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This week turned in to week after next week so dropping to blaster tomorrow! kinda been in limbo so not much progress (vinegar soaked and painted some clips + bolts) but today I said fuck it and knocked out the first 2 of MANY patches to come. firewall passengers footwell ..and figured since the blaster is passing over, I’d expose these bulges around the shock towers so it’s nice and clean behind. also blasted the crusty bits on the front valence and made a few holes. I just zapped these up and rust killed.

A few minutes with the strip disc and flap wheel turned this... Into this: Amusingly that's not even the side that was leaking. This one is. You can see the peeled off 'patch' and the offending hole that let all of the river go for a spin through the bilge pump. Today's mission is to head down to the metal recyclers and obtain some replacement metal to hot glue in there.

Filing cabinet for a guy at works camper trailer. 2 drawer spun on its side and shortened top drawer. Small drawer for cutlery big drawer for bowls etc and chopping boards down the side. Pretty time consuming but looks sharp. Am making extended cabinet on right hand side for more storage and flush mount for gas cooker.

I got a engine crane for my birthday, so i yoinked the spare engine from the boot out and ripped into it. Its a 115.000c engine which was probably from a Fiat 1500 sedan or Crusader based on a Solex carb it has. This would have been the factory engine in my 125P Ute and is also the 2300 engine less two cylinders, so shares a lot of parts and design It only had three spark plugs, no air filter and no oil cap, with grass seed and mouse nests everywhere, and appears to be seized. Perfect. Remaining park plugs out look not bad, not too bad at all, not bad. Hmmm. Valve cover off, well, would you look at that. Bit of crud under the open oil cap, but otherwise clean I guess? Centrifugal oil filter says, well maybe you shouldnt get too excited, just yet... At this point the effort of getting the crank nut loosened the engine shifted. Some more oil down the cylinders and it moved nearly 360 both ways. Couple of the valves were sticking so Head off, Mouses grass seed and fluff so tightly packed in on the inlet valves it was actually stopping the valve from closing again. Ill chuck it in the vinegar for a bit it should clean up i reckon, no damage, just grub Guess which cylinder had a and a mouse living in the spark plug hole! However thats a pretty new head gasket, can still see the writing A bit more brake clean and the pistons look shiny! Bores are a bit surface rusty in a few spots as expected but no scoring, i reckon a hone might be all it needs. This is after some worn out wet and dry and wd40 for about 20 seconds on the worst bit Need some M12 x 1.5 bolts to put it on my engine stand, then ill remove the pan.

Made a bit of box into something else Its a bumper mount, the front bumper had been removed by a PO and one side was missing some bits. That means i could put the bumper on and finish routing the the wiring from the dash to the engine So i could put the dash back in, and ran a bit of juice though the circuits. IT LIVES! Indicators, dash lights, fan, and wipers all working. TStill some electrical work to do - on the engine side (after i drop it out) need a new column switch so the headlights can works (Ebay, ordered), and to install the new headlight bulbs (stuff in stock). Brake lights use a pressure switch so cant test those yet. So I put the front back together Look at that little face

Got my cast off 1.5 weeks ago and have had bike out for half an hour since then. Have been pretty cautious as after 12 weeks restrained there was very poor muscle control and it felt super super fragile, but grip strength is improving very rapidly. We know this, but god damn shits amazing. In general I don't speed, but like acceleration and the sense of unlimited power- and this thing delivers for sure. Also very easy to see why these end up with huge kms on them compared to most 600-100cc superbikes-so easy to live with and manage. Big trip coming up and so of course i had to make the acquisition of a luggage rack far harder than usual. I had time on my hands and like a challenge, plus thought I could make something a little more aesthetically Drew outline in cad and printed/test fit then made alterations. Had a good friend cut from alloy. Ended up being done from much thicker aluminium than originally planned but this gave me the confidence to get a bit artistic with the design and weight removal. Then got a tiney router bit with tiny 4mm guide bearing and ran it over both sides to cut a sweet chamfer. Its had a fair bit of finish sanding/filing since these pics to remove hard edges, but now want to DIY anodise it dark grey/black. Its turned out pretty good so far I think. Swaps between aero hump/passenger seat/rack in a few seconds just with a key (all other racks use bolts, but they do allow a pillion where as mine doesn't, and they are also big square things with no real thought given to design) Also started it last weekend and had a really loud and alarming clutch rattle. Shut it off pretty quickly, opened up the clutch and ended up loctiting and torqueing all of the fasteners (this particular year omited factory loctite and loose bolts there is a problem) Sounds gone now but research tells me that these things are renowned for having rattles there due to their variable clutch torque limiting shit being pretty sloppy. Anyway, until next time Bye.

I made a forge

Fuckin wow. Those patches. Hole E Shit.

Another quick update, got some welding done on the manifold and did my best to smooth out the ports etc. I am sure the design is far from optimum but I think it will work. I made some more bits to box it in. Now more welding....

Well it's been 2 months of ignoring this thing in the shed and what do you know....it still isn't fixed. 3 trips as passenger in other people's boats has motivated me a little tho. So it's time to flip the hull. I pushed it off the trailer and naively thought I could just roll it over using muscle power with the misses holding my hernia in. Turns out steel is heavy. That's no way my shed could support a chainfall so I got out the trolley jack and a series of wooden props.

Brake bits out of the vinegar bath after a few days and then a quick water blast. Magic! Before and after, everything just washes off like its dirt. Gotta catch the flash rust tho, i spray them with degreaser (alkaline) to neutralize the vinegar (acid) then wash them again, then a bit of rust converter or evaporust before paint.

Right front wheel arch rust removal. Four spots. Will weld plates in this week.

After smoko I slapped it in for a test run. The photo below shows things under full throttle. Much better. Will give the pie cut a quick tickle with my glue gun before I slap on a few coats of Hammerite. Thanks for looking.

There is nothing nicer than a bit of metal carving on Mum's Day, so this morning I fired up my trusty grinder of angles and before morning smoko I had myself a mark two version of the accelerator cable bracket. The two brackets side by side show the difference in style.

Coming together

So a year and abit ago I was looking on trade me and someone was trying to sell a ford Sierra project and after looking and wondering I brought it next step was to get to the north island to get it ,so packed up the family and away we went and I got this!!! Its a Ford Sierra xr4i it has a 2.8V6 cologne engine the person I brought it off was going to make it into an RS replica so I’m going to continue with this theme

Thought I would put up a build of my Ariel, have been lurking on here for a while and have really enjoyed reading the builds posted, both cars and bikes. I've always been interested in motor bikes and had a few in my earlier years, mostly Yamahas, and had always wanted an older bike. Many moons ago where I worked in Ch-Ch there were quite a few guys in the VCC. A couple of them went to Wellington and bought up a heap of bikes from an estate (Brook or Brock Motorcycles?) One guy got a bunch of AJS/Matchless stuff, and the other guy a bunch of Ariels. I had a look through the Ariels and chose a bit of stuff that would be the grounding of a 1937 Ariel Red Hunter. Engine was 1937 and not too bad, frame is about 1946 from memory. Pretty much enough for a complete bike plus extras, but everything needing work. Back then I got a few bits done, girders straightened, oil pump over hauled and most importantly got the engine done. Had it re-bored to suit a wiseco piston from a 350 Chev and new chev valves to suit. Didn't get much more done due to moving towns, young family, seperating from wife etc. etc. Usual shit. So recently life has settled down a bit and I have come into possession of another Ariel. This is a pretty much complete, bit rough, ex farm/hoons bike that has been hidden in the back of a shed for at least 40 years. It's a 1939 500cc Red Hunter. Frame and engine numbers show it as a 1939. It had been used on a farm for a bit here in Ashburton and thrashed, blown up, piston shattered! Then sold, engine removed and stripped, stashed in the back of a shed until a few weeks ago when I got it. Most parts from 1937 & 1939 are all the same. Will post a couple of pictures of the 1939 bike as I got it, 1937 is in bits and all over the place in my workshop.

Still plugging away at fiddly little bits and pieces. My mate Lane was back from his swing this weekend and brought a few hoses and fittings home with him so we were able to mock up the pressure hose for the power steering and complete one of the fluid return hoses. He will take the pressure hose back to work with him so he can crimp it and we just need a short length of 5/8 hose to complete the second return line. The adapter plate that mates the Mitsi power steering pump bracket to the Toyota engine needs a slight bend as the belt isn't running perfectly true at the moment, so I'll take that out and sort it before the big fire up. Talking about brackets I'd noticed that the accelerator cable bracket that I made up a while ago isn't going to cut the mustard. Everything looks fine with the accelerator at rest, but as the pedal is depressed the cable starts running at an angle. Here is a photo of the angle of the cable under full throttle. Not good.

Ecom on pertol? No. Unsurprisingly. Checked its fuel consumption just as a matter of interest pre mods- 15.9L/100 around town and a bit of motorway Went to rotorua today with cruise control set at 100 most of the time, 14.35L/100 It came with a set of headers, so I'll put those on, should try a new thermostat because it seems to run a bit cool, and I should probably fit an electric fan as the engine driven viscous one takes a while to 'unlock' when it's cold Stay tuned for riveting updates on the subject

Cut and reinforced some better speaker holes in the parcel tray. And purchased all new seatbelts so was able to make and have Matt Tig in some OTT anchor plates.

