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Gidday, me again with the crappy volkswagen. so last time we left off that i got it out side. WAHHOOOO the next thing on the list was tires and to dial in the ride height. i had messaged seedy al a we while back and asked what size tire he ran on the front and i run these also but this time i fired him a message to see what he was running on the back, and yikes it was a small tire compared to what i was running, which was a 205 70 14, i done some tire comparisons online to find something that would give me a smaller tire but nothing to small. I ended up with a 205 60 14. this is 22mm smaller in the side wall, allowing me to go a little lower with out having to ram the tire up into the guard. but since going lower i now have a lot more toe in, now causing the tire to catch on the spring plate adjuster. so i got some shims from bunnings, yes bunnings stock shims for vw kombis (washers). what i needed to do is shim the spring plate out a bit from the arm to help correct the toe in being this is one solid arm with no adjustment. this required a bit of fucking around, with the 1st attempt having to much toe out. so i removed a shim (washer) and put it all back together and it seemed pretty much bang on. So i got my 3 meter straight edge and drew some lines to the front and back and chucked a tape measure over them. i had the wheel alignment 5mm toe in. this measurement was comparing 2 meters behind and 2 meters in front of the wheel. so i thought my 5mm was pretty bang on for something that is not really adjustable. picture of the solid arm which i placed shims on to correct my toe in issue ^^^ this is the rear i placed spacers where the arrow points With that all done i was able to actually drive it out side and down the road a couple of times. was good to finally have it out side. I was using it a bit here and there to see if anything was an issue or i would need to adjust anything a bit more. My biggest issue was i was not able to select gears that well, i was really starting to get pissed off about this. got talking to the guys at v-dub shoppe and they gave me a bush to replace in the gear linkage system close to the gear box. fucked one this little guy was toast, it was ment to be solid and have no movement but it had about one 8th of adjustment in it causing it to no select gears correctly. replaced that and OMG what a change! while i was up there i got this image of it all done. next up i proceeded to loose my drivers side hub cap about 4 times with in 10kms from home, found it each time which was a bonus. next i needed to sort some shocks out for the front, while i was out at @Fuckedifiknows house i was talking about what i needed to do and he passed me these. and then i got some shocks but i was going to need to do something as the shaft was to big for the bush on the shock. well we had @Kimjon pop in and take my vespa for a ride and he suggested he take them home and chuck it in the lathe and take a few mm off it to make things easier. finished result! next up i needed to tap the shock tower so these could go into them. she was a tight squeeze but we made it work. time to make some bump stops for the front and the rear. front ones go a little like this. put some holes in them make sure the holes line up then you get them lazer cut and leave them for 2-3 months back ones go a bit like this remover rubber dog chew toy (way before we started this) Get smaller rubber chew toy make small rubber chew toy screw into metal thing thanks to @Geophy make metal thing that rubber chew toy screws into be one with George the kombi glad i still know how to melt metal together not that well. so paint metal thing black and screw little chew toy in also removed the big cup thing off the rear control arm for more clearance so i have a bit more travel before bump stop hits, this was only held on with 2 little tac welds so i feel like i done good here. now when it touches a good solid peace that wont fall apart. done some other things to make clearance issues not an issue but i wont show those as i didn't take photos....... but here is a photo of it allll done. do you guys like the no hub caps? or with the hub caps? visited my mates out at the v-dub shoppe to show of and thank them heaps for all their help. and our next adventure was to the bay of plenty to see some vdub people and inquire about getting the kombi checked over for a wof. the bay of plenty was great to us. chilled out with beth and tayla before visitng the wof place. re done my wheel bearing while i was at the wof place cause it was making some noise and then headed out to catch up with a vdub mate brought some rego and went to take a comparison photo when i got back home. thats it for now. next time on adventures with the 64valiant family and George the kombi we head to beach hop and vw nationals. stay tuned

things are pretty great with this car. just got to sort out the seats and some carpet but thats for another day. i bought some new rear disks for it a while back because the ones i had were turbo fucked. minimum thickness is about 11 mm and one was down to 9. so yea, in they went. not a big job but still. 2021-05-01_12-59-34 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-05-01_12-59-28 by sheepers, on Flickr

Just me then ? Oh well, I should probably give up the modelling bit & just stick to sniffing the glue and thinners. It's nice. Got an hour in tonight, sunny weather & lots to do is not exactly helping. / pics Going back up-country again in a couple of days so will bring the 1/24 Caddy back & have a bash at that.

