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Went away in the bus for the weekend so didn't get a lot of time this weekend, just a couple of hours today, but I thought I would chuck the axles on just to get it a bit more mobile...

Waiting on parts to finish the throttle & plenum setup. so pulled the radiator and intercooler out to modify the intercooler pipe. Then went full retard and cut up the radiator. cut a bit off the end and relocated the outlet pipes Why? more room for other stuff and that part of the radiator was mostly blocked off from airflow anyways. Redone the turbo side pipe, as well as the inlet side. the pile of pipes at bottom of pic is the old stuff that come off it. Yep that cast elbow looks horrible for flow ^ thats why i chopped it up, so goes from 2.5" to about same area as 3" pipe. The intercooler is on the list to go in the bin. because is heavy and junk. I brought the cheapest one i could get when originally built the truck. Staying for now but will go to a tube and fin one day. 2.5" hot side 3" cold side. old was 2.5" . even though the pipe is bigger have cut the length down quite a bit. so probably sill less area in the pipework than the old setup

did the bushes in the rear today. nothing special, usual shit of drilling out the rubber, cutting the sleve then smashing it out. new bushed just push in. haven't drive it on the motorway yet to gauge betterness but given how squishy and fucked the old bushed were i suspect it'll be a big step forward. 2019-09-28_06-51-37 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-09-28_06-51-27 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-09-28_06-51-19 by sheepers, on Flickr

A Big Rig turned up today... To do this Which ended up looking like this A bit better after clean-up Next step, to the panelbeaters - hopefully soon.

More pics

O fuck yes Yesterday Today

Back from the blasters. A couple of minor things to do and it’s off for paint.

This txt looks to be the same and its bigger.

Could someone make me a set of tank decals? someone here was good that.

Probably not, but I’m Coming up to Tauranga next month in a van weekend of the 19 oct

Been awhile since been able to fit this in the truck hahah. Took kids down to palmys bike park. Was a blast. Reason havnt put back on the spike as. The speed bumps at the park and my driveway dosnt clear well. Lots of confussed looks and some random yawns with people about it

Vw 1.9tdi

If you have gone to the trouble and expense of getting a 9 inch with all the good gear, don't stuff round with trying to use a secondhand drive shaft. I had the one on my Holden built with new everything except the yoke into the trans, 3 inch shaft rated to more horse power and revs than the 5 litre Holden will ever get near for $750 including tax. One busted drive shaft will do more than $750 worth of damage.

Small steps my arse, I will be cranking this motherfucker. Although I do need to take some time and care getting the engine back together...

Small steps? One bolt a day will soon have it parked outside the cert shop!

Yip, we should be able to do this. Hopefully we can find a good image of the text to work with.

Did more math... Not looking good is the short answer... But I'm not giving up on using the FCC (full circle crankshaft). Just have to approach this problem from a different angle. I'll give it some absorption time to think it over...but likely to involve drilling out the bottom side, then adding lead to it to increase the weight on the counterweight side.

For comparison I used to get around 10l/100km in my NA 3L LN106. Similar-ish to the shusband vehicle currently.

The 5le in my ln145 goes good for a non turbo, does about 6-7 liters per 100km round town (40mpg?)

I would turbo the motor you have, or find a 3L or 5 L to turbo. This is right up @Yowzer alley and he will have some insight into turbo L series diesels.

5L, possibly with some force feeding? Easy bolt in and technology like a bag of rocks

Is there any advantage for having diesel vs petrol where you are? Over here diesel is a lot cheaper but we have to pay per km travelled so it works out about the same. I did a job on a hilux that had a turbo 1kz put in it instead of a 3L, it went pretty good

There's 1jz hiluxs of your era around. I think they are a long fit but do go in There probably was Buick V6 kits in the 90s. The one in my mitsi is pretty crude so you could get some thing water cut easy

Buick V6 1JZ no shit 1KZ 5, 6, 7mge should bolt to Hilux gearbag? But m-series Sad times when a rover V8 is sounding the best option

