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Replaced oil pump with other unit I have with the SQ Engineering additional relief valve spring setup to bump up the pressure, we seem to be good! If that still doesn't give me good pressure at all times i'll flick the cam caps off and have a measure up New Speedo drive is in so I've now got a work speedo Think that's it really, time for cert? Bumper is back and looking absolutely insane if you compare to what it was previously!

Hanmer car show

I thought I better get myself some new shocks. Looks like the use by date is up for the original ones. They did give me the ability to work out what I needed to do and also gave me the top mounting bracket. I didn't want to carry on with the shock mounts until I new they were going to mount the same way. Most replacement shocks for the Avenger are just the usual pin type mount. Gaz have made them as original, Cool. So now I know they mount the same I made up the passenger side mount. Still needs to be test fitted and trimmed a little. The drivers side I have ready to weld in once the weld through primer dries. Well tomorrow really as all this cutty grindy weldy stuff makes you thirsty.

Intake noises sound good (imo) with the vortex / 3d printed intake And final power run. Pretty happy with how the exhaust sounds, first time I've heard it from outside the car Solid red was old tune, dotted green is B16a intake cam with timing optimised. Dotted blue is the doort tube. So the factory airbox/filter is a 3kw drop I'm pretty happy with the midrange gains just from a cam swap. Final numbers were 107.8 fwkw @6905 rpm and 165.7 talks @6072 rpm. Tuned on 95. Static compression ratio should be 10.23:1 with the B18 head (vs stock 9.6:1 with the original non vtec head)

Despite my best efforts. Sadly I will be doing a Blake jones and turning up on a not shitty old motorcycle. hey cheesing to ride bikes with some gcs tho, will probs try take heaps of pics vids etc. wondering if anyone has any spare accom in waikaia? If not I will biff the camping setup in. Looking forward to a few liquid sandwiches at the waikaia pub watching @RUNAMUCK run 15psi sharning about hilux surf rear windows !!!

My parents gave me this for my 21st It came with a card that says W.W.I MAJOR JENNINGS D.S.O. Google wasn't around when I got the watch, but now it is, so o know he was a surgeon. http://www.maltaramc.com/ramcoff/j/jenningsjw.html

Got back from Japan with my little UP Garage purchase. fitted it as soon as I got to the shop this morning. Dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyymmmmmmmm

Picked up a pair of trailer guards, aka wheel tubs from a solid GC today. just sat them in place where I think they’ll end up, or there abouts. stood back and admired the look, quite like it. still need to trim to fit snug once it’s all decided.

Those teddy bears are spinning pretty fast.. I think you should call it 107.8 fwtb instead of 107.8 fwkw

Thought I had a pic!

Nothing went bang, 3% average gain overall and a bunch in the midrange. Will upload pics and vids when I get home. Stock airbox is worth 3kw up top so I'll have to look into butchering it or making something more free flowing

The seats actually came out looking quite good. So I put them back together and put them back in the truck. Fuck, so much more comfort. And now both seats have adjustable lumber support. Then I fitted a cooling fan I had to the AC condenser. I made a bracket and it's in there pretty good. I made up the wiring loom for it but it got dark so I'll fit it tomorrow. Also I bought new discs and drums for it.

Highway transport sorted. Will be there in the morning.

All of which I have on order.

Probably, 2 foot was a common gauge for small rolling stock. In the day you could buy pre-made track sets and switches to put together like an oversized model train set! There's a few old industrial wagons out at waikino just sitting on "display" that are begging to be restored and run on the tiny mainline

Americarna day 2 (for us at least) and the cars were all parked up on the main street. Heaps more people around but still plenty of room to move and look at cars I'm pretty sure this on is an original GT Nice galaxy. I should have taken a picture of the chev in the background, turned out to be a mate. Imaculate everything and 600hp 510. I quite like the notch back Barracudas We headed home on the Sunday after a false (non)start. Not sure what drained the battery but I didn't even get a click. To make it worse I had spent 3 days trying to charge my jump kit to no avail so it was worthless as well. Luckily a local had some leads just up the road so he drove home to get them and came back to give us a jump. Good bugger. I was a bit nervous stopping at the servo a few minutes up the road but it started first pull. Lucky. Enjoyed the scenery on the way home and used the quarter windows for ventilation rather than the main ones. Quite a bit better on the fumes front. Still some work to do but when is there not? I might give it a rest for a while but I think the steering will need to be sorted before the next big road trip.

