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In keeping with the 'factory improved' theme I'm running with, I located an old 12a twin dizzy rotary engine to rebuild. It was near complete which was a big bonus. I also pieced together a dummy block to mount into the car after sourcing the correct engine crossmember, so I could start sorting all the ancillaries etc. Stripped the motor down, cleaned up and bead blasted the alloy parts ready for modification. The last pic shows what factory improved means, more on that later, but you can see already what Ive had to deal with, its not a survivor "OG" car, i do like to see original l

painted the spoiler and put it on. i think it looks ace. the other thing i did was to move the rear flares up to suit the wheel and match the arc better. something i wished id done ages ago. moving the flare allowed me to move the wheel out a bit more to fill the guard, it can easily go a bit more and ive ordered some wider spacers for the back. 2020-04-22_03-10-59 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-04-22_03-11-06 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-04-22_03-11-19 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-04-22_03-11-29 by sheepers, on Flickr

Got the truck back together and driving now. Have put the running boards back on and shes nearly ready for vin! Took it for a quick jaunt up the road to grab a couple photos last night. Heres a couple of before and afters of the whole truck before/after rust and dent removal.

We spent a few days panel beating, block sanding and roughing in the body work. It's now ready for filler primer but have to wait til after lockdown to get materials. Overall it wasn't too out of shape. The worst bits being the beaten up front guards and rear passenger door took a fair bit of time to get the body line straight.

Also, here's the front end all back together with the new grill

Decided after tuning the carbs to the best I could, and spending a day cleaning it, that an essential drive to the super market was needed. I may have stopped to take some photos too! Doug out the contents of the glove box... hopefully what Ive done in the last few weeks hasn't void my warranty! I decided to remove the bumper over riders, so so happy I did. transformed the front and rear of the car. Also sanded cleaned and painted the front grill and the horns that sit in behind the lower valance. Also painted the tow eyelet. Alot of things had crappy over spray on the

Gearbox! Located a factory Rx2 4 speed, and have completely stripped and replaced all bearings, synchro's, seals etc. Bead blasted the casings, clear coated them and re-plated the rest.

At the start of lock down hell I wrote a list of things to get done, which is further up the page. I have been knocking them off bit by bit, or at least getting to the point that I need to buy stuff. Old fuel pump removed from the tank and new on e fitted. Turns out the connectors inside the tank were corroded when I started checking before putting everything back together. I had anther tank off an earlier car (VR commodore from memory) and this had a better set for the wiring. New pump swapped over to the VR pickup and all checks out with a muliti meter. Thought I would check out the fue

I had some sharnes with @scooters recently about old FMC log skidders, I was saying that as a kid a friend of Mum and Dad had a friend who worked for FMC and gave us lots of promo material etc and that Dad had made a wooden toy based a FMC skidder that had been a huge favorite when I was little. I asked Dad to send me a photo of it to pass on to Scooters but I think Dad's a bit bored and he went next level on the photos. They are too cool not to share. So to clarify I didn't make any of this stuff, Dad did 30 plus years ago.

Made some progress yesterday. Fitted cam, valves etc, torqued things up and set plug gap, points gap, timing and valve clearances, and tried to start it. Had spark so thought it's be easy. Nope, kicked and kicked and kicked till I was a sweaty mess without even the slightest cough. Was wondering if timing was 180 degs out, then checked spark again and very weak, so had a think... That's right, these things need a good battery to start, checked and 4V. Doh... Chucked it on charge and decided to drain the old fuel for good measure, plus a new plug. Barried up another battery and was rewar

Oh, I was contacted by a Japanese journalist and it also featured in a magazine in Japan, the author sent me a copy..

Teaser: Now interestingly enough a certain someone @Roman had some interesting comments on this engine in 2007 on another forum. and than went onto have a long discussion about the merits vs the BEAMS

Best i get on to fixing the yellow machine. Hopefully 3rd time lucky she makes it to the end. Not trying my luck with points this time, CDI conversion here we come.

Hey you giant legend @Thphantum. Keen? Well be starving on the side of the road without you. Much love, Everyone. X

Gotta do an essential shop before any more work on the tray or body mounts. Next biggest pile that's in the way in the shed is the VS engine and trans. Pulled the 4L60e off and degreased it Dug out the bits I already ordered for it at least 12 months ago Shift kit, corvette servo, uprated 3/4 clutch pack, improved pistons, also fitting a temp sender and a drain plug to the pan. Probably I will now order a whole seal kit because I don't want to pull it out and apart again.

So this thing has never had a back seat since it has been in the country. I just bought one along with matching belts, etc. ex-Japan. Who knows how long it will be for the container to arrive but if nothing else it will be a little bit more saleable with a rear seat.

