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I removed the Targa band to repaint it but also clean up underneath, also going to repaint the trims around the windshield and the roof gutter of which most of the original black paint has worn off over time.

I still have this and am starting to get back into working on it before I lose interest and sell it too. Recently purchased a Whiteline strut bar that was listed on their website as fitting the 13B GSL-SE but turns out it fouls on the air filter housing and the upper radiator hose. Rather than return it, I opted to modify the air filter housing mounts and shorten the radiator hose for more clearance.

The view from 6 metres up is pretty mean. Now it's almost time to start the cabin foundations. They tell us we may have fuel by mid June.

Driveshaft hoop! The ring is 8X50mm. The spreader plates are each 80X60X3mm. The bolts are M10. The bracket off the ring is 160X60X5mm. AFAIK that fits with the specs.

Ah man those are identical to the ones on my old 124 sport. But if Im sticking with 13's then I prefer what is on there already tbh. And I have finally got in contact with the Maserati rim man, this is looking promising....

I then made the cover for the hardlines. Might be overkill, it's pretty sturdy. Still thinking how I want to mount the driveshaft hoop. Can't really bolt through the floor there because there is a cavity. I'm thinking I'll make some strut things that go forward to the box section dealie, maybe won't make it removable.

Picked up a shiny pair of 4 pot wilwoods locally. these will fit the hunter or the cortina. direct bolt on is great. also picked up a pair of racepro seats with side mount brackets, came on sw20 MR2 seat bases. ive ditched the bases and made these adaptor plates to bolt onto the cortina rails. The seat brackets bolt onto these. Each plate is identical and a perfect fit. i haven’t done a thread for the cortina, not sure if I’ll even bother, might just slap it up on this one.

I need to make the driveshaft safety loop. I've got no 5mm flat bar, but I do have a whole lot of 8mm... But how will I make it round?! I'd need a press or something. ...WAIT! THE WEED WAND makes fire! And I have this convenient round thing. After a while the zinc on the 'heat shield' starts to melt... NICE! Only took an hour. Here's what it sounds like. I added a clickbait title so I can go viral.

So many little jobs that add up to suck time. But its a fun time to be at and there's no point in rushing it. The rear seat base was next up because I needed to work out where I could run the engine loom through. I tried the base in place, got an idea of how its steel rod framework needed to be adjusted and set to it. As you might spot in the above pic I also gave myself a decent cut from something sharp in there. Seat base now fits in neatly although it wont be a luxurious softly sprung seat for a middle passenger when 5 up. Highly unlikely scenario that is an Imp though. Megasquirt and associated fuses/relays etc are tucked away under the seat. I made some mounts for the exhaust box.. Welded the mounts in place and I was then able to tack, then weld the secondaries to their flanges. I painted the crossmember after having added some handbrake cable guides. Then it and the rear suspension was all bolted up in place. The new driveshafts fitted and hubs pulled on, wheels bolted up and it was rolling again. So it got rolled out the back to join green imp so I could use the hoist to do a customers van job. As soon as the van was fixed and out of the shop I put Impy back up on the hoist. I then worked out the final section of pipework for the clutch's concentric slave cylinder (CSC). I wanted the bleed nipple to be easier to access and not have any spillage running down into the bellhousing. I made some pipework and fittings to suit. Bench was covered in brake fitting stuff and I pieced together a system. I made one setup, tested the clutch and while it worked fine I wasn't happy with the pipes sticking up in the way so I changed a it again leading to the final iteration.. The csc itself was a unit I'd scored from a Ford Mundano engine and gearbox I had well over 6 years ago. Intended to fit the duratec into my Viva wagon. Sold the engine and kept the release bearing just because I thought it might be handy. So six years I've had it laying about and before that it was residing in a wreckers yard. It must surely be a bit cruddy inside? They are not designed to be serviceable but they are also stupidly priced here in NZ - like triple what they cost in the UK. So I decided it was going to be serviceable and I took it apart. Sure enough it had some mild corrosion marks on luckily what is a stainless guide tube but otherwise actually pretty good. It cleaned up well in the lathe.. Its a very nicely made thing and quite simple but has to be mounted correctly. This guide tube seals on the mounting plate with a thin square section seal. I made a new bigger mount to support the base because the original machined support I'd made wasn't broad enough. I was then able to add two more bolts to sandwich the lot together so that square seal remains squished evenly at all times, as it would in a OEM situation. We trial fitted it all with the new base plate and pipework. I was not sure whether my stock Imp 5/8" bore master cylinder was going to move enough fluid to get the release bearing travel I needed and I was prepared that I might have had to fit a 3/4" M/C. However it all seems fine with a light pedal and the bite point is about midway. Very smooth motion too! While this lot was being done Hannah finished prepping the rear valance for paint. On a nice warm morning I set up the paint frame outside and sprayed some blue about.. I did my best not to paint the cat blue.. It turned out fine.. Another little fun job was cleaning up the gearstick shaft in the lathe.. ...and discovering that universal steering rack boots make for neat gearstick boots... I'd bought some muffler packing sheet and then played with scissors... I then painted it with stove paint and sat it on the burner to help it harden. It looks much better in black. I've used silicone to seal the lid. Ran some beads, let them set for a couple of hours till at the point where it squishes flat without smearing. Stainless bolts carefully pulled up evenly. Seems all good but only time will tell on how the seal lasts. Like a few things on this build its a bit experimental. Gaskets for the inlets and tailpipes are copper. I have quite a bit of decent thick walled copper pipe from the Imp racecar cooling system. Chopped some bits, flattened out, heated and quenched with the oxycet and now nice and soft. Exhaust all mounted and engine now ready to go in for the final time (he says..) I just had to get a few more pics of this stage because its a point I've been looking forward to Positioning the power plant under the car.jpg Yep. Getting very close now!!!