Bonsoir les chattes bon. Three month update and a bit of a brain picking session. It's been great, I've put 3,500-ish miles on it and really haven't had to do much except put diesel in now and then. Anyway, last week I was aware, once again, of the smell of failure in the air. Had a look underneath and yep, sure enough, oil's coming out. And a bit of water & P/S fluid, but that doesn't matter. Looks like it's the rear crank seal this time. Sigh..... So it's engine out, and as has been pointed out once or twice, a "gutless " engine at that. If it's out and broken, why would I put it back in ? Obvious solution is a later 2.4 turbo lump (or a 2.8 if they bolt straight in) but I'm considering a bit of an increase of workload for the old bus (more of which to come). So my question is any ideas ? I don't want to cut massive holes in the thing and I don't want to make my life too complicated. It cant be much longer than the stock lump so it's Rover V8 (no laughing at the back), or a similar sized diesel ? Not one of those Toyota 1UZ-FE V8's thanks, I get a headache just looking at diagrams of them. 4BT Cummins ? I'd put a Land Cruiser 1HD-T in, but it's way too long. A TD5 might fit I spose.... Just want some more torque and not too much elctrickery. Any ideas ? Chur.

Lopped the back muffler off yesterday afternoon fuck did that wake it up got an interesting burble to it too. Its not loud at all apart from at idle the exhaust is drowned out by roadnoise once moving pretty happy. Happy to do whole exhaust now i know it doesn't sound horrible and will net some power gains.

This badass beat is for sale on Yahoo at the moment.

Any welly piners coming up got room for a TS125?

Hell yes! Exactly the look I was trying to achieve, like a 90's MX bike (yz, cr, kx, rm125 etc...) So next up on the list: 1) Cut the top of the cylinder head off. 2) mill/lathe cylinder head to get right deck and compression ratio. 3) port the fuck out of it 4) fit s domed head kit to replace the top of the cylinder that's getting cut off 5) fit a much larger diaphragm carburetor Then pretty it up and ride!

You can actually see and feel the wear on the tip.

I done some work on the carbs today. Have them a good clean for starters Replacing float valves. The new ones are viton tipped and a bit different in shape. Not a huge fan. Probably should have gone oem. I’m going to replace the fuel tap again with oem for security and I’ll order a new fuel cap to. Remind me again never to buy another old bike.

Engine mounts trimmed and sitting in place. Will need that leg bent in to sit against the subframe and probably a brace going rearward too. Too easy!

I flattened out a bit of coronated iron and turned it into a steampunk top hat, made the googles to.

Front end back together after a year and a half. Now she's out in the sun all the body issues are painfully obvious! I've got some rust to fix over the R/R wheel and in the boot, and the clear is coming off in sheets, but it drives sooo nice. It's like night and day from the old 5M, and definitely glad I went manual. I've still got a long list of small stuff to tick off before cert, but I feel I'm on the home stretch now.

On a random side note, I did a mini spring clean of the shed today. I had accumulated a rather large pile of ever increasing junk taking up a bay for no good reason. Amongst this was a project I rarely look at...so I removed the covers to reveal it for a look... Fuck yeah...seriously...fuck yeah!!! Makes me wonder what the fuck I'm doing spending time on gopeds when I could be putting the finishing touches on this 99% finished harley? Someone kick me in the balls!!!

Back in the game! a literal bootload of 18rg parts just turned up at work. purchased from a mates mates father up north. highlights include; a mint block, that has been professionally honedand surfaced. nearly all rebuild parts. a couple of really clean heads and a partly complete dismantled but complete one. the early "230" head has port work. but ill most likley use the very clean and resurfaced "270" efi head as they had bigger ports anyway and are much stronger with a lower compression, they just had wimpy cams, so the 230 cams may find there way in there too. a slightly lighted flywheel, which will probably be ideal for a street car. once the crown is shipped off to panel in the next week or so, ill hook into building this engine. i need to do alot of measuring and thinking about what combo of parts to run though.

