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After a week or so of driving around with my newly confidence inspiring and robust cooling system I got all excited and transferred my tools into the drawer. This showed up the limitations of my home made drawer sliders, which I kindof expected but was disappointing when the drawer no longer opened after a drive on a gravel road. So I bought some proper sliders and fitted them up; These are better, although they are not as chunky as I wanted due to space limitations. However, this extra weight caused things to list slightly to one side. I had previously bought a high lift jack that is useful to brace the body when using the crane, and that was just sitting in the back, so I thought it would find a spot where I could use it's chunkyness to offset the tools. A couple of hours work and we had this; It is pinned at the bottom and has a trailer hitch at the top so can't really fall off.... This had the desired effect, it sits nicely as you can see. It also now has a UHF cb with a chunky antenna, it's quite fun driving around with it in auto scan.

Since the last update work had continued making the studio area a bit more finished looking. Boxed in the ugly steel framework and finished the ceilings. This really made the place feel more like a house and less like a shed... Few more little bits to add, trims around the chimney. Really looking forward to selecting paint colours and getting some colour in there. So we've now moved out of the little cabin and into the workshop mezz. The cabin was getting a bit chilly, the bed a bit tiny now that the cat has decided he wants extra warmth and snuggles in between the pillows. Plus its getting boring walking from the shed after watching a movie, late at night, in the cold or rain, to a cold cabin. So we have continued on at full steam building the frame work and a bedroom. First thing was to suss out the position of the doorway frame before we started the main framework. We rummaged around in one of the woodsheds outside where we had stashed a few old doors. Picked out this one here... We'd bought this and another door for $20 together. Bloody bargain because this door is brand new, never having had any glass fitted nor any door locks or handles. Solid cedar, made in NZ. Would have been an expensive door back in the day... I scribbled some pencil lines on the floor... thus working out where the door would work best because it was going to have three positions it could be left in. Then we started frame work... insulation... Then plywood lining. Now that there was framing in the way we had to get the plywood upstairs another way. We couldn't use the stairway. I knew this was going to be an issue, along with future furniture, fridges, ovens, pianos etc. I allowed for it like this... Sorted I didn't take any pics of the plywood going up onto the walls but you can probably use your imagination. I had an idea on how to frame up and hide the steel framework in the bedroom and also set the drawers in under the kitchen benches so that way we had maximum amount of bedroom space around the bed. Its not a large bedroom but big enough to sleep in! Pretty nice to finally have a bedroom you can stand up in. Opulence for a couple who have been living in vans/housetrucks/cabins for the last 20 years. Bedroom aint finished yet but works. Rimu trims to add, wardrobe to build and some bedside shelves/cabinets. But Kevin loves it and its his go to place to feel all snug. It has a cat door the leads from the kitchen into here, past his doorway. A bit of wiring went in to suit various lights, sockets and we had to work out a suitable doorway point for our boss, sir Kevin fluffcat. He likes his new cat door with a plank he has to walk across from the bank outside.. With a cat hole sorted we brought in one of the two stainless benches we had stashed away outside. One bought cheap for $40 and the other gifted to us by a customer. Sensible choice stainless bench and sink. No pissing about. They just work forever. I cut the splashback down removing the bit with two old wall mounted tap holes and then cut a new hole to suit a shiny new mixer tap... The kitchen is almost finished but for drawers and cupboards which we will custom make ourselves to suit. I'll snap some pics of it tomorrow. Damn its nice to make a cup of coffee/cook without going downstairs or up to the cabin. Not long from finishing this project and I can actually hook back into that flat six sitting on the bench under a sheet Whoop. Oh and also I suppose I could do some more actual paid work, which there is quite a long list of jobs from patient customers up on the whiteboard yay. Shed was well utilised over the last two days. There's a Triumph 2500 wagon that's been with us for over 14 months due to covid lockdown among other things stopping the new owner from collecting it. On Thursday four likely lads flew down from Auckland and after two days of solid tinkering, carb fettling, mild levels of bodging and number 8 wire thinking they got the old girl on the road and took off today to drive back to Auckland. The movie theatre got utilised last night with many old car adverts and classic racecar youtube clips being watched. Fun times.

