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Ive been making good progress on getting everything wired into the fusebox and controlled by ECU rather than hardwired. I bought 2x 500mm coby hotdog mufflers which are currently just sitting pushed over the ends of the pipes on each bank. Quieter than just open manifolds but should be better once welded. Have wired up ECT, wideband, fuel pressure sensor. The motor was still idling really high (like 4200rpm...) with fully closed throttles, even after setting everything to fully closed. I couldnt figure out why until I noticed that my 2x lower intake manifolds dont quite cover the edge of the circular holes which must be an idle air bypass. It was only by a smidge, so gooed the gap with some silicone and solved that problem. My current issue is that the cam angle triggers arent being picked up properly. This motor uses hall effect sensors on the cam angle sensors, and the voltage they output is too low for this ECU to register correctly. So pullup resistors are needed, which I have wired in. But stilk not working it seems. Some people have suggested wiring them to the 8v power supply rather than 5v supply, and this boosts the output voltage. But this stuffs up my loom a bit, as the 5v supply on that plug branches to a few other things as well as the triggers. So, another annoying problem, but not insurmountable. Just soaking up more time on little bits and pieces than expected. But thats always the way I guess!

*girly screams of excitement * just got these through

I lifted the rear subframe off. Feels like one of those photos showing off the big fish I caught... With the car like this it made it really easy to measure between the front and rear lower ball joints to find the wheelbase on the drivers side was longer than the passenger side. I suspect it's because I built the alignment jig for the two front mounts on the yellow car, not this one. I had oversized the holes that the studs come through to allow some wiggle room, but I need to take a further 4mm off both sides. Once I can get it on a wheel alignment machine to make sure it's straight the studs will get welded in solid. I've started cleaning off the last of the underseal. I've got to also remove the remains of the original spring seat reinforcement.

The bits I need for that Wof have arrived, the wheel bearing might be a mission, but we will see. In the meantime I have been hoovering/relearning what I need to know about DCNF carbs and have had some useful and enlightening conversations, some of which can be found in my DCNF thread.. I also decided to replace the expensive oil in the tranny with fresh expensive oil. Mostly cos I drained it all out to put a bit of sealant on the drain plug as it was dripping a tad. When it came out it was kindof murky which I guess is the new oil washing out and interacting with the old. So I did that and it resulted in a pretty significant drip from the drain plug regardless of my sealing efforts. I did a wee bit of investigation, which has had this slightly annoying result; I have a spare box which I stripped enough to get that housing off, pretty much for practice but to see if I could just use that. But unfortunately they are different. This might mean enlisting @yoeddynz in some dirty welding duties if I cant find someone slightly closer. If it welds ok I will tap it out with a parallel thread rather than taper and machine a flat face so it can use a washer for sealing.

So the above teaser was me dropping the ute off to a panelbeater near palmy. this is his update pics. i just didn’t have the time or mental energy to grind my way through the stitching phase, or attacking the mint bonnet with a grinder. he has made up new flanges for the front of the guards , he won’t use the rx3 guards on this set up, all new steel. have also tasked him to fill over the fuel filler hole as I can’t utilise that once I drop tank it out the back anyway. So now I’m forced to drop tank it now instead of when I bag it. it means that I can carry on with the tubs when it’s back. I will end up using push button bonnet pins, hopefully they’re ok as a bonnet pin for road use. I’ll also fit a check strap as a secondary safety measure happy days

I actually have a massive boner for early Jimny 2-strokes. An old guy that comes into work has one, I'm trying to get put into his will so I can get my mits on it. Anyways, I have done a bit more on this thing. Don't laugh at my lack of wood working skills, I fucking hate working with wood. So I made the front guards, bit of a weird shape to try and make out of wood, mostly because of my being a tard and all. A bit of fiberglass & resin, a hint of bog, and they should come out pretty good. Then I got started on the bonnet, which is probably the most complicated shape on the thing. Added some wooden ribs, and a couple of dowels as reference marks, then put real thin MDF under them to keep the foam in, then filled the gaps up with foam, then carved the foam with a hacksaw blade and Stanley knife, then chucked a couple of layers of fiberglass over it, to give me a firm base to work with. It actually came out really close to correct, so will need very minimal amounts of filler. Next was lights. My B-I-L used OG dolphin torch reflectors/lens' on his Jeep, that he cut down to the correct size. New dolphin torches have four round LED bulbs in them, so don't look anything like a head light. The only torch I could find that was roughly the correct size, and also sort of looked like a real headlight was some budget items from Bunnings. I pulled them to bits, linished & sanded the OD of the lens down as small as I could, but so that the reflector still fit into it. I then cut the holes in the body to suit these. The front grill will hold the lights in, and also down size them to roughly the right scale size. I also found a Toyota badge that used to be on my 86 (before I got a legit one) that's pretty damn close to the correct size for this, but not sure if I will use it or not. The back lights were way easier, I found some LED lights on Ali that were the right shape and scale for this thing. They are meant to be in corners of the bumper IRL, which seems silly, as they would get smashed real easy. I added in a bit of wood roughly the same shape as the real bumper, and set them into this, so they are a bit more protected. There will be a steel bumper under them mounted to the tow bar in the future, so it should be quite a challenge for the kids to smash them. That's pretty much where I'm up to. Regards, VG. xoxox

registered and will pay shortly. "all cars must have a wof and reg" feels a bit fascist

No

DIdn't say they have to be current?

