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Now I had an engine that starts and runs for half a minute I wanted more. I needed a makeshift cooling setup. I had a spare Nissan March radiator and fan kicking about so that was called into action. I whipped up this beautiful bit of carpentry artwork.. Using a collection of spare hoses I connected the dots between the engine, the electric water pump and the radiator... I started filling the system with coolant mixed at 35%. Remember this bit. It comes back to haunt me later. The whole system wouldn't fill up due an airlock in the coolant pipe from the opposite head. There was no way this was going to shift. The standard goldwing cooling system has both top pipes meeting in the middle at a thermostat block so they just bleed the air straight out naturally. I needed a nipple. I looked in my collection of various sized nipples and other brake fittings... Found this small nipple which was perfectly formed and a lovely size... I needed a boss to inset the nipple into. I machined one up and tig welded it carefully onto the top of the coolant pipe, in a discreet place tucked away behind the alternator so the nipple isn't immediately on display unless you look for it. Now with the nipple cracked open the large airlock was able leave via some clear vinyl tube. This allowed almost 1.5 litres more coolant in. With the water pump in override mode and twisted sideways I was able to bleed the pump out and the coolant was circulating fine. Next step before running the engine for an extended period was to sort out the O2 sensor positioning. Luckily a nice stainless boss from ali land had turned up so that was welded in place ... I was very happy that I could run the sensor cable around behind the oil filter, completely out of harms way and about as out of view as I could hope for. There's no hiding the ugly sensor sticking out of the exhaust but that's just life. The exhaust also required a token amount of silencing so I popped the old motorbike silencers outside on the truck deck and painted them with black high temp paint, mainly so I wasn't looking at ugly rusty things.. I also had to do a little bit of extra wiring. The water pump and its controller, the O2 gauge and not to forget the remote unit for the mandalorian spaceship interior lights.. I also wanted to slot my throttle cable adjuster base so I could easily remove the whole cable outer and inner without fuss... In the mill with a tiny slot drill... I made a hand throttle using a spare mountain bike brake lever and a bit of suitable alloy tube. But I needed a tiny solderless nipple for the cable end. My tray of bike cable adjusters and such what had nothing small enough so I machined one out of brass and used a 3mm grub screw... Now I had some basic throttle control without reaching over the engine. Time to start it up which happened without any fuss. The coolant system worked fine and the engine rose to temp quickly and smoothly. The fan kicks in above my for now setting of 98 degrees. I intended to tune the idle first, once the engine was hot and not using any of the warm up tables etc. But the idle control valve was still passing a touch too much air even when 'closed'. I wound the idle bleed screw in to its stop on the throttle body but still it was idling at 1200 thereabouts. If I blocked the iacv inlet with my finger the revs would drop to circa 700-800. I could also hear a very tiny vac leak from the spaceship window (plenum lid) Bloody mandalorians with their terrible glazing skills. Tightened the lid bolts down and its not bad. Main issue really is the idle valve. I might just make my own like I did with the Mazda V6. Rip the guts out from a stock Mazda item and machine a suitable body to take the solenoid and valve head. Another issue far more critical that really had me feeling quite low was this... Coming from here... Coolant gallery at base of the head gaskets on each side. It's not dripping but weeping and only once up to temp. I was gutted. I had to travel over to Nelson city that afternoon in my Imp so while there I popped into the engine reconditioners I know there and explained the problem and showed them the photos. Instantly they said I shouldn't have done my first fill with coolant. Apparently it creeps very effectively through any tiny gap before the head gasket has sealed and its slippery/slightly slimy consistency stops the paint on the gasket sticking to the surfaces. All is not lost though. I was instructed to drain the system of coolant, flush everything through thoroughly with clean water and let it dry. I did that last night. I then ran it a couple of times this morning with nothing in it for no more than 30 seconds, allowing it to cool between. Hopefully this will have dried it out and help it seal. Then I was told to just run it with water for a while and see how it goes. It might be ok. If not then they have a kiwi made product called sealwel that many kiwi/aussie reconditioners use with troublesome gaskets. He reckoned its not failed them. Worst case scenario is a pair of new head gaskets. and no coolant when setting them ! I might just order the gaskets just in case so I'm not ever in a position where I have to wait later on down the road if the above doesn't work. So yeah. I hope its ok and I've plenty of other things to do anyway. Like sort out the alternator that seems to be defective. This one. I need to either fix it or find an exact replacement because the spaceship has been built up to it and there's no room for anything bigger/longer.. I have also chopped the throttle body spring back a half coil for more tension on the throttle shut. It wasn't closing completely by itself against the strength of the engine want of air. Oh yeah I took a vid ...