Here is a picture of the complete, identical engine at waikino for reference.

Mainly done. I need to weld in a small piece to fill the hole you can see in the pic's. It's that shape to give a bit more clearance for the odd square corner of the Honda engine. Also, another piece to fill the tight corner up on the right. It will make a little shelf but will be ok. I am pretty happy with the welding. I seem to have good penetration and not too much build in the main. I have taken a few high starting lumps off but it won't need much more. Some filler will be needed to smooth of top join (I suppose I am allowed to being sheet metal), but I still need to weld that from the inside as well. I think it is coming along well. Far better than my first attempt which was not so good but still gave me a stepping stone to doing a much better job the second time.

Refreshments procured!

We made it down to Americarna after months of mucking around. We headed down to Puke on the Thursday afternoon and headed off to New Plymouth from there. First stop, gas and coffee at Hampton Downs The Mustang runs really nicely on the motorway and Waikato Expressway. No problems overheating in traffic and cruises at 60mph easily. No more vibes and it is nice having the steering wheel centered again. Without aircon we got a bit toasty ourselves so from Hampton Downs we had the windows cracked to let in some air. It's a bit noisy and the wind is almost as noisy as the (not subtle) exhaust. Also noticeable with the exhaust though were the fumes. You don't notice so much on a normal short cruise but after 4hrs we were smelling of burnt dinosaurs. The steering is still pretty notchy around centre at speed. Low speed it is not noticable and through the twisties on Mt Messenger it was great, apart from getting a bit sideways on a crappy pot holed corner. Made it in good time though. Got ourselves a hotel with a secure carpark too Put the muzzy to bed and off for a beer. I've only been to the Beach Hop but Americarna was great, didn't feel as busy but still heaps of cars. We got a beer from a local micro brewery and stood on the curb outside watching the cars go past in the Friday night parade. We did get fumed out for the second time in the day. 100 big v8s doing laps on a city street will do that. Came home after dinner and found the mustang had good company And some cool ones up stairs too. The truck is an original flathead from Rotorua.

What a brilliant watch, mine will of course be much wetter, crudely shored & poorly lit

100% keen to come do some back breaking labor on some old timey machines in an illegal gold mine

Enough of that nonsense (press the sleeve out of a GN and run the piston in that in the standard cylinder to maintain std head) I went and picked up 2 engines tonight. One complete and supposedly running, although backfiring (has a China pod filter on it) and a second junker parts engine. Guy had lots of other parts, but I refused, because putting decent parts on this is a slippery slope to a 100hrs paintjob

Body painted, trunk and hood should have been done today. Popped up the road and collected the rear bumper and other parts from the panel shop. Plan is to be all back together for the Beach Hop.

Looks like a fairly low hr 0.50 over piston in there too, but intake is scored. Rtv gaskets Timing was way out I think it had a rebuild not that long ago I might pull a side cover and look down the cylinder hole and see how I feel about the bottom end. Cam has some scratches on the edge of both the lobes, which may be normal as thrybare right on the edge and not where the rockers rub. At this stage I would like another 90 engine for it, possibly just a good top end. Maybe some front and rear shocks. I think there must be these components floating around after lifan, hard tail, and disc front end swaps?

so i done some digging and some searching around with the rims. wasn't having any luck with finding one so the next step was to look at different swing arms to either modify or try fit in the rear of the bike. a Suzuki gs1200ss swing arm popped up for sale in tga. i have a mate local to me that has one, so i shot around to his house with my stock swing arm and got some rough measurements to see if it would work to modify and the common consensus was that its probably going to be the best option to make a swing arm work. so i hit the buy now and had @Mop Head pick it up for me. had a few people concerned that it wasn't going to work and that it was going to be a rather large thing to undertake but i didn't really have many other options if i wanted to fit this 5.5 rear wheel in. and after some comparisons and some measurements the 1200ss swing arm is rather larger and stronger. factory swing arm is 60.2mm tall and 3.2mm thick the suzuki gs1200ss swing arm is 74.9mm and it is 5.2mm thick time to chop it up. gotta trim it down a little bit on the width as well and removed the twin shock mounts off time to get more precise with the measurements chucked them in the mill and @Kimjon showed me how to do some things then we needed to cut some space for the rear shock like the stock swing arm. got it looking like this and i took them home to get them welded up and to do some more measurements cleaned my work bench and got busy again. worked out where the center of the swing arm is and done some basic math and made some brackets. factory mounts trace some out and draw them a bit of grinding and a stepped drill bit later and thats one side all sorted. the bottom side now, kim had already cut these out while i was doing other stuff at his house one day. i trimmed them to shape and chucked them in the bender (vice) and got to shaping them up and making them fit kind of a before and an after well during that time i did go to @flyingbricks house and steel this lathe to re make those peaces that go in the top of the mounts. we some how made the center hole to big. i reached out to josh to see if he could weld these up for me but some times he replies way to slow and often has stuff going on in his own life. so i also reached out to @Rhyscar to see if he wouldn't mind doing some welding for me. he said to pop over and we could run through it see if it was possible. next images can tell if you if it was or wasn't so happy with it. back out at kims again while i adulted with my daughter at my toes. time to try make this fit in. hey thats close enough, lets put the seats and plastics on before i go to see how it looks blue tooth chain but we still got a fair few things to do. daughter loves granddad garys motorcycle so she wanted to sit on her seat. and we are now up to speed a bit more. huge thanks to those who have helped out so much so far and kim for letting me keep it in his shed and use all his tools

