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Picked this up after work today and spent the evening fitting trim and panels. It's bright! Emmett did an awesome job spraying this one. He's a panel beater, not a painter, but is getting good on the gun now! It feels like someone else's car at the moment. The red on red combo will take some getting used to!

Oh my……

Before I had children, I had cool cars. I had a Fox Body Mustang which ate tyres. I had a jacked up K2500 Silverado which ate smaller cars. And I had a Chevy Astro which chewed my reputation. I’m a vintage Ford man and I’ve always aspired to own a MKV Cortina Wagon - but with prices on the rise (and fuel climbing too….) I’ve had to set my sites lower…. I’ve been keeping an eye out for anything vintage and cheap. Smallbore, with 4 doors. These were the only boxes to tick. I’ve been rolling in company vehicles and haven’t owned a car for years but I’ve been really itching to get back in something with damp carpet that reeks of old oil. Enter, the 1968 Morris Austin 1100. At the time of purchase I knew nothing about them. The Mrs had a Morris mini 1100 when we were younger, so I knew it would be mechanically familiar, and also a tinny piece of shit. I’ve come to learn that in its day, the Morris Austin was a prolific and popular family car with an innovative Hydrolastic ‘float on fluid’ suspension system. They were also known as ‘land crabs’ and ‘road lice’ as they deteriorated into the rusty underpowered whip of the working poor. Mine has been somewhat of a gangster mobile in recent years, to a group of Morrinsville Millennials (without half a respectable haircut between them). It features flared guards, cool wheels, quality paint over poor quality panels and one of the most dubious recently expired WOF’s in New Zealand. The Hydrolastic system is flatter than Taylor Swift. The drivers seat is chooched. It needs back seatbelts. The cv boots are split. The exhaust and fuel pump have been snapped off by aforementioned teenagers, driving it sacked in the weeds. And there is rust. As I type that, I am questioning my decision. I was coerced into it by @anglia4 and my mate Big Lukey who in hindsight, may not have had my best interests at heart. Nobody tell Bucket Barry, he will not approve. The plan is to achieve WOF and then send-it around a nearby roundabout. Stay tuned.

Also modules make the world better. And AU falcon gear sounds better then mkii stuff

Here's my little sentimental toy. Always wanted one, can never find a nice early one. Swapped a ZXR250C that I picked up super cheap for this Moved house, during that process I didn't have any space for it, panicked and listed on trademe. Got all emotional several days in and couldn't deal with selling it, so I pulled it off trademe and just made space happen! It's a tidy wee project, I threw a second hand engine in it to keep it running. Original motor had been massively penisfingered by some womble, is salvageable and is in process of rebuild.

So brought a chopper been after one ling time 1st pick how i got it missing few bits. So far ive.. Put pedals and arms on kinda need thoes and gressed up head stock and crank as both were semi seized. Started making a sissy bar too. Plan is just make it cool hang in shed ride now and then will full paint ect

Luckily I have lots of 1100 bits coming and going in otorohanga! What do you need? 021 557028

Whats backlash? Spent the day digging further into the greasing issues, pretty sure its now getting everywhere, lots of black gunk spewing out onto the rails and its much, much quieter! still have quite a list to do before full operation, but yeah, could start smashing out cabinets if the will to CAD them existed.

Fucking win

I recently brought the weldskill 205 acdc and really like it, TGA abrasives https://tgaabrasives.co.nz/shop/welding-plasma/welding-equipment-welding-plasma/tig-machines-welding-equipment-welding-plasma/cigweld-weldskill-205-ac-dc-tig-welder/ were a bit cheaper than blackwoods too, the 8m tig torch is handy for some jobs but a bit of a pain for others so iv got a 4mt flex head wp17 setup for it now as well. really rate the ease of use, great upgrade over my old china acdc tig

yeah neat meat! Even had a super car turn up. Hope the ride back wasn’t too cold by the way @oldrx7

I have been keeping an eye on the lvvta docs but if you see anything whack let me know. Crush tubes for the engine subframe mounts Put the rear ones where the original engine subframe mounted Bending tube to fit The subframe isn't finished, I still have another engine mount I want to pick up and maybe tie it into the shock towers but for now it's enough to get it in.

For the inspection? That seems a lot.

