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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.

Hi all . Back in 1992 i built myself a Mk1 Escort rally car, i used this car for a couple of years before barrel rolling it in Woodhill forest at a rallysprint. After sourcing another shell i reshelled the car and did events in it till '99 when i parked it in container while i went on my OE. Fast forward 20 or so years... So after a gentle nudge from my partner that went along the lines of " You should do another rally before you're 50.." So i started to unearth my Escort ( it has been out of the container for about 10 years ). I will try to up load some progress shots as we go. Cheers for following!

Dont know why i find this stuff daunting looks very logical. Ive found a transmission place in Auckland who supply alot of good quality parts and good stuff for gm transmissions. Think I'll throw my existing transmission in with the new engine with a shift kit and just be nice to it for a while as its done plenty of k's but isn't giving me any problems. I'll find a lower k box to rebuild with some upgrades at a later date then turn the wick right up on the engine.

I got bored of reading all that about 12 words in and have concluded that it needs to be tossed into the ocean where it belongs

Fancy new grips, stuck on with the old spray paint trick. I had to carefully cut the ends out enough for the bash guards to fit. Looks 1990's cool, which is the period correct look im after.

Managed to find this car closer to home. Took it for a drive to Riverton at Easter, carb float ended up being a sinker and sending fuel all over the intake manofold, fun times.

oh, hi!! so yea things have been great with this car. except the output bushing on the gearbox is flopping around and subsequently the output seal is leaking and flinging oil all over the exhaust. this is shit. the gearbox has only done a couple thousand Ks since it was brand new from Toyota. apparently this is fairly common on the new R154s which fucks me off even more. I've fucked around with changing the seal multiple times and all the other usual checks but it just keeps on leaking. cool. so to fix it i have to take the motor and box out because of the whole massive drive train/small car thing so out the motor comes. its fairly depressing taking a motor, that you have worked very hard on to make as new and shiny as you can, out of a car and seeing all the road grime and shit on it, as well as all the crap that goes everywhere when you start taking things apart. well, its what has to be done so away we go. not sure what else ill do while the motor is out. im not 100% happy with the clutch i put in it. its juddery and grabby at take off which sucks so that may change. fuck knows.............. anywho, first step, jack up your car. 2021-05-04_05-59-44 by sheepers, on Flickr

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.

So the same process as the dash, i drew up the layout of the console and had it cut out of 3mm MDF, once finalised i had it cut out of laminate. Ford used lots of gauges and switches out of lots of vehicles for the works cars... The reverse lamp switch is out of a Jaguar and the Lucas amp gauge is from a Rover P5B coupe....

I found this pic from a while ago when i got the fibreglass dash parts and offered them up to see what it was going to look like... Lots of hours have gone into them since that pic was taken...

Rear so big it doesn't fit the guard, so I cut it so it's somewhat protective, but functional.

Added neoprene fork gaiters. I think its a good preventive measure to take. Pretty cheap and easy to fit.

Several hours and tins of paint stripper later !

27 years of paint coming off... slowly but surely

Car uncovered and looking a bit sorry for itself.

Any mechanic worth paying should be able to sort it out in less than an hour.

car went to the paint shop to get the runs out of it and get the final cut and polish. i went and picked it up last night and it looks amazing. anywho, today i wanted to fix the exhaust where the flex joint had worn through because its the lowest point and its had a fucking over judder bars and whatnot and subsequently has a hole it in. step 1 - jack up your car. this is where things went wrong. 2021-04-25_02-55-42 by sheepers, on Flickr car slid off the jack on the way up. given what could have happened i got off extremely lightly. it bent the radiator support up and bent the bottom of the radiator real bad. it also bent the bottom of the front bumper. however, the radiator isn't leaking and the crank pulley is unscathed which is a fucking miracle given what happened. i was able to bash the rad support back down and i got most of the bend out of the bumper so it looks fairly normal again. fuck it could have been WAY worse.................. so yea, after dealing with that i moved on to fixing the zorst. cut out the fucked bit, made a new bit, tacked it in place, remove zorst from car and fully weld, add 4mm thick bash plate and put zorst back in car. 2021-04-25_02-55-49 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-04-25_02-55-55 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-04-25_02-56-02 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-04-25_02-56-09 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-04-25_02-56-21 by sheepers, on Flickr then it was time to wax the newly polished paint. that went well. it looks pretty ace tbh and yea, i cant take a photo that justifies how good it looks. but it looks good. take my word for it. 2021-04-25_05-34-27 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-04-25_06-18-48 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-04-25_06-19-23 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-04-25_06-32-09 by sheepers, on Flickr

That’s better. The epoxy glue kinda sucked so I whipped up a wee reinforcer plate. Once bolted back in against firewall she’ll be safe. And I scaled back the front runners. ..just for sandblasting.

I freed the wiper! fucking pot metal shit. The shaft runs on brass bushes either end and the middle section was full of some now-solid shellac sorta shit which jammed it up good. I have cleaned and lubed it, now trying to epoxy the housing back together. It doesn’t have to look good as it’s not seen, but it needs to be reliable when used. The ugly repair method should work in my favour, I just have to take my time and let it fully set each time

I'm off Island for ten days so only have a couple of pics handy, but here you go.. What you've built is EPIC. It'd be perfect for Chatham and wouldn't need to be legal to be used on Island. I am very impressed MrPog. My little brother has recently put a Chev cab and wellside on a Patrol chassis... but he got a bit carried away and made it 6x6 My Dyna needs new (lifted) springs... but that's hard to arrange from a distant Island. I love the truck as it's incredibly strongly built, has virtually no electronics and is easy to work on.. but the ride is shit. New springs will hopefully help if I can ever take it off the road for long enough to get that done

so after almost 4 years of owning this thing and doing nothing but moving it around between 4 different sheds its time I did something. With the Africa Twin not far away from being completed (not actually starting the G/S until AT is done) it was time to get it home into the shed, so I went and dragged it back from my lockup where it was buried in dust. Since turning myself into a bit of a adv barry and G/S foamer I have concluded that the only thing to do to this bike is restore it to as close to original as possible, which is made possible by companies like Sibenrock in germany that remake most things for them, like just about everything. This is a gen you whine G/S Paris Dakar, and from what i can figure out there is less than 6 of these in the country, they demand oodles of money overseas, and probably here too but there hasnt been one for sale in the 4 years ive owned this. There is a few spendy bits to get, but stage 1 will be to get it back to a restored rolling frame, stage 2 will be refresh the engine and stage 3 all the OG bits and pieces to get it back to its former glory. Gave the dust a quick blast off, seat was removed as the catch is broken and i didnt want it to take off into the stratoshpere. Quickly whipped the tank off to asses the underside of tank and the frame. the frame is really tidy considering, a blast and powdercoat will make it like new. The tank has more rust on the bottom than id like, was a little flakey. These tanks are worth like 2000 euro alone so I aint getting another. Gave the rust a quick wire wheel and chucked some rust kill on it for now. id rather not have to patch it as these have a factory tank liner and this ones still tidy on the inside, so dont want to spoil that. I might get the exterior of the tank sandblasted when i do the frame, but will ask them to go easy on it. And thats about it for now, will do a big parts order from the fatherland in the next couple of weeks and that can slow boat its way over here while I make the reigns cum on africa

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.

How long before you hit the Kaituna?

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.

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.