1970/80s trd bucket seat on factory ke25 seat rails

Good work. I look forward to updates on the kittens names

A small update. I did get it all welded in and I am pretty happy with it. Of course, I finished it off when the temp was hitting over 32deg which was not the best day to pick to finish it. You need all the protection you can get when doing overhead welding. I had to repaint the firewall anyway as that is where I got some fish eyes. But I have changed my mind on the colour and have decided to go non metalic. I found a pic of a Mini Copper but could never find the colour (which floats my boat) it was painted but I found this link to matching paint from a photo. I will depend greatly on where you select the area of the car you are trying to find the colour. I gave it a go with the Mini pic and this is the closest match I got. Looks pretty good to me. I will get some mixed and see how it looks. Anyway it's good fun having a play with it. https://www.resene.co.nz/swatches/colourmatch.php#:~:text=To get matching%2C either enter,to get your colour match. Colour match was from the bonnet.

Been driving around some more. 2200-2800 rpm is punishing to cruise at. Transitioning through this band is fine and generally it makes bad-ass old car tunes. The rear muffler is a straight through bullet style and this needs to change, I think. I have a new problem with clearance though. The exhaust isn’t banging the floor anymore but now the rear axle housing is banging on the inverted U section. I think I need to ditch the slip joints and weld flanges in instead. This will give me some more wiggle room to play with angles before welding the flanges on. Also I may investigate adding another leaf or part leaf to the rear springs. They are so soft I can make the diff housing touch the bump stops (and exhaust)by pressing down firmly on the boot! Increasing ride height is not an option. Servo pic: 8.8 l/100km on this one. I was expecting 10-11 so call me pleasantly surprised.

Our usual Friday night cruise followed by burgers at the beach.

Now it’s time to get the axles back in to get it rolling, and sweep underneath it. it’s become a bit of a tip under there. im actually pretty keen to make this one RX3UTE the more I work on it. and make the 2nd ute mongrel as. Or an RX4UTE???

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, give yourself a good kick up the butt and redo something that just wasn't right let alone aesthetic. The firewall bugged me and it could have been welded in better. I stuffed up and didn't drop the top piece down far enough and then added to it which didn't go that well. It all started to get a bit out of shape. Fugly really. So today the start of a new year I made a start on a new firewall.