I still rate my BOC highly, it's called a 200 but it's actually 210A. https://mytools.co.nz/products/boc-smootharc-tig-200-ac-dc?pr_prod_strat=collection_fallback&pr_rec_id=26b01ce58&pr_rec_pid=4459075469347&pr_ref_pid=4516669259811&pr_seq=uniform

I know I worked with a relatively small sample size, but I saw Lincoln welders fail and be sent out for repair more than any other brand. They must be alright because people swear by them....but it left a bad taste in my mouth

I have one. For the money it seems you can’t go wrong. I will say it’s not a frequently used item in the workshop atm. Makes nice welds when dialled in.

Phoooooaaaarr New paint who dis Looks bangin

There's good choice of vw group specific head units Recommend getting android auto with steering wheel control Little active sub make it sound way better too

Stumbled on a 6/110 18months ago. The lad liked it and wanted one so got this rust bucket for him. Should of given him my mk i, but seeing as it is dead rego and the parts ordered 6 months ago havent arrived, hopefully easier getting this mkii back on the road...

This is relevant to my interests, I picked up a mk5 tonight, 2.0T wagon with stage 1 remap. It has induced a few grins so far. Your headunit looks good, might need to get something similar for some modern features.

I can't sell it! It's far too coo Have a pile of NOS bits for when the restoration happens

off goes the old shell, used it to store scrap metal and got $50 for it.... hardly worth anything these days but its paid itself off in parts, and more space on the lawn nowfeel kinda sad to see it get destroyed but cant fix them all...

Got the driver's side suspension all back together yesterday and started taking the passenger side apart this morning. Lots of shagged dust boots and some notchy feeling ball joints and tierod ends. A bit more of the Mustang's history was revealed during the process. The upper control arm on this side is a repro unit manufactured by ACP. Date stamp says 2006.

That’s what LHD racks are for…. Suspect there are other unintended consequences lurking though - there always are!

Ive got something similar in my shed. Its a Daihatsu 550. One day i might do something with it but probably not. Super cool little trucks though.

I bought a LeLink obd2 from amazon. Bit dearer but leafspy on iPhone is fussy. Works mint and has survived a trip through the washing machine. I think android is better for apps. I have car scanner pro which has connection profiles for hundreds of models, but generally only newer cars. Does generic OBD stuff just fine.

Same as above, I just got a generic ELM327 chinese thing and whenever Ive wanted to use it, it has worked (they do drain your battery if plugged in and dont use car for a couple weeks)

The torque pro app has been pretty good for me. Got 3 or 4 Chinese obd adaptors and usually one of them will work... But not always the same one

My new water pump controller arrived Saturday, props to Davies Craig for sorting it quickly. I plugged it in and everything looked good. I gave it a test today and ran it for about 30 mins. Temp limit was set to 85 degrees so when it hit 88 the fan came on and within 30 seconds the temp had come down to 85 again, pretty happy with that. I let it do this a few times and it seems to be working well. Only issue remaining is the time it takes to warmup, I suspect they'll recommend a thermostat with some extra bleed holes in it but I'll run it past the manufacturer and see what they recommend.

Made a little coffee table tray to put stuff in. I think the wood is Rimu and flattened some old copper pipe to cover the screws

The above bike just got tuned on the dyno on Friday. Stock pipe, 116hp. My pipe, 153hp. The power curve was constant up to about 245kph. Was not expecting that much increase.

Oh god what have I started

Finally got round to removing all the seats, carpet, door cards, kick panels etc and are now $3.25 richer. Only found three more areas of rust that will need to be repaired. Two in the floor pan in front of back seat. Not a big area and should be easy to replace. The other area is in the side wall of the passenger foot well. This might be a bit harder to fix. Most of the floor pan is covered in sound proofing which looks to be in good order. Have cut this back around areas of rust and it looks like new underneath. Some surface rust which just needs to be treated with rust converter. Also decided to take overriders of bumpers which proved to be harder than expected. Two screws shared off and had to be drilled out and tapped. The others took a lot of patience. Bumper are matt black and will need to be refinished. Not sure if painting or some other finish is needed.

