Leaderboard

Then this evening I accidentally spilt paint on it, Luckily it was the right paint, so I left it.

i was worried about the added load to the other bolt once i took this bolt out. 2020-05-03_04-47-41 by sheepers, on Flickr so i did some analysis on the loading. its pretty interesting what results came out from my experiments. ill save you the details but you can bet that things weren't good with that one bolt removed. in fact, according to my calculations the structural loading on the rest of the frontal impact zone, even at moderate speeds, went way past the design loading that the other bolt was capable of withstanding. as you can clearly see from the graphed results, things were bad. stupid graph by sheepers, on Flickr so, what to do? ive been in this situation before, some of you may recall my dilemma with the lower suspension arms that failed due to over stressing one mounting point. you can see the stress point in this xray of the lower member. tooth failure by sheepers, on Flickr there was nothing else i could do. i had to remove the other bolt. and another bolt. and the other bolts. 2020-05-03_04-48-20 by sheepers, on Flickr seeing as how the bolts were no longer stressed and everything was at equilibrium i knew i could rest easy. then i had a thought, since all these parts are now lying on the floor maybe i could tidy them up a bit? so i proceeded to move the mess from the inner guards to the bench. 2020-05-03_04-48-20 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-05-03_04-48-02 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-05-03_04-48-09 by sheepers, on Flickr unfortunately removing the mess from the inner guards left them without any rust protection over the bare steel. ill need to figure out some way of protecting the bare steel...............................

Welcome to the New Year Datsun thread, year of the dogleg.. Work on the new motor stalled due to Christmas break and needing funds for a special Datsun event - Leadfoot 2020. Mid last year I made a few sneaky phone calls and managed an invite for my father to compete in his 1975 Heatway rally car that has been resurrected. As the story goes, a few weeks out from the event, his co-driver convinced Wishart Helicopters (Now Helicopter Line) to sponsor their entry, they stripped the running gear from Dad's 68 1600sss, swapped it into a bare shell and had at it. With only a few pics and good stories left I figured he needed a good event to bring the car out for the first time. While he wasn't near the top of the impressive field of entries, the car ran, sounded and looked the part, We had an amazing weekend which made all the travel and preparation worthwhile. With lockdown now in effect, the motor build is well and truly on the backburner, like alot of NZ, surplus spending is a luxury so i focused on what I had in the shed. This gearbox really tested my patience, advice given was to test everything before fitting, the linkage bellcrank is a tricky beast, it however, was a breeze... This little shi(f)t insert was the source of my pain. Every time I put it together, these would fall out of second gear synchro. Somehow I was slow to learn that the front cover acts as a travel limit for the shift rod, once installed, no problem. Once the box was together and shifting nicely, I popped it back (if only it was that easy on my own!) first test drive and it really did not want to shift 1-2, so out it came (Again) Issue was tracked to the spacers on either side of the sandwich plate bearing, swapped them over, and everything lined up much better - thats the punishment for many months between strip and rebuild! The only saving grace was carpet on the workshop floor, made life much more comfortable. Final lockdown task was cleaning up the centre console from the 200sx the gearbox came from, hot soapy water and plastic doctor, very nice and suits the care 100% Test drive was short lived with a squealing alternator belt, but proved the gearbox was happy, this morning I swapped out the belt for a spare and went for a quick drive, while it ran terribly, a tank of fresh gas brought her back to life. And that brings us up to tucking the car away for the winter, fingers crossed for some pottering about this winter, getting ready for a spring time hoon!

Went to the garage this morning and found the wrinkle fairies had been busy..... Well pleased with how that came out so decision decided on the cam cover. Spot of magic paint, (plus a sneaky beer) and left it in the sun..... Came back 30 minutes later & what is this witchcraft ? Good choice me thinks. I'll let it dry for a couple of days and then have a go at sanding back the lettering. In the meantime I'd better clean the engine bay up. / pics when it's back together.

So when i got the car the dash topper, gauge cluster, centre console had all been black winkle painted. Had a modified factory cluster to fit a set of autometer guages. Black wrinkle paint not really my thing so decided ill put the dash and cluster out and clean it up and repaint it satin black. So pulled the dash out, tried to clean up the topper but wasnt having much success so a quick call to the man @64valiant and will be getting the dash topper over to him to trim in a nice black something. Will repaint the steel part of the dash top while its out too. Got the gauge cluster out to clean that up which also turned into a can of worms. Ended up finding a brown factory cluster with speedo etc to either run factory cluster and flick the volts gauge, mount tacho below dash next to steering column and change the gauges around in centre console so only the ones needed are left. But then after that also found a factory black cluster with no gauges so will have a look how easy its going to be to modify that one (tidly and not wrinkle painted) to fit these gauges back in similar to as they are now. Both of them are on their way to me so will see what happens when they get there and make a plan to tidy it up as best as possible without buying a heap of new stuff.