pulled it to bits and got it ready to remove the motor. ive ordered some parts which willtake ages to get here so im in no hurry. i thought id tidy up some stuff while im waiting. water return pipe from the turbo went into the original spigot and the second one was just blanked off. it looked a bit dumb so i pulled the stainless tubes out, welded up the holes and welded a dash 6 nipple on lower down. 2021-05-09_07-04-13 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-05-09_07-04-05 by sheepers, on Flickr then i thought id make a new, smaller radiator reservoir and windscreen washer bottle because real-estate in that area is real tight and its a pain in the arse to get to anything in that space. not finished yet but getting there. cut some 75mm box section put a pie cut in the bottom to help clear the body work better weld caps on each end sand them up a bit weld the screw caps in still got to put the inlet outlet fittings in and mount the little electric motor for the windscreen washers but that shouldnt be a drama. ill just hide it underneath like i did for the V8 2021-05-11_08-14-23 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-05-11_08-14-29 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-05-11_08-14-35 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-05-11_08-14-41 by sheepers, on Flickr

So, I still own this It got used for a daily for about a year or so, and I made a few more changes to it - t3 knuckles and modified the tension arms for more caster. And changed out the rear end to an 4.11 F code center from an mx73, with an Altezza torsen. Here's a terrible, old, cellphone picture of it about then; A little later while I was taking a short break from possessing a license I pulled the windscreen(s) out to fix up the rust that was coming along nicely in the lower corners of the rear screen frame, but didn't actually get around to actually doing that for a long time The 4a was getting pretty tired too - at some point i'd lost one of the filter socks and gave in and just ran nothing at all - so a life of hard work and then that, it was starting to experience pretty heroic levels of blowby. So was looking at doing a rebuild on that, but then I happened to be at Zebra looking for something unrelated, and found this in one of them mental WiLL VS doodads; A 2zz. No real idea what condition it was in but being zebra, it was cheap enough to get to just stuff around with Id actually already bought a j160 to put on the 4a - had a look at that, and the way a few key things on the 2zz were arranged (simple steel sump/pickup, easy waterlines etc) it actually looked pretty straightforward to make work in a rear wheel drive arrangement. Did a very rough 'adapter plate' to the j160, for a sort of proof of concept and threw it in the engine bay, it all fit a little too well I figured they already make 190hp standard, is all aluminium, has vvtli, gain 200cc, so why not really This is going back a little while now, and progress has been glacial (had a kid/wasting my time with other projects) but it looks something like this at the moment; Ignore the 20v throttles propped up with a bit of wood for artistic purposes but yeah it's mounted, the headers are now done, the j160 is more or less adapted, and the rust is fixed too I'll put up some more detail on that stuff soon discussion\tell me how stupid i am

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

I Zebra'd a new engine mount and also put the factory exhaust manifold back on, as the other one was leaking horrifically from everywhere. Then did a bunch of other things and got it fired up! Pretty chuffed with that, it's a nice feeling to not have it all blow up immediately. I reckon it's gonna be pretty rowdy with these cams haha. I then mucked around for ages and bodged together water and heater lines, filled it up with coolant, then.... fucked up. Despite my previous efforts I managed to wire the waterpump backwards and I think I let the smoke out. I fixed the wiring but now it doesnt work. Will be lame if I have to buy a new one, as they cost as much as this bloody engine did haha. Depending on the motor type I might just be able to bodge this one to bypass the variable speed and just run it full speed full time. Dunno. Aside from this. I really need to pull the wiring loom apart a bit, because currently the alternator wiring is baked into the loom up top, but it needs to move down lower. Also because the block is taller, my trumpets hit the bonnet now. So will need to make some new ones. However will all 3 of the polyurethane mounts in, it's now super rigidly mounted. So I can hopefully push it close to the available space without issues. But it was awesome to get it fired up anyway. I'm still a few tasks away from being able to drive it, if the water pump isnt fixable it'll be next month that I can buy a replacement.