Went to pickapart and replaced the missing air bleed hoses. Fixed a few other coolant leaks. Now it's good. Bought a big syringe pump thing to fill the gearbox with oil, managed to do this notoriously messy job without spilling a single drop of gearbox oil! Miracle! Until I realized that the drain plug wasnt screwed in properly, and itwas on an angle - so I had to undo it and quickly straighten it and tighten it up. So gearbox oil everywhere still. Damnit, haha. Then I think I've still got some fairly massive air leaks, I dont have any gaskets or sealants at the moment so I'll pull it all apart and sort that a bit better. I managed to get it idling at around 1000rpm, but only because I've leaned out the fuel table so much. Again an easy fix, just time consuming. Then another cool milestone, and to be honest something I was dreading a bit - testing the clutch. Everything's good! I drove the car forward about a meter, then reverse about a meter. Which is officially the furthest it's propelled itself in about 6 or 7 years. It's still ear splittingly loud, and dear god it sounds like a straight piped RB or something dreadful currently. Ugh. Will buy some mufflers this week if I can, so I can keep making some progress without making my brain bleed. Then also have enough of an exhaust on there that I'll be getting okay readings on the wideband. Small steps but all in the right direction currently. nother

Alright alright alright! So I pushed the car outside this afternoon so I could reach some wiring inside to try fire it up. I filled the car up with coolant, by which I mean water because I was expecting things to leak. Sure enough each head had a hole up the front where water started leaking out. I couldnt remember what these were for, then found out that they are like an air bleed channel that goes back to the thermostat housing. So, these seem to have gone AWOL when moving house so I'll need to pickapart some more. I must have removed them when taking the heads off to clean them. Easy fix. Then I got the fuel pump working and fixed a few fuel leaks. It turns out that AN fittings arent very good at sealing if you havent tightened them up? Crazy. Then I got my tune somewhat sorted, and tried cranking the motor over.... and the bloody battery died! Ugh. I mucked around to get another battery, it sort of spluttered a few times but not quite. I had a look through the tune settings. Engine size was still set to 1500cc from using this ECU in the Echo - woops. I needed to disable the fuel pressure sensor allocation. As since this isnt wired in yet, it took 0v to believe that the motor had zillions of psi worth of fuel pressure. Then when I cranked the motor it was registering the crank trigger, but not cam trigger. Checked the settings, had this wrong. Both were set to VR sensors, but the crank is VR and the cams are hall effect. So once that was fixed... Bam! We are running. It was absolutely awesome to reach this point. So whats next? Lots. Get the coolant system functioning properly. Make an exhaust for it. A lot of wiring work, get the fusebox setup all connected nicely and mount all of the wiring nicely. Need to put some gearbox oil in the box, will do this before running the engine any longer. Pull the fuel rails off, and do tests to work out the CC rating and deadtimes for the injectors. Calibrate all of the sensors Mount a radiator fan Check intake for leaks (I think all of the air bypass screws are currently all the way out) Install the wideband Finish wiring up the alternator And a bunch of other little similar jobs. Most of these I can peck away at over winter with limited space. Making an exhaust will be difficult when weather starts getting darker and wetter and I can only really work outside. Will push ahead as best I can. Super excited for first start though!

Dad's cousin married Max, who has always been our family mechanic and panel beater. He's somewhere north of 70 and a full-time menace and tinkerer. This is his Ke70 wagon that he bought off @Dudley (also a fill-time menace) and proceeded to rebuild half the body of before painting it and tidying allll the things. He got bored one day and had a 2TGEU sitting around that he'd got in exchange for putting a 4age into someone's wagon years ago. The loom had been chopped in half, and being older than fuel injection he thought it was a great idea to replace the injection with twin carbs. Yesterday my brother called me and said "Max has been talking to Pete's friend who built himself an ECU for his car and tuned it himself. He reckons you should be able to do it." Approximately 24 hours later I have all of the EFI gear from the Corolla sitting on the floor in the shed and have read half of the information on the internet about the Speeduino. I've been given a generous (for a Speediuno build) budget to work with and told to get ordering. I've printed out the 2T wiring diagram which is comical after dealing with 1UZ diagrams and am starting to make a plan. So far the shopping list (other than the ECU) includes: IAT sensor (probably a Toyota one) Map sensor (also probably a Toyota one) (so I don't have to run a vacuum line all the way to the ECU and can just run it off the AFM wiring) TPS (maybe 4age as we have a couple of motors sitting around) A wideband, probably Spartan 3 I'm leaning toward either one of these https://www.everythingfuelinjection.com/store/The-Micro-p161480124 https://kiwiefi.nz/index.php?route=product/product&path=20&product_id=54 Feel free to tell me in the discussion how far over my head I am. I've wired a 4age, a B16a, an SR20VE, a 1uz and a 3uz and used to do car alarms, so pretending I know what I'm doing.

The shroud arrived, it'll need some trimming to suit but was cheap enough I pulled the manifold off and sat the turbo in place with the v band adaptor bolted on so I can start figuring out the manifold. I'd be a lot easier to fit the tubo without the air con compressor The downpipe is going to be fun and a lot of bends too, it'll probably will do a U-turn then sneak behind the manifold and down. @Raizer trimmed the Drain fitting and that now fits nicely (I'll need to clock the core to sort out the angles ) The sinco merge collector is quite nice, I might need to shorten it a little as its quite long and space is limited I've ordered some more steampipe short radius bends as I don't have enough. The Nissan genuine studs for the turbo are 40mm M8x1.25 and are $12 each, The Honda studs are 38mm M8x1.25 and are $2.50 each so I'll order a bunch of honda studs and hope the 2mm won't make that much difference

Were not the cops. Or narks

Thats probably a regurgitated rule from a really old oldschool event form. Personally, i dont give a shit.