Nekkid! more tomorrow

Gather round for a sharn boys Me and the ol miso soup went for a trip around Northland at the start of the year and camped out of her old mans AU wagon which was lush. While it was a robust and practical Australian sports car, it was cramped and not a functional camper. We caught the bug for camper life and started browsing trademe with mild enthusiasm and wild pinterest-fuelled dreams. The first takeaway i got from van shopping - fuck vans are expensive. In our budget all we were hoping for was a flogged out ex-tradie L300 with 500xxxkms. Until one night this bad boy popped up on trademe - the skylite roof piqued my interest immediately. It had everything we needed: fully self-contained, electric cert, wof and reg and a boot full of camping gear and was in our budget! I enlisted the service of fellow 3Y enthusiast @HighLUXto go kick a Kelly 70 for me, and confirmed it went hard for what it was. So we made a spur of the moment decision to go pick it up from Rotorua the next day. Its a lush spec import Liteace with pop-up skylite roof and is well specced up the front with monsoons, power windows and steering and a fully hektik JVC headunit run straight off the battery in true SCA carpark installation fashion. The 3Y-EU injected 2 litre donk actually doesnt disgrace itself on the flat, though it dislikes maintaining reasonable speed up hills. Suits me though, wagon time ain't no crime. Have taken it to TGA for a weekend since buying and it was smooth and comfortable but by gum it drinks 91 like Sumpson at Nats 13. It is an ex-backpacker rental van which explains why everything has been done legit - no doubt its seen a fair few dogging spots in its time. The interior was setup for a single with a tiny bed, which needed to go. Other amenities include a sink unit with water and waste, a compostable toilet and electric chiller. The electrics setup is pretty lush - battery and inverter setup with adventure kings solar panel thing, along with power point for camp grounds, complete with RCD and 3 pin outlet to run the breadmaker. There must be nearly a grand worth of electrics alone in this thing, stoked. I then set about the task of building a double bed, adopting a @Beaver approved design from his Vanette. A slat bed with additional pull-out frame so can be used as a single seat during the day, and pull out for double bed at night. I made it out of decking timber and ripped down some fence rails, as it turned out to be the most economical solution amidst this nationwide timber shortage. so its a little chonkier than i would have liked. I had an uneven number of slats so had to double up on long bois. Still, for a bumpkin with fuck all carpentry skills im sure Stevie Wonder would approve. OCD trigger warning I dismantled the old bed and left the electrics in-situ and then when i built the new frame had to play electrician and figure out how to put the RCD and gear back together. Tidied up a few cowboy spec installation foibles while i was there. Pretty stoked with its functionality, and still some room underneath for storage of bits and bobs. Next mission will be to build a storage solution on the otherside of the van to maximise space in this compact little rig. will be sure to document that too. The hugs and kisses is currently making some lush 70s floral print covers for the mattress squabs to give it a nice lil retro vibe. Then what? go dogging i guess oh and maybe slam and wheels hehe

6 of these so far!

They made it back to Auckland. They did 2000 miles and only had to put petrol in it. They didn't even have any tools with them. He once put a little oil in and then realized the car was sitting on a slope, so it now has a little too much in it. I believe there are a lot more pictures to come.

Seats all finished up and mounted for the last time.

Slowly but surely...

Lovely wee car- I remember driving it at Hanmeet once. It just needs some widened steels and lowering by about 4" and it'll be fucking awesome! Please put some discs on the front. Drums suck. They'll always be a bit shit. Just swap in some appropriate bits from an escort and possibly just a slightly larger bore MC (someone fordy on here will know which bits work) I'm sure there's bits that swap straight in and it would be a period correct swap that no wof station would either notice or probably even give a fuck Oh and btw...

i got a few things ticked off the list today. trigger 1..i bought a 36-1 trigger wheel for the pinto but it bolted in front of the pulley and i didnt like the look of it ...so i made the hole bigger and mounted it on the back...just a few tacks for now till the sensors turn up and i decide where to mount them. then it was on to trigger 2..i bought a 63mm 36-1 trigger wheel as it was just small enough to fit inside the pinto dizzy buuuuut.....didnt even think about the dizzy to inlet manifold being a problem....well it turns out it is. i thought about cuttng it down but remembered i had a xd falcon dizzy on the shelf that i had gutted and used with a drill to pump oil around the 4.1 in the other cortina. turns out it fits the hole in the block for the dizzy and it a wee bit smaller .so i trimmed all the stuff not needed off it and made a slot on the side to be able to bolt it down...i then cut the pinto dizzy shaft down and made a bush for it in the falcon dixy....made a mount to bolt the wheel to and all done...)will make a cap when the sensors turn up and i sort out mounting)....was told i could just use a 1 tooth wheel so see how the sensor works with this small wheel first. both triggers in place i also stripped cleaned and rebuilt the intake manifold repositioned the dipstick got the factory vacuum all together so i can even plum the brake booster in. managed to turn the full TPS setup upside down aswell for more room. still got to sort out idle air control.....the injectors are on the way and i need to mount the coil packs and also sort out a breather for the block under the inlet manifold .....and im thinking some sort of brace for the manifold aswell. but its strating to look pretty good.