Progress has been slow of late. I've been mocking up the brake hard lines using old lines that I've harvested from my fleet of wrecks. I'm using them just to get the correct shapes and lengths as well as identifying the correct end fittings since I've got a mixture of brake components from both the Thames and some of my donor vans. It's fiddly work, but is worth investing the time to get them right. One of the Thames parts that I will be using is the brake light pressure switch and T piece. It was originally plumbed in to both the front and rear brake lines, but now that I am upgrading to a dual circuit setup I'm going to plumb it into the front circuit only and will blank off the remaining outlets. In other news I've finally installed the second fluid reservoir. I just need to complete the pipes feeding the master cylinder. Once I've got the pipes all mocked up I'll take them along to my local brake and clutch place to have new ones fabricated. Thanks for reading.

Ideally we’ll be blasting the underside and enginebay next week! stripped the heater A/C and junk out because it will never be more accessible/ save some weight baring down on my stupid little wheels and I can clean the mouse shit off. Some time in the past the furry sound deadener has got moist and that’s why there’s crusty bits on the firewall. I had to remove it or it would catch fire anyway. Back out with the face mask and wire wheeled this big kahuna after whipping off the fuzzy shit. Quick black-zinc to seal and savour. That shite I mentioned a few weeks back that I was blowing out of the plenum, there was more in the ducts. Glad that didn’t fire out first time I used the heater! LOL at the gasket never being square since assembly. Classic industries hadn’t provided an invoice or MAF declaration, just an address.. so the crate was just chilling at the depot in California. Took the mrs a couple of weeks to get that squared away.

Today I took the bull by the balls and poked a ruddy great hole in the sheet metal under the drivers seat for the additional brake fluid reservoir. Started with a 15 mm pilot hole which is the size of the bolt on my 50 mm chassis punch. The chassis punch made short work of the cab floor and I then poked the 3 smaller mounting holes for the bracket. I cleaned and painted the second hand mounting bracket that I got in from the UK and gave the new reservoir a few coats of satin black to match the existing one. I've ordered 2 meters of 3/8 EPDM fluid reservoir tube which should be more than enough to plumb the dual reservoirs to the brake master cylinder.

Turns out I'm a moron and those fuel injectors were hoopajooped. Changed the filter and cleaned the bowl, everything was covered in this fine silt crap. I figured of its on the inside of the filter bowl - it's on the inside of the injectors. Then it hit me. What causes detonation, crappy power and chunks to break off a piston - shit fuelling! There was also one time I started the engine and it locked on one cylinder. I'll bet number 4 injector was leaky and that's what screwed the old motor. Anyways, the internet was half divided on whether you could/should run VT-VY injectors on a VS ECU. Everyone agreed they would fit and had the same capacity and impedance....But a solid 90% of posts said you would need a map to suit. One guy posted on the justcommodores forum that he did it and drove around for a few weeks and nothing bad happened. That's the sort of scientific evidence I needed! So on went the VY injectors with fuel rail, pressure reg and a new filter. Drove to the boat ramp, fired it up and boy did it sound quite different. So went for a quick lap and holy shit, it seems so obvious now that things weren't running right before. Have a listen to the engine note and max rpm compared to earlier videos. What an unbelievable difference.

Hang on...what's that sitting in cylinder 4? Oh that's the top ring. Not sure where the missing chunk of piston is but it hasn't ruined the cylinder wall or put any dings in the head. P.S I didn't mention it but this thing did start up and run on 4 quite happily after I got home. Bottom end wasn't knocky and it had oil pressure again.

injectronics are the specialists in aus repairing vz ecus , absolute garbage bosch ecu (they burn up the tracks inside the ecu not really a diy type job on multi layer pcbs) to go with equally as junk rattletec engine, my tuner/programming mate has replaced over 70 ecus in vz v6s in the last 2 years

na i love it, i have bought and sold several "doesn't go" vehicles recently The pile of new parts only sweetens the deal