And this car also missing under load... and idle sometimes, hot or cold Took plugs out and they all spark strong, plugs are new, ignition modules new, coils new, leads all the right ohms, cap and rotor cleaned, all cylinders have 150psi comp, injectors cleaned and all work, bit at a loss as to what it is Might have to get it to do it again at idle and pull plugs to see if a cylinders cutting out ... Do these look lean? Discussion link is on page one...

Biiig weekend pulled interior out. Drove palmy to Auckland for the electric statesman interior was a good bargain all electrics work too super comfy.

After running the engine a few times I now know a thing: will the bike waterpump cope? No, not at idle at least. Not surprising though, it's a tiny thing trying to push water a long way. So the first revision is to ditch the mechanical pump for one of these. The controller adjusts flow based on temp so I can remove my thermostats and therefore some complexity from my setup. I still need to remove the mechanical pump and plumb the new one in once I find a good spot for it. As for the other unknowns, the new pump will help test the radiator and assist the air bleeding which looked promising i.e. roof hose was warm. On to other important issues, how to listen to 'NZ Hiphop Bangers Only' when parked (it will probably be too noisy to hear the intro to Deceptikonz Fallen Angels when driving). I am keeping the factory radio but wanted something with modern connectivity, basically an amp, speakers and a bluetooth connection. I bought this little Alpine 3516 amp, swapped the din plug for some rca inputs on the side, picked up some Pioneer TS-X5 speakers as they were the only ones that I could see that would fit on the tiny parcel shelf and finally a Fusion marine BT unit. Goes ok for what it is.

Chassis update: I managed to make it back to NZ for a bit, a couple of months ago, to have a go at this chassis building thing my Dads been raving about! Turns out it is actually hard work! Hes just finished both rails! I just got a bunch of machined parts done. Spring mounts and braces that go between the rails. Just have two sheetmetal braces to figure out then all of it can be bolted/riveted together (with a few more holes and some tweaking I'm sure!)

So now I had a spot for the engine I had to work out if I could get drive from it to the axles that goes in the right direction. I spent more time thinking, looking at pictures, measuring, reading forums, asking @yoeddynz questions, doing nothing, buying parcel shelf speakers, looking at rims, starting other projects. I started to cad (poorly) up my own diff with countershaft unit when I found an outfit in the UK who do R1 conversions for Minis and they have their engines facing the same way, a quick email confirmed they would sell one of their diffs separately if I wanted one. This Or this So now I had a solution I started to fit the engine.

The engine is a Suzuki GSF1250, so not a big hp R1, Busa type but the price was about a third the cost of a sport bike engine and it has a stacked gearbox which was gonna be useful. It still puts out 110-120hp with some easy mods but its main feature is torque, about 110NM which is all in by 4000rpm. Space was a big concern as these cars are tiny, 3m front to back, 1.295m side to side. From the rear axle to the back of the car is 50cm or something silly so I needed a compact engine to allow enough room for a diff, that's where the stacked gearbox helps as it makes the engine shorter front to back. I spent a while considering different configurations, putting it in front of the axle would make it easier to sort the drivetrain but there is still minimal room in that direction and I really didn't want to chop up the interior. This way around had some benefits but still not enough room. White tube at the bottom is the axle centre. Then I noticed the bumper sized space behind the headers.

These are sooo cool. You should make it your goal to have it rideable for the Urewera undertaking and let strangers like me do jumps on it

Eventually got the old brake booster out. On close inspection I discovered a bent actuator rod. That's not good either.

So back in December when I bought the Mustang the brakes worked okayish but needed plenty of leg power and I suspected that the power assist wasn't working. I swapped a few emails with @sr2 (AKA The Brake Wizzard) around Christmas time and with his help we diagnosed a faulty brake booster. I ordered a decently priced replacement that came complete with a new master cylinder. Both have been languishing in their packaging for a good while now, but today was the day. Started off by checking out the existing setup a little more closely. First thing I noticed is a brake bias adjuster mounted under the booster. Hullo .... that doesn't look factory. There is also a set of non factory looking firewall brackets that the booster bolts up to. So I'm picking that this car was originally delivered without power assist or if it was someone else has been here before. Okay, so after removing a few nuts and having to sacrifice one of the solid brake lines due to a previously rounded flare nut, I was able to seperate the m/c from the booster. Yikes, that looks a bit nasty: