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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!

Matt sent me some better pics of when he was doing the floor and stuff

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.

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.

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:

They'd probably accept garden hose going by the trailers I see on the road. Perhaps just sleeve it in some electrical duct so it can't rub?

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....

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

Some more progress. One thing I have learned from the job I do, is sometimes it's better to pay for someone to do stuff instead of having a go and making a hash of it myself. Both front floor pans had some rust on the top side which I don't have the skill, gear, or patience to do a nice job of. @RXFORD/ Matt at tin tricks in east tamaki is a friend of mine, he picked it up and fixed the floors, while it was there he deleted the heater motor and hose holes in the firewall and made a new part of the inner guard which gets rid of an ugly bit where the battery box used to live, and made it match the other side. My photos are a bit ham but I'm stoked with how it turned out

I was lucky enough to get a pool table. It's a childhood dream come true and despite not really having a big enough house to put it in, we do have a spare lounge that has no real purpose...so that's now my pool room (let's call it "a work in progress") Now there's one end of the table where the wall is a tad too close. Solution ...cut the cues down, or build a bigger house??? Okay, for now I think I'll just cut the cues down. Cue loaded in lathe. Boring a hole to stick the weight back into the butt of the cue. And there we have it. 2x shorties, 3x tall timber. Next on list is to make a pool cue rack and a sexy pool table light box thingy like the pubs have hanging above the tables.

P clip it inside the a-frame. Much easier to fix when it gets whacked and broken off at the master cylinder

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!

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.

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.

Made some subframe connectors out of some 75x40x3 rhs and glued them in

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.

Some months later. . . Handle bars. Made, finished today. Panther gussets made in 3mm and milled down to 1.8mm because I couldn't buy 1.8mm Chromoly plate. Jigged and welded into place. Mock up picture because I was feeling proud. View from the drivers seat. Also 26x1.75 Gum Wall tyres on their way, Pantha stickers purchased, chrome, paint anodizing, and other 80s spec bling to follow.

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…

I'm thinking about sleeving it in garden hose inside the draw bar.

All going well, I might get to bring a different car this time/probably still bring the wagon

It's back at the upstairs carpark behind the Ellerslie Burgerfuel. Enough regulars have disappeared that we now seem to be sneaking under the radar of that nearby resident / maybe he can't hear us over the 6-lane motorway across the street....

Didja buy it? I see it's no longer listed, although there's always the newer green one in Northland for $6.5k. The autocar buyers guide has this very "Jag owner" advice: "Check for misfires on the V12 by holding a bank note over the exhaust pipes and watching for uneven fluttering." You might also want to test the cigarette lighter by rolling up a bank note and attempting to smoke it.

I had the same thought, gasket has been replaced, I'm not quite ready to rule it out though as it is the most likely origin, now with a fresh gasket any leak should be obvious.

Agree on both counts. Had an initially intermittent tick on my Cressida from the gasket/

I really think you need to keep those racing colours Engine tick- exhaust gasket? I had that on the samurai.

Basically an Italian FJ.

might be better pics of my curved ram tubes here

Maaate, this is the best update yet!! You must be so pumped to have it all painted. Well done man, can’t wait to see more updates and the wagon finished

stupid like a fox!! great work mate, would love to have half the time, money and knowledge as yourself.

Yeah sorry @yoeddynz not much has been happening with this lately, been pouring all my money into this stupid v3000 and trying to finally get the green l300 legal. So yeah nothing to report sorry guys! It lives at home now though. Have a picture.

Soooooo for a while now I've had an obsession with getting a "proper" bellmouth geometry on something. I successfully made a big one for the big single throttle but I really need a different radiator arrangement to make it work so its been on the back burner. But the geometry to give completely straight flow is massively massive compared to what is usually used, so its a problem when you have 4x throttles close together. With the space that is available, you have to trim down the sides of each trumpet by this much to fit 4 alongside each other. (Obviously dont need to trim front or rear but lazy modelling) So it looks like you lose most of the useful area of the bell... And looks like it would be prone to "stealing" air and maybe fuel from adjacent cylinders? Not so good. Probably better just having a smaller radius on each. Either way, I printed out a full sized bellmouth (without trimmed sides) so I can size it up in the engine bay. As it turns out that thanks to having a brake booster I've got zero room for a trumpet this big anyway on the rear and hitting the bonnet on the front will be a problem too. I've seen those cool kits where people have all of those parts you can clip together to help build an exhaust manifold. So I thought I'd try the same thing here but for an intake. So printed some parts so I can try some combos for a single runner. Base piece, a bell, 3 x straight 20mm sections and 3 x 10 degree sections. Also pictured is the bellmouth provided with the ITB kit, for an indication on how rediculous the bigger one is haha. Unlike those fancy exhaust kits though mine doesnt actually clip together because aint nobody got time for that. Also, turns out printing the straight ones was a waste of time as there's not even enough room for just the bends. Neither front or rear really fits. pooz. So I'm reprinting the bend parts with 15 degrees per segment and a bit tighter radius to see how much that helps. Based on what looks like will fit though, tipping the trumpets slightly towards the front of the engine bay is actually pretty cool because it allows more useful bellmouth area per runner. A lot more! Most of the air comes from around the sides rather than straight ahead so will be interesting to see how this goes. The question is, is the efficiency gain of the big bell worth the efficiency loss from the bend. And is the bend worth the extra runner length gained. And does any of this make a difference when you're trying to wheeze through a 45mm throttle. And the biggest question of all, will I actually finish making any of this? Some preliminary nerding seems to look like the bellmouth partially shrouding the entrance shouldnt be an issue so long as there's a bit of gap. The colour scale on this, red is 101.3kpa and green is 101.0kpa so pretty minimal loss hopefully EDIT: Just found what the factory BMW S14 engine runners look like, makes me feel like I might be on the right track. Even if the big bellmouth isnt necessary, perhaps there is a real life benefit to having them staggered to allow more clear air around each runner than you can get with straight pipes that are butted up to each other.

