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Making progress. Completely std build using good S/H parts and all new bearings/rings. Once I got all the required parts it’s gone together reasonably well.

I have finally sorted gearbox with a stock ctsv cadillac tune for the trans, it is like butter now... Will attempt to get to a night speed dragwars meet one night see what she does down the 1/4. I have put 4000 ks on it so far and back to daily driven...

My exhaust had a terrible bracket on it that sucked! My OCD couldn't handle the fact that the two pipes weren't parallel. Over a 400mm section where they run along side each other, the gap was out by 10mm from front to back. I saw this as an opportunity to fix two problems. 1) make it look right to the eye 2) raise the lower pipe by 15mm and the upper pipe by 5mm. This will really help with ground clearance, maybe not completely solve it...but certainly won't hurt. So: Marking out, lifting the holes by 10mm. And looking at the pipes for nice sweeping parallel lines. Success!!! So, lower pipe is now 15mm higher than before, with nice clearance around all the bits you don't want a hot exhaust touching. Happy as fuck! I'm probably going to cut the lower pipe mid span and shorten it by about 40mm to bring it inline with the upper pipe and my frame angle where it heads up to meet the axle. But that can wait for another day.

guard all done ,on to the front guard and door frame next

back on the ground now , its 50 inches from ground to top of roof .

Took Friday off to get a 4 day weekend and make a serious push on the crown. Some rain and some socialising took a chuck out of my time but still managed to get the shell, hood, boot and gaurds in fill primer. Found a few spots of rust on the bottom of the rear doors so will drop them round to the panel beater to have that sorted, then the doors will get the same treatment. For now, here's way too many photos of a car in primer, but given its never been this straight or single colour in my ownership, I'm getting excited. Blocking back will take a while, but the end is in sight! Then I can start on the manual conversion which I've been slowly gathering parts for and aside from a driveshaft (will get mine modded to suit hopefull) I've got all the bits there. Including a hand brake centre console which is sitting in Japan still and I really need to pay for the shipping to get it here for when I need it...

Oh and also - Vin would not approve of such things...

got the sill tacked on today finish it tomorrow

rear guard welded on fits great

new rims

chassis work

didnt do the sill today cut the front chassis off instead

took front guard ack to bare steel

Finally got the wheel tubs spotted in place and sealed against the quarters. I was told by a number of people don’t weld them completely to the quarters as they need to have a bit of flex to them. i haven’t spot welded them to the frame just yet as I need to lift the body one more time so will do that once it’s on for the last time.

The hardest part about driving an EV is telling your parents you're gay. In another 30 years I'm going to be no different to the old Barry's with their bib overalls and trucker caps at tractor/steam carnivals. Burning dinosaurs and telling Barry sharns about the golden age of gasoline. (Meanwhile the much hated and maligned millenials will be the new boomers in training, pissing and moaning about whatever handle they bestow on the pesky kids of that era) Dont forget who you are Alex. Burn dinosaurs till the end..... /ling.

small rust repairs

400 and 727

hi all con here thought i would share afew pics of my car ,its a 68 ve valiant . been working on it for five years .4 inch roof chop

Further engine stripping today, still doesn't turn. Next job is pull the engine out, sump off and see what's siezed.

Took the plunge and ordered a full set of superpro bushes, also sourced replacement front seats and a new engine/box. Enough to be going at for now..

Nah I've not thought about them. We do have some friends in the valley with a leaf so I must take it for a hoon. But I would miss proper engine sounds though. Not a fan of piped in fake sound either. And cheers Mason. No worries. One day I'll get to hoon your Rx2 (if you've not sold it by then and bought a horrid as Falcon.... )

Forgot to post this - cheers for the hoon in the imp Alex and Hannah! Was awesome to see you guys in December. that imp is a rad AF little sled and as for the shed set up on the land - epic. that Mazda Ute on the hoist was a thing of beauty too @maxted

This guy does control boards for getting rid of the canbus gubbins from leafs https://pandspowerelectronics.ecwid.com/

@yoeddynz Have you ever thought of a leaf conversion? I have been thinking quite a bit about an electric Jag but I'm struggling to find much information. A comment you made about a Testla Imp got me thinking about how a Leaf Imp could work.

The other big reason is getting an even suspension weight on each corner, if someone was not paying attention or was an idiot it is easy to get the car level so it looks fine, but have very uneven settings- like 100psi in the left front and right rear and 20 in the other two, then you have 2 wheels that will lock up under braking, or the car will do weird things going around a corner The book also mentions the twisting on the vehicles structure being an issue which makes sense if it's not a very strongly built car

this is the guard clearance, not a lot but maybe I trim another set of bumpstops so that the tyre never hits the guard?