Minor update. New handlebars and new brake lines. Indicators installed, led bulbs in dash. I put a pressure switch banjo bolt in for the brake light. Genuine Suzuki intake boots and replaced some o-rings and rubber plugs in the carbs. I really really want a 4-1 for this thing and the only one I want is from Cycleworks in welly but that means riding there!

Hi Guys, So just an update on a solution for our rear sear removal. After testing and looking at the wiring. The rear seat harness that my unhelpful Toyota parts guy couldn't find is actually a part of the middle seat belt buckle. This middle seat belt buckle harness also plugs into the left and right seat belt buckle wiring. So for order for us to drive out vans without the rear seats installed. we must have all 3 buckles plugged into the rear seat connector. (the 3 seat pressure sensors not needed.) For those who only need the rear seat a few times a year this is perfect. simply remove the rear seat. flip it upside down. remove all 3 buckles. its just 2 x 14mm bolts and a few harness retainers. 10min work if you only have half an idea of what you are doing. connect them all together throw them zip up lunch cooler bag, have the main seat plug hanging out. plug it in to the van side of the seat harness. and bobs your uncle. I will need to remove and install the seat more frequently. so I'm going to price new buckles so i don't need to remove the buckles every time. Cheers Brent

After asking if anybody wanted the rotisserie I made and having no takers I decided to turn it into a mechanics creeper. bit of mdf should finish it of and help save my back.

Shit yeh good stuff. Advice for the bed, get something hard to lay on top of it under the mattress, like 2 sheets of MDF or something so your little white boi hips don't get reamed by the planks through the mattress.

Got wheels powdercoated, 235/60/15 front, 245/60/15 rear. Looks ridiculous now, lowering is required sooner than later. I think its actually got lifted springs in the front, they have eibach branding on them and its higher than other stock ones I've seen pics of I might go up a tyre size all round, if it doesnt rub when slammed

Turned wife's hoodie into dog cloak Needs a bit of velcro for the belly strap and I think I will fold the front bit over, but otherwise not bad

Water temp gauge works now, so does the oil light.. Some moron flat peaker switched them round... Plugged vac line 21 into its home, so now it idles better and may sort its other issues out.. He reckoned it had a blown turbo... No smoke, but wouldn't full spool... Turbo flap actuator not plugged in.. Penis

You'll never cry with a 3Y. Random fact, there is some significant ECU difference between these and the Hilux version. Base timing is 12 deg for this and like 8 deg on Hilux, setting timing to 12 just results in mega pinging

First step was to clean out most of the grease and grot so I could remove and properly inspect it. Then engine out and cleaned up the top end that had bits floating around after timing advancer flew apart.

I think this ones done 70,000ks, I want to make it the daily. Hopefully I can get that many ks out of it

Shit yeah solid looking bike now! Matching 1pce leather suit I hope??

Yeah she's got drovers boots I don't look at the wife's dog credit card statement and she pays no attention to the car parts piling up

Because my life is pretty sad, I spent a few hours building this working mock up of version 3 of my HiAce to Thames accelerator cable bracket. Stole the mini ball joints off the ends of my gear shift cables for the intermediate shaft, so I'll need to order in some replacements. Even went as far as to make a longer pivot lever so the accelerator pedal is now nice and soft with heaps of travel. Should make for nice smooth acceleration. So all that's left to do is to replicate this mock up in something tougher than a piece of dirt old plywood. I'll hopefully make the finished article a lot more pleasing on the eye. Thanks for looking.