Not much to report as I am still in the process of scraping together the funds for chassis coating. This is hampered by me spending quite a lot of the money I have been saving on frivolous new engines and such. This came about as I was alerted by many lovely people including @Willdat? That there was a cheap TD42 on FB marketplace. It turned out the chap was about 2 km from my house and was desperate to get rid of it as he had to move this weekend. I also bought a complete manual conversion kit off him that he had never installed and was going to scrap if he couldn't find a buyer, so I am selling this on as I don't need it, check the parts for sale if you want one. Overall this has worked out sweet as there were a number of things missing or toast off my engine, ie oil cap, exhaust shield, belt idler etc. I now have a spare alternator and fuel pump, plus he threw in a whole lot of other shit that will prove useful. The crank looks good, so I guess I could have passed on the Trundles stuff, but maybe I will build this one up properly for later... You might be able to see the snapped conrod in the second pic, he had driven into a river and hydraulic'd it, this is why it was in bits...

So I did the upper ball joints as well.. ..but it wasn't those. The push/pull play at 6 and 12 o'clock was still there. So I looked at how to adjust the wheel bearings.. I was expecting it to be horrible but it was easy, and now the play is gone. Should have done that first. Alas, the vibration is still not quite gone. It's probably just something I have to live with in a British car which has made it all the way to..... 200,000kms. So I got a new obsession instead. The engine doesn't run all that well - it has a random half-stumble at idle and low rpm.. You can see the misfires by watching the shaking of the motor, and although it appears to smooth out if you raise the rpm sufficiently, the higher engine speeds could possibly be disguising the problem. The car has also never really started that well from cold. I checked the spark plugs and they looked amazing to someone who has never owned fuel injection before. I looked for bad connections and vacuum leaks, since the ECU directly reads manifold vacuum (in V12 cars, the ECU is in the boot and its vacuum line has to run the whole length of the car, because why not... ). Nothing stood out though. Several tanks of fuel system cleaning pills didn't help either. Today I took off the airflow meter and cleaned it, and this did make an improvement. The raise in engine speed on startup is more pronounced, and the idle speed seems to have raised slightly which makes the car coast better / makes it not decelerate as aggressively when you lift off the accelerator. But just like my reduced 80kph vibration, the shaky running issue's still detectable. I'll try a compression test and then randomly change every ignition system part, idle valve, fuel pressure regulator and injector before giving up in 6 months from now. The Jag let me know what it thinks of my diagnostic skills:

2 months later i have all the bits to rebuild the bottom end. the heads are already finished and i have them back. parts, 9 to 1 CR Ross forged pistons (the cunts will not change the value of the parts on the shipping invoice so keep that in mind when deciding to use them or not) eagle H beam rods and ARP rod bolts ARP main cap studs and bolts new genuine Toyota oil pump theres heaps of other shit too but you get the picture. block will now be bored and honed to 88mm. rotating assembly will get balanced and ill get the short block back. then its reassembly time. good days. or maybe not good days. going in to hospital to get back surgery in about a month so that will fuck all progress for a while............... 2019-09-19_07-59-37 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-09-19_07-59-22 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-09-19_07-58-23 by sheepers, on Flickr

so 1 x generic falcon tap and some cutting and welding and we're back in business. tap is in the engine bay and its fairly ugly but there isn't fuck all i can do about that. 2019-09-19_08-00-10 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-09-19_08-00-03 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-09-19_07-59-55 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-09-19_07-59-47 by sheepers, on Flickr

stories from M lyfe. the heater tap started leaking. the heater tap is inside the passengers foot well. like any true M series connoisseur i know it was leaking within seconds of it happening because i smelt it. i knew, instantly, the the M was about to try and fulfill the prophecy of its lineage, and its tradition, and attempt to BHG. but old M masters like myself are made of sterner stuff than that, it'll take a better trick that that old chestnut to bring the prophecy to life. so, i caught it before it had a chance to get hot, no harm done. MS75 heater taps are vacuum operated, incorporate a 90 degree bend in them and just to really make sure there is no way of substituting it with something available its closed with no vacuum. all available vacuum operated taps that i have found are open with no vacuum. there are no taps available that event fit in the space available, let alone have the right vacuum configuration. so ill just have to buy a gates one, cut and weld the vacuum actuator to be on the other side of the lever and put in the engine bay somewhere. if i can stand up for long enough to do that job ill do that tonight. 2019-09-19_07-33-00 by sheepers, on Flickr