Yeah so the trigger code for the 2gr lets it run as wasted spark / batch fire until it gets a cam trigger signal. So originally i had timing 360 deg out, then it would work as wasted spark but then cut out when it found trigger 2. Ha. Yeah so there are 4x cam angle sensors for vvti, one gets connected as trigger 2 then the other 3 to DIs. According to some old posts on the link forum the trigger decoding only works if set to falling edge. As otherwise the timing of crank vs cam overlaps in a weird way for vvti range. Will do some checks with a multimeter tomorrow.

I'll sort my entries next week (pay week)

Fuck that off with a sharp stick. I would never inflict that kind of pain on any individual looking to aggressively sharn and relax, I make dumb decisions, but I’m not a cunt

Stopped for a burger on the way home and came across a Nissan type meet. If I’d brought my other car tonight we would have pretty much been a Toyota* meet.

Autopilot stuff. Gave it a lot of thought and decided that the main use I have for an autopilot is keeping us vaguely on course in light winds while I go make a cup of tea or steer the boat with the engine on which is boring if you have to do it for more than 5 minutes. The fancy expensive autopilots can be trusted to probably not kill you if you go down below to get some sleep while sailing through the night across the middle of the Atlantic. They react to wind gusts better and manage rolling nasty sea states under sail without getting confused as easily. Even then, some of the long distance sailors just carry 2 or 3 of the crappy cheap ones and throw them over the side when they stop working. Since I don't plan on doing long passages - and in challenging conditions I'd rather be steering myself or have another meat bag driving....I bought a cheap crappy autopilot second hand. The big brother to the one on Nice Try - the Raymarine ST2000+ Principle of operation is simple. The built in compass keeps track of your heading. When activated, it tries to maintain that heading by extending or retracting the ram to move the tiller and turn the boat. The bigger the boat, the more force you might need to use so the gruntier the autopilot needs to be. The ST2000 has a brass recirculating ball drive for the ram rather than a plastic nut on an acme screw as found on the ST1000. It also seems to have some bigger fets driving a slightly bigger motor? Not quite an apples to apples comparison since the ST1000 I have is from 1999 and the ST2000 is from 2012. Still rips my undies how simple these things are inside. Autohelm designs it then Raytheon buys them out and milks the design for a few decades. Minimal changes in nearly 30 years of production. No limit switches or position feedback. No conformal coatings on the board, glass reinforcement in the plastic or silastic schmoo on the connectors. AvE would be disgusted. Will install it maybe next week and see how it goes.

It’s been awhile since I built a hot rod. my last one was a ford pop that was chopped 3 inches and channelled 4 inches running a 302 Cleveland. i ran it in black primer for awhile and sold it to a guy in Aussie who painted and upholstered it.

Got some paint on them and baked it with the heater for a while Good thing I have some photos from when I took it apart 7 years ago to refer back to for what goes where. Got one side done, looks better with the pipes painted I must say. Had to stop and tidy up the work area as we have a couple of house viewings tomorrow. I don't usually tidy up until either the stage of the project is finished, or I can't find what I need.

While I've got the underside of the car right in my face, I've been using the hammer to close up any gappy seams and straightening edges. Because I can. The seam at the front end of the sills were a bit squashed from jacking so I knocked and pried them back into shape. While doing that I noticed some pinholes in the flat panel that joins the bottom of the front wing to the seam on the bottom of the sill. I decided to remove that panel. It's basically an 'L' shape so real easy to make a new one.(I've made the new ones using slightly thicker metal) The drivers side sill end was quite pitted under that flat panel because debris gets stuck between them. I cut that out too, it's also flat. It was in AMAZINGLY rust free condition in there. It seemed to be evenly coated with a dark grey primer, this shell must have been dunked in a vat of this primer at the factory for it to be in there. Just for good measure I flooded it with Zinc primer. I did the passenger side too, just to check it was in even better condition. A little pitting, but no pinholes. I tried to take a photo inside but my phone didn't want to use the flash.