was thinking about temp sensor for the ecu and where to put it.. couldn't put iy in the factory position as the factory sensor was there for dash temp gauge.. thought about the hole in the head between #3 and #4 inlet port but there is no way with the linkages for the inlet manifold... so then i thought about the frost plug at the rea of the head...there is about 30mm from the rear of the head and the fire wall and when i popped the plug out and measured the depth i had ..that was 60mm from head surface to 34 cylinder wall...........and the temp sensor itself is 60mm long. soooo i garbed a new front plug....gutted it and got some thick pipe and cut that to size and then a washer.....welded it all up and fucking back.......sorted.. andits about 10mm of the cylinder wall. and as paranoid as i am with it leaking and being in a spot that the motor will have to come out if it does....i plasty dipped it twice. tapped it into place and it should be fine. also trimmed the adapter plate for factory temp sensor. .port matched it to the inlet manifold.. port matched the head to the adapter plate (will do for now ...this motor is to only get it all running..i don't have hope for it lasting long)..gave to surfaces some belt sander love ..some lock tight on the socket head screw.....a gasket and some extra sealant and bolted it on the last time .....(well till she epode's ) cheers

so... the painter told me he had a bit of an incident with my car. . . . . . . . . then he said he spilt a few litres of paint on it. . . . . super duper pleased with the result. .

So I skipped a few picture updates. After lots of cleaning, grinding, filing, and making up a seat stay I tripped this off at the paint shop for sand blasting and a coat of black. I picked it up today, really pleased with it. They used chassis black paint which looks spot on in my opinion. Not to bright not too dull. I got the rims done at the same time so next thing to do is rebuild the wheels.

The blue fork boots on the 185 had disintegrated after being ridden for the first time in 20 odd years. IMG_20210426_140223_1 by John Bell, on Flickr AliExpress to the rescue, they're not quite long enough but will do for now. IMG_20210501_131214 by John Bell, on Flickr Annoyingly the rear shocks that I had rebuilt at somewhat of an expense don't seem to dampen very well again, no oil lost so I'm guessing the gas has left. Might have to look to AliExpress for this also. Would like to keep the blue springs though. Have only travelled about 400km on this since reviving it. The jetting on china carb is still a bit off, so will have to experiment sometime. Is nice enough to ride around on though, not fast by any means but would probably tour around at ~80km/h quite happily, will do 100km/h but tach is at 9k by then. Found a gate open close to home and drove up a hill. IMG_20210426_163748 by John Bell, on Flickr IMG_20210426_163800_1 by John Bell, on Flickr IMG_20210426_163817 by John Bell, on Flickr IMG_20210426_163829_1 by John Bell, on Flickr

So bought a very rough CRF50 near the start of 2020. As is tradition, threw a bunch of AliExpress parts at it, and badly painted rusty bits. It probably wasn't safe sitting around here as I was riding it round the lawn at every opportunity. Have lent it to my nephews until my boy is big enough or they get sick of it. IMG_20200213_183639 by John Bell, on Flickr IMG_20200426_151544 by John Bell, on Flickr

Was a bit hung over on Anzac day appreciation day, So I made a fire thingy out of some junk I had lying around

Toolbox art? Well if putting stickers on shit constitutes "art"? Was quite the mission to do and if I did it again I'd probably position it slightly differently...but meh, it works and looks basically like what I had in mind.

Managed to poke a few holes in the spacer for the load compensation valve that I harvested from the Starwagon and its now bolted up to the right hand side chassis leg. I'll leave it in position so I can bend up all of the pipework and I'll then whip it out again for a clean and paint. The two tubes floating about above the valve are my gear shift cables which still need to be bracketed to the chassis leg.

As detailed in a previous post I'm using the original Thames muffler and rear section with a HiAce flange glued to the front of the muffler that attaches to a slightly tweaked HiAce intermediate pipe. The new setup places the muffler closer to the centre of the van and at the time I suspected that I may need to tweak things to gain maximum clearance between the driveshaft and the exhaust. To put things into perspective the muffler sits on the left hand side and the exhaust tip exits on the right hand side of the van just in front of the rear wheel. So as the pipe runs from left to right it has a hoop which in theory should sit directly above the driveshaft. With both items in place a quick check confirmed that the position of the hoop needed some tweaking. I ended up cutting 120 mm of pipe out in order to centre the hoop, but needed my mate Sno's help with the welding as I'm not setup for stainless. Sno did the deed for me yesterday afternoon and its now all back together. With the bit of pipe removed from the centre, the tail pipe no longer sticks out ridiculously and I even gave the end piece a polish for that extra little bit of bling. I might give the end a bit of an extra trim, but I'll leave that for later. Thanks for reading.