Yea so there was a wee saga with the engine parts, Trundles rang and said the only crank they had was damaged, so they had only sent the seals, gaskets and bearings. I spent a bit of time trying to find another crank but nothing was available. Plenty of complete engines for too much money, but then what fucking use were all the other parts. So I suggested I send it all back and he got all pissy and said he would find another crank, which he actually did. So we will wait and see what turns up. I have been selling off shit like a demon, I've got 2/3rds of the money to pay for the coating, but I have to wait for some latches I ordered off Ali Express to sort the drawers so I can get it done. In the meantime I have been tidying up the last few things I have to do. I have needed to get some sort of tiedown detail into the deck, but preferably without going any wider, or having them down low and preventing the drawers from opening. I decided to do it this way, which was laborious but reasonably tidy. I can also use the detail as a mount for sides if I need to; I also made something proper for the low range boot to mount too; Might have to start the many jobs I have been neglecting around the house now..

Righto, so ive been driving this to work every day for the last month ir whatever. Hasn't missed a beat. Its fucking slow. Fuck me is it slow but that's not such an issue, it's fucking cool and I like driving it. The front end is a bit all over the show If you have to hit the brakes on the motorway so ive replaced all the bushes. Castor arm bushes and upper inner bushes were completely fucked. Im fairly certain they were original ones. I'll do the back next weekend and put thre disk brake diff in at the same time.

Major diff sharn for this weekend... So I bought a new diff, and it came attached to this: Explorer was in Aucks with a dead trans for the same price as wrecker wanted for a complete disc to disc diff outa the same, so thought I'd drive up from Hams and transport back. Ring the dude up and get him to climb under the truck and check the tag, 3L73 yuss it's a 31 spline LSD 3.73 8.8, perfect. Mad mission up there showing up after dark, bundle it on the transporter without really any inspection getting home late last night. Then while basking in the 90s luxury Ford cockpit this morning I notice this on the centre console: Initially super excited holy shit has a moonbeams air locker in it, but then dawned on me I drove all the way to Aucks to pick this thing up and now I still have no LSD, as open/full locker setup less than ideal for what's sposed to be a fast road ute. So now can't decide if it's a win or loss, prolly come out ahead if I sell it to fund another diff (or new internal bits for this one) but mo time and wheeling and dealing while I should be trying to get this damn ute finished... As an aside also found this wedged under the truck, looks like someone's been explorer red necking

If my calculations are correct it should go well, I still have to advance the exhaust port to get the full benefits, this is going to be horrible on the ears.

Fucking civilised as fuck. It's almost a Jag or a Roller now.

Well gosh dang it, possum on a gum bush, etc. Bumper arrived in less than 3 days, 4 days early. It's good quality, painted nicely not just primed & only cost 9 quid. Bargain. Save the tea for next time @Dell'orto God Bless 'Murica.

hi all haven't been on for a few months, been a hard few weeks , my wife died of cancer 6 weeks ago . so i haven't done much car wise ,the roof chopped ve as going to be her car so i haven't got the heart to work on it , so its going in to storage just to get it out of site . so i thought i would do a fun car for me ,had a spare ve wagon here so i am making another gasser , this one is drag car only , got a chrysler 400 and 727 a axle out of a dodge truck and a ford explorer diff .the car is real rusty in the floors and chassis so i am cutting it all out and making my own chassis and new floors , here a fw pics .