Well, here it is, the culmination of months of trying to import a car. Months ago, I heard through Facebook about an estate sale auction that was happening a couple of hours north of where I live. There were a few cars there, including some cool MG and Healey classics, but only one really caught my eye; a little 1990 Suzuki Alto Works nugget. I've always loved Altos, and here was one that was small, manual and turbocharged. It had been off the road for at least 11 years or so, and the rego was on hold. There were no keys, the condition was unknown and they could not confirm it ran. Excellent, my sort of car then! Long story short, I took some time off work, borrowed a truck that could tow a trailer, and made a trip up the line to see if I could win the car, with a plan to bring a trailer back the next day if I won it. We get there, and there it is, in all its glory. Look at that little face, what a nugget. I'm not sure how long it had been up on the blocks, but it was certainly in "barn find" condition, dust and all. It's clear that it hadn't been touched in a long time. The interior was.... disgusting. Everything was covered in dirt, or mould. On the plus side, it still had all the original features, like the cool seats and steering wheel with WORKS horn button. How good is the dash cluster though The little F6A twin cam 660cc turbo engine would love to rev all the way to the 7500rpm redline. The car had been converted to manual, and wasn't quite in showroom condition, with peeling paint, the horrible interior, and a large dent in the front RH guard, which had slightly damaged the door and bent the hinges Worst of all though it had rust in both sills, and the rear boot seal lip was just crunchy flakes at this point. Still, I wanted it. I found the keys to it (on the keyring for the Wagon R next to the Alto), but didn't try to start it. Long story short, the bidding started at about $200, and there were a handful of us bidding on it. Suddenly it was jumping up in hundreds, and only two of us were left bidding, in the thousands now. I had a firm budget in mind but the guy I was bidding against was there to win. Not once did he drop his hand. I hit my limit, and bowed out. I later heard from someone else there, that the winner had wanted an Alto Works as a garage ornament for years, and was prepared to pay whatever it took to secure it. It was not to be. Hopefully he got what he wanted, and it sees the road again one day. So, I did what any reasonable person does and began to obsess over Alto Works. Old ones were cool, but had the inherent issues of being old, and harder to keep on the road. I knew of the newer HA36S models from 2015, and although I always loved how they looked with their angry face, I had never seen one in NZ and didn't think I could afford one. But as it turned out, between the sale of the Yaris, and Lucas, I suddenly had a healthy looking bank account. The next problem was the fact that as far as I could tell, when I started this process, there were none in NZ. I had been curious about the importing process and buying from auction in Japan, so got in touch with an importing broker, who agreed I should be able to get what I want, with the budget I have. The HA36S Alto Works comes in a few variants (including the Turbo RS, which is more common but didn't come in manual and is a bit less "hard core"). I wanted manual, not black or red, and preferably 4WD. I bid on a few cars at auction in Japan and just kept falling flat. Despite watching auctions for a bit before I could afford to jump in, the prices were suddenly thousands of dollars more than I was expecting. Not only that though, 4WD ones were proving rare, particularly ones that weren't from the snowy northern regions. After bidding on a couple of dozen cars, and missing out (one, a nice blue 2wd one, by only a few hundred dollars, which ended up being imported by another Kiwi and now lives locally), I finally had one on the hook. It was 4WD, manual, wasn't from the north, in silver, and had good KMs. It was grade 4, and had minimal damage marks on the sheet. It looked nice in the photos, but Japanese auctions are very limited in the info and photos they provide unless you can get an inspection. In this case, it had a couple of exterior photos, and an interior one. No underside or engine bay. I did spot and liked the slightly wider flares, and aftermarket muffler though. I liked it. I contacted the importers, who translated the auction sheet and gave me some bad news. It had underbody coating, and some rust. Not to worry though, in their own words, "for around $2000 trade rust repair will be carried out under the supervision of the repair certifier and come with a repair certificate. It will be sandblasted and rust treated and painted black. Rust repair is in fact a good thing, your car will be protected from future rust and will pass every WOF for a long future". Sounds good, but to be sure, I ordered an inspection at my cost. In the mean time, knowing that it'd only be a couple of grand to have it blasted and coated, I submitted my bid, factoring that repair work into my bid. It was all the specs I wanted. The auction came and went, and I heard nothing, and no inspection results were provided. Guessing I had lost it, I went to bed that night and forgot about it. I woke up the next morning to two emails. One, at 10:51PM "YOU WON A CAR TODAY!" and a second, at 11:03PM, the inspection result with photos from the inspection. Handy. Well then, I had an Alto! I was excited. I looked over the inspection photos, and noticed some spots of rust I would rather weren't there, like in the bottom of one of the doors and around the engine bay But other than that, nothing really concerned me. The underside had been undersealed and there was still some rust in the seams, but nothing a couple of grand of repair work couldn't fix This is where it started to go pear shaped. I got an email from the importer, asking "are you sure you want to import the car, we don't know how bad the rust is and the rust work costs could be higher". Based on the photos, I was still confident it wasn't that bad. Heck, I could've fixed most of it in an afternoon with a wire brush and some rust killer. Also, I had agreed to buy the car already, I didn't know at this point rejecting it was even an option. I said to continue. The invoice for the car comes through, and I pay promptly. Yay, I'm getting an Alto! Three days later, I get another email. This is where the scaremongering really kicked up a notch. They had "spoken to compliance" and would need the engine removed to repair the rust, plus sand blast, plus repair cert $$$$$. "Good thing the car will be protected from any future rust" he continues to say. Suddenly the repair work was being quoted at approx $5000. Well, I own it now. I've paid. What other choice do I have? About two weeks of radio silence later, I get an email from the boss. It failed border check and has been flagged for rust. That was expected, they fail any signs of underbody rust. The advice was to abort, and send the car back to auction, otherwise the potential repair costs were now "$8000++". That's a lot of money for a car that was already going to be $15,000 landed, on the road. I weighed up my options. I could import it and risk the costs. Or lose my $1000 deposit, get a refund and either try again, or find a different sort of car. I chose the latter. I rejected the car, and asked for a refund. That was the end of that car He agreed to refund my money, less the deposit, by the end of the week. Happy days. The money didn't arrive. I wasn't too worried though, I could use that money to bid on another car; so I was still looking, and bidding in the mean time. I was advised to stick to higher grades like 4.5, and to avoid anything that mentioned rust. In order to be sure, they wanted to get an inspection on any car before I could place a bid. The funny thing is, now they could suddenly get an inspection to me before the auction closed, unlike the one I won. I found a nice looking blue one. It was manual, 4WD, 67,000km and grade 4.5. It sounds like a winner, so got them to get an inspection with the intention to throw big money at it. The auction sheet said nothing about rust. I actually found this car later listed on Beforward (another importing site), listed in the north, in Hokkaido. Not a good start. The inspection came through quickly, well before the auction time. Externally, it looked very nice. The drivers seat was worse for wear. The bolsters were squished, and the fabric looked very worn and gross. Surprising for 67,000km. But worst of all. Rust. It wasn't as bad as the one I won, but it was there. It was on suspension components, on the sills and worst of all, coming out in the seams in the engine bay. Clear signs of having spent time in the snow. Keep in mind, this was a grade 4.5, with no rust noted on the auction sheet! I decided not to bid on that one, I couldn't take the risk again. There were a couple more, but only one that was really notable, made me very angry, and was the nail in the coffin of my importing experience. Manual, 4WD, silver, completely stock standard, 117,000km on the clock. It was the spec and condition I wanted, in the Ks I could afford. It was a grade 4. I wanted it. I asked for an inspection, and sure enough, it came through with plenty of time to spare. And it looked GOOOOOD. It was spotless. New AD09R tires all around, the underside was clean, no sign of rust, the interior was nice. The body even had minimal dents and marks. Someone had looked after this one. I was very excited. It was perfect. Nothing could stop me now. I placed a very generous bid on it, to make sure I would win it. I didn't win it. It sold for well under my top bid. It went for less than my last one. Why did I lose it? Because they chose not to bid on it, based on the recommendation from the person in Japan bidding on the car. Why? because of this dent in the rear quarter panel. Apparently that would "need a repair cert" to import. I threw my toys at that point. There is no way a dent you can barely see would stop that car being imported. My closest guess is they forgot to place my bid. I was angry. On top of that, I still hadn't got my refund. Twenty two days after I was told it would be refunded by the end of the week, after me asking repeatedly, I received a partial payment of about a third of my money, with an excuse that "Japan was holding the money from him" but he could "manage it next week". Next week came and went. Just shy of a month later, after a rather terse email, I received anther partial payment of less than half of what was left and yet another excuse, about the car having not sold (not that that was ever a condition or term of the refund, that's what the deposit is for), but that it would be sorted. Two weeks later, and my patience was done. I threatened court action to recover the remaining money. I was sick of the broken promises and deadlines. Two days later, I had the rest of my refund, in full. I know it's not the norm, but the whole auction and importing thing just left me feeling really bitter. If I didn't know two people now who have used their service (albeit at least in one case, not completely smoothly either), I would've wondered if it were a scam of some sort. The auction system itself seems to be broken and the auction grades mean nothing. A grade 5 is as close to a new car as a used car can be, so a 4.5 should be near new with some minor marks. Grade 4 should still be very good, with a couple of slightly bigger marks. So why were the grade 4 and 4.5s so junk? I have heard reports of corruption in the system too, where sellers have paid for higher grades, but I don't know how true that is. Long story short, I was left $1000 out of pocket, with no car to show for it, and a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm very glad I could even get a refund; although the Terms on their site allow for it, I still wouldn't have been that surprised if they tried to decline the refund, or wait for the car to sell first. Don't worry though, not all is lost. I gave up on importing, but I didn't give up on an Alto Works.

