maybe carbon fibre or aluminium. If the seats go too then I'll make some sort of firewall type thing and try figure out a non ugly way to cover up where the bottom half of the seats went. -Front seats Currently each front seat is over 20kg (including rails) So will get some lighter ones, maybe with fixed rails if I ditch the rear seats. -Radiator Support crossmember Currently I am using an oversized piece of a 2nd crossmember that I chopped out of another carina, so I can unbolt this to take the engine out. Since its an easy shape I'm going to 3d print a mold to make a carbon fibre replacement for this, and the bonnet stand. -Get rid of the glass and replace with Lexan This is something I'm not interested in doing. It's good weight savings but it's a ball ache because you need an authority card or whatever, I can barely deal with trying to get WOFs on this bloody thing as it is haha. -Other stuff I'll learn new things as I go, doing the above. So I might come up with some new ideas or decide to ditch some of the above. But it feels like there are some exciting new things to learn, which I'm happy about. A lot of these things only save 1kg here or 2kg there etc... But they all add up. Since my gearbox is toastedd and trackdays are starting to become significantly less affordable or accessable. I'm happy to just have the car off the road again for a while, while I geek out a bit. The only thing I can say for sure, is that fun times are ahead and I'm excited to learn some new stuff, especially regarding Arduino programming, 3d printing and some carbon fibre stuff.
    1 point
  46. So I haven't been spending any time on the car for the last couple of weeks. I've been busy working on my late Grandad's boat making the last big push to get it into the water. He spent nearly 8 years building a 41ft yacht back in the 80's that my dad and untie grew up on sailing around the bay of islands. When the time came to sell that boat, Grandad moved on to building a sister ship that took everything he learned from the first one and improved it. After 26 years working on it, he died in February of last year leaving the second boat unfinished. Since then we've come together as a family and work bloody hard to get the last of the woodwork completed and final details done before the launch. Today was the day we got the boat pulled out of the shed for the first time in close to 20 years and taken down the road. Here are some shots of her. I implore you to check out the Facebook page my dad made to document the build: https://www.facebook.com/bluewater41/ It has heaps more photos and stories about the boat. And to stay within the rules ish, here is a photo of the original boat on launch day - proper old school cool.
    1 point
  47. Then within an hour off having it off the trailer I had the front torsions wound up and test fitted one of the wheeeeeels The grub approves too.
    1 point
  48. Por15 in my minor has survived having engines dragged across it and soaking with oil and brake fluid
    1 point
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