Ay time for a wee post about this fun project. so about a year ago I was lucky enough to purchase some land pretty cheap as the owner was retiring. She was looking for someone to pass it to who shared her vision about the place and wouldn't just chop it up and sell it to developers. So now i pretty unexpectedly own 23 acres just outside of my hometown of Picton. My plans are to move to live on it (hopefully by 2026) and develop it slowly and carefully, as its pretty easy to make a lot of non reversable changes these days with a 3.5t excavator at my roadside. Ginormous pole shed is a must of course. Right now its mostly Wattle and Kanuka with a spattering of other natives trying to fight with the gorse and younger wattle. Goats, pigs, possums, weka etc. Oh and a log cabin. So the story with the cabin is that it was built from about 1998-2000 by the woman who sold me the land. It was built mostly with hand tools, no electricity, from half rounds and poles she got from a local sawmill and dragged up the hill with her Subaru Leonie. She lived in it for about a decade and gradually improved the water catchment and storage, put some basic solar on the place and built a nice, but now pretty rotten, composting toilet down the hill. Since she moved out ten plus years ago there were a string of tenants that lived there and unfortunately when i took possession the place had become pretty run down. Fortunately my first trip was with a few friends and we spend most nights getting sauced up and deep cleaning every surface of the place.

So I finally got the engine mounted into the Imp with the freeway flyer gearbag. A lot of installing and uninstalling to see what works best where. As usually with these things it is a case of compromise and the least shit option which is to be expected. With the adapter plate and the VW being a bigger box I thought it would push the engine past the rear crossmember. Turns out that it's actually a shorter box and the engine was back towards the front by several inches. Therefore the carbs were hitting the firewall. Did not expect that one! So I had to make up a new gearbox mount bracket that pushed it rearwards 50mm. It will make the hump under the seat easier to make and possibly the linkage. New one installed here with me holding up the old one. The one issue this cause was that the output shafts on the gearbox are now further back. Annoying but seeing as there was always an angle to them it isn't that big of a deal. Except now the half shafts foul the exhaust. They had to come off and Ill have to cut a bit of length out of them. So out the pipes came and I got to chopping off the ends of the half shafts to line them up. I lined them up as best I could and scribed them for the engineer. I scribed them at full CV range with the wheel side at suspension stock level so I assume the engineer will weld it in the middle. He is a clever guy and I didn't want to tell him how to do his job so I'm interested to see what he comes up with. I took them in at lunch and he'll get around to it when he can. He promised to tack them up and I'll double check they fit ok before he finalises it.

Trips down since then have seen a full rewire of the 12v system with new deep cycle lead acid batteries, a total overhaul of all the lighting, lighting installed in the toilet and shower areas, new stereo with bluetooth, 12v low power fridge, 12v TV for watching Cars 2 on a rainy night. Just a tidy up and rewire of the existing 12v solar setup. Better controllers (these are as shit as they come) would improve it vastly but i think im going to go to LiFePo4 and fancy hybrid inverter straight away instead of bothering to spend more on these campervan systems. But eventually they will be installed on other satellite buildings so worth keeping em nice(toilets showers etc) Putting the fridge in the bath is actually awesome cause these 12v fridges build up quite a bit on condensation and this makes it easy to drain. Plus theres a good shower on a gas califont a short walk from the cabin so the bath mostly goes unused. These hilarious Sharp mini system speakers are a nice impedance to run out of a car stereo and sounds surprisingly punchy actually. The 12v tv i got for $50 from noel lemmings clearance center cause the dvd player dont work (they sell for $500 at burnsco). Most of my lighting is "pond lighting" i bought online, they come in nice aluminium housings and are really low power consumption.

More photos etc had to go for a hoon up the Wairau on the bro Vaughans classic jetboat after all the hard work

Well well well, another day of progress, well , a couple hours anyway. knocked the nubs off the welds, etched, then set about throwing mud at it. actually hasn’t taken much except where the previous body guy has just filled instead of pulling the corner out to align with the other side. not much left to finish the filler off, used about 400gm of filler with most of it going the floor after sanding. almost ready for paint. Just need to see if I can “delete” the inner guards before I lay colour. No pint going back and doing it after paint.

