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Im thinking of doing the whole engine (including heads) this Grey. Then just clean up the covers but leave them a 'patinaed' kind of raw look. Same with the Webers.

Ok side drafts it is then! I dont think the down drafts would fit under the bonnet anyway! Got the engine out this weekend. Pretty easy. Got a bit of cleaning up and harnessing to do. Got some nice original Cal Custom finned rocker covers.

Putting the new frame aside I mocked up the original old, rusty frame with the rebuilt front end and a dummy motor & box and started taking measurements. Came to the conclusion that the old girl would look better a little lower in the front, and if I was going to do it now was the time. Options were to either kick the front rails up or lower the mounting pads on the HR cross member. As much as it cutting up something I’d already rebuilt goes against the grain Rigamortice and I decided on the latter. Time to start cutting. Wound up the amps and welded in a piece of 3mm angle to build a lower pad. Boxed it all in with gussets and then cleaned it up. Not the prettiest welding I’ve done but it was all about penetration and strength. Filled some holes (note the copper sheet) and notched the frame rails to clear the cross member, I’ll fill the holes in the side of the rails later.

Used my labour day wisely just doing some small things. started with sandblasting another (2/3) of my 14" SSR Formula Mesh faces with my 100L supercheap auto sandblasting cabinet. Definitely not a fun thing to blast. Untitled by Emmett Westwood, on Flickr Untitled by Emmett Westwood, on Flickr Then I used my 3L ultrasonic cleaner (using Evapo-rust as a solution) for about 27mins to clean the hardware. Not perfect but the replacement bolts I tried were slightly too wide at the head for the face and I didn't want to drill them all out so decided to reuse the original hardware. even if they're a bit stink. Untitled by Emmett Westwood, on Flickr Untitled by Emmett Westwood, on Flickr Then finally I blasted all the hinges. Not to perfection as I'm not that fussy for this part. Then I put it in epoxy primer using my new Iwata spraygun with a 1.8tip. My first time trying out this set up and I'm happy with how it turned out. Untitled by Emmett Westwood, on Flickr Untitled by Emmett Westwood, on Flickr Untitled by Emmett Westwood, on Flickr Still waiting to find time/effort to get the doors sandblasted (from the actual sandblasters)

There were a few pallet cover sheets going spare at work so I claimed them, brought a jigsaw and got into making some new cards. Unfortunately the fronts are still on the car..down south so I could only do rears (which were way more haggard than front anyway). Wouldn’t mind pre-fitting them before I glue them so have come to a halt. also made a new partition for between the boot and rear seat. I made some more wee splash gaskets for inner guards. This grille is a proper cunt of a design. I couldn’t successfully mask it right, ended up making a card insert to cover the black and leave the silver exposed for painting..it somehow failed and I got overspray. Don’t particularly like the silver and the plastic is kinda pitted in places which I should have primed and sanded but wasn’t so obvious before. I still want to silver the seam around the inner edge but might have to use a paint pen which won’t be the same shade.. brush will look arse. I tried touching it up and the paint fried up so that’s me giving up for a few years. tried to start into making some new brake lines and the flaring kit fucked out so I went inside.

Got new brake hoses, tube nuts, brake pipe clips, some copper nickel pipe, made some hose brackets and joined toyota parts to plymouth ones

Boot floor indent also added to the replaced section

Where were we? Ah yes, Rust.... Folded up a patch allowing me to warm up on the relatively simple rear guard. And so onto the main event, the boot floor. I have been thinking many hours how to do this panel, if not for the cobwebs in my wallet I would have just dropped a stack of coin on bead rollers and such and moved forth, instead I gave an idea a go and managed to fold up a test piece with the pan bender which impressed me enough to push forward with making the repair. Hold the breath and... Almost there, used some rivets to hold across the bends and tapped the end around a suitable shaped offcut of 4mm Not the tidiest up close, but it is rust free! Next step would be to launch into welding up but my gas bottle is near empty from other projects and there seems to be somewhat of an Argon shortage going on, hedging bets on making some calls Tuesday. Until then i've got some grot in the front guards that needs attention, folded up some more test pieces to confirm the process and dimensions

The water jacket is in very nice condition. No pitting, and just a light dusting of surface rust. I have cleaned up the outside of the fuel tank too. No pics because it’s boring. I just hit any spots with signs of rust spidering under the paint with a strip disc, then spot painted with brunox. Then I hit the whole thing with 400 grit and painted it with a brush and some White Knight rust killer paint I had leftover from another project. Inside the tank looks like this though: that’s the back of the drain bung you can see on the right of the picture. Check out the tide mark. Thoughts on how to treat?