So I got the bike all together and dropped it down to Danny, Hayhole and the team at Watermark Signs in Wellington. What a bloody transformation! I gave danny a bunch of photos of the original Rothmans Dakar NXR750 along with what vectors of Logos I could find. Danny drew up the vectors that I couldn't find, color matched everything and sized it up. Hayhole did all the application. Im absolutley blown away, its come out far better than I ever imagined. Its still not 100% complete. I still need to get the sump guard and crash protection on. This wont happen for a week or two though as the tank needs to come back off so I can install the new choke plungers when they arrive from Japan, less than a week before the rally, eeek. I'm cheesin. Will get some lush photos done of some of the cool details once its all back together properly. I do find the before and after photo quite mesmerizing.\

Purchased a full rubber and seal kit for the car from Azhar so thats here ready for when it goes back together. When i sold the 808 i had a pair of BBS RS in 15x11 with 5.5" dish and a pair of 15x8 with 3" dish which i kept for a rainy day. Heres a pic of the 11 on the back of the RX3 for a laugh, shows how big the flares had to be to make them fit on the 808. Anyway was browsing market place and stumbled across a set of 3.5" lip 30 hole BBS lips by chance. A quick measure up and they look to be perfect once guards are rolled to fit on the rear with the narrowed diff. Will give them a full recon, repowder coat centres, new hardware, full height hex centres and repolish lips once i decide on car colour. Fit front and rear with basically next to no spacer so thats a bonus too. I also found a set of mint 5x114.3 17x8.5 ROH Z'S. The 8.5" only came in 5 Stud AFAIK and have a huge dish compared to the 7.5" 4 stud versions. Unsure if they will fit on the front but will definately work on the rear with a 4x114.3 to 5x114.3 adaptor spacer. So will wait for these to get up from down south and i can work out what of these i will run front and rear and then get Toby to give a set a polish up. Have decided to sell the SSR Mesh and the 5.5" BBS lips as im not going to be needing either of these any time soon and iv got too many wheels it seems haha.

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.

I made a forge

And this as well, which I filmed halfway through the process. This was cos i am now under serious pressure to provide content to my now 189 youtube subscribers, fuck you for suggesting I enter that competition.

Had a design in mind for the wall up to the lounge from very early on. Was gonna take a bit of time but I thought it would be well worth it. Cut and planed lots of batons from Rimu off cuts Its not a techy thing. They went up along the wall and are spaced just so that as you enter from what will be a hallway it sort of looks like a solid wood wall. Then as you walk in and past you can see the orange paint through the gaps... Neato. Much neater. I like the effect. But I also had this planned... and all the colours in between Today we went to the big smoke (Nelson..) and met up with @CPR Sierra who gifted us loads more leftover timber plus loads of insulation from a house build. Top fella- thanks so much Morris! This is just what we need to now continue on with the kitchen smoko room and bedroom sickbay build.

hhmmm page 6 ay... pretty slack. sorry for lack of updates but in my defense i haven't done any work ...at all on them...due to a small health issue and my body letting me down on more than 2 occasions .. and i have taken this year off the cars to get some stuff done around the house.....and if i try and do that and find time to work on cars ill just get fucked off...so year off. the cars are still there i have been playing with pintos tho as less room and just keeps my mind ticking over. i had sorted the falcon CPI for fuel injection and was starting to make a hat for that for boost. .....but ive had a nissan gtir inlet sitting on the shelf that i was planning on using on my focus.....but it got the better of me and i had to see.....(now it does need some cleaning up and i need to do some port matching but this was all by hand with a battary drill...and the socket head bolts cost more than the inlet manifold0 i had a pinto gasket and i made a cardboard one for the gtir..they do share a common bolt hole so that was enough for me. i had some 10mm alloy so i sorted the pinto part first. once i port match the head it will be fine....only had a 44mm hole saw then sorted the gtir side tryed it on the turbo motor......looks awesome.....love it i just need to find a better tool to port match gtir to pinto and back and find a fuel rail and maybe some bracing .....and thats good to go. cheers

Almost time to do the engine swap, that’s all under control but I am thinking of fitting the other gearbox I have, it had clean oil but I have no idea what it’s like, looked ok when I had the lid off. The gearbox in the car won’t go into reverse sometimes and you have to change into gear then back into reverse or double clutch to get it to click in and it will jump out of 2nd under engine braking on very steep hills and when I fitted the bell housing I had to drill a mounting hole and where I drilled hit a bearing lol, I need to space that hole out a bit to avoid that spot.

About 1/3rd of a panel is what you want, it's diminishing returns after that. But more is always better right

I don't want to spend too much $$$ on a little old engine, so mainly just cleaning it up + replacing the obvious. Locating pin on the camshaft had been smashed out, hoping a replacement bit turned up and jammed in will hold ok.

Old mate Gary has a few of these. his daily has now done 180,000 ks

My mind boggles, thats damn near 1kg in turn signals. For a bike that weighs what? 100kg? 1% of bike in indicators? wtf.

@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.

