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Cool kids wear fresh Lids

Most of the old pictures died but i'll see what i can do to replace them. So i learned you can use a pocket knife to carve totara & chewing gum to make a makeshift oil plug, or a frost plug. Just some pictures of some travels.

Made a start modifying the 4-link mounts. As you can see they originally hang quite a bit lower than the sill. New mount all welded up. Should be heaps strong enough! Cleaned up a bit. 17mm socket just fits through the channel to tighten/loosen the bolt. Might swap to Allen head screws, as the paint/underseal mightn't leave enough clearance. The lower arm is nice and level now. Next was to do the upper arm mounts. This is it all done coming through the floor under the rear seat. The seat just doesn't fit, but should be an easy fix by bending one of the wire spring things a little. Top arm angle looking much better. The arms should intersect pretty close to where I guessed the instant centre of the car will be. Just have the other side upper mount to finish off. Sent a bunch of stuff of to be zinc plated. Some didn't turn out as shiny as I'd liked, but not all of it's that visible and I think I'll get the engine and gearbox mounts powder coated any way.

We've set ourselves the goal of having this run under it's own steam before Christmas, only time will tell if that's realistic. 21 head studs and 35 years of rain, not a great combo. We had the engine crane hooked to the head almost lifting the front wheels off the ground before she shifted! Minimal bore damage from what I can see. The valves aren't pretty, but what is on this so far. We'll keep tearing this down and drop the bare block to the reconditioners for closer inspection and start a parts hunt.

All very painless. Lots of rust converter poured down the pillars and copper sprays for days Soz I remembered about pictures as I finished with the black zinc Fluked the rail, even the chrome clips on

Door fits Opens without hitting anything Closes without hitting anything Is parallel with B pillar Is parallel with sill opening Sits flush everywhere All it took was totally reshaping the guard. Some spots were way out. The rear mounts had been welded on crooked. Added about 5mm in some places and skimmed a mm off in others Need to add a little at the A pillar, and probably add a little to the A pillar bottom edge itself. That lower bend/angle was different on the B pillar,door,and guard. At least it closes now FFS

It's woffed and regod, beats most cars on here

OK, i tried to replace as many pictures as i could, sorry about them being mostly massive though. Wow that's an old photo. It made a friend half it's size.

Next up is the fan controller. I got a 2 speed controller from Davies Craig, if the temp doesn't drop enough after 10 seconds of the first fan it kicks in the second fan. Also has an A/C trigger for when I get to that. I've seen a few of these mounted under bonnet but it isn't advertised as water resistant so I wired it up under the dash. That way I can have radiator temp while driving if needed. Once I mocked up length it's all been tucked under the guard with the rest of the loom. The early 1uz doesn't have a Te2 pin on the under bonnet diagnostic connector to trigger live data output, but it does have one on the ECU. I've gone and wired in a standard Toyota connector under the dash with Te2 for live data with the hope of getting a Toyobd1 Bluetooth dongle at some stage. They are hand made by a cool Canadian bloke so take some time to become available. Next up is Tach. Keen to keep the stock look inside so I swapped in the guts of a RX60 4cyl Cressida tach hoping that would give me an accurate reading. It did for about 5 minutes but then died. Swapping in the original 6cyl tach did the same thing. Maybe they didn't like the trigger signal from the ignition module? The newer style of tach from a 90's Corolla has the same bolt spacing for the card. I just needed to drill out the needle 0.5mm and fit a needle stop, the newer style has no internal limit to rotation other than the clock spring. Beautiful. I quite like the font on these older dashes the more I look at them. Next up is sorting the check engine light and possibly stealing a speed signal off the rear of the cluster for the ECU to avoid a pesky fault code.

Ok so it was the swing arm that was bent. Got a second hand one and banged it in for a test fit, sat perfect! Stripped off all the old paint and surface rust then brushed on some rust converter to kill all the rust in the corners. Here is as it sits now. Next is stripping again back to bare metal and hit it with the etch prime then in the 2k black. Easy.

Re water pump, I glue the gasket to the pump with a very light smear if rtv, then fit it and pull the bolts up tight from there. Give the o ring and where it sits a good dose of rubber grease and put it together.