Now the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that the arms are slightly different lengths. I setup a little "test bench" using an old cereal box. Poked a hole through the box for the pivot bolt and ran a little experiment. For every 15 mm of travel on the long arm the short arm travels 10 mm. If my maths is correct this works out to a ratio of 1.5 to 1. Adding my original pedal movement figures of 45 mm to 30 mm into the mix, this just so happens to be the exact ratio that I require. If I was to connect the short arm to the cable and the longer arm to the pedal activating rod, I'm thinking that the pedal will need to travel further than it currently does and hopefully the longer arm will slightly reduce the force needed on the pedal to move the cable. Please shout if there are any glaring errors in my theory. Anyhoo, in order to give this a try I've got to fabricate a MK 3 version of my cable bracket, so that is the plan for tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Gotta start thinking about rad and intercooler soon

Took some more shots since it was out of the shed. She’s now at the blasters. Cancery upskirt

@yoeddynz, you should start building it, your shed's big enough. That set-up in your video is pretty cool, 203 views now. Shigeyuki Mizuno is indeed a fellah and as you say, and a seriously skilled one. I was thinking about the whole super realism thing having looked at some stuff on the model forum and I reckon we get more demanding as we get older. As a kid you're happy to let your imagination fill in the gaps in your talent (or blank out the shag pile sticking through your train set rails). I think there's a ceiling to the realism, after that it's down to clever photography. I'm not a train person but was certainly impressed with Rod Stewarts layout.

Sorry for the delay in replying - it is a bit of an unusual one for sure. One of the big improvements a Mastervac booster has over the older Hydrovac (remote) booster design is that it introduces the atmosphere from the inside of the car ( the drivers foot well) as opposed to the engine bay. I’ll just mention here that the major improvement was not relying on a single pushrod seal that the failure of which would often result in a total loss of braking – great innovation guys! The filter usually consists of two parts, a coarse foam doughnut and a felt washer where the pedal pushrod enters the unit. The filter sits in the valve body held in place by the felt washer which in turn is held in place by the rear boot. Sadly a lip on the boot forms the seal between the booster and the firewall and to access it you have to remove the booster and master-cylinder (sods law strikes again). I’ve doctored up an exploded diagram of similar Nissan booster for clarity, (alterations in red). Have to say that at this stage I’m clutching at straws with this one. Nothing new here; the more interesting diagnoses are usually the most baffling at their onslaught! Although an obvious conclusion to jump to I’m not comfortable with a 10 year old booster somehow “digesting” both filter and felt washer through overly vigorous brake bleeding. The ports in the control valve are small and the only Mastervac filters I’ve ever seen fail have been from early 70’s boosters that have lain unused for decades? I have seen boosters with a small perforation in their diaphragm still performing to spec but needing far more atmosphere than usual to be introduced to the rear chamber. It could well be worth pursuing this, I’d suggest pulling the master-cylinder back a little to see if it is leaking fluid into the booster, on many cars you can manage this without releasing the hydraulics. Please keep the thread going and let us know what you find.

Have you been hooning the Whakatane river? SunLive - Plastic spill into river investigated - The Bay's News First

This months meet, 27th May at burger fuel the base.

Was expecting this to die 18 months ago thrashed snot out of it ran it on kerosene while i got it for free. Played with tuning etc its been through a lot and just keeps running doesn't burn oil or use water....... now ive said this it'll probably blow a head gasket on way to work tomorrow. Just needs to last till i get new engine in.

It came from the states with new quarters screwed onto/over the existing ones. Great idea instead of trying to jam them inside then have them chaff through your interior etc/ slide into the glass but it sure did a great job of masking the despair aye

Got the fuel tank back. First pic is before it went to the radiator shop. Had the remainder of an existing liner in there, so he had to split it and sandblast to get the new liner to stick. He also knocked out the worst of the old dents, so I am happy with the outcome. Stuck some brunox on there and have got into epoxy. Found some denting on the sills which is a bit annoying. Guessing it has fallen off a jack at some stage, unfortunately it's got similar damage on both sides. Not sure what I will do here yet, I think it is within the VIRM spec so I might see if I can just get signoff for it, then bog it up later on.