The HB Viva went to a new home and have this new project arriving next week

So you’re saying once again carb is superior to fuel injection?

Yeah, pullup according to documentation.

are you sure that a pull up resistor is correct for your sensor? it may be wanting a pull down. 5v when hall is OFF 5v when hall is ON

Kennel

Made it home. Heater tap was the culprit. When I turned it to cold it stopped leaking. Fixed?

FIRST START! Turns out I'd bought a rotary thinking it was a 4AGE with the idle its currently got. Huge milestone and it doesnt make any metallic noises so thats a bonus. Its basically an unopened engine thats been sitting for god knows how long in some garage in Wellsford. Now has some extra bits bolted to it an a new ECU so Im surprised it did run okay for the 10 seconds it was on. Cant post a video unfortunately/ Now onto sorting everything else I've neglected. Theres a leak on the return line fuel fitting to sort, I probably need to extend a fuel hose down inside the tank so the fuel isnt aerating as it goes back into the tank. I need to track down the sick vacuum leak. Body side wiring to do, not all the gauge cluster works atm. Clutch fork retaining clips (due to some photo found, I did this already! woohoo), some oil in the gearbox is probably wise. Carpet seems to hide a multitude of sins...

No worse than pontiac tri-power.

If anybody is going to call @yoeddynz a cunt then I'd appreciate it if you put the word rad in front of it. His embarrassingly lame MS paint drawing dumbing it down to my level worked and I now have a proper shift pattern. Happy days.