I've neglected this thread, but not the car.. mainly been a case of more of the same, but we now have sills both sides etc

Don't stress. You could hide that fuck up with some of these...

That tank looks fine to me, but im broken. Id just run it as is with a new inline filter or 2.

.....and before you know it you'll be the boss. HORN PLEASE!

Exhaust positioned.

righto so i wasn't happy with the left side of the spoiler so i cut it off and made a new one. i was really happy with the fit and the shape so i went about finessing the thing to get it how i wanted it. i radiused the bottom corners and went about making it stronger, i welded a couple of bits of 1.6mm thick sheet all the way along the bottom edge to stop it flopping around then i set about making a good mounting for it. i ended up welding a bit of 3mm plate to it that bolts to the bottom of the intercooler bracket so its pretty strong. then i put another bit of 1.6mm sheet right across the lowest most forward point in the hope that when i inevitably crash it into something its got a bit of strength to it. then i put a coat of primer on it. and today i sanded it, put some bog on it and put some more primer on it. tomorrow ill wet sand it and put some colour on it and its finished. also this is the english wheel i bought. i wouldn't know a good english wheel from a fucking sandwich but this one worked for the thing i did and i was really happy with how well i was able to make the steel do what i wanted, so yea. 2021-10-20_07-24-20 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-10-24_03-00-29 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-10-24_03-00-39 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-10-24_03-01-06 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-10-24_03-00-55 by sheepers, on Flickr

A few weeks later on old friend arrived on a transporter… …and settled into her new/old home…let the games begin!

This happened a while ago. Ran over a piece of steel on the road and sliced the sump open. Was an absolute mission to get the sump off and new one on. If I knew how hard it would be I would have just welded it up! Turns out I should have just committed to pulling the engine completely. Not a single drop of oil coming from this engine now! But it drinks oil, has low compression and gutless as anything! So whats the solution? A 446hp Blueprint 383 stroker!

time to make a front air dam for this thing. its only been needing one for 16 odd years so I've really not hung around on this. i bought an english wheel and a bead roller, neither of which i have any idea of how to use but you gotta start somewhere. so i made up a wire frame using 3.2 dia welding rods then put some cardboard on it. i used the cardboard as a template to cut out some steel then i went about wheeling a tiny bit of shape into it just to give the pieces some rigidity. with some folding, some beating with a mallet and a bit more rolling i ended up with what you see below. for a first time doing this im fucking amazed at how good it is, im really happy i was able to get the shapes i did without fucking it up too much. having said that im going to start again with the sheetmetal and make another one. i learned heaps just making this first one and i know i can make the second one better so i will give it a go. 2021-10-20_08-03-54 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-10-20_08-03-48 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-10-20_08-03-40 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-10-20_08-03-31 by sheepers, on Flickr

Air tank is in, with fittings connected and sealed. Wiring loom is pulled back through too.

Started goin over the engine. Compression testing @ about 155-165 but cylinder 4 is at 145psi. So I gotta keep checking that and see if it is actually bad. Ignition was way off too. I had 35deg mechanical advance (excluding vac). So even with low static timing I was in the mid 40s which cant be good. So I got a new electronic dizzy and high power coil. Now running 16deg static and 38deg mechanical with 14deg vac. Works way better. It wasnt without its issues though. I didnt know the harness ran an internal ballast. So the coil was only getting 4volts and breaking up at higher revs. Then after I fixed that out the ignition key couldnt handle the higher current coil and started playing up after a while. Put a relay in and fixed that.

Need a ute to carry moulds for the engine project. So I got a 67 El Camino. Picked it up in Tucson and drove it back to CA without too much stress. Has the original 327 with camel hump heads and a modern (/80s) 700r4 trans. Ton of things to sort to make it a daily. Like it doesnt run very well! Timing feels off or vac advance isnt working. Carb seems way too big. It looks good from a distance but dont let the fool you!

Yeah there is a wombling thread on here about buying covid rego

Any garage, hold is taken off when you buy rego. VTNZ for pink/green sticker removal.

Your arse and beads go together like bread and butter....

I know we all love original, but I thought I’d throw in a little customisation. I welded in an exhaust Channel in the rear valance I had to make up.

Made a fan shroud. Also made some clearance around the radiator cap, the radiator needed to move forward a little more.