Somewhere on the dash there will be a button or dial with a label "Vol+" if you increase this setting the problem should go away, if its still there then increase the setting a touch more. Hope this helps

Well, 2nd sons arrived now, waiting on some funds to come through to buy argon for my tig, hopefully soon, in the mean time here's a picture of a gas cap with Jdm stickers on the old van lol

Some days I do consider just moving it on but would be wanting what I consider silly money for it as thats what the markets like. Car is also in Melbourne so might be a bit far away for you :p Anyway, managed to chuck the boost leak tester onto the turbo and what do you know cant even get 3psi into it as its leaking out that fast :s so when I get a chance will go round all the clamps again and then start on the old soapy water trick starting at the turbo and moving out. Also could hear bubbling so really hoping I am not pressurizing the cooling system or something. Pretty sure the gearbox may have 2nd gear problems based on my last posts but considering it probably needed to warm up and was running like a bag of di*ks it may not be that bad. I do know of a gearbox going for 1100aud in QLD that I may jump on as a spare. Hoping the leak is just a loose clamp and not a pin hole somewhere :s should probably buy a 2.5" to 3" adapter and a 2.5" bung so I can pressure test each pipe but I suspect itll be easier to just work forward from the throttle body if I have to do that. Fun times

I just looked up images of that Shigeyuki Mizuno fella (or is it a company/group of bloody skilled artists?) WOW. So many cool models. My dream would be to combine model talents like that with model trains to maximum effect. Imagine a big model train setup , the likes of the Pendon museum etc, with trains rolling through scenes like what the above mentioned has created! My nerdy video of pendon model railway (OMG! How fucking popular has my video been- its had 198 views in less than 2 years .... eat that fucking project blinky! )

@Valianthad seatbelts thru the b pillar on his Anglia too Much stronger than mounts in panel steel like my Anglia had

I did Alexandra to Whangarei in a 40 year old lancer that hadn't been driven in 5 year

Yep absolutely! “She’s a 20 footer, and don’t slam the door!” When sourcing parts I kept coming up with ‘repair caps’ that you just zing over your chassis rails. impending doom!

its more no car than mopar look foward to some big black panels

sweet project vehicle. would look sweet with some low and some form of hand painted company signwriting of its era. also the lady at nzta who deals with the black plate stuff might be able to dig up some info on the van too otherwise fill out a ownership form. there is a specific one for deregistered cars and get a jp to sign it. and maybe get the all clear from police that there is no interest in it

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. .

Okay soooo "The other guy" that did this, looks like he's used the earlier engine bracket, but this means one of the bloody bolt holes doesnt line up (again) Notice how on mine the bolt thats out of line faces "up" On this other same motor, faces "down" (So must be standard 1NZ bracket) There are different part numbers between 1NZ and 2NZ brackets for this, so I dont think my existing one will work. EDIT: Yeah definitely no chance of 2NZ one working, need to get a standard 1NZFE Bracket

I got all of the bellhousing stuff sorted, got the manual rack in (I have to remember to do up bolts on the steering column...) Ends up losing about 5kg with the non PS rack and no pump. Then I got the engine mostly in but there's some weird shit going on with engine mounts on the engine side. (The other two are on the gearbox) The steel mount part on the Prius block is a different shape to the 2NZ one, so I cant swap them over. I am hoping this is because the Prius block uses a 1NZ specific mount that's different to 2NZ one, meaning I just need the different rubber mount and it'll work. But the mount is wanting to sit too far forward currently, by maybe 20-30mm. So it's not sitting in it's proper spot yet, but happy to have it in the engine bay at least. It's actually been pretty easy to work on, a sideways engine isnt nearly as shit as I remember from MR2 ownership. Also I think I damaged the clutch hose so might need to go find a replacement. More hurdles but still making good progress! I think I'm still hopefully on track for engine start on the weekend. To Do list for first fire up: -Sort engine mounts -2 longer bolts and nuts needed for bellhousing -fit starter motor and battery -fill gearbox oil -fill engine oil -Fit CV rack boots properly -fit radiator/hoses/add coolant -EWP wiring -fit intake and shitty exhaust manifold -Setup new base tune file for 1500cc and 2ZZ injectors.