Another thing to mention is that the Cabin is now available for rent. The driveway is somewhat Awd access only in the winter or after a rain but even a toyota carib or honda crv would be more than enough. If this cant work for you there is a short walking track up a hill from a car friendly parking spot on the town boundary. Rental rates arent decided entirely yet but have currently been going with $400 per week or $80 per night and my guests seem happy. Can do a smidge cheaper for oldschoolers of course. At these prices its the cheapest off grid cabin style accommodation in the region . The power is solar, the water is rain, the kitchen is gas and the toilet is composting. Off da grid as they say. Live Laugh Log Cabin

Update time: So insurance eventually processed our claim and lumped some cash into our account to pay for the repair with as the repairer isnt in their system. I headed to Hamilton very early in the morning a few days before Christmas to collect which was good timing as we needed most of the gear inside for our new years camping trip (with the camper trailer, not caravan). Dave had the old panels inside his shop which was interesting seeing how they are made. We had a good chat about all things caravan and I paid him some money and went on my way... however the first mistake I made was not pulling the caravan into the sun to take a look at the new panels. In the darkness of his workshop the new panels looked super straight with only a bit of workshop dust on them. However by the time I got back home and parked the caravan in the sun I realised that the paintwork is a bit patchy... Im annoyed at myself for not checking this out closer when I picked it up. It wasn't obvious in the workshop but yeah... silly me. Ive emailed Dave and he said it might need a cut and buff. In my mind its not my job to do having paid for a repair, so trying to work something out with him to get this sorted. In the mean time I took it for a long overdue wof and it sailed through with a clean sheet again. We took it away to Kauri Coast over anniversary weekend and we had an excellent time - we even won a campground competition for best setup. I still need to get the water tank out for a good clean and setup the electric pump so will hopefully get that done before summer is out. Away to Raglan for Waitangi weekend.

Most complete and well-maintained classic vehicle that's ever belonged to this household...

Also theres this...

Oh, and redid the mounting arm on alternator, that rough cast dags really irked me..great restraint not go further, looks uniform legit unlike my pic.

Also replaced the EGR emmision plate for the more shaped green bros one...Irked me way too much. Top half of manifold ( 'dynamic chamber' and factory throttle body/greddy intake tube etc) are now surplus to requirements moving on for reasons I will divulge another time..all that frikkn hard work vapour and reassemble/mod throttle body wasted Also a change of direction, twice the fun perhaps?

A man named Bart, against advice, Bought a Datsun, not once but twice. His wife disapproved, The car hardly moved, Now it's rusting – not so nice.

Picked this up in October 2023 and only recently got around to working on it after months of watching youtube clips learning about cars, and what I'd got myself into. Original plan was to; "Just get a WOF and drive it around". It's gone off the rails a bit since then. From the factory the car was a 400ci V8 with a manual transmission. At some stage, one of the previous 26 owners replaced it with a 350 chev and TH350 3-speed auto (I think that's what it is). Known problems and mods are: Car paint has faded Exhaust is hanging too low Front seats are worn Dash has cracks in it No heater or AC Failed WOF in late 2023: Brake pedal hard, brakes are weak Power steering leak Axle bearing play Passenger door sagging, not closing properly Speedo not working Headlight aim Boot not staying open Some rear lights dead Stereo is not banging Huge gaps between door window glass and weatherstripping. Water will go straight into door skin Very slow oil leak from bottom of transmission, only leaks after being driven Has a gilmer drive Dash is missing the original temperature gauge, has a stuck DC voltage gauge, and has a cluster of 3 aftermarket temp/pressure/voltage gauges flopping around unsecured below the stereo. Has a 1977 trans am frontend. Suspect that one of the horde of previous owners was really into "Smokey and the Bandit" I'm using this forum topic to keep track of what I've done so will make a few posts in a row just to catch up to real-time

in the mazdanine there are two single mattresses that can make a queen, downstairs theres bunk bed and the couch and if desperate a foam mattress on the floor. so up to six in theory. And noise control couldnt find you even if they wanted to haha

It’s been a while since iv posted on here. I used to have a different user name but can’t get into that profile. anyway I have bought a mk1 transit and know nothing about them, iv heard there may be a couple people hiding on here that know a bit more. I feel I’m going to have a lot of questions as I get deeper into it. first question is diff rations, it has been pinto swapped but had a factory diff. At 100kph sounds like the poor engine is nearly valve bouncing. What are the common diff swaps for these?

Just added a vid build thread. This still makes me giggle and I'm so looking forwards to seeing reaction at shows in the future.

ACHEIVEMENT UNLOCKED: Saying Nipple 300 times in one post

Tanks sorted even have a wet sand and a re clear looks realy good just need rear guard

Definitely. Once im down there full time i will have my own annual event too.

Heck this is cool. OS Nats 202x?

I think I'll be bold enough to give that a go, but will require me to acquire stencils (I'm sure Ali Express has the finest available).

With the adapter plate re-machined Im pretty sure it is ready to go. There were quite a few odds and ends in the kit left over that I couldn't tell what they were for so I'm hoping I either didnt need them or they were from the wrong kit. It's all torqued up now anyway so the next time I'll know it's wrong is when I test drive it. Quite a few things will need to happen before then however. Such as cutting a hole in the floor for the box, sorting a shifter, and custom made half shafts.

This project is the tits!

Got some quick wins with the WOF progress Brake pedal was stiff because brake booster wasn't getting any vacuum. I got lucky with this one, it only needed a $6 brake booster check valve to be replaced Power steering was leaking from the low-pressure hose. Bizarrely the existing hose was made from two separate bits of aged flexible hose with a metal pipe in between them and then wrapped in many rusty hose clamps. Threw that all away and replaced with a single piece of new hose Axle bearings replaced. Ordered the parts from rockauto, bought a slide hammer from trademe and got into it. Rockauto sent me a used part but promptly sent a new one after I notified them. Great service. While doing the work I rotated the wheels a bit and the spider gears escaped from the carrier. Was going insane trying to put it back together before I realised that I had to move the Z-clip in the middle as that'd moved too. Speedo cable wasn't attached to the gauge which made for a quick fix. While doing that, saw that the printed circuit fabric(?) at the back of the speedo/tach cluster was in a terrible state. Burnt out tracks and rough handling apparent. FIxed up a bit and found a bad ground which was stopping the cabin/dash back lights from lighting

That's a bugger. Getting it up to temp then retorquing the heads might help?

@cletus after your opinion as you’ll be getting this project eventually , whenever it’s done. So I need to get this ute lower than what it’s maxed out with the balljoint, I’ve been told to do a pie cut and reinforce it etc. these pics are of a 1st gen b1600 , bagged and pie cut uppers. what I need to know is what documentation do I need to support this mod? NDT report only? these arms sit completely flat standard, so you can judge how much it needs to drop overall to sort the binding. i also not the bump stop on the bottom arm is completely toast in those pics. what is the expected minimum for these? I do plan to retain using a bump stop for max lift travel too, I’m sure it’s wise to not over inflate bags and max out bjs etc the opposite way too. always open to suggestions and tips. also going to dig into the C notch and 4 link when I’m back from Japan. Similar to @kp60nick set up, although I think my arms are slightly shorter. I’m not aiming for massive travel change. Ride height at 100mm, slam and lift of “enough”. Using 8” travel bags. solid advice is rewarded in beers/hugs/high 5s/fist bumps/east coast waves

Fiiinally builder is free to build my sammie, dropping off irons & housings tomorrow...YUSS Have been furiously scoping out the future parts/bolt ons needed & buying bits n pieces last few weeks and tinkering on modifying bits for the factory items I'm actually keeping and the delooming process for engine bay repaint I'm sure when I get my keg back in one piece I be all focused and pepped up.. Projectlife?

De-clutterised some of this turd Actually looks a lot better already Lots of crispy bits still falling off it Cut up a fence paling for my seat base Need some baleing wire to patch up the leg sheild

All we really want to see is that CRX anyway.

Yea so this got the backburner big time as the next day from that ^ I wound up in hospital and spent 8 days there. This is a tedious story where my partially removed gall bladder decided to spontaneously weld itself back together, make gallstones that happily blocked my bile duct, which basically meant my liver was pumping bile into the wrong bit of my insides. I turned very yellow until they flew me to chch on the flying doctor plane (this was actually pretty awesome) and reamed me out. I still have a drain in and hopefully will be getting surgery mid Feb to sort the rest of it. This is all very very boring, I would not recommend in any way. -43/10 So many wasted shed hours. But in the meantime I have been slowly picking away at things, nothing too serious tho. Splashed out on some new hoops, Goodride something's at $80 a corner fitted. They may not stay but will be an improvement on the tyres that were there, these were the same ones it had when I sold it. Then I installed the heater and dash, this hurt me and I probably shouldn't have done it. @HumberSS has found a heater mech out of an NA MX5 for me so I should be able to hack that in there. There is a wrecker in chch who quoted $260 plus shipping for an original heater mech, which is more than a 1/3rd the cost of the entire car so they can get fucked. I had to draw up and print a vent that was missing, some previous owner decided to bin all the heater gubbins and had weirdly blocked off the screen vents which wasnt particularly solid thinking. I also spent a bit of time rerouting and extending the control cables as the heater is out of an earlier car. I bought a cheap AFR off AliX a while ago so I mounted this while I was at it. The seatbelts were pretty toast and of different makes. I had bought some cheap seatbelts off FB, but when I picked them up the tags were unconvincing; So when I got flown to Christchurch to talk to the surgeon last Wednesday I (again probably stupidly given my state of health) grabbed a lime scooter over lunch and made my way to NZ Seatbelts and picked up some proper ones. These got fitted up; Now I just have to look wistfully at this and hope that in a month or so I will be fit enough be able to drop it so I can finally sort the wiring;

Been a few weeks now since I've had this thing. Started by deskunging engine bay with degreaser and waterblaster. Lucky my shed at home is so shit, as I had to waterblast it inside as the brakes are still seized. Before and after Removed a whole lot of junk out of the engine bay. Was originally a CNG car so all that shit went in the bin. Also had a/C so I pulled all that out too as I have no pump and the rest of it looked pretty unserviceable. Keeping it simple for now but would love the opportunity a/C eventually. Then set to deciphering the basket case wiring. It's like 15 year old me had been there and thought I could improve on it. Bit of work with the test light and had it all figured out. A lot of fuckery was going on but I got to the bottom of it. Had an electric pump owing to the CNG, I didn't hold much hope but shorting it sprung it into life. Next up removing many broken studs and retapping holes. All gravy. The big news today however is that after finding all the various parts that were strewn all through it (thankfully only a few bits are missing), and assembling back onto the engine with a new manifold gasket, thanks to @fletch new front pulley (had big chunk missing) and new thermostat housing. Old bitch fired up, after my comedy of errors forgetting to install rotor...woops! Thing runs mint, oil pressure around 60psi so I'm happy. I'm surprised it actually ran on the decayed plugs I cleaned up and shitty leads, but firing on 6 and sounding like she's ready for the demo derby! I'm stoked Have also cleaned and vacuumed out the rat shit from inside and pulled the old house carpet out and, whilst not mint inside is really not too bad. Door trims are a bit fucked and the seats have a few tears, as well as missing rear seat base, but otherwise good. Have assessed the rust situation and for an old Datsun it's really pretty good. The floor is mint. I mean mint. One pinhole. Engine bay also only a few pinholes, front cross member is toast though, so will remake once I get a rad support panel. A little bit on inner sills above floor, and both outer sills need replacement. One lower door needs a little bit of work, other is mint, as are the front guards, barring some dents and shit. Lower rear quarters and rear valance are toast, and boot floor either side of wheel well needs replacing. Not looking forward to finding a passenger's side rear window however... Next mish is to tidy up the bay wiring proper and perhaps get the brakes working so I can do some skids. That's why you own a Datsun. Will then work from front towards the back on the body work. This is not taking precedent over the camper, I have simply had more time to tutu with it in the school hols. Have spent a grand total of about $45 on parts so far to get it running, sold off some shit too which has offset the price of a set of widened steelies @ThePog kindly located for me in the mainland. Chur.