Removed the front guards, bumper and radiator cowl and store them in the flash new shed. These 30’s designed cars are just one big bolt together Meccano set. Motor & box came out real easy, hopefully I’ll find a good home for the mechanicals. (Anyone interested PM me, it’s in very good condition and I’m more interested in finding a good home for it rather than cash). This is one very sweet little six cylinder. 1781cc of OHV fire breathing 30’s technology producing a stump pulling 48 bhp (36 Kw) giving the standard car a blistering top speed of 70 mph (112 Kph) while rocketing it from 0-50 mph (0-80 Kph) in an eye watering, leg wetting 21.6 seconds. It’s easy to see why these cars were serious “chick magnets” in their day! And it was even cool to smoke cigarettes. No one wore seatbelts

Fuel pump wiring mostly complete, just need to do the power feed up the front. Lines completed.. Only need to find my inline filter to install. Also did a bulkhead massage, and tidied some wiring. Now it's ready for the engine and box to go back in for the final time.

Also I dummied up the pedal box to check for clearances and pedal position. As the car is all masked up I had to offer it up in my Mk1 van for a test fit . 20211023_185231.jpg 20211017_131216.jpg

Did the car need blasting? Maybe. I doubt someone experienced would have done it - they would have started taking bits off and decided "actually it seems pretty straight". They'd have tackled problem areas as they arose with wire brushes and some welding + paint. But I went into this project with the idea of transforming something old and tired into something that's ready for another 40 years, and that combined with my bushy-tailed newbiness and slow pace always meant getting someone to blast and paint the bulk of the work in one go. There were some clear problem areas we knew about Fun amounts of bog in places The radiator mount has a rust hole in it There's some cheeky rust above the dash Some rust damage at the boot latches A tiny hole in the floor pan so why not just Get It Done. Strip it all away, know what we're dealing with and let the phoenix be born again from the ashes. Was it worth it? Idunno, prolly. I think it was. The above issues were all of course still there. Less words more pictures you say? Well you may regret saying that, straw-reader. But I made sure to downsize all of the photos on this page so it should be less brutal on your modem this time. The misc bog wasn't actually that bad........ .... (foreshadowing?): The radiator support had no surprises for us. The hole in the floor. There was also a tiny hole on the other side. The rear latches had a bit more to say, with some issues at the keyhole and pinholes below the rear as well. What we thought was just surface rust on the back seat actually punched through a bit, but not by much. We thought we were one of the only starions on the planet without rust under the windscreen but we didn't quite escape that event horizon. I had no idea it was this bad! We learned about some new problem areas. The left rear fender has some issues. And the swiss left door sill.... But the worst blindsided us: the entire front has been stitched on. Someone threw a new front-end onto the car, then bogged and painted the welds in the frame to hide them. Overall, the work doesn't seem to massive - but the front end gives me pause. The car has previously been registered in NZ so I feel it's probably okay as long as the work is cleaned up a bit? Would love some advice there. The other thing is it'd be great to get the suspension back on (once cleaned up). But it seems like we should get the underside sealed/painted first?

A few years ago I got sick of wearing glasses and got laser surgery. My eyes suck so they couldn't just do the in-and-out, drive-yourself-back-to-work one. They laid me under the laser, put alcohol into my eye, scraped to the lens with a tiny spatula, lasered the lens into behaving (after warning me that the smell would be the air ionising not me burning) then tweezered a bandage contact into place. I was told I'd have to basically stick to a dark room at home for at least a week. I'd been told what the process was. I was okay I guess, I wanted it and was steeled for it. Then the doc said "cool that's one eye done, onto the other one" and it suddenly hit real. There's no backing out now. I've got one eye done, I can't exactly nope out at that point. While the mystery of the first eye was easy to experience as it came, I knew exactly what was coming now. I suddenly felt very anxious. I'm feeling a lot like that again. One eye done. There's no backing out now.

Decided it was about time I focused a little more on the Rigamortice project. It was obvious I needed more space than my meagre suburban garage could provide so storage shed and a small machine shop became a priority. Solved the shed problem with a Bunnings el-cheapo but couldn’t resist building a sturdy base on which I could build something more substantial on in the future. Yes it’s a flimsy piece of junk but hey you get what you pay for! Next step was to cut a hole in the side of my garage block wall (with the help of my son) and build the machine shop I’d been hankering after for a while. Still needs a little finishing (and a sub for the sound system) but I’m happy.

Spent a few hours this morning building another replica of the air tunnel / engine box front panel. Started off by making a cardboard template of the side profile which I then replicated in some old chipboard that I had lying around. Got the position of the intermediate plate's mounting bolts pretty spot on so I was able to bolt in the intermediate plate complete with attached shifter. As I suspected I'm going to need to lower the shifter base a bit more so that my "gate" lever will clear the tunnel top, so that's what I'll tackle next.