Thread dredge, thanks to @a.craw4d. Ok, so not 1/24, though I did build some & have a couple unmade somewhere. Models is models though 1/35 WW2 stuff was my thing. I had a break from the glue fumes for 30+ years but have got back into it recently. Pics of a few out of the loft... This is chopped down from the longer wheelbase version. Scratchbuilt fuel tank and tyre rack. You can buy the SWB one nowadays. Burned out Opel Anyway, times have moved on and skills displayed on that internet inspired me to get back into it. First bash was this Flak Half-track. Rushed it a bit and didn't really have my eye/hand in but it is what it is. Some bits I'm very pleased with, others not so much. Current build is the last kit I started before I lost interest in about 1990. It's a Bergepanther ARV. I gave up when the rear track idlers kept breaking off so back in the box it went. I'm now using it to practice my weathering & rust, hopefully it will be a bit more subtle than the half-track. I may even end up finishing it. As it was... Repainted it later dark yellow and am now slowly working through ageing it and trying to make it look like metal. So that's enough stupid big post from me, I'll add pics as it goes along. Hopefully I won't be alone on here. Sat on my own, cementing bits of plastic together, waiting for the world to laugh and point, wishing I was a tank commander. Vroom, vroom.

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.

So more fails. My understanding was that if you swap the sump over, all of the bolt holes line up to the gearbox. But what it means is "At least the bottom half will line up" because literally nothing lines up to the engine block It looks like the best compromise is to drill the block. This means all of the bolts will work except for that center top one, which I guess is good enough. It's pretty meaty at the places I've drilled it. And yeah I literally just used a drill, thug life Ahhh well, still making progress I guess. Just need to file out one of the holes a little bigger then I'll have it all bolted up as good as it's ever going to get. Luckily the dowels that were in the motor came out super easily, it turns out that there is a position for dowels that's common to both the gearbox and motor. So that puts my mind at ease for making sure the clutch is aligned to the output shaft correctly, even if my bolts situation is yuck.

Progress. The head is back on properly, cam clearances all within spec after 2-3 goes of juggling the existing shims around. I pick-a-parted a front pulley, so now I can start on an alternator bracket. Funnily enough the light weight alternator kit for my 3S motor, that saves 4KG. Uses a 1NZ alternator. So there's some irony in stealing the brackets from that, in order to mount a 1NZ alternator to a 1NZ. I'll just need an intermediate plate to bolt to the side of the block and stick these on, hopefully. Not the most light weight solution but I'm more about just getting this going for now. Looks like underneath the waterpump will be the place for it, and no AC anymore. Keep the top side looking tidy - Afterall, this is a show car. One of the now superfluous water outlets was a hose barb that sat with a tapered thread into the back side of the block. Which I replaced with a drain block off bolt I pinched from a dead 3S motor. Easy fix. Also note how the dipstick on this motor nicely bends out of the way, rather than being between number 1 and 2 throttles. Excellent. The power steering pump is apparently difficult to mount on the rear side of the engine, but I'm thinking something looks doable. The amount of gasket goo required to put on both layers of the sump as well as the timing cover is insane. If this doesnt leak, I'll be suprised!

I found a diagram, it looks like the water return is internal in the block rather than an external pipe like on 3S etc. So the two main external lines are just the heater circuit. However yes there's all sorts of complicated shit going on apart from just a heater! Cams arrived today, and it's bloody exciting - I've never had non standard cams in anything before. Since an Echo is basically a more modern iteration of a Starlet, I shall keep with the established nomenclature and call this a 3/4 race cam. I hope it goes hard for what it is. Not sure if these will work without pinging gilliez though. I need a set of feeler gauges to check the clearances to the buckets, then order new buckets if needed as these are shimless (Prius race car technology) They've got numbers on the underside of the bucket that tells you the thickness, so that's handy. So might be able to scab some from pick a part. I think it's safe to jizz the sump back on properly, as the only thing left that I could risk dropping down an oil gallery at this stage is a head bolt washer. (will quote myself later when I do exactly this) I've well and truly spent all of my car money for the month, so might be a few weeks till more progress. I need to get my 3d printer back in the shed so I can mock up some brackets for alternator and hopefully the PS pump too. If the PS pump isnt going to work, I'll get a single row accessory pulley from an NCP91 instead as it's presumably a little bit lighter.