One of the last things to sort out is the exhaust for car. Started out by cleaning up extractors that came with car but on a 1300 motor. I think they are coby's and cleaned up really well. Winner I thought until fitted. They are hard up to firewall and very close to washer bottle. Not going to work, so onto the next option. A set of Ashley extractors which were not much better. Not sure why these are not working for me . After a 6 week wait for a set of Pacemakers which are now in place I'm very pleased with alignment and clearances from other componets. Will hookup to old exhaust for startup and get it replaced later. Just have to sort out what size pipe I'm going to use. Project Discussion https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/84912-petes-mk2-escort-1600-sports/page/2/#comment-2614933

Bench testing continued. The sump was now holding oil. Phew. I fitted the old smiths mechanical oil pressure gauge that was originally fitted in the imp race car. I mounted the gauge to the temporary coil stand. With the engine cranking over it was seeing about 20 psi. The oil level would drop in the sight glass and after a minute or two it would be back to the old level. I was happy with this. Next on the list was to check the idle control valve was working. Its a 2 wire Bosch style pwm type unit. Very common, simple, reliable and hence used often in megasquirt installs. Its basically a rotary valve that is opened against spring pressure by a solenoid windings when current passes through them. The ecu earths its ground wire in a series of pulses, the quicker the pulses the more it stays 'open'. Simple as I thought.. but.. this is where I discovered that I had bought one of the units that is actually 'closed' at about 30% duty cycle. A failsafe on cars that use these for closed loop idle control (aircon/powersteering/epic sound systems etc etc) If the valve fails then spring pressure actually takes it to a slightly open state so the car cant stall. But I'm only using the valve for open loop at start up. So when its closed I want it to be closed. Luckily I was able to pick out/burn/pick out/burn/pick out the tough as epoxy that was holding the valve stop adjustment screw in place. I wound the screw in until the valve was closed with no power. It still passes a tiny amount of air but its much better. I'll manually adjust the idle bleed screw on the throttle body to get the fully warmed up idle where I want it when that time comes. Which was going to be soon I thought! Next thing to check was that the crank angle trigger wheel VR sensor and the camshaft half moon hall sensor were both putting out satisfactory signals. Opened up the composite logger on tunerstudio expecting to see nice clean signals. But there was nothing. My heart sank. Oh here we go.. I took off the cover on the main board plug and checked the connections there. I then popped the volt meter, set at AC volts, onto pin 1 and 24, wound the engine over and got about 2.0 volts. I don't have an osillioscope and only have an old megastim 2.2 testing unit which won't create the required rpm signals I needed for testing. I wasn't quite sure what to check next so I started a thread on the megasquirt forum. Got some bits of advice but in the end I rang a mate in Richmond who has a lot more knowledge with megasquirts and has helped me out in the past. Organised to go see him the foloowing day. In the meantime I checked the hall sensor. I had never been able to find confirmative details on the polarity of the hall sensor even though it was a really commonly used unit among many a citreon/fiat/renault etc. I finally found a factory service manual online for Fiat ducatos which had a pin out of the sensor. Turns out I'd got my polarity wrong and after swapping the wires around at the hall sensor plug I now had a strong clean cam signal. I also made a mandrel to hold the old honda 12-1 trigger wheel in the lathe. Then I made two jigs. One for the spare goldwing VR sensor, like the one I'd fitted to the engine. The other jig was to hold a Mazda V6 VR crank sensor of which I had a few kicking about and had used them with no issues on the Viva. I spun the trigger wheel up in the lathe at various speeds and took voltage readings of both sensors. The readings were very similar but I still couldn't tell what the actual signals are like. The next morning I drove out to mates place and he set to work on my ECU. He compared the board to his spare Ms3x. looking for any differences. Remember I had bought this ECU secondhand from someone on trademe and was told it was working. I had swap some of the circuitry jumper wires to suit my application. Once he was happy there was nothing major missing on my board he got another spare ecu he had and ran up my sensors in his test bed to confirm they were putting out a good signal. Then we (well - mainly him, I just stood about and learned) systematically went through the VR circuit looking at the signals on his osiloscope. Discovered that transistor U7 was faulty so he kindly swapped out the known good item from his MS1 which I'll find a replacement for him. After that he found a loose, terribly soldered resistor in the circuit- when it was wiggled the signal would appear.... re-soldered that and hey presto - clean signal. Lots of other pins got re-soldered too. The Goldwing pulse generator/VR sensor puts out a much weaker signal that the Mazda crank vr sensor. we double checked them against each other and the Goldwing item struggles at slow speeds (cranking type speeds) so I'll swap over to the Mazda item. When I got home I quickly tried the repaired ecu out and now there's a good rpm signal but it drops out of sync but I took a log anyway. Then started making a new bracket to suit the Mazda sensor. New vr sensor in place and wired up. I then had to remove one cambelt, which is so easy to do on these engines, remove the trigger wheel, file off the old key and weld a new one in place to suit the mazda vr sensor position which was now bolted in the other set of holes Honda used for the original 'pulse generators' as they call them. New trigger wheel key peg.. Finishing that lot got me to this point when trying it out that evening... The red spikes indicate an out of sync situation and no rpm reading but at least the log was clean, consistant and rythmic. Something wrong in the settings, not interference. I tried changing various trigger settings but no luck I was tired so off to bed. Following morning I discovered that when I was changing the trigger settings I didn't spot the prompts to power cycle the engine because I was still on the diagnostics page. So none of those changes took place until the very end when I had actually set it back to the typical default settings. This time a power cycle after changing the capture to falling edge and I got this lovely log... Yay!!! Now I was ready to check the ignition coils and then the base timing. What else could possibly go wrong? Coils all tested fine and the sparks were nice and clean looking. I then marked the timing mark on my custom crank pulley and tested the base timing. I was out by 4 degrees. Pretty happy that I had got my trigger wheel so close. Simply changing the trigger wheel offset value in the settings by 4 degrees had the timing marks line up bang on. Engine start up time was here! I went to bed happy, excited and somewhat nervous about what could happen, or not... So this morning it was time to roll the engine out on the table to the front of the workshop, throw some fuel into the mix and see what happens. I set up the garden hose just in case, taped my phone to a light stand, started recording, tentatively went for a start and this is what happened... Wow!!! Faaaaaaaaaaaarking awesome! What an occasion. What a milestone. Such relief and much giggling with joy. I couldn't believe it. First start on my own custom built engine and it sounds bloody amazing! That was starting on a basic universal base map loaded onto the ecu so I was really expecting a lot more mucking about with the starting settings to get a clean start. I was stoked! I tweaked the cranking settings slightly and now it would start on the button after a few cycles... I can only run it for a few seconds as there is not a drop of coolant in the engine. So my next job is to set up a makeshift coolant circuit using a spare Nissan micra radiator and setup the Davies Craig electric water pump. I can test for leaks and then I can really have a good crack at setting up a nice clean starting and idling tune. I'm so happy! Alex.

Ambush camo plz...

It's probably the fastest around a racetrack too

The 1600 is parked up in a garage. 521 is a 620. Thats in the garage here. Its awfully far along, but still not quite there yet. I should probably start a thread for that.

I mostly finished it. Drove it. Sold it for more than it owed me and lived happily ever after. Got a cat named Spanners with 3 legs thats happy as. Fun fact the old photo of this 4dr 1200 wagon has the back end of my Blue 2dr Ke70 wagon in it.

You need to stipulate that should two more cats be imminent they need to be either Burmese or Sphynx.. Also remind her about the damage cats do to the local bird/reptile populations and the purchase of such is only exacerbating the problem and also that cars only damage the local environment when they work..... Good luck and god speed..

Awesome thanks. My vespa with sidecar has a lasped rego. I purchased it this way, so paid accordingly.

They could be acceptable if nzta recognizes CCC as an acceptable standard for seat belts There are many belts made in China which have standard markings on them which are acceptable HOWEVER china is notorious for just putting a label with a safety standard on whatever the fuck they feel like. Sometimes the standard is not even relevant to the part, ie they will put an 'e' number relating to lights on a seat belt. There's a note in the virm about one particular brand which has the label but the top loop will fail in an accident , they are not allowed. But if its like anything else made in China, bur Chuang Zhang seat belt is no longer allowed so they just change the name to super lucky golden horse seat belt safety co and away they go again I wouldn't trust them Can you take a pic of the top loop?

Thanks Clint! I will 3d scan the floorpan and CAD up the proposed rails for design approval.

classy eh, everything changes inside except the seat mounts, they on cert plate, awesome gear change too, a foot of lateral movement & nearly a foot fore & aft lolol

Anyway back to why I'm really here, I done something really dumb, it's oldschool..... most of us fuck up sooner or later lol ive aquired this turd, ld28 5 speed beddie van ... peeled open & a caravan glued on. Its certed, regoed & needs a wof. want to reclad the outside, add a bootbox, & fucked if i know where im shifting the batteries to yet. Will dressing it up make any difference to cert?