With the steering column out I quickly pulled the side cover off the steering box and a nice mixture of brown sludge, water and a little bit of oil came out. Nice ! No wonder the steering was almost seized. I'll strip the box at some stage to see if it can be saved as I'm planning to keep all of the original mechanicals intact in case someone ever wants to put it back to original. So with the column and steering box out of the way I was able to cut all of the riv nuts holding the outer edge of the hacked cover plate. I then carefully lifted the cover plate a little bit at a time whilst cutting through the Rhino line with a Stanley knife until I had gone all the way around. The final result doesn't look too bad.

Umm... People say strange things? https://youtu.be/VXRBjEnpMwY https://youtu.be/-MEn4SMv-4s

Filled about 50 holes in the engine and removed all the brackets I no longer need. Laser cutting a sheet of all the filler pieces made it way quicker and easier! Where the chassis rail kicks up at the firewall is a known place where cracks can form. There was already one about 8mm long on the passengers side. Made some gussets and welded them in. Found some previous repairs around the rear hatch on the body. I think they just ground out the rust spots here and then bogged it up. Cut out and welded new steel in there. Another one here, this time just a piece of steel brazed over the top of the rust holes. Fixed! As well as a few more bits around the seal. Picked up a pair off TA22 Celica fender mirrors from YAJ, that you can kinda see. I think they look good, but hard to tell when half the cars missing. Bought a Estima F series diff. Stripped in right down, cut off all the brackets and then noticed one of the housing tubes was very bent! One end was out by at least 10mm. Had a go at straightening it, wrapped some chain around the tube and some big u-channel, and then used a bottle jack and heat to push it out. Came out pretty good, close enough to then shorten it. Drew up a jig that held it all square and inline. Shortened it by 105mm a side, so it's the same dimensions drum to drum as the factory diff. Bought some MRP adjustable 4-link arms off @Cdarust Got a Altezza Torsen LSD head to swap in. Made some upper and lower brackets for the diff. Borrowed @oftensideways rotisserie. Going to raise the rear 4-link body mounts up. About 50mm higher for the lower mount, which should make the lower arm level and somewhere between 50-100mm higher on the top arm. The angles are currently far too much and I've gone this far so may as well, will be good to get rid of the lower body mounts as they're the lowest part of the car. It shouldn't effect the rear seat too much either.

The old pics in your build thread don’t work. Can you put up a pic of the whole car so we know what all the people are talking about in your hidden camera vids?

If you have new seals, put them in. Put rubber grease on the inner lip.

My first thought was to try to uncover the heads of the bolts with a die grinder. Instant fail. Gotta tell you that Rhino liner is pretty tough stuff. Sticks like the proverbial. Looked underneath and discovered that the bolts fix into riv nuts, so thought okay if I can cut the riv nuts off with an angle grinder I should be able t punch whats left of the bolts out from below. Only problem is that the steering box is in the way so you can only get to one of the riv nuts. At this point I was getting pretty desperate and figured the easiest way forward would be to hack the cover plate to get the steering column and box out and then take to the riv nuts once the box was out of the way. With the steering and gear shift columns in place surrounded by the floor mounted clutch and brake pedals there isn't much space so I carefully drilled a whole lot of little pilot holes around the edge of the cover plate then followed up with a larger drill bit to overlap the holes. With the holes drilled all the way around and a straight line cut across with my tin snips it was easy enough to pull the remains of the cover plate out. Not one of my proudest moments, but needs must and I reminded myself that I'll need to fabricate a modified cover plate anyway as the HiAce steering and gearshift columns are much further apart than the Thames ones. The remains of the cover plate captured for posterity.

Thats a cool shot on the beach there Rusti. pretty amazed that you would put the wrong hood on your 2022 dodgy wofed electric car tho WHO WOULD DRIVE THAT

After morning smoko I thought I would crack into the next step of the "proof of concept" so I headed into the back garden to retrieve my mock-up 4Y motor out of the back of my second Toyota donor van. Loaded the motor onto my trusty wheel barrow and moved it under the back carport so that it is out of the weather. Grabbed the loose Toyota gearbox at the same time. First order of business was to take some measurements to see if the mighty 4Y will fit in the puny Thames engine box. Results of prelim measurements are as follows: Mighty 4Y - 510 mm wide at widest point. 670mm long from back of block to front of viscous fan. Thames - 505 mm wide at widest point. 654 mm long from back of block to front of fixed fan blades. So from the look of the width I should just be able to squeeze in the 4Y. From a length perspective I suspect that I may need to ditch the viscous fan on the 4Y if I'm going to retain the original Thames radiator. Nothing that an electric fan can't fix if this comes to pass. I still need to take some comparison measurements of the two gearboxes but I'll do that tomorrow.