Hi. lets go back a few steps. I had just received my beam from Sean at kune re. I put a few layers of brunox on it and painted it black. and stashed it away. the next stage was to fill some holes and touch up some rusty peaces and i was waiting on a mate for a hand with this part but i ended up getting a bit impatient and smashing them out with the mig welder and cleaning them up with a grinder cause im clearly not a welder and while i was at it i went over a bunch of my old welding peaces and ground them up and cleaned them up. a few late nights and got the job done. next up i wanted to cover the underneath with brunox and get a few layers in to convert the small amount of surface rust it had and set a good base. with that done i went around and chucked a bunch of seem sealer on crap to clean it up and make sure aint no water getting passed my dodgy welding techniques. once that was done i dusted the under body with some underseal. end result was pretty much brand new. next job was to get the beam in the bus, i needed to put the steering arm and the torsion arms on. this also meant i needed to shorten my leaves to now match the narrowed beam. to have them narrowed i visited a mate who helped me cut them and he welded the ends together to make the leaves go into the ends easy. here we cut. here we weld then i kinda rounded the edges to help it find its own way into the hole and re drilled my locating hole for my arms to bolt into. next up the torsion and steering arm on the beam next job to put the beam in, and jesus i am lucky to have a hoist. me and @flyingbrick lowered the kombi down over the beam and bit by bit we went up and down with a peace of wood between the beam and the ground as the fitment was so bang on with my underseal on it she was binding up going in, definitely should have used lube. but we got there in the end beam in, the brakes went on the front, new rotors new bearings, new calipers, the only 2nd hand part here is the drop spindle and the retaining nut which was robbed of a bus rotting away. this wasnt an easy job. i ended up using a strop and tightening the bottom arm and kinda fitting the drop spindle in the middle now with that all done i installed my gear linkage. i replaced the bush at the front while it was out before i went and installed this next up was the rear. for some reason i was doing this all to fast and didnt really get many photos of assembly. but the new stepped spring plates are a breeze. actually after that i had to put the rear arms in, which i had replaced the bushes in quite some time ago and they were ready to go. so also installed them after the spring plates. next was the rear hub, i actually drilled my old one out to fit different bolts in for the horse shoes i tried to fit just before covid last year. so i got some second hand ones and headed to evans place to use his sand blaster and clean them up. before: note the long noes pliers as circlip pliers during after and new bearings fot the rear hub section. now with this all done i can put the axel in and put the rear brakes on and continue doing small jobs. next up was new brakes lines, hard and soft ones all the way through the bus. also my last slave cylinder was just left sitting out, kinda rusted and also never really worked correctly when installed on the bus. so got a new one of those but the cups where a different size than the last one, so got some small adapters to make it work also i had replaces both hand brake cables, accelerator cable, clutch cable and complete full axels and cv's some where along the line. This where i ended up in the last post. made it on the ground and drove it for the 1st time in over a year. Great success. one Greg for scale i just checked dates on this and i started grinding the under body and doing rust on the 12th of feb and she was on the ground out side on the 23rd of feb at 830pm.

Figured out the EWP and got it working easy as. It's just 2 high current wires for 12v supply and earth. Then one is a pull to ground PWM signal to control pump speed. Then the other is a square wave pump speed signal which you can feed back to the ECU. (which is what I was hoping for) So you can tell if its jammed or stopped working before the motor overheats! Cool. It's got a failsafe so a high duty cycle on the pwm signal slows the pump down - So if there's no signal, it runs at full speed. Trying to work out the water line situation though, I'm not sure if there's a water bypass for if the thermostat is closed. What looks like a bypass hose also looks like a heater line. But if that's the case, no flow through heater core if the heater line is shut. There's also an extra heater sized water outlet on the exhaust side of the motor, which isnt there on the normal motor. Hmm. Might have to try find an engine manual that shows how it's supposed to go. Finally used my Aliexpress spec USB oscilloscope for something. I also got my head back from the engine shop with the new valve springs fitted, $75 saved me about 100 swear words and 10 hours so a good deal. Hopefully cams here on Monday.

Progress! Finally got my motor home, and have had a little bit of time to muck around with it. Still amazing how clean and new everything is. I decided the best first thing to do, would be swap the sump over. So I did that, with all of the necessary patience. Cleaned everything, piped out some silicone stuff, let the goo set, then flipped it back over and started on the valve train. I got the valves, old springs, and retainers out no problem. Trying to fit the new ones in, not so easy! Springs are much stiffer, and these retainer keepers are fucking infuriating! So tiny and dont want to sit in the right place. With one of my ham fisted efforts, I ended up dropping one of the keepers down an oil gallery... into the bloody sump. The half of the sump of course that means I have to pull the whole bloody thing off again. So pulled that back off, and after some various attempts I decided there's not really any way to do this short of taking the head off. So pulled the head off, and holy hecka the combustion chamber and pistons were absolutely coated in nasty nasty EGR shit! So gross. And this is only a 30,000km motor, they must look fucked by the time they get some big km on them. As these pistons are coated (apparently?) I decided to not use anything more volatile or abrasive than petrol and a toothbrush, and a toothpick to get some shit out of the tight parts. Came up good enough. Hopefully running it for a while without EGR will clean everything up a bit over time too. The combustion chamber looked just as gross. People say these motors gum up the piston rings, I can see why. Also, I had a laugh at this. On the left, we have a beams 3SGE flywheel bolt, for an 8 bolt crank. On the right, a 1NZ flyhweel bolt for a 6 bolt crank. Hopefully I wont have a 9k rpm flywheel come buzz saw through my brain