Made it to an Oldschool meet! Was a nice wee catchup. We went for the tune up with Wayne at Pitstop Burnside. Started well but ended quick when he noticed the dizzy advance weights were seized so not much point tuning around that or tearing it down after 5pm the week of Christmas. Was hooked up to a huge scope what was $45k in the late 80s. Tech as, even used a stylus on the primitive touch screen! Found my timing was 10deg retarded not 10 advanced.. either my timing light is fried (my mate had an incident when he borrowed it) or the dizzy hold down clamp wasnt tight enough (possible, cause its in a cunt of a place and can only get a click of the wrench each swing if lucky) Was lean and lumpy at idle + rich everywhere else. He sent me home and said to get a Bosch GT40R (my rad MOPAR coil was like 30 years young) gap the new plugs tighter and maybe a set of leads (if they show more than a max of 1300 ohms. I tried 10 times and couldn't get a reliable reading.. they aren't old but are an ugly colour and stain easy) After pulling the dizzy apart and lubing up to see if mechanical advance comes to the chat. Well the next day i was off to get a new coil after work, missed my slot in the 5pm traffic and it got hot. Was stalling, idling at about 250 and really hard to start again and wouldn't run unless pedalled. One was peaking at 100% panic mode so as soon as it fired i slammed it in gear to keep moving, tyre screeching. Did this 5 times and then saw smoke. Props to the Koba battery, it got reefed on and kept coming to the party. Decided to slip into (the same carpark i did when the slave cylinder failed in the bluebird) to cool it off and saw a big ole trail of trans fluid. Hmmm. I think the lurching into gear fatigued the trans cooler return line brass fitting. The mrs came to the rescue with the XD and we towed it home on the short rope and it took YEARS off my life. Next day i rolled under and started taking the cooler bundy off, with all of the 2 inches of space available ,about 2NM exertion and it snapped off flush with the trans housing. *foetal rocking* Driveshaft out of pinion, trans mount out and lowered down for some access. i knew an extractor was a dumb idea cause they use outward force but fully had to try. Cut itself a new thread but nothing moved. Then it spun. Oh god. Air ratchet on reverse with pliers forcing outwards didn't catch. Big guns employed, drilled a hole in the (welded on) socket and attached slide hammer. Didn't appear to make any headway but when i marked it with vivid it did show outward movement, onward we go then. Thank god. Put a slice in the fitting with a wee cutoff Dremel disc to try and use a blade driver but the brass shattered as soon as you put any pain on it. Last resort drilled it out but tagged the alloy case and thread a little. Fuck it, ran a tap through whatever was remaining and wound in a new fitting ( mrs poached from a used trans at her work) with my good liquid thread sealant and left it for 2 days. Re-installed everything. Fired up and re-set timing after pulling dizzy down and inspecting/lubricating/gapping. Topped up trans fluid, none flew out again! My xmas present was a moon-style bare foot pedal for the dip switch and Im hell stoked! I had one my brother gave me when i was a kid but probably sold it off. Tidys up that area loads Re-scheduled for the tune up next month. Rapt im not doing any damage, its just not optimal. Knew it but needed to hear it from a pro

Ready for wof??? Hmm will see tomorrow. booked in at the local workshop. all lights are working no rust brakes bled and it stops, eventually lol top of the roof sits lower than the top of the well side of the ute. She’s a mission to climb out of now that I’m getting older haha

Had fun last year at 2022 Oldschool Nats. Bit of a delay in photo updates, but hey Had some issues with timing and crank key wearing. I couldn't get the thing off the line very fast! Sorted now, so should be ready for Drags 2023!

Saturday flex session very tempted to turbo this 4age

Hunter is Blaze approved. alternate news, I had some oddball shifter sitting in the shop with a leather boot on it. it’s the traverse lick out type. so I pulled it apart, honed out the guts of it to slip over the T50 gearstick, wound the know onto it. looks perfect. will need to trim the console plate to accept the boot base, then I can apply trim to the console plate to finish it off. im also wanting to find a nice tach that doesn’t look complete cactus and actually reads correctly. this one bounces all over the show. hits limmy just off idle

She’s Finished!!!! I’ve finally finished a project. certified, wof’d and registered. last legal for the last Hanmeet, so it’s been a while.

Ordered and received a new brake light switch. Fitted and fixed. winning. that’s all electrodigitals working again. only brake imbalance and steering box leak to sort out.

Got sick of waiting for someone to open a wof spot for this, so decided to gamble at VTNZ today. hell of a laugh watching these guys try and figure out how to use all of the technology of 1972 Britain. yup, had to show them how to operate the wipers, lights and horn apart from the cert stuff which is obvious, it failed on the following: rr indicator no blinky blinky - already fixed brake lights no shiney when stompy- brake pressure switch died (possibly blocked). Lr brake imbalance, may still have a bit of air in the system, plus the fluid looks shit as again. steering box doing British things and leaking. Yup good luck on that one cuz, might just drain the oil for recheck haha the lady behind the desk scared the bijeebers out of me and said the plates had expired. I was like WTF KAREN!!!! turns out she got the last digit wrong. so whoever had GF6958, your car must be farked

I can’t wait to get these reactors retrimmed to a more suitable colour. I made up a switch panel today just to temporarily *permanent* house the switches. have a kill switch, diagnostic switch and the red one has been set up to be the engine check light. also made up the centre console plate and painted it. Need to get some black vinyl to finish it off. Then the screws will disappear. also made a bellhousing plate to fill in below the engine. running a golf ball for a gear knob for now

Did a thing and drove it home today. off for an alignment tomorrow, drives straight as already. definitely need to address the exhaust height, it’s low, too damn low now that I dropped it another 10mm or so.