It’s been over a year since I’ve posted about the ford. I Have only just gotten it to the stage where she can be driven. The brakes took me so long to do.And all I did was replace the master, wheel cylinders and brake lines. Gave it a good clean and enjoying it before something else brakes on it.

Cab off and away last night for wood rot repair. We are thinking of not painting the cab until after it's re-registered so the chassis tag & WOF sticker etc are undisturbed to make the process as smooth as possible. Now that it's short enough it can fit in the garage and we can hoist the engine out & get the chassis cleaned up. Keen to do some laps in its current state!

Ok is not that fast just faster than it was, and spin wheels friendly. Did a gps accel test, 0-100 in 12 sec.. Does rev out a whole lot more tho, excited to go for a big drive.

I never use gaskets other than head gaskets obviously. I use copper max or whatever derivative is on the shelf, super small bead and smear that around maybe 1/4mm without leaving dags anywhere.. Then I finger/nip up the bolts and leave it for a couple of hours then torque up.. If there's an o-ring supplied I use that..

With the cover plate now mostly out of the way, dropping the steering column was pretty straight forward. You can see from the pic below that the pivot points for the three levers that control the gear linkages are actually built into the steering box housing.

Today's task was to remove the old steering column, steering box and column gear shift as it's a single unit. So I lifted the floor mat in the drivers footwell as the first thing that needs to come out is the steering column surround plate that is bolted down to the floor. Now it's at this point that things start to get interesting. Firstly a little bit of background information. The previous owner bought the van to use as a delivery van for a flower shop that his wife was starting. They thought that a quirky delivery van would make a good marketing tool for the shop. Since there were going to be water filled buckets of flowers slopping around in the back they wisely decided to get the entire rear floor Rhino lined. At the same time the Rhino team lined the two front footwells. What would have been nice is if the boys at Rhino had pulled out the fixing bolts and lifted the inspection plates before sealing the floor, but that would have been to much work I'm guessing and why would you give a toss about the poor bastard that has to maintain the vehicle into the future. So the result is that the four little star headed bolts had been neatly covered with a 3mm thick coating of Rhino line and you couldn't even pick up where the lip of the panel is. FFS !

Here's the master cylinder rebuild: I won’t go into great depth of each step, as they are quite well covered by various workshop manuals (I referred to the Haynes manual, as well as the instruction from the rebuild kit for guidance). Here is the master cylinder in place in the car, of course to do the rebuild we need to remove it. To remove it, disconnect the brake lines from the master cylinder (I used some plastic bags and tape to cover the ends of the lines), but before doing so, remove as much brake fluid as possible from the reservoir (I used a syringe). To provide better access to the line in the middle of the master cylinder, I removed the power steering reservoir (only two bolts), that made life a lot easier. Then you remove two nuts attached to the brake booster and it should come away. Don’t forget to disconnect the brake fluid senor wiring. And here is the removed master cylinder and reservoir. Also, I thought I’d put a photo up of the kit box, just in case anyone is interested, also has the supplier’s details too. To remove the reservoir from the master cylinder, the holding pin needs to be removed (referring to the photo below, it’s in the bottom of the ‘V’ of the reservoir outlets). I found this extremely stiff and took quite a bit of effort from using a hammer to knock it out, you’ll also need a dowel or screw driver etc with which to tap it through the master cylinder casing and finally remove. My advice would be is take your time. The reservoir should then pull away with a bit of effort from the rubber grommets on the inlet ports (which in turn need to come out too). The next step is to remove the two pistons within the master cylinder, these are held in place by a pin that passes through a slot on the primary piston and through to the other side of the cylinder casing. The Haynes manual notes that a magnetic should be used, but the image shown isn’t very clear/easy to understand (well to me at least). To access the free end of the pin, you need a magnet that can fit into the inlet port, I did not have such a magnet (I tried a magnetic tipped screw driver, but this wasn’t strong enough). Not really wanting to get off my arse and buy a suitable magnet, I improvised, borrowing one of the magnets on the wardrobe door lock (the type that you screw into the top of the door and other in the door frame) and ‘attaching’ one of my socket drill bits to it. This worked nicely. With the pin removed, a gentle tap of the master cylinder on some wood and the pistons came out. Here is the disassembled master cylinder (note in this photo the piston locking pin is missing). As you can see, (an assumed) 33 years have taken their toll on the inlet rubbers. Here is what you receive within the rebuild kit, I used all the new parts, apart from the piston locking pin. The original one didn’t have the chambered edges and I preferred that. I inspected the bore of the master cylinder and couldn’t see or feel (as far as much fingers could reach) anything that jumped out at me as being suspect, so proceeded with the rebuild. Here the secondary piston is being installed, after the primary one. Care should be taken when placing the pistons into the cylinder, the instructions with the kit covered this well, stating that they should be slightly rotated combined with slight up and down movements (don’t want the spring to score the bore etc). Also of course, apply clean brake fluid to the pistons prior to installing them and also note the position of the slot on the primary piston, as to ensure that it lines up with the opening for the pin. And here is the master cylinder rebuilt, just awaiting for the reservoir to be installed. I don’t have a photo of the completed one with the reservoir in place, it must have slipped my mind, as at that point I really fancied a beer!