After a bit of comparing I've found the drum hub and disc hub are the same apart from the top balljoint tapered hole being bigger in the 2nd gen and the thread being different for the wheel bearing nut/split pin. The drum backing plate and the disc backing plate (has caliper bracket mounts as part of it) use the same bolt flange, and the wheel bearings are the same. So I can keep my arms and steering and just bolt on the disc backing plate, calipers, rotors/hub. done some measuring and it looks like I need to copy my mates booster tube, I'm just not going to shorten mine as much as

Been a while since I've updated this. Decided to do a cold airbox around the existing filter. Made no difference to intake temperatures, still up around 40 degrees, i suspect it's heat soak through to the filter plate where the sensor is mounted. I've been struggling with keeping the rear brake temperatures down, and it's been meaning the front have been doing more work and they started getting a bit hot and micro cracking. Also into the hairpin which is where the brakes are the hottest the car just hasn't felt like it's slowing as fast as it should considering

The chrome had definitely seen better days... I really wanted to get everything straightened and re chromed before I installed the new rubber I had. however I had come this far so I decided to see if I could restore some life into them. Lots of grime and service rust... a few hours with some #0000 steel wool and hey presto! Looking pretty damn nice. good enough for now, thats forsure! When I did the suspension I also installed new outter tie rod ends, after doing my best to match them up the original measurements, I quickly found out my new ones wer

Phase 2... Its always driven me nuts, how the 240z sits nose up. After looking through and reading hundreds of threads about spring options for the Z I settled on a set of Vögtland springs. There is a seller on ebay who sells them in the US combined with staag shocks. I couldnt find much info about the shocks, however at the time I purchased them back in 2017 I was trying to ball on a budget. I will most likely look at some adjustable replacements in the future, but for now they will hopefully sort my visual problems! Added to the list : Clean up and paint the calipers, new

I’m in! @Duke Blackwood will be keen and we might try and get Bucket Barry to leave his rolling workshop behind and ride a bike

Alright, alright, alright! Without knowing what the rest of the year has up its sleeve, how about we try have a thing to look forward to. Subject to change possibly, who knows! Would anyone like to go for a bike ride in late November 2020? 27, 28, 29? Being rather busy at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, this time round I propose we just do last years route in clockwise direction. What you reckon? Friday 27th will take us from near Ohope, through Opotiki, the Old Motu Road, Whakarau Road, into Gisborne. Party on Garth, Party on Wayne. Saturday 28th will ta

So as has been guessed it's a Honda K20a Euro R motor (Basically same as Type R, but more on that later.) These only come in fwd layout, so obviously that's going to make things challenging. They came in the following cars So Why Change? The 3SGE Beams Blacktop is a good engine, it's been very reliable and I've had no issues, however when you look around there is very few of them around the world which means the aftermarket support is limited and there are very few experts with them. CelicaRA and Harris Engineering (Previously Lyn Rodgers) being the main ones who have an

hooo leee shit yeah

Well i went to finish fitting the airbox and for some reason it no longer fitted as it should (motor has been in and out a few time since then.) So this led to me redoing something i wasn't 100%happy with.... The way the motor sits so i lowered the mounts as far down as i could and cut the top of the tunnel off and made some 20mm spacers to lift the gear box up.. Now it sits so much better and the gearbox to driveshaft to diff is a better angle ..... As for the airbox not fitting as it use to (had an idea i was planning on doing to this anyway as the box is solid mounted and the trump

The top of the door cards has been falling apart for a long time now, and the parcel tray carpet was turning to dust from all the UV. I managed to send them away & get them back before lockdown, Derrick at NZ Vinyl did a great job at a great price. The central locking hadn't worked for 5 years, turns out the solenoid contacts were just rusted out. Some cleaning & spare parts brought them back. It now locks the doors above 30kph again which freaks passengers out! That's pretty much all I can do from home. After the lockdown its off to work for me

Little bit of end of the day progress. Funny how a bit of blue masking tape makes it look like you know what you're doing. /I don't know what I'm doing

Hah, had a tonka once.. Dad got it from the dump cabless , made a cab out of some 4x2s and painted it with timbacril.. Loved that truck.

In my box of spare parts was a new water temp sensor. Was looking forward to finally knowing how hot the car was getting... had been just playing it blind for years. Unfortunately at this point my documentation of the process left much to be desired. I spend around 7 days covered in grease polishing things and didnt really pick up the camera, so now we skip to the after images. I painted the fuel rail the runs around the valve cover black with some paint I found in the garage, I cleaned and rebuilt the carbs, new plugs, new plug wires, new cap and rotor... The new JDM balan

Gonna chuck down and expression of interest in this one aye. Will see how Employment and the year pans out

So next question is what Gearbox to use? J160 + get adapter made to suit. MX5 6 Speed BMW S2000 AP1 S2000 AP2 There are pros and cons to each I ended up going for the S2000 AP1 gearbox. Here's why. J160 has no aftermarket internals support, basically you stuff one, you throw it out and replace it + cost to make adapter + flywheel. MX5 basically same as J160. BMW, I stay away from Euro so no thanks. That left the obvious choice of the S2000 AP1 or AP2 boxes. Pros: Lots of adapters from different companies to bolt them up to. Sold in the USA, means

I like bikes and men.