So because I have a big job to finish at the moment and am under immense time pressure, I got distracted and had a fiddle in the shed after staying up late last night doing research. This is my 2TG pile. First I had a fiddle with throttle bodies and TPSs. On the left is a TVIS Redtop 4age throttle body and on the right is the 2tg one. The 4age has a potentiometer TPS vs the switch type of the 2TG The 4age inlet manifold is on the left, and the 2TG one is on the right. The bolts are the same width apart, but the 2TG ones have a smaller spacing vertically. There is also a 10mm difference in size between the two TB holes. The nerd that can't weld alloy in me has been working out how to design a bolt-on adapter plate to bolt the 4age throttle to the 2TG inlet, but the logical option is probably to make a weld-on plate that the 4age throttle bolts to. We looked into switching the TPS over, but swapping the whole throttle seems to be less fiddly and results in a bigger throttle, and bigger is better right? The next little mission was trigger wheels. We searched through the shed for old Toyota distributors and found an AE101 5AFE one and a Blacktop 4AGE one. I pulled them both apart and decided the 4AGE one on the right was a simpler setup, but will take them both to Max and see what he thinks. I've read about how ideally you want to run your trigger on the crank due to distributor slop etc, but this seems a whole lot less ugly. Hopefully, we can drop these guts into the 2TG distributor and get a cam and crank signal off it. It will be easy right? (This is what people say when they come to me for website things that don't turn out to be easy). I've found this discussion https://speeduino.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=495&start=100 that relates to a 3SGTE that seems to use the same style of trigger wheels.

I live on a very loose shingle beach, all manner of 4x4s get stuck here all the time. We have a basher SWB V6 Escudo on 33x10s for beach duties, it does well but its a turd grubby thing and I want to replace it. W163 is pretty high up the list for replacements as I am a Benz foamer. So, what are they like on the loose stuff? I worry about buying a 2 ton 4x4 and it not being usable here. I'd probably stick some 315/75R16 all terrains on the stock rims and lift as required for clearance. Doit?

Used a D shackle and a pin from a door hinge out of a 1930s bungalow. Will attach it with a bit of sink plug chain or something sonic doesn't get lost

Threw some brass and beeswax on the drawbar. Put some big brass screws through the 2 sections, I knew I was saving those for something. I think it looks suitably vintage

There are things to learn before you commit, I really should update this thread properly with the gl tales. I would say if you don't mind spannering your own vehicles (you are on os clearly...) they are really coming into quite good value for money territory compared to anything suitably capable/comparable. I think this is what scares people most about owning Mercs is they hear horror stories of repair bills. But that's from people who don't know which end of a hammer to use.. Cost of parts is pretty reasonable through rockauto. I've done more than I expected to due to buying a less than mint example, had I have been a bit more patient I would have brought better with probably a bit lower KMs (brought at 210, now around 232 in 9mths) Hasn't let me down. Is a very easy car to live with, plenty of grunt and good on juice.

One the plus side I labelled the plugs On the minus side they have mostly faded. Dug out the intake piping, surprisingly well made I thought considering that I did it, but needed a good clean up Inside and out. I don't think I had roloc discs back in the day, they are good for this sort of job. Squirted some good old black zinc inside, will do the outside tomorrow then look at my silicone tube and clamp supplies. IIRC the radiator needs to go in first.

Cube speed shortshifter

I got the charcoal bonnet off a mate who wasn't guna use it i thought it would be funny to put a k&n out the hole just to keep people guessing (nearly got to race in n/a class at summer drags a few years back)

I got ants in my pants this morning so I took a coffee break from work, connected up the wiring, filled the fluids, primed the auto lube pump, mixed up some oily petrol for safety, and kicked it in the guts. Stoked!

Bout that time again

Was each side of the floorpan designed by people in different rooms who refused to talk to each other? The raised sections of floor are not visible inside, there is a second 'floor' that the seat bolts to. Those are pretty much identical. WHY the different shapes?! Is the floorpan also used in the Stag? Is there something there in the Stag?