Well.... 6 years have passed and I've done totally fuck all to this besides drive from brotown to up in a far less corrosive environment on a section in Mt pleasant and then watch it fall into total disrepair. Needs a fair amount of rust cut out to make it road worthy again, and of course mechanical repairs. Have mate doing the body repairs as I have zero time to give it but went up there this arvo to try and move out from its resting place for the last 3 yrs. Bit of gas down the carb and a jump and it fired right up then died while it tried to prime the carb so three attempts and of it went. Took a bit to get it to move as one of the rear tyres was totally flat but again, once I managed to roll it over it propelled itself along as good as it could.. even idled after it warmed up.. Amaze Some pics...

First part of the exhaust done. Now have to figure out what to do with the wastegate pipe Easiest would be plumb it straight into the pipe behind the turbo. When I did the last one I made a mistake blending it into the pipe at too shallow of an angle and it was very difficult to weld. It never cracked and it never had a flex joint between the gate and pipe...but it had a heap of weld in it Input on whether a flex joint is required would be appreciated if you have done it before Other option is run a separate pipe to down by the trans then into the main pipe but I'm a bit short of room

Motivation = 110% currently Front guard repairs this time - repairing what "Patch Adams" has done in the past Discovery phase: 10mm+ of Bog!! Past repairs Only one option - cut it all off and patch it up weld it together And - patched - now to find time to prime and fill the small hollows..

Still on daily duties. The datsun club had a meet at Levels in Timaru last weekend and we did a few laps of the track during lunch break. Didnt miss a beat. then on Saturday night I was thinking of excuses to avoid this respray, and essentially had nothing so on Sunday I stripped it and started undrilling the roof. Not too many nasties, really stoked the side rails are mint considering. It has bust out on both front corners, prefect time to slice this out! The new roof skin weighs 8kg. The red one was 15kg. The amount of bog truely is astounding, and I gave it a layer of rhino-liner on the inside to assist in strength.. and a full size piece of dense underlay because I didn’t know if it would drum. Gonna be so good to not have to drag that around! Won’t be running the towbar next time, so minus another 12kg easy. the bootlid is from the old nickM race car, it’s really really fucking tidy. No rust, one small ‘depression’ near the lock, and came with nice bolts and a nicer-than-my-current lock mechanism. Big thanks again to nick for that, the red one had a lot of time, rust repair and bog in it, and wasn’t in nice shape. I have a fair few areas I’m going to re-do but I’m not going to let this drag out. Will be done before the weather cools down again