I mean not bad for a complete random pile of parts hahha

Will be interesting to see how this fits height wise in a starlet engine bay. Beams motor is annoying for tallness but K is a bit more again I believe. But maybe not so bad with a 20 instead of a 24. Hopefully works out well without too much trouble but my understanding is you'll probably need a sump made too. I'm genuinely looking forward to an honest comparison of beams vs K motor in the same car, same dyno etc etc. In terms of power, weight, how it drives, yada yada. It's so hard to get genuinely comparative information without so many external contributing factors making a dif

True. The more I think about it, spending $80 and having it all done in a couple of hours is looking much better than pulling the diff, replacing bearings and seals, changing the handbrake cable and lots of fucking around.

Great weather to push her outside & get stuck into the interior. The ECU fits nicely above the glovebox where the 5M ECU would have gone on the EFI model. Then the airbox can go back in and the relay box and fan controller/diagnostic port fit on nicely. Feels good to finally have the engine wiring complete! I'm still getting fault codes for the missing trans computer unfortunately. They are dormant in the ECU but they throw the check engine light up when the engine is revved up. I have heard it's possible to wire in an old Surf trans computer to keep it happy, but it might be easier at thi

It's not a cheap swap, but there is some stuff that would make it easier, I will be very detailed. I can't weld so the main fitment will be done by Bert @ palmside exhaust done by JPW Performance and I think I can do the rest with off the shelf parts. Feel free to ask away here happy to answer questions, I am working with Speed Science on giving them updates for their facebook, so I can't get ahead of those, but I can be a lot more detailed here. 2L K20a Type R motor The rear sway bar made a huge difference, the car was so much flatter, even with the valving wrong in t

can be done. need to change to the disc rear end axle bearing and seals they have a different seal width to accommodate the difference in backing plate thickness, bearings and seal kits from vk v8 sailsbury commodore should work

Yeah I think I was born a foamer. Cup hook towing eyes for the win! When we get back to level 3 I'll get them all out for a truck and tractor show.

An excessive amount of welding and grinding later And then I found out you can just buy a replacement panel So I did that lol can you imagine Gave it a quick hammer and dolly before 2 coats of durepox. Pretty good tbh, I'll give it some final tweaking when it goes back on the tray, but I think some fill primer should get it 90% there

I pulled the valve cover and went to town with some scotch bright and steel wool. I decided against going wrinkle black, wanted to keep it more original. This photos are after many hours of degreaser, scrubbing and water blasting. The inside of the front guards were covered in a thick layer of 50 year old dust and crap. Amazingly the head is silver!!!! and some of the block is blue... One day I will pull the engine and re build it, for now though, limited skills, fuck all tools, by myself in a garage, this was as far as I was going to go. Its amazing what elbow grease can d

I forgot I had this spoiler. The homes it came with were in stupid places so I drilled some new ones and welded up the old ones. I fitted it to the car then blazed some more primer on it. Tomorrow I'll give ir a sand and put some colour on it.

registering hopeful interest/availability

I wanted to install a fan on the intercooler as it is in a fairly low airflow position and in my head one way to lower the EGT's would be to actually have the IC do something. With this in mind I managed to wrangle a 10" maradyne 24v fan from one of my suppliers, this arrived on Friday. Some skinned knuckles and swearing got the intercooler out of its position without having to remove the deck, just the one deck panel and some mesh from the front, but it wasn't fun. Just as well the fan is reversible as I had to change it to a pusher configuration, as this was the only way this assem

Yes hello I would much like to attend this on the forztard Hopefully 7 months is enough time for the last of my aliexpress parts to show up so I can finish the build

Im gonna go for an early retirement on this one. Strapped some wheels to the back. smashed the throttle some more in the air. helped a little, still nose diving. tried in rwd, surprisingly not much different. pretty close to being out of suspension travel. super unkeen to fix bent truck. Not saying no more jumps, just don't wanna push it any further In saying that i think its done pretty, well for something that wasn't built to do jumps. Now i have a big fuckoff jump in my back yard. what to do with it.. Did I try going faster. yep.. Hit it a

I'm going to commit to this this time. I have a shit RV50, I'm gonna shove a Lifan up it and I'm gonna be there. Or I wont.

Shit yeah. Been chipping away at my Cape special this week too #4 strokes are for wankers

Bit of a before and after of the truck deck from when we first picked it up.