New ragtop cover for the ragtop time. Brought the bug inside work, took the old cover off and had fun removing all the sticky duct tape glue, fuck that stuff. All the parts layed out. Cut the new cover on the esko, perfectly square cad cut. Sewed the hems over and added slits for the bow to sit inside as factory, the old cover didn't do this so you had to be careful not to end up with a parachute attached to the roof. All mounted, I added some thick felt to the front bow, not sure I like it, if it doesn't pack down I might remove it, looks to chunky. Looks sweet folded back. Will now start thinking about the inside headlining.

hope to get on to fitting new sills this weekend , mine have a few little holes

Thanks to @Raizer 's tip on sandblaster cabinets being cheap at the moment I went and got one today. Makes cleaning up crappy old parts easy I had to get a bigger compressor as well, supercheap has a special going on those at the moment too, $550 including an air hose

Hi everyone. Its been 4 months since the last update so explain whats been going on. thought, no point getting a wheel alignment with fucked ball joints so i removed these. and well, just go buy new ones it was the most scary drive of my life driving to the wheel alignment shop. obviously i didn't get it as close as i thought i did. the day before my 30th i went to get gas for the kombi i found myself underneath it tapping the starter motor, thinking it had shat itself after about 3 months of use. it was the ignition barrel that i had brought instead. so we by passed some wires and my i have a cool push button ignition. from here i was egar to actual put a wof on this car and get a few things sorted. one was my tail lights on it. seemed to have been a bit weird. well turns out i had a normal indicator stalk on the bus. mine should be a U.S one. turns out they made new ones, which are shit so that got returned and i ended up getting a 2nd hand one from a mate in Thames. put that in but the ring that gets tight on the center shaft was a little flogged out so i made a spacer so it would tighten up. all sorted and my tail lights and everything works well now. next up i decided i wanted to upgrade from points CB performance magnaspark 2 is legit. im not going to try explain the brains of it but if you have 2mins just watch this we went on adventure to whitianga for a vw catch up, which was cool to see everyone. ended up doing some on the side of the road repairs. the light was staying on so i just removed the power and pushed it back in its hole. ice cream kombis collected all the bugs I was using it for a work car quite a bit and just getting good use out of it. It was getting close to xmas now and i was pushing Beth to go away in the kombi over our break, but she was pushing back to have the rust done. so i talked to a mate and he got busy doing the jobs he felt comfortable doing. everything out! turns out i don't have any photos of what he done but look what i done. actually here you can see some out riggers on the other side done and painted grey. rust be gone brought this channel from the vdub shoppe along side a few other peaces. had to cut and bend it for some reason, cant remember now. but the image above of the U channel was welded in 1st and then this these panels came with the kombi when we brought it so i kinda knew what i was in for. looks something like this ohhh i remember why the ends of the U channel were bent. they go to the inner sill which you can see here in the above image and in the below image. you can also see another out rigger welded in close to the hoist arm, and above the hoist arm is another one that needed to be welded in. got that from the vdub shoppe also. The inner sills came with the kombi for both sides. the inner sill was welded in place in the above image and we then placed the outer sill replacement panel on, put a scribe in the white paint and then i went about cutting the amount off that we no longer needed. came across some bog pretty standard for a car of 50 years old that was probably worth scrap value at some stage. nice straight line. outer sill tacked in place waiting on a @bobby1930 to tig it up. put the front and rear section on as well. i went through and plug welded the bottom of it all in place while i was able to get away from work. the following night bobby came over and tiged it all up and i was able to take it home while drew was away on holiday, allowing me to finish the rest of the rust. it was good to have it home. i managed to get away for two days over new years and came back to work on the 3rd. so we didn't make it away in the kombi but we made progress. on dads anniversary of 15 years i stopped working and had my day to myself and got this kombi water tight. went like this. old mate @Geophy came over with @Beaver and i put him to work. well actually both of them went to work. they both had large help with me drilling the plug weld holes to the I and U beams that were under the floor floor all welded up. well now it is after adding these other peaces of steel prior to all this i saw @oftensideways put a bunch of sound deadening in his little kp starlet and hit him up to see what he was using. Turned out the brand was kilmat and it was a crap load cheaper than dynamat. for example there is a dynamat kit on trade me for 369 for 3.3 square meters so around 110 a square meter or you can get kilmat for 43 a square. Or I paid to have it fast freighted and it still only cost me 58 a square. I ended up ordering this just before xmas and it turned up on the 7th of jan while i was doing the floor. this is now the day after dads anniversary and i really just wanted to get this stuff on. boom all done. for reference i got the 50mil stuff (lighter) they do a 80mil one but not in 50squar feet so that's why i didn't go for that one. i will probably use the 80mil stuff in the front half of my kombi. link : https://www.amazon.com/Kilmat-Deadening-Automotive-Insulation-dampening/dp/B0751G6TMV back to work i went. old @Bistro and i went shopping for some rubber grommets for his car. He brought a couple of different sizes which one didnt fit his car but man what a great fit it was to my kombi. i was now aiming to reach kumeu car show but i didnt quite get there. so i just went hard out on just getting the kombi sorted for @Neds birthday week away at kai iwi lakes. so straight to it. time to do the upholstery before everything else goes back in. ahhh whats that little black thing for greg you may say. well. it turns two lights on and the fridge. what you have a fridge?! well i didn't at that point but Beth came across some money so we splashed out on a 49 letter fridge ohhh i now needed to do my headlining before i could get a wof. as you see i dont have one here but you can see the new LED interior light foam down 1st to pad it out. help with sound deadening as well. i also filled the pockets on the side you can only just see two done here. boom we have a headlining wanted to paint the side of the van where i had done the rust repairs, so i done a botch job on that. and painted it white. now you can see how bad the bog is. oh i also added a house battery to the kombi to power the lights. i got this sweet gadget from super cheap which allows the charge to go the 2nd battery but wont drain the main car battery when we are camping. back to upholstery. put some black carpet down in the back then covered with with a bed. a rock and roll bed that is now that was in time to move on to installing the fridge and cabinet. 1st part was to sort out the sink. hole in the floor and it now drains in the center of the bus now that is done the fridge can get screwed in perfect fit. now back to more upholstery here is a before hand of my drivers seat a during and a after not bad for 1am upholstery. made Beth a little holder in the cabinet we also put shelves in there the weekend we went to whitianga shit i still had some more rust to do before a wof but we did get a wof beth likes to pull the sheets up and just keeps pulling them when we are in bed. been the kombi doesn't really have anything to tuck the sheets into i sewed a buckle to the bottom of the sheet and the quilt. which goes around some brackets under the seat ready for camping