Cheers man, pleased to be adding to my small collection of quirky patinavans with a 1:1 scale model

Well that was never coming out intact with the rubber. theres 2 distinct sheets of laminate with a gap in between which crunches and cracks. Also, there clips in the corners on both sides so you couldn’t get in to ‘flick’ the seal out. bit the bullet and sliced the seal. pretty happy! Hasn’t broken through anywhere, just scode and pitting. Even saved most of the trim clips. lovely piece of original paint Was good to access the top dash fasteners and swing the dash down for a look (cool design has whole dash pivot on two bolts in front of the doors) so I vacuumed more shit and dirt out. Allowed access to the wiper spindles too so I whipped them out as they are frozen. One came right, ones soaking. My lovely mrs sat and cleaned up the stainless trims with wire wool for me too!

My new work car arrived, and it's by far the nicest car I've ever "owned". Some fun gimmicks like paddle shift, cruise control, decent power etc etc its a turbo deeez that goes hard 4 wot it iz It doesnt even rattle or anything. Amazing. Really nice on long work trips, which I do a lot of. However obviously the best part of all this, and why it's in this post. Is that this now means my Echo has been released from its daily driving obligations, so I can start on drivetrain swap soon. Time for a full blown big block fuck around! I've still got the engine in storage up at my Dads, but have collected most of the necessary other bits. Also because I am a financially reckless man-child I have also ordered some JUN cams, fuck you bank account

Factory wheels, new tyres and alignment today

The car was running super lean this morning and I needed to use the choke the whole way to work. So I did the good old carpark in the dark 8 minute carburetor rebuild. There was a piece of glove in the jet. It seems to be fixed now.

Hatch repairs and some fill and final prime

and filled the garage with a lot of dust and some other stuff too

Slowly but surely getting on top of the rust. Got the boot floor patches all welded in and painted with epoxy. Been working on getting the outer edge sorted. Wasn't keen to section the whole length to get the curve right. Got myself a shrinker/stretcher which made things much easier. My first attempt was to make a jig which had the right curve, bend a right angle then hammer to form a profile. Results weren't great, so back to square one. Cut, bent and welded some box tubing to get a curve the same as the boot. Welded and clamped on the bent and stretched angle, hammered flat. I butt and plug welded it on. Now just working through smoothing out the welds with a flap disc and power file.

Spare wheel well! been a while in the making. It was looking like a sara lee danish dessert in there - layer upon layer upon layer upon layer... and bits chopped out etc etc. so choppy choppy Fixed up the middle part to look somewhat right and cut/pressed the stiffening and drain into a new bit. rolled the edges too welded the centre in and tested the cover Tacked in. welded and sanded Pretty happy with the result - way better than before.