Made a light fitting the other day out of some pallet wood and the rods out of a cable drum. Aliexpress WiFi dimmer so you can control it from bed for max mood lighting

Fixed the misfire in the first 2 minutes with no tools or spares required - one injector plug wasn't clicked in properly. Had a good test run and got through half a tank of fuel. It's got a lot more power than before and is a fair bit smoother! One problem is that it seems to be pulling timing and losing power the longer you hold it at full throttle. Coming back to quarter throttle for a few seconds feeds the timing back in then you can get on it again. I think I can hear the knock, oil temps are cold and water temp never gets warm so it must either be a hot spot in one of the cylinders or a fuelling issue. I think I can hear the rattle coming from both banks so the current plan is to change the fuel filter and go out for another run with a pressure gauge on it and the scan tool looking at live timing data.

So after the last outing, I whipped off the RH exhaust and realised there was no amount of sealant that was going to fix this. Took it to the local engine shop and had them mill it flat. The bow was to severe for them to sort out so I got it back with the recommendation to have someone else fix it. So I did. Build up the problem side with a skim of high temp JB weld. Make a ghetto surface plate out of some sandpaper glued to an old floor tile. Refitted everything and headed out to the lake with a bunch of spares and tools and a safety tow boat.

Secured myself a 'new' engine from a VY. Ripped out the old one and spent Saturday swapping exhaust manifolds and intake from the old motor onto the new one. One exhaust manifold was a bit banana and I knew it wouldn't seal but I bolted it on anyways. Ran the motor for a while on the hose with drive shaft disconnected and it sounded good, was a very different exhaust note to the old engine. Went out for a little test at the lake this morning and it had a big exhaust leak and developed an intermittent misfire at part throttle. Didn't want to row too far and had no tools with me so just chucked it back on the trailer. Will sort out that exhaust leak, check all the leads and then try again.

And it seized. Luckily it happened on the way home in a nice flat bit of slow flowing river. Not sure if the oil temps got too high or if something else went wrong...But cylinder 6 doesn't do much any more and the plug is covered in oil. I'm not that sad about it since against all odds, I accomplished my major goal of making it to the Aniwhenua dam outlet. Mr Greer was kind enough to tow me home.

Got the local engineer to spin up a new spacer for me, cleaned everything up and started reassembly. Got some new oil seals and loctite, the packaging was excellent. I glued the front bearing into it's housing with the loctite after cutting some shims to keep it centered in the bore and to electrically insulate it from the aluminium. Discovered a couple of sad threads. I can't quite tell what they were tapped to but some brand new M10 bolts tightened up ok. If I ever put this stuff into a new hull, must remember to get some threadserts installed while it's out. Finished reassembling everything and went for a gentle squirt about the lake to run the bearing in without the engine cover fitted so I could keep an eye on things. Noticed large amounts of oil smoke billowing from the right hand bank. Turns out there's a sneaky hole in one rocker cover weeing oil onto the headers. There's also a lot of smokey blow-by coming out of that hole but we won't think about that for now....we're just going to 'fix' it. Back to the lake tomorrow for a good extended run with VG and J5.

How long before you hit the Kaituna?

Alright.. all confessions, the motors not mounted. Just sitting on strops. how ever the Gbox member is done and bolted it, with the box level that’s pretty close to where the motor will sit. unfortunitly the factory mounts on the chassis are waaay to far forward. And actually interfere with the thermostat housing and alternator. after talking to a cert guy and couple other onto it guys I’ve though best to leave it to someone else. Bloke down the rd does nothing but motor sport stuff and said 1/2 to a full days work, so I’ll leave it to him when he’s got time in a couple weeks. in the mean time, I can finish and bleed brakes, install drive shafts, new hard line for clutch slave location. install hi steer kit. and that’ll get it moving. from there it’s: intake manifold fuel system wiring ECU and tuning. Good feeling to make progress

Looks like a flash as goped house to me!

Kids now have a matching tiny house, that they'll never use (along with all the other shit I've made them that they never use). Finally finished it today.

Never one to waste an opportunity. The concrete I cut up and removed from my shed floor. I've just laid it out for a quick visual and it looks roughly about right. Next I'll remove it, level out a flat base with sand. Lay the concrete back in, then fill it flush with the driveway and tops of the concrete bits using gravel. Something like this ^ This should give me am area to park my hilux or maybe a large tandem trailer in the future if I actually buy one etc...hell, if I get old enough maybe even a camper van?

Barried up the start of a 3" dump for @Raizer van for hero churbo diesel spool noises

And finished: Then I sandblasted the handle for contrast and texture, and polished an edge on it sharp enough to cut you just looking at it! Posers photos below: I'm happy with it. Something unlike most knives people make at home, which was the goal.

Made a start on this, then decided that drinking piss and talking shit across the fence with my neighbours was more important than working on this. Will finish when less drunk.