Underneath. W55 box.

Spent much of the last week measuring and thinking about the manifold for the Carb Conversion. Think I have that sorted, so will try to get some more progress this week on getting one made. I have a spare 1ggte head that turned up this week which has been useful to just look over. Had a manifold flange quickly drawn up so I could figure some small details out. This was for my original plan which was to use two 4age Weber manifolds (easy to buy) and have a conversion flange on the head. Am leaning away from this at the moment. Also attached is the one picture that kicked off the carb idea.

So when i got the car the front and rear bumpers and the grill surround trim were plastidipped black. Not really my thing got to have chrome on a old school car. Managed to peel it all off to reveal very tidy and mint chrome which was a relief. Couple of before and after shots, very happy with the outcome.

Ordered online from the smits group/spray store website. Prices were what I was happy to pay and from the first place I found shipping. No idea if it's the cheapest or best place to get it. I've been flatting back the clear this weekend, gave that bog trick a go and it does work pretty well, but was super slow going. I later went back and re watched the video, he started sanding with wet 320 and said you could even use 240 and best I had was 400 so that's probably why, I was getting worried that the extra effort required to cut down through the filler would end up with me rubbing through the clear on the perimeter of the filler. Didn't happen thankfully. But since I noticed all the runs while I was still painting and stacked on a few extra layers, it's actually been really easy to cut them out with a careful hand and just the wet sand paper. I havnt been able to track down any razors, but I'm not sure I'll need them. Results so far are super good and it's looking like the whole job may come out bloody nice once finished. About 35% done with flattening the car, then have to move through the gritts which will be pretty quick. Then polishing fun, which, fingers crossed will be super rewarding after all the work.

I still have this. Still building it. I get slower at doing things the older i get.

This is how the car has been sitting for the last week and a half.. So this morning I went down there and got busy rust proofing and scotching and prepsoling. And masking..

i didnt like the colour of this bolt. i decided it was the wrong shade of red and you know when somethings gets in your head and you cant let it go? well the colour of this bolt got to me. so i decided to take it out and repaint it. 2020-05-03_04-47-41 by sheepers, on Flickr

Yay! I got some more work done and and update before another year passed! Still not flash when the update at the top of this page (6) is from 5 years and 4 houses ago. Not too bad though when one of those houses was a 2 year sabbatical on a boat with my family and we moved to a new city. Latest house does not have room for Felicity so she is stored at a friends house and it’s been far too long since I have seen her. Thankfully the engine is home so I can make a little progress. Have done some really important things like painting. Then tried to remember how this lot went back together after pulled it apart over a year ago... Bit of beer assisted head scratching and it was easier that I thought. Looks sexy front and centre and has new electronic points. Just hope it works as well as it looks? Had the genius idea of gutting an old worn dizzy and pulling the drive gear off so I can pump up oil pressure without turning the engine Resulting shell on the right. ARP just look so good. looks like someone has given this a bit of love? Valves look a bit larger than standard and maybe some smoothing been done? I was happily surprised that my genius gutted dizzy easily pumped up enough oil by hand to pour out the oil spray bay! I thought I may need to get a drill on the end of it.

Job done, finally.

Hi all, Long time lurker. I brought this car out off Dunedin 2 and a bit years ago, off a friend of mine who id hounded for a while to be able to buy it off him. I brought it Reg on hold, no wof, motor not running, manual swap not quite complete, and the interior in the boot. Car is a Hardtop, with the eagle Mask front end, my favorite combination! A buddy of mine and I drove down, threw it on the trailer and brought it home. Car was originally a 1geu, Auto. It had a 1gge and W57 stabbed into it, but a long way from running. Once it arrived home i reassembled it to see what was missing. A pic form the day i picked it up In the 2 years following that i battled my way through making it run. Someone had REALLY funked up the motor loom, and most of the time was spent chasing that. A few spots of rust were removed, Engine painted and freshened up, engine bay painted (twice god damn it). Interior was re instated, wiring loom tucked, coilovers, bushings, booster delete, proportioning valve, strut brace and eventually a full respray. Among a thousand other jobs December of 2019 the car was certified for everything, luckily it went through with very minor issues. Car as it sits now While in lockdown ive been chasing issues with the factory EFI. I hate this EFI system, it is rubbish. Probably more of an issue because of the muppet who tried to fix the loom for the owner before me, but none the less its been a nightmare. So to cure it, ive started collecting the parts to do a full conversion to side draft carbs. Triple webers seem to be the answer in my mind anyway. Thats all for now, ill detail some of the process in future updates, and specifically the carb conversion. Thanks!