Ooooh its been over two months since I updated this thread. I have not touched this engine since stashing all the bits under the bench out of harms way, throwing a blanket over the main block on the bench and spending most of my time since then buying up many Micras, working on the housetruck and building the mezzanine floor in the shed. Oh and some of that paid work thing too because we do have a mortgage to pay. However - I still have a little bit of progress up my sleeve to report before we get up to real time. So I can do an update and hopefully soon I'll be back into working on the engine. I'm very much looking forward to moving in upstairs because I can whittle away on the project even easier. Well at least I think it'll work out like that? There's still a load of sawdust to create yet before we can move in though. So where I left off last time was in making the start of the adaptor plate/engine side of the bellhousing. I needed a flywheel to work out its depth, due in part because I am intending on using a concentric slave cylinder, one that was left over from the Ford Mundano that we had robbed ages ago for its engine to fit into the Viva wagon. I had a Subaru Leone 1800 ring gear to suit the gearbox. I needed a clutch setup to suit and started hunting a variety of places. I found a brand new subaru Leone clutch disc going cheap on trade me so I snapped that up pronto. Now a suitable pressure plate. I was just going to buy a Subaru item but had realised that it wouldn't have worked - hence my question to you all in the last update - but no one on here came forward. Someone on retro rides forum won the prize though and guessed the issue. Whilst out on a run, my head clear and thinking of things it suddenly dawned on me that the pressure plate tension straps would now be in compression due to the Hondas anti-clockwise rotation (or clockwise when looking at the pressure plate). Luckily there's loads of clutch components available for early Hondas with their anti clockwise engines and I ended up sourcing a new pressure plate from a mid 80s Honda accord/prelude that would fit the bill and suited the new subaru leone clutch disc I'd already bought. The pressure plate was cheap from Rockauto - turning up only 5 days after ordering. They always amaze me! Clutch sorted and sitting on the bench. I could now measure up and start on a flywheel. I had Dylan @ThePog draw up a cad file of what I wanted- the right diameter and pilot holes for the adaptor bolts. He suggested that I get them to leaser cut pilot holes for the pressure plate bolts while at it and this saved some time. Got my plate cut and picked it up from Dylan's - giving me another chance to marvel at his Dynafari. I first set it up and bored it out a 1/4 way through to fit perfectly onto my flywheel hub I had previously made (this hub also has the surface that the rear main seal run against)... I could then seat the flywheel onto the hub, clamp them down and drill right through into the hub. Drill out to tapping size, tap the hub holes, clearance the flywheel holes and finally countersink and spot face the flywheel holes to suit some fancy bolts I bought - these need to sit near flush with the flywheel surface to clear the clutch disc damper springs. Pics... Flywheel now bolted to its hub I set it up in the lathe for machining... Then gave it a skim. Checked it again, double checked it and then triple checked it. All good. I then machined the required step onto the face to suit the factory specs for the clutch. Next thing was to add the ring gear I add. Now this was a bit tricky because my lovely old Mitutoyo vernier calipers (one of the first tools I bought when starting my apprenticeship) were not big enough to measure that diameter. My old work place I did my time at had some lovely 600mm Mitutoyo calipers in a lovely wooden case. They were one of the treasured items of the tool room and I used to love using them. I had priced up some 600mm items from a variety of other brands but wayyyyy too expensive for me. I'll still keep looking because they'd be handy for many jobs. Might find some second hand. But that didn't help me when I wanted to do this flywheel now So I made an extension from some stainless I tigged together, replicating the end of my calipers. Taped in place securely and hey presto- I had a new updated tool. Never perfect like the real thing so I had to really triple check my measurements but managed to turn the flywheel down to give me just the right amount of interference fit I wanted from a shrink fit. Into the bench top oven the ring gear went, heated up and it dropped on to my machined step nicely. Cooled down and its not going anywhere. With that in place I rechecked it all and got the throw out on the flywheel down to about 3 or 4 thou. Super happy with that. My clutch kit now bolted on in place and I have something I can set my bellhousing depth to suit... I have added the required dowels and its all done. I'll get the flywheel, clutch and crank balanced together before assembly of the engine. So that will be the next update I think. Machining the spacers that will become part of the engine side of the bellhousing adaptor. Then I need to finish off making some chain tensioners to suit the oil pump drive chains. However I still have plenty of other jobs to do on the housetruck and the mezzanine. Those are a priority whereas this is just a fun little project. But I must mention that today whilst out on a bicycle ride we had about 50 various motorbikes pass us on part of a charity run. I spotted a bright metallic blue Goldwing 1500 go past and as it accelerated up the hill we were on it had that distinctive flat six exhaust note and just sounded superb! It certainly got me tingling and all I thought of was that sound coming from my Imp A good incentive!

All back together now. Had a turbo shit off a time getting the heater hoses back on because some idiot stuffed a huge motor right in the way. New clutch (remember that, the reason we pulled it apart in the first place) is really good, it's a tiny bit grabby at take off but it's not really bedded in at all so I don't know if this will get better or worse. Also i have connected the boost control pipes around the wrong way so it's free boosting up to about 30psi. Easy fix that. I drove it to work.

This is my first 1:24 car model I've just done recently. No mods, just a copy of the wife's first car.