well after being in storage for just over 2 years now...the old girl has been sold. its gone to a mate who only hounded me for 20 months.....and has big plans for her. so everyone wave good buy to the mighty mk2. it has been replaced with another cortina ......and that has taken up its space in storage.

Finally getting back into this after a few months away. Have decided to paint the outside in two sections which hopefully makes it a bit more manageable. The obvious way was to section off the roof. The other reason for doing it this way is to ensure there is plenty of paint in the gutters which are prone to rust. By sectioning it off, it gets painted when the roof is done, and again when the sides get done. This ensures maximum paint without making a mess. Have been sanding for the last couple weeks. My weak little office arms really struggled with painting the roof today but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

yea ive just been dailying this and going places slowly. its just got its first warrant after compliance which it flew through no drama. now thats done i thought id put on the new big brakes that i bought for it a while back. usual story, LN106 hilux calipers with DBA272 rotors (which the guys at castle hill Auto One in Sydney got made as a small batch because DBA dont make them anymore) and R32 GTR pads. bit of trimming of the backing plate and it all bolts on. these calipers work a million times better with the 1" master cylinder than the factroy two pots do. much better pedal feel and way better progression of the brake pressure. anywho, its all back together and working so now ill spend some time bedding it all in but its already a zillion times better. 2020-01-27_12-25-25 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-01-27_12-25-36 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-01-27_12-59-14 by sheepers, on Flickr also these aren't the wheels im keeping on the car. it will in the near future get some jet black steel smoothies with small moon caps so you wont be able to see the red calipers.

Happy as! Stripped the diffs and epoxisprayed them. had the bottom U bolt plates acid dipped them epoxi sprayed them too. installed all the new suspension, greaseable shackles and bolts, adjustable drop steering arm and torque arm just need bump stops, and steering rod rack ends. and get some sanding wheels for the drill to take out the build up in the shackle mount tubes thinking with the Honda engine exhaust being on the drivers side I might as well do the fuel and break lines now and swap them to the other side

Skitz

All the bushings are superflex ones from Witors, and I can’t remember the name of the dynamite pack I got but I needed two of them and have some leftover if that helps narrow it down

Hot metal glue gun action... Bolts are for pussy's!!! Functional, but far from sexy. That probably describes most kiwi woman...and this bracket falls into that category too. I'll get it chromed and it should disappear and not draw attention to itself.

As we were having morning smoko the rain started falling, so I saw it as a sign that I should move indoors and steal an hour or two on the Thames. Started off my removing the front indicator lights to install the new lamp to body gaskets. Turns out someone had made their own cork gaskets which was better than finding the lamp body mounted directly onto the paintwork. Installed the new body gaskets, re-fixed the lamp housings and installed the new lenses. I'd made a decision to go with amber lenses up front rather than the original clear lenses. First reason was to give the front a bit of colour as its pretty bland at the moment. Second reason is that I had heard that the clear lenses don't hold up in the harsh OZ sun as well as the amber ones. Sadly the new fixing screws and rubber sealing rings were inadvertently left out of my parcel so I had to use the old screws. Easy enough to replace when they arrive with my next shipment. Before and after pics to show the improvement. You can see how badly the clear lens had deteriorated. Thanks for looking.

Certed, dyno on next couple of weeks. Ongoing trans issues, I have been working hard at trying to get my head around the issue with a 2 3 shift that is fine at wot but is arse at part throttle. If anyone knows any 6 speed gm trans expert tuners, please pass on details...

under side is all done full chassis connectors .

its had the b pillars moved back and made into a two door .dash has been changed too

its also half chassised with 15 by 15 under it and a 383 big block

And we have colour...,