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.

This'll be the 3rd Commodore ive bought with a "blown head gasket" for fuck all this one had a blocked thermostat the others had perished heater taps the people put water back in but didnt bleed them so they would get hot.

@Raizer dropped me off a couple of gy6 motors from his hoard. I was wondering if the wheel would clear the case and it does which i'mm happy with Chucked the pile of parts roughly together

REALLY impressed with their bending. Cant wait to see the hoops welded together and standing up!!!

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.

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.

So, ain't used this much in the last year and a half, infact it's been sat in the shed the last seven months. Thought I better start using it, so I charged the battery, gave it a quick clean, and obtained a WOF. This morning I felt semi motivated, so set about fixing a few things that have annoyed me for ages. Since I got it back on the road about six years ago, the fuel gauge hasn't read correctly/won't show over 2/3rds full. I whipped out the sender (luckily it has an inspection hatch for the sender) and held the float lever against it's full stop, it still wouldn't show over 2/3rds full. I then opened the little box on the sender, and it seemed the wire coil is wearing out, and the little arm that rubs against it wasn't contacting properly, so I gave the little arm a tweak. I teasted it and it now reads darn bloody close to full, not perfect, but much closerer. Next I pissed around with the hatch latch, as the hatch has never sat down on it's stoppers properly, and kinda sits on the latch mechanism. Managed to free the latch and adjust it, and by hoki, it now shuts nice and toight, which has the awesome side effects of not letting exhaust stank in, and has banished about 78% of the rattles in the car, huzzah! The other thing I did a while back was modify my catch can, it used to be empty, so did a shit job at taking oil mist out of the air, so it's now full of steel wool and fancy shapes, and let's no oil mist out at all, rippa. I have some fittings to connect it to the back of the filter plate, so next time the plates out, I'll slap that in. Next on the list, is to give it a rangi tune up, as it runs ridiculously rich, so I'll have to acquire the bro in law, so he can muck round with that. I still haven't sent the rims away to be fixed, fucks sake VG. P.S. I really like driving this car.

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

2011 (2l 16v swap) Engine and gearbox installed and the car back on its wheels. Mega squirt setup, despite this not being my final solution i was really happy i had a crack at this. Really taught me that all wiring looks horribly daunting before you start but after going through and labeling and sorting out each little bit step by step its nothing a good system cant fix There was a nice useful pin out so i actually made the megasquirt loom just connect directly to the existing factory loom for easy removal.

Head cleaned up very nicely with a bit of a diy parts cleaning bin and some elbow grease. A fresh selection of parts from the UK, i struggled to find new valves anywhere else. The old 8v lump removed, made for a good paper weight. Took me so long to get this out maybe a couple of days. Having had the new engine in and out a couple of times now for clutch replacement etc, i reckon i could do a full removal in a couple of hours. Struggled with breaking the cam gear, could not figure out why the engine would not turn over and then the cam gear would snap its tooth off. Turned out to be bent cams, which set me back a long time cause trying to find another set was proving a mission. Found some new Cams in the end and it all went back together nicely.

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.

Haven't done bugger all on this recently. Had been trying to source some cert happy 14" wheels, but that didn't happen. Wheels held the build up a little bit as I needed them to start working out other things that will happen later. Anyway, some pics of the limited progress since last update. "Built" a frame to straighten out the headlight area of the front. Didn't take too long with a handful of long tek screws, to get it much closer to the right shape. Happy enough with the results, so that will get a primer / paint later on. Amazingly complicated alignment tool: Previous to that I had removed the rusty A pillar section shown earlier. Before, with the two layers removed. After, with one section made up, i'll make the top section when I have this one welded in and epoxy primered up. Then weld that over the top, epoxy, paint. Meanwhile, this turned up, with a friend another day. And unwrapped Wheel specs: SSR XR-4 Longchamps, 15x7-1(x2) and 15x7+11(x2). Lost count of the hours spent browsing Yahoo to find a set or even a pair that matched the offsets I measured I wanted. Well worth the time in the end, but it did drive me half insane, finally finding some, only to be outbid by twice my budget. Nothing super wide or dished, but they will sit well on the car I feel, and I can wrap them in damn good tyres. Similar dish on the rear to my 14x7.5-1, but with 10 times the number of tyres available, an easy choice in the end. I also removed some unnecessary weight from the rear of the car, to help sort the ride height. Shocks and springs, overrated. Before: After: I will be home alone for the whole Xmas break, so will be aiming to get the car completely back together (for now) with all of the rust cut out and replaced with new steel. Epoxied up and some red spray cans to tidy up the repairs. Then I can start the next stage which will get quite expensive, rather quickly. Until then, let me know what i've done wrong here.

Ahhh old faithful, I built this thing, owned her for 10yrs. Good motivation photo lol

Glad it all came through for ya man. You buying this meant I didn't have to. So thanks. Ps: make this happen please.

Finally, a good sunny morning for some photos. The first two are my bike with a 16" Cub that the kids ride from time to time. @d.p.n.s

So nearly four years after mentioning it and well over four years after coming up with the idea. Here it is! FINISHED! I took it for a quick ride up the road, it feels awesome, taught, light, and responsive. I'll take some better photos of it in the sun over the weekend. *Pine*

Shit vid of me making a cunt of myself at Nats track day.