While I’m waiting for my Mk 1 GT 2 Door to come back from the paint shop. I’m going to build this into a rat build. Anyone got any experiance with a satin clear coat over what’s there on the exterior? Discussion: https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/72206-66gt’s-rat-mk-1-cortina/

First job is to get all the suspension out of it and build a dolly for it. I know what engine I will be using in it so someone one will pick it as the build goes.

Pete on a burgman smoking galloise and drinking laphroaig ftw

Next up after getting busted buying flares i got back into working on the truck to get it sorted for Beach Hop. Had a week long break at the end of Jan to go for a boys roadtrip to Muscle Car Madness in Rangiora (if you aint been an like old cars and beers you got to go , its hectic as fuk) Anyway whilst i was away the mrs rustled some mates together to get the car and take it to another mate who knows a thing or two about rotarys to get it going (wasnt going when i bought it) . Long story short was a bit of a mess few things round the wrong way and what not and so got that sorted and got it running. Came home after a week long trip with the boys and got thrown the keys and told to go out to the shed to start the car haha. Nice crisp sounding motor starts mint as hot or cold so pretty happy with that. Will get it on a dyno and checked up and tuned before i go leaning on it too much. Couple of vids of start up and driving Next update coming soon

*build a 2cv based bike

@V8Pete you are required to buy a shitty bike and come on this

We have done a few Fenix at work, all full alloy units. Most seem to be OK, but we have had a couple that leaked out of the box, and one that was physically damaged in the box but the box wasnt damaged. They have been pretty quick to swap out faulty units for us. They are cheap though, so yeah. I wouldn't use one myself, i'd rather pay the money and have a radiator shop recore an original one, or go for a good aftermarket brand if its something more common.

Load testing

I've been chipping away at that corroded boat anchor motor. Bits of it were OK (starter fine, alt could be ok) but the carbs had inhaled water for years, so lots of the motor is junk. I was quite interested in getting the distributor assy off it (have disassembled most of it) but I think the cog / gear wheel at the bottom of the shaft may be corroded solid. I haven't been able to split the engine cases to see in there, even with all the bolts out. I may just give up on it soon. I had hoped to have a spare to match the spare engine I have.

The plan today was to make up some temporary radiator hoses to get it running. Managed to hack out the broken fitting, will buy a new water pump anyway but wanted to do some testing today. Hacked: I then found a fitting that worked, put some rtv in it since the threads were damaged. Again, just temporary. I was going to block off the hose since it is just for the heater But thought I should loop it to the other end. Pulled off the hose from the intake manifold and found it was completely blocked with white powder. It was rock solid, had to drill it out. Ended up having to take the intake manifold off and found it was blocked in the head too. I must be some kind of long term reaction with the brass fitting? That oval recess above the stud in the centre is meant to be open and is blocked with more white powder. This stuff came out easy though. Can now see into the head with no blockage. Need to buy a new intake manifold gasket now. Checked out the intake ports and they look like they could really do with some basic porting. It’s not even uniformly round lol. I’ll compare the gasket to the intake port and manifold runners to see.

G'day. 6 weekly update... A few little things are going to get done thanks to lock down boredom/family avoidance. Engine bay needs a bit of a tidy. It's mostly just dirt but the cam cover & air cleaner look a bit shit. Had the big debate about polishing the cam cover or going wrunkle funnish. Black wrinkle won and was ordered but I thought I'd just mess about with some 3000 grit & a bit of Autosol coz it was a nice day. Looks OK for not too much bother, may just go with it. Sprayed the air cleaner though. Yes, not orange. After about an hour it was starting to crinkle up quite nicely Went out later and it was looking ace. No pics/ it was dark. Sooo..... What's it going to be for the cam cover ? Not sure, I'll choose in the morning /Prace bets now.