Well boys!! It drives, and boy does it drive. handles great, smooth acceleration. so stoked. no driving vid, no co-pilots available. made up 50mm blocks from 50x50x5 shs. booked in for an alignment on Thursday. just need a cert now

Wow howdy, Humpty is all together again. fitted a air filter off a pipe due to not many other options. radiator was modified by Waiuku mufflers and worked perfectly. there’s only a couple of things to do to button this up now: hose clamps on the intake elbow. fit the o2 sensor. replace the rear UJ that I have. swap the 40mm blocks for 50mm blocks. make a centre console cover plate to suit the shifter. give it a wash and an alignment.

Devided to pull the carbs and refit the injection.. Grow a pair and figure out some wiring. Ive got a surge tank and pump for this now. Pretty much have everything i need minus enough efi fuel hose. Im also thinking of running the battery in the boot due to the lack of room where the intake sits. Only option is to run a small battery. Have the loom run where it needs to go. Just need to man up and blow a hole in the firewall for the loom to pass through. Need a suitable grommet first before i do that. For now ill be using the hubter radiator.. Until i can get someone to reduce down the ally rad outlets to suit the tiny 4age hoses. Choice as

Did a thing today.. Lost a stack of cash.. Got hold of Azhar and picked up a 12a RX3 nosecone set... so good, comes with the grille chrome, upper trim and eyebrows. Got back to the shop, looked at it..and went full send. It actually felt like i had done this before.. Haha.. Actually come together quicker than previous one. Upper is fully bolted on. Will bolt the lower to the upper and try my best to find a pair of rx3/808 guards to use the front 1/4 section for the flange. This will all be bolt on this time.

Like catching up with an old mate you havent seen in 20 years. I think its almost exactly 20 years to thr day that i sold RX3UTE.. Now i finally got the plates back in my hands, have a 3rd b1600, have a flying dorito burner... just need the nosecone and some balls to start the process. It all started in 2001 when i swapped an opel monza pos for a crusty un wofd b1600. I quickly got it down on the ground and chucked 15x8s on it with 45 profiles. Then i decided to primer it. For some reason i had an rx3 10a grille sitting in my shed.so i decided to cut the b1600 grille and slip the 10a grille into it. Was a fairly good fit tbh.. Looked good with the grille badge. I drove it like this for about a year. Until some knobjockey ripped it off on my lawn. Ripped out the gauges, steering wheel and wheels. This prompted me to do some work on it properly. So i pushed it into the little single car garage i had, and stripped it down and decided to put a 13b in it. Found a s4 13bt block and box. Got it in there and mounted, then found other bits that somehow fit to make it work..(s1 radiator and oil cooler, found lines to fit, found headers that fit).. it just worked. Then after some advice from Mark Julian at RES i had it fired up. I was stoked. Then i decided to do the bodywork, so i blew it apart, shipped the deck off to murphys panel in waiuku where they warped the hell out of the sides, and paneled up the tailgate with a rollpan etc. I deciddd i wanted a rx3 nosecone on it, so found one for $250 from a mate at pbms..gir home and lioked, measured, cobremplated, then cut..mocked up.. it will work!!! Then found another panel beater to finish the fitting..picked it up a week later and the whole thing was in primer and guide coat..he was a legend. So got it home and put it all back together, and had the plates on order. Sent it to RES to be tuned. Then Andrew Smith rang me and asked if i wanted to out it on the dyno at the nats...hell yeah i do. Its first maiden voyage on the road..no wof, cert or reg..no worries.. Once i got it back home that weekend i decided i wanted to paint it..it had to stick out, so i decided on lemon yellow with green pearl. It was retina burning bright. I got to the point that it was ready to cert, but for some reason i sold it for $13k instead.. I always regretted thag decision. Then after hearing it got crashed, i was devistated. But now i have my chance to get it back, and do it the way i want. Love it or hate it, it was one of the most unique builds back then. And im proud to have done that in a little shed with little to no tools or idea..i was dar from a mechanic back then.

Carbs refitted for shitsngiggles .