But first, more important things! As I don't have radio, I've just been plugging my phone into this 222Wattts of retro power! With speakers in the front now, I was keen to get them going, luckily I have two 222Wattts amps. After way to much time trying to somehow fit them both under the back seat, I realize there's heaps of room behind the back seat, I was going to but this behind the back seat. But, without drilling holes in my floor there's nothing to anchor it's considerably weight to. So. Ye ol 6x9th, shall suffice. Tidied up the wiring. Been fiddling with settings, running the low pass on the 6x9, not bad. Had a stupid idea of just mounting the sub like the 6x9s as that rear area is pretty good box. Took the family out for a drive over to Devonport, they weren't that thrilled about not taking mums limo. Well not limo, but a 04 Odyssey is infinitely more comfortable that this tiny smelly noisy little car. Started off great, got on the motorway, had gone about 2kms and the engine stuttered and we're outta gas! Fortunately I always carry spare gas. Are we making memories yet! Had a swim and drove home our wet toggs with an ice cream, i always have to turn the car off a drivethu, cant hear the little man in the box! By the end of the day we all a most excellent day out.

Spacer: So after all those drastic mods I was at this stage running the final version of the bastardized random unknown pipe and now on a 24mm PRC Maikuni Flat Slid Carb. After a chunk of trial and error tuning I observed a massive increase in power, and the rev limit went from topping out at 7k to zipping past 11000rpm (where I sook out and change gears). Unfortunately, these are only balanced for 6000rpm... so now your hands go numb and every bolt on the frame comes undone in seconds. Its also still painfully slow compared to the stadard FXR150's. So for now its back in the laboratory while I finish welding up the pipe and pull the crank to balance it. While I've got it apart I will take some more off the barrel to get the squish down, and if funds allow, I'll re-bore it and might look at fitting a new piston to get better ring options, RG500 thingy's look like they might be a good fit. That's the whole story up to date now. Edit: you can see in this photo how pissed the piston is sitting on the barrel. This is because of the 10mm cut from the skirt on the inlet side with my precision 5" grinder.

3D scanned with an xbox kinect 3D camera and then modelled using solidworks sheet-metal

Next up was to get onto some fibreglassing. As I had moved back to New Plymouth and was much closer to Blackwood manor and hence the original MC19 tank, I stuck the glued foam abomination on the top shelf in my workshop and took a mold off the original tank. Not having done any fibreglassing before, I massively over did it, its about 10mm thick in places where the sheets folded over themselves and weighs nearly as much as a steel one I scored a TZR250 race tail section off the buy and sell but it was massively wide, so I cut about 125mm strip out of the middle and glassed it back together. This left it with a cool pointy tail thing going on. About this stage we got the racing off the ground. Our first real event we invited the bucket racing guys from wellington and had an awesome field of about 15 bikes, this was awesome as it really got some hype going for us and we built numbers very quickly. We have a solid 9 or so bikes turning up most club days now and only a year in. We had a roll of red duct tape that was nearly a perfect match for the existing red paint on the tail and front mudguard, so for most of its racing so far the bike has been liveried with tape. Great from afar but far from great.

A bit more shed time had a racey light weight tail frame made and Ali-expresses finest pit bike tank mounted. I then started shaping some foam to make a tank cover as the Duke had other plans for the original CBR tank and it was on the northern island. This bike has been treated to only the finest of chinese components. Fork seals, levers, brake pads etc. The brake pads are actually bloody brilliant!

If using ae85 dash wiring... do you have a wiring diagram for it? i had a bit of a google but only found ae86/4age stuffs. ie original toyota workshop manual to download and engine manuals https://www.hachiroku.net/servman which covers the efi wiring but couldnt see reference to the 3au emissions ecu specifically . its reasonably easy to trace wiring once you've got a matching diagram to follow But id be wary of splicing into power to an ecu that is half disconnected from the engine without knowing where the wiring comes from?! (Emissions ecu). Generally a fat white wire going into a fuse box is the 12v+ power feed and is only fused at the battery which needs to be stepped down in fuse size to be safe. So yeah can use the Stop fuse for constant power. I dont see any reason not to use that plug-in fuse splitter thingee. even better if it uses a 2nd fuse to power the splice. chuck a 15amp fuse in for ecu BATT pin and job done. Im thinking the 30A ign fuse is too grunty for ecu power source. Do you plan to setup a "main relay" as per ae86 wiring? then basically wire it as it would factory? There's a few things that get power from it in the 86 wiring and its good to share the load instead of running it all through the ignition switch. I havent had a geez at ae92 wiring diagram but will need to identify if coil and injectors are powered by a relay or via ignition switch. 86 diagrams seem to show both coming from the switch but i recall ae101 had a bunch of stuff on one and a bunch on the other. had black/orange and black/red wiring to differentiate between the two power sources in ecu loom. One (assumimg switch) came out of the fwd loom around the front end of injectors whereas relay power came out at the fwd engine bay fuse box. Also, the +B and +B1 pins on the ecu are joined together on the circuit board so only need to supply one of them with switched power from either a main relay or ignition switch via 15A fuse.

Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet, been busy with mrs car, change of work, wee motorbikes and then lazy. i did do the H165 diff swap! My boss went away for 3 weeks and left me his car so I took the opportunity to sort it then. No great pics but after I cleaned it up I hit it with some black zinc and then spare 2k black my flat mate was using. black zinced the springs and bolts and brackets and shit, swapped the shoes and cylinders etc over, cut the old shock mounts off and welded to new diff, swapped the hose mount to opposite side, tidied and swapped hard lines and handbrake cables and made a small bracket to move the cable mount about 50mm across. Cbf cutting it off and rewelding and painting again. had to shorten and balance driveshaft using the larger rear flange off Ute to suit the new diff. Also scored a factory style output seal for the box with the the steel shell through a supplier at work. i don’t like the new ratio ill keep an eye out for a different head I guess. Have spent ages adjusting the brakes and starting to get somewhere. Then a yarn cam up of a NOS roof skin in a blokes shed roof. calls were made and it showed up a few weeks later. Was damaged in transit yonks ago and the guy tucked it away for a rainy day. well everyone knows my roof is fucked from a fire way before bart and I had this so it’s forever changing shape and now the bog has cracked. Time to re-roof it. Now because it’s a datsun, of course the cunt was rusty despite never touching a car and being dry its entire life.. It had a few dings and scrapes but most hammered out well, the rest will be done when it’s stuck to the car so I have some rigidity. i buzzed it All back and wire wheeled the Deep bits and hit it with 2K epoxy etch to seal away the baddies. The inside was much better so just got rust converted after wheeling. sorry to the neighbourhood for 90 minutes of this bitch singing on the panel stand, very harmonious for a Good Friday. so yeah, dunno when I’ll attach it now. Means I should do new rubbers and change to a better screen, a real headlining at the same time too. $

Pics up on the facebook page. meet started off a bit quiet with a sprinkle of rain on the drive in. Didnt rain though, plenty cars turned up and i ended up getting sunburnt, again. was a good meet! some dickheads ripped up the tarmac though on the way out. not cool

Id suggest option 2 on the rear arch patch. easier to hide the weld when it's on the arch and flat panels are more likely to warp when welding (would pretty much guarantee it will). Dab each stitch weld with a damp rag to cool it and weld in different areas to let the previous weld cool. otherwise that panel will buckle.

https://www.facebook.com/events/192124088008602/ When: Sunday 21st January 2018. 11am - 2pm. (starts thinning out by 1pm usually) Where: University Ave, Massey Uni Campus, Auckland. middle tier carpark outside 'The Ferguson' bar. Cruise meetup points at the usual places... Greenlane McD's and Westgate outside ASB, 10.15am, depart 10.30ish. Someone in attendance gather those there and make call to depart. For previous meet galleries and FB posts.. www.jap-olds.nz

Re chain tensioner... just checking that you know it is adjustable? rattle upon startup can often be cured with a tighten. 5kg of force on the spring loaded piston in the end of it should move it 0.5mm. (after rotating the crank clockwise to put the chain slack on the tensioner side). also the tensioner are cast iron and break easy so no tapping or leaning on it. Do you has 18rg workshop manual?

sweeet meet guys n gals. cheers! and even the weather turned out well considering the carnage the preceeding night eh. ps.. alistair your 20 fricken rules!

today is the day

Gona be a scorcher today. Wear sunscreen!

Advertised on the following forums: Oldschool.co.nz toyspeed.org.nz zclub.co.nz MR2OCNZ NZGem NZDatsun SCONZ Post up if you know others of interest

cant update original post Place: Massey Uni Albany, University Ave, outside 'The Ferguson' bar. Date: Sunday 18th Jan 2015, 11am - 2pm Map: https://maps.google.co.nz/maps?ll=-36.733106,174.703518&spn=0.000955,0.002064&t=h&z=20