While things are apart I wanted to replace some wear components. The clutch was suggested to me but I was already eyeing it up. Firstly I brought the clutch to MP auto parts to see if they could find or build an uprated solution (they were side-eyeing me HARD when I said I wanted it to take up to 90kW), but they weren't able to source anything off the shelf, and joogling the interwebs overloaded my already taxxed noob brain, so I just went with Kelvinator's suggestion and elected to get OEM replacements. They're made by Exedy anyway. Kelvinator also suggested I skim the flywheel - MP auto parts pulled through here (though they destroyed my bearing and charged me for it thanks lol), and actually informed me that clutch manufacturers require a flywheel skim for the warranty to kick in. It's nice to get multiple angles of confirmation. I also wanted to prep some special tools for the reassembly phase, and my clutch alignment tool came out acceptable after a couple of tests to ensure the splines were shaped correctly. I'm getting better at using onshape, I only swear at the screen a few times per hour now. We'd taken the cams off the head to be able to remove it, but it still had the springs and valves in it. Disassembly time! I blindly got a generic spring compressor and uh... no part of it is compatible with this engine. I tried pressing in with pliers, which was okay for a couple of the springs, but a bit too easy to slip off them and I foresaw myself destroying something. So we found an alternative. Then we learned very quickly to ensure limited travel of ejected components... It went pretty well and before we knew it we were all stripped and down to the valves. Finally, the valve stem seals came out with some long nose pliers and some cardboard to protect against grazing the edges of the camshaft seats. I stopped stripping it there, because I didn't see any need to remove/replace the guides and I wanted to get the head tested and cleaned professionally. I dropped it along with all the rotating assembly off at the machinist for inspection and cleaning. He quickly told me it wasn't worth my time to have the conrods weighed and the crankshaft balance checked, saying that the manufacturer is very reliable in this space or else they'd lose a lot of money honouring warranties. He also told me that usually, when the rings are replaced, the block should have its bores honed - so I left that with him too. And finally he told me that it's probably worthwhile for him to perform the rotating assembly installation as he'll do a much better job of checking oil gaps and what have you. With the damage to the bearing guides and my own inexperience, I decided to take him up on that. On Monday the bearings all arrived so I dropped them off and gave him the go-ahead, estimated completion mid next week. Also the head and the valve stems are fine, just some minor pitting on the valve seats which he said will lap right out A lot of stuff relies on the block and head to come back obviously, but I could still crack on with stuff. The chain cover actually doubles as the oil pump casing, and is called as such, and as a separate component I could get that sorted. Along with finding homes for some of the ADHD'd bolts spread everywhere... First, the new front main seal. Easy. Followed by a thorough scrape and clean - order, I know. I thoroughly cleaned all components; some stuff has a stubborn brown oil tinge that I'm not worried about. The main thing is to ensure all possible hidey holes for bearing material are gone. To this end I also disassembled some bits that the manual never specified (I guess because they're totally replaced), such as the oil pump housing. My cleaning process is to use the D20 parts washer that girlface's old work has forgotten we have, followed by a healthy(?) rinse with brake cleaner. Once re-assembled, the oil manifold gets gets attached to the case, ensuring that the spring doohicky is oiled up but the faces are totally clean. I've forgotten what sensor this was but it was next... Then it's new oil pump time. Both sides of the housing appear to be totally fine so I'm re-using them, but the gears were toast, so new gears. Measure all the things to ensure clearances are in spec and fortunately all is well. I should have measured pre-oil but I got there And making sure to have the gears lubed up, but the face clean, the other side of the housing goes on and gets torqued in the specified pattern, and the bolts marked. It's only then that I noticed some unhealthy marks in the crank timing sprocket which drives the oil pump... so a new one of them is on the way. Next up, the water pump gets cleaned and goes back on with a new gasket. One of the bolt holes goes through everything to the block so that remains empty for now. Next up is the rear main seal and its housing. I used a failed ring compressor print and punched the old seal out, then gave it a solid scrape and clean. The manual says that the new seal needs to be 1.5mm below the surface of the housing, and names a special tool to perform this. I measured everything up and printed a solid PETG version of the tool. It's just a 1.5mm deep ring with a lip face to prevent it going further. ... and a larger seal driver as my set ran out... Hit it flush with the face, then drive it another 1.5mm with the special tool. The plastic tool isn't as good as the real one; it flexed slightly with each tap, so i needed to go back around the other side and tidy it up a little bit after going slightly too far. But it did the job and I got it in the end. Meanwhile, girlface got to cleaning the sump. She found sad glitter!

Engine mounts redone in thicker material as advised by the man. 8mm should do it. I machined up a spacer and did half at a time so I could use the original half to keep the alignment. But I also added a 4mm spacer when welding on the first new half to shift the engine back a tiny bit and give me just a little more clearance between the cross member and the sump. I hope that doesn't come back to bit me in the arse later. When welding in the second half of each mount I replaced the 4mm spacer with a fibre washer as a shim so it's not such an uber tight fit to get the bush/sleeve in there.

So I started on the body. Did some CAD modeling, And then started hacking into 18mm ply, Then I took the old temporary seat and floor off, and made a new seat etc. I then started screwing everything together, And where it's at now, The back corners are meant to be rounded, but that's too hard for an amateur woodworker like myself. The floor and firewall will stay on the chassis, and the rest of the body will lift off. The bonnet and front mudguards will be the hardest part to do, but I have ideas, will find out soon if they will work. Oh and I decided to make it a BJ/FJ land cruiser (maybe it should be an EJ?) because the kids cousin has a Jeep already, and because I'm forcing them to like Toyotas, because not doing so would basically be child abuse. Regards, VG.