Make some fake branding for the parts like GRuddy or even something more local

This is pretty much the finished car. I took it to Clint for a cert. It didn't fail on too much, just some additional fuel line clips needed, a smidge of camber to be wound in, heat sleeving on a brake line on the diff, some nyloc nuts for the seat bolts, and a couple of other very minor things. Anyway here's finally, some proper camera photos of it. 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (369)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (383)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (327)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (350) by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (356)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (311)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (294)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (403)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (58)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (66)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (83)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (48)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (160)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (175)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (238)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (263)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (440)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (408)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (306)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (494)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Thanks for looking, for the past 15 years or so.

Spent this morning working on the MK2 version of my gear shift mock up and I'm much happier with the proposed position of the gear stick. I then disassembled the shifter one more time, drilled the first of the mounting holes in the intermediate tunnel panel and bolted the panel in for a quick test fit. The good news is that it clears my accelerator mechanism and the gear change cables look like they will clear the radiator. So now I need to take a courage pill and start cutting up my intermediate tunnel panel.

So I had it all booked to go off for its rollcage to be done. Nope not even close. Last minute job of pulling out sound deadening found some weight reduction holes in the floors. Only the fronts. So I promptly ordered a bead roller, as you do. And will find some zintec to make up some floor plates. Cage was able to be swapped with another car.. So better pull finger.

Thought I'd start the process of converting the plate, by creating a mock up in wood. This will allow me to have a few goes at getting the position of the mechanism exactly right before I start hacking up the real deal. So, this morning I put together a MK1 version. The angle of the base plate is pretty good and the cables now point downwards in order to clear the radiator core. The angle of the gear stick will need to change and also the gear stick has ended up further up the tunnel wall than I would like. All good learnings so tomorrow I'll crack into the MK2 version. Thanks for reading.

The purpose of this plate is to deflect a stream of incoming cool air over the top of the radiator. This air gets blown into the hollow void that exists between the inner and outer skin of the engine box lid. Back in the day when heat reducing materials were pretty poor quality, the propeller heads at the Dagenham Ford factory came up with this brilliant idea to use cold air drawn in through the front grill to keep the engine box lid cooler to the touch. Those who have driven a Thames in warmer climates will attest to the fact that the plan didn't work all that well. Anyhoo, since the plate is still there on my van and I have a plan to fill the void in the engine lid with heat resistant expanding foam to keep temperatures down, I figured I could re purpose this plate and use it as a mount for my floor shifter. Photo of the plate in situ:

Thought I may as well get the shock mounts done before pack up time too. Flipped one of the stock upper shock mounts and used that on drivers side, then used some lasered brackets I had left over from another job on passengers. Shocks sit nice and more upright than stock so should ride a bit better. Can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

I love how far this project has snowballed

Can you not go full Yella Kebab Spec?

Poking with the torch revealed some crust in the pillar seam hidden by the roof framing so out came the welder again and brother put paid to it in a tidy fashion

Cubby house finished today.

VTNZ are very good at being useless sometimes talk to land transport about it and see where that goes

I spent ages cleaning the 53 years of human hands goop off the wheel, I'm going to stick with the stock wheel I think

All glued up. Ready to clamp it down to the pallet, then drop it to the ground. Went a lot smoother than last time but still a big big mission. Need a bigger area and a better way of mixing sand. I think its a little lighter than the last one. In preparation I added some 'helper' air bags to the El Camino a few weeks back. Should be good for 1000lbs.....

So, the new one has a little bit of history in NZ, built in Nelson back in the early 2000's https://themotorhood.com/themotorhood/2008/1/3/articles-surfin-usa-1949-ford-country-squire-202 It's was sold to the previous owner up in Whangamata several years ago. Sill much the same running gear I think, except for an aftermarket Scott front suspension setup. All I've done so far is remove bamboo roof rack and most of the stickers. The roof needs a touch up where the roof rack was mounted. The wood will have to come off and be refinished 'soon'

Put discs on as it had scary braking. Same old story, get in to install the discs etc and find the ball joints are gone. I get new ball joints and when I get to the 2nd side I find the upright is flogged out (scary). So I do all ball joints and uprights. Then when installing the new booster find that the proportioning valve is in a completely different place with different sized fittings. So replace all the brake lines!

Adjusted rockers. Still a bit tappity sounding so not sure whats going on there. Maybe a stuck lifter. It had a dead spot at tip in and surging at cruise. Im certain the timing is good now so went over the carb. It was all gunked up, wire brush in the float bowl and a bent metering rod. Gave it a full rebuild and its now great. Have a new dash and engine harness to put in to clean things up. The fuse block looks ridiculous. Theres a lot of surface rust/corrosion under the dash but only from pedal height up which is weird. The rest of the car is great so I dont know if things just get humid under a dash?