Righto.. first quick easy mod.. when I picked this up and spent a couple of days getting to know her, I soon discovered how damn heavy the bonnet and boot are to open due to the body kit. The boot is still on the agenda to be done (fibreglass rod works well for now), but the bonnet was a straight forward fix. Onto eBay to buy this kit from a supplier in Aus. The only thing I did differently was flip the struts compared to the information I was looking at because of the angle of the head at one end suited it being fixed to the bonnet end rather than the guard end (in my humble opinion) Struts in a box: Starting point: Replacing the hinge bolt on either side with one of these: Then the same along the guard.. third bolt up from the front gets replaced: This is where I chose to have the angled head of the strut. Probably could have been on the guard mount, but visually it looks better this way for me: And the end result. Bonnet latch needed a slight tweak for the bonnet to release a lot easier but I don't think that was related to my install. Well worth doing this mod I reckon!

So got sick of looking the primer/bogged rear quarters so spray bombed them with some satin black cause it was hurting my eyes looking at it in the shed till i get it sorted properly. Took it for a drive, couldnt even get it out my driveway without the guard rubbing on the tyre and basically stalling the car. Turns out on further investigation all the load leaves had been flipped to lower it some more, so basically had no spring tension in the rear. Pulled the leave pack apart and put everything in the right place, slightly raised the car but made it actually driveable an doesnt come close to touching the guards now! Couple of pics of it and the springs before unflipping. Yarns here

Been a Veedub fan since my teens, collection stuff that lived in a box for ages, found a bird cage stand and re purposed it as a shrine to the VW. Couple of semi rare items, the red 50/50s one year only Australia and Italy, also some Snowflakes up the top. VW lounge light, used a big valve for the stand, actually casts a VW emblem on the roof above.

I just bought a tandem. It's basically an early 90s mountain bike with an extra seat and crank. It's got hydraulic rim brakes which need a bit of a tickle. I'd like to keep them if they're not too much trouble, but if they're not worth it I'll chuck some V brakes on. Anyone know anything about them?

Actually I’ve got a Peugeot scooter out the back, ....

Best part being the price alright! Was scared to pull it off and find it was rubbish haha ah yes good to know will sort that out, need a few bits and pieces from auz so will add it too the list Sooooooo stretched haha. Bloody hell would of been a task getting them on. Cheers man looking forward to getting the tyres round the right way and getting flares on the back will look alot more together then!

So way back in Feb 2019 on the shuttle foamer group/forum/facebook page I saw a advert for a limited run/pre order of lsd to suit the awd gearbags. I chucked a 50% deposit and waited, and waited. Sent a few emails and had no response. A few weeks ago the guy I ordered with said there was another party also doing a diff and due to some bs they got in first. Plz wait and we'll see if we can get production re run. Today I got a email saying yes we can but it's a 90 day production time due to the plague and steel shortages. So it'll be another 4-5 months before I can give the gearbox to the gearbox guy. I was a bit annoyed with the time frame as I was hoping to get the new engine in and running by then. Then I remembered how long it takes me to do anything on my projects so it'll be fine

I've Wanged a couple fenix radiators into my ex daily and her project car. Both held up fine/we sold them after a year

People like to say a product is shit, but as it's an aftermarket product, you also have to take into consideration as to how it's installed. For example if it is solid mounted to the bulkhead with no electrical isolation and they're running mediocre earths and a 10:1 antifreeze ratio, then it's not the radiators fault it shat itself. Not to say Fenix is or isn't shit, but if it's cheap, chances are so is the install. And the people who have no issues probably aren't as vocal.

After thinking about the rear brakes and asking some questions I decided that drums are going to be just fine, mainly because the wheel cylinders are about $45 each and by the time I did the rear disc conversion I figure I was going to be another $500 - $700 into it. The money insanity has to stop somewhere. BnT had the wheel cylinders in stock so 2 hours on Thursday night saw them swapped over and brakes bled up again, all good so far. No doubt there will be some adjustments once the car is driving.Have to touch up the paint on the diff as brake fluid managed to go all over the place, lucky its only aerosol can black. I also picked up the new battery and re-terminated battery leads Tuesday. Put all that in today and finished off more of the wiring. I stand back and look at it and think that it could be much tidier, and them I remind myself this is not a show car and it is all practical. The instrument cluster and fuel pump/sender unit went to Robinson's on Thursday. They use a crowd in Auzzie to supply modified resistor cars for the sender. Hopefully they have one on the shelf and it will be here in a week or so. Once I have that back the fuel tank can be painted and go in. I'm not keen on painting until the pump is in, bound to scratch it otherwise.. The list is getting much shorter.