So, we left off with me giving up on importing an Alto. Where to from here then? I nearly gave up on Altos. The whole importing thing had really stressed me out, and the constant rollcoaster of emotions involved in it just did my head in. I started looking at other cars, but absolutely nothing interested me... except an Alto Works. In the time I had been trying to import an Alto, I had heard of one that had been brought into the country earlier in the year, with the intention to be a track car for the owner. He never got around to doing anything with it, so asked on a Facebook group I'm part of if anyone was interested in it, and posted these photos Phwoar, what an angry looking little car! Obviously it had had a life in Japan, being fitted with a bolt in cage, no carpets, obviously lowered and on nice wheels. Under the bonnet were some visible goodies too. Hold on a sec, that engine bay looks familiar.... Sure enough, using my Google searching powers I managed to dig up where I had seen the engine bay photo before; a Minkara Carview blog from the previous Japanese owner! The most interesting bit though? It was a legit JDM trackday car. I even found the owner's Youtube channel, which has many videos of the car fanging around tight little tracks in Japan Along with finding out it was a track car, I also found out all the mods the owner in Japan had done to it. Now, I didn't know what was still fitted to the car and what had been removed, but I knew two important things it still had; a Cusco 1-way LSD in the gearbox, and a Cadcars 3685MAX 85hp upgrade kit, including an HKS FCON piggyback computer and HKS EVC6 boost controller. It also had adjustable suspension, wider 15" alloys, full exhaust, the front lip and rear spoiler, carbon blade on the bonnet and some bigger intakes under the bonnet. (It also still has the Cusco front swaybar, discovered after purchase) It was missing its factory Recaro front seats and anything resembling a rear seat though, which wasn't ideal. You can see in the above interior photos it has some billy basic Alto seats fitted in the front. Anyway, I got in touch with the seller in NZ, and found out he was in the process of having the car complied for road use in NZ since it would be easier to sell on the road, than as a track-only car. As part of that process, the cage had to go. It wouldn't meet NZ cage standards, and couldn't be used in a normal road car. To make the process easier, and not have to certify the car (an extra process and expense, limiting me from further changes to the car), the owner swapped back to standard Works KYB shocks and springs and some wheels he had from another Alto. Yes, the owner had privately imported three Altos, a Turbo RS and two Works (this one and an AGS "automated manual" one). After quite a bit of discussion, I agreed to buy the car, with some conditions. It needed to be complied and on the road. It needed to have the full Works Recaro interior, a stock airbag steering wheel, and had to be on standard suspension and Works wheels. With some jiggery-pokery involving his other two Altos, and one that was being wrecked local to him (a real low spec poverty one), he managed to get this one into the spec I needed, and still have two other complete Altos, albeit missing some of the Works bits from one. The car went in, and failed its inspection. The cage holes needed to be welded up by a panelbeater and signed off by a repair certifier. Not a problem, it was booked in for the work to be done, and we waited. And waited. And more waiting. Eventually we heard from the compliance shop that the work had been done, and it was all ready to go, but they had been waiting on the one and only repair certifier down there to actually give it the big tick, and he had been away on unplanned leave. After a couple of weeks, the car was finally signed off, it had a new WOF and just needed to be registered and have plates fitted in order to drive it on the road (A task left up to me to keep costs down). As it turns out, as part of the work at the panelbeaters, the underside of the car had been completely sandblasted and undersealed... and guess what, it cost about $2,000. I believe on this car it wasn't done because of rust, but because they had to protect multiple areas on the underside where it had been welded, so was easiest to just do the whole underside. Once back the seller changed to the stock wheels. The car looked much better on the stock 15" alloys (even if I don't like black wheels; they suit it). The tires on these are stuffed, which is why they weren't fitted during compliance. The seller also fitted the Recaro interior front and rear (the rear fabric matches), and a stock Alto (not Works) airbag steering wheel. A truck was booked. They sent the biggest one they had. An anxious wait over the weekend and I had the call, it was 10 mins away. I wait outside, expecting to see a delivery truck with the car on the back. No, I hear this angry little growl coming up the drive, and sure enough, it's the Alto. The guy gets out and apologises, he had to drive it the 10 mins from the depot because the Alto was too small for their local delivery trucks. He loves it though. I park it up, have a quick look over it and take some initial photos First impressions; it's small, but also very spacious. The Recaros are more comfortable than expected and fit my wide frame fine. The gearshift is divine, it's almost rifle bolt action. It makes great noises and pulls like crazy on boost (and it's not even at its full boost currently). It's not all perfect. Everything is covered in dust from the panel shop. Its everywhere. There are some areas where the paint isn't perfect, and the dash has some random screw holes and things from various track based gubbins being used. It's not an open road car, at all. At 100kph, it's pulling just shy of 4000rpm. Sure, it's on boost instantly, but that little 3 cylinder 600cc engine is just whirring away constantly. There are kits to replace 5th gear, and lower the rpm to about 3000rpm, so I'll probably look into that at some point. The LSD is brutal. It's a clutch type Cusco Type RS 1-Way unit. When cold, it knocks, it binds, it thumps. It's quiet and smooth when warm though, so I have some new Cusco oil to change shortly. The way it works is making me rethink how I drive and corner though. When on the throttle, the diff will relentlessly pull you around the corner. The steering feels heavy, but where you point the wheel is where you are going, no exceptions. The moment you come off throttle though, the front end suddenly darts to the inside of the corner as the differential unlocks and allows a speed difference between wheels. I can't wait to see what it's like exiting a corner on the track. I have already started removing the decals on the bonnet and along the Works side stripes. It was a shopping list of some things the car no longer had, and I wanted the nice clean stripe instead. Stickers were the previous owners thing, not mine. There's plenty to do. Parts are constantly arriving from Japan for it. Being a 2016 car, and so modern, parts are ridiculously plentiful and readily available for it. I'm used to having to hunt around for scraps years after the cars stopped being popular, but currently, anything I want, I can get. This weekend it'll get a full oil service, since I don't have any real service history, and it'll get a couple of the goodies that have already arrived from Japan fitted. It's not the stock, 4WD one I was planning on, but I love it. *Parked next to my colleagues Honda S660. One of few cars that makes the Alto look giant.

Interesting yarn and can't wait to read the next bits. Conscious of not spamming up a good thread in the making but I've had a bit of experience with bike auctions from Japan and have the same experience with grades. Always tried to bid on bikes in the 4-4.5 range. Sometimes they would be amazing, sometimes utter shit and obviously graded by someone thats legally blind. Then again I've had 3.5's turn up in amazing condition. There was no rhyme or reason in the 2-3 years I was involved with it - as you have we just had to hope and pray based on photos. Just reading that had me excited a couple of times and deflated an equal amount, I can only imagine how it must have felt for you. Thanks for taking the time to write about the process so far.

This is cool, especially the sleuthing you have done. This is my pocket watch that I have had for 20 years or so. I got a toolmaker to make a new winding axle(?) as the old one was slogged out. Its missing a jewel but still seems to work pretty well. I might have to have a go at dating it now that there is internet. It says 'A. Mardirossian, Constantinople' on the face. should try to get some better pics probably.