My accelerator setup seems to be the gift that just keeps on giving. Although I’ve solved the issue of the cable pulling at an angle I’m still not happy with the overall feel of the pedal. The first issue is that the force required on the pedal feels a lot harder than it should be. The second issue is that the overall pedal travel feels pretty short to me. First thing this morning I grabbed the HiAce accelerator pedal and after hooking up the standard HiAce cable to my carby I was able to confirm that the HiAce pedal travels a total of 45 mm from idle to full throttle. In contrast my current setup results in around 30 mm of travel. The HiAce pedal also feels a lot lighter. Good to know that I wasn’t just imagining the issues. So I dusted off my trusty piece of old house carpet and crawled under the Thames for a bit of a lie down. Well it may have seemed like that for any one observing, but I find that the creative juices flow better when I’m actually looking at the problem. Now as a young un I was never any good at science and maths, but lying under the van I had a sudden thought that maybe some type of uneven lever between the cable and the Thames pedal might solve both my issues in one go. Okay, let’s go down that path I thought, and because I’m a bit of a lazy sod I started scratching around for something to repurpose rather than building it from scratch. The first thing that I turned my attention to was the loud pedals from my donor vans thinking that I may be able to scavenge something suitable from the innards of each pedal. Sadly, no such luck. Then I cast my mind back to the original Thames throttle linkage that was made up of a number of rods and pivots. So after a bit of hunting around I found it languishing in the pile of cast offs sitting in the back of the Starwagon. Pulled it out for closer inspection and as luck would have it there is a nice little pivot lever at the very end of the mechanism.

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! )

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.

Making slow progress on this whenever I can be bothered. The control panel is covered in leather jacket, and we have volts! I bought a kitset of a motorised chain similar to a tank track, and used it to create a motorised curtain. The curtain grinds its way noisily open and closed, which adds to the cheese factor. It's lit by some Christmas lights: Hopefully the lights in front are sufficient to stop lights behind from being visible through the thin fabric. I discovered that my plasma globe causes my neon bulbs to glow dimly, which is kinda cool. I hope I don't have to ditch the plasma globe because it scrambles electronics in its vicinity. Next up on this project is puzzling out what the rest of the controls should do, and deciding how much effort to put in. I'd quite like a magic eye VU meter.

They say the two happiest days of Birtish car ownership are the day you get the car and the day it leaves your life. Well the other day it left my life (at least for now). My dad is taking it on a long road trip. He is taking it to Auckland, via the bottom of the South Island. They're staying at Lake Hawea tonight. I think their trip will be complete by around about the 15th. Hitting the road: Somewhere in Mt Somers I believe: Lindis pass (actually surprised it still ran up there): He insisted on taking the roof rack with it. I bet it uses 25% more fuel now. When it gets up to Auckland my brother will paint it and we will try to track down the few remaining bits that it needs to be complete and then will stick it on the market. I'll keep this updated as the photos from the trip come through. Feel free to add any spotted photos if you see him on the road.

I'm going to start spamming your you tube channel saying things like "we need to see the sexiness behind this voice" P.s... Clean your workshop, I'm not mad... just disappointed.

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.

Minty! Didn’t like how the generic Tridon ones went so rock auto came through again, for less coin! I sent the old booster to a shop to assess its state and they came back at $700 in parts alone x USA in a month. It is a bit of an oddball, but no thanks. I figured it was fucked cause it had been full of brake fluid but a customer I didn’t know had the tech came in and saw it, said he can clean it up and reassemble it and that if the diaphragms we’re going to react badly to fluid contamination then it would happen pretty quickly, that mine was salvageable. I mean it’s junk totally disassembled in a box so may as well sling it back together! He’ll sleeve the master too. Just prior to this, I brought new booster off a chap on Facebook for cheap, he didn’t end up using it. It’s not ideal but was going to make it work.. it’s a couple inches smaller than my original unit but I figured all it does is assist. I could deal with a slightly heavier pedal. me preference is original..

Managed to get the Thames back on its front wheels for the first time in a few months. Pushed it out of the shed so I could give the floor a good sweep. Looking at the Thames front on the L300 steering angle box hangs lower than the front valance, but it's a small price to pay for the vastly improved steering setup. Even with two leaves removed from the back springs, the van has still got a bit of a nose down stance. Perfect for that 70s look that I am aiming for. Thanks for looking.

Drum brakes are just shit, difference between hot and cold can give imbalance, I wouldn't get too antsy with the wof station over it. $20 on them being out again next week.