Magura rim brakes German made quite strong but a decent set of v-brakes is just as good - they push parallel to the rim not on an arc which is good they use mineral oil not brake fluid - same fluid as shimano discs need syringes and bleed fittings to bleed but I’m sure there is a garden irrigation fitting in right thread rather than spending lots on a bleed kit have a good look at the rims for wear they can put a lot of force on rim and on a heavy tandem with grunty pads they will wear thru a rim quite quick - worth letting tyre down and getting a feel for the thickness of the rim to adjust pad angle need to undo the ALLEN screws a bit to let the caliper move in the housing - wiggle it til it’s lined up squeeze brake lever Check it’s lined up on rim right and do bolts back up quick release lever (schnellspanner in German lol ) is so you can drop one side off quickly to get wheel in and out edit - they look like really old ones maybe even a copy - don’t see a quick release on them and the brace looks bolted solid Pics of whole bike please Anything else ya wanna know ?

Been having a play with new Nextion screen and Teensy 4.0. Both of which are remarkably quicker than older stuff I was using. (But was still good) This time around instead of using all of the premade features you can use in the screen GUI designer thing. Which are a bit limited and inflexible. I'm gonna make as many features as I can by "hand" so I started with an XY graph that's rescalable. So to draw a graph on the screen you just need to specify where it is on the screen, how big it is, and which variables are on the X and Y axis. Then it looks up a table for that particular variable which shows what its min and max values should be. Then rescales everything to suit the size that the graph ends up being. Benefit of doing it this way, is I can just manually add items to the screen in realtime and save the layout. As well as being able to change which values its showing on X and Y axis, I can just save the settings to eeprom. Rather than needing to do it via a combination of the screen GUI program and updating arduino code to match it. Zillions of hours left to go though. haha. But most of the canbus code and my ignition trim code will be directly portable over to the Teensy 4.0 so that's good. And then as per post in the EFI thread I made a little engine simulator thing, that will send/recieve canbus signals exactly how my ECU would. So I can use it as a simulator for testing my screen without having to go to the car to confirm.

Cleaned up some engine parts, brake booster, battery tray, rejetted the idle jets, new gasket for the oil pump, removed and cleaned up the swaybar mounts. I assembled and put the new waterpump on the engine but forgot to put the alternator tensioner on! Removed the assembly and in doing so I had to destroy the new gasket. Happy to know the vnt copper gasket spray works very well. All put back together and assembled the rest of the motor for a start up. Unfortunately it wouldn't catch on any cylinders and a couple of back fires through the carbs. The only thing that has changed is I've leaned out the pilot jets from a 35 to a 32 and adjusted the fuel screws. Will check these and any potential vaccum leaks tomorrow. Have since cleaned up a few more cables. Good old British workmanship. Bonnet stay/post should have been centered.

Then slapped together a "rough and ready" wooden jig that will hopefully hold everything in position while a mate of mine glues it together for me.

I ended up ordering a 2inch aluminium 90 degree bend which arrived earlier this week. Spent a bit of time fine tuning my drain pipe and plywood mock up and then test mounted the SU carb to check clearances. Crappy pics, but you get the idea.

Soo.... Measure all the things. Im loving this already

Take the wheels off add some trellis round the base and a shonky deck off the door......,,

So the shifter housing is real fucking close to the cross member...chassis rail(not really sure what to call it) that goes through the tunnel. It makes it a real bastard to get the gearbox on the engine because you cannot slide it back. You have to drop the engine, and to do that you have to take the engine mounts off. I was going to leave it until much later when I could flip the car over and have easy access. But I decided to do it a different way. I borrowed a piece from the rusty yellow one. Then unstitched the welds to remove the offending side of the cross member Then chopped it up to make myself a puzzle. Then zapped it back together. I started off with the mig, but the welds were such a pain to grind smooth, so I had some more practice with the tig. I made about 30mm more room for the gearbox. I will make the angle bits to join the chassis rails back together when it's on the car. The width of the rails is not consistent, so making them fit this does not automatically make them fit the white one. I'm crossing my fingers that the floor panel pressings are the same.

Because this area can be seen I've decided to TIG it all. Finally getting my head around how to do it with pulse on panel steel, really enjoying it to be honest, very controllable and I can just knock it all down with my body file to leave a good finish. I've yet to decide what my plan of attack is going to be here....

Previous owners thread from well before i brought the car if anyone is interested.

I'm also still got this image stuck in my head

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

Please no rain this weekend... Got my black flap and visited a boat shop for this delicious waterproof push-pull switch in preparation for headlights.