Just got some actual side cutters, I must be getting serious. If I'm feeling non-lazy, I might slap up some updates tonight or tomorrow....

13" option ??

Made a buck for the chop on the window..and if your wondering why there is a curve at the rear I’ve decided to go all in and try build this into a coupe. something like this.

** Discussion https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/74793-helium-elbows-magical-rx-7-fb/ ** So I never thought I would end up owning a rotary any time soon but wasn't having too much luck finding a sweet Starion/Conquest near me over the last year or so. This came up locally for a good price and thought why the fuck not. It's a 1985 Canadian spec FB RX-7 GSL-SE with the IMSA Targa option. It's basically the same as US spec top of the line GSL-SE with 13B RE-EGI engine just with km/h dials instead of mph. IMSA Targa package adds faux brushed metal targa band (I'm not the biggest fan), front splitter (currently off the car broken) and rear wrap around wing. Factory options include maroon leather interior, electric windows/mirrors, push button climate control A/C, LSD with larger vented disc brakes F&R, cruise control, and glass moon roof with carry bag. It's a two owner car with 167k kms on the clock. Needs a little tidy up with a few small rust patches but otherwise it's a solid body and completely factory original inside and out. It comes with an almost complete '84 GSL-SE parts car that has a 10k old rebuilt engine (though hasn't run for years) and a Racing Beat full exhaust which will probably find its way onto the good car. Plans are to tidy it up over time and bring it back to as factory fresh condition as possible. Probably hang onto it here in Canada for a while and perhaps even bring back to NZ with me. Discussion https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/74793-helium-elbows-magical-rx-7-fb/

Got the call on Thursday that the ute was going to be ready to go today. booked the trailer and made the painful 6hr hike to Fielding to pick her up. got there with 20mins of daylight to spare. Couldn’t get good pics . made it home in a 12hr trip. so much to do now, but atleast I can start getting the rest of it all fitted up, wired etc before blowing it apart for paint.

I used Nordlock washers too and plain washers + nordlock to caliper as it was aluminium. Cap screws for most things, 10.9 and 8.8, 12.9 were not suitable for cyclic loading so I just avoided them completely in the end. Wouldn't think a nut would be needed on back side of threaded hole. My rotors used nut + bolt, but where the bracket attached to the strut itself the holes were threaded and so just bolted through the holes as per factory.

If anyone wants some garden art will be loading the car up on marketplace.

Time to make some wood gas?

When people hear it coming they will totally not expect to see that car

Thats for this Terry. I own two cars with fuck ups in landata regarding the chassis numbers. One should say P510, but the system says PS10. The other one shows the engine number as J15xxxxxxxxx, and the chassis number as J15xxxxxxxxx. The body tag has this number, and then the actual chassis number as given by nissan. I will ring these people next week.

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

The plan was to keep the original Thames running gear in case anyone wanted to return it to factory sometime in the future. So, for the past few years it's all been languishing in my shed taking up valuable real estate and it's also been a real pain in the arse remembering to turn the engine over by hand every few months. Then earlier this year I realised that there is no way that I am ever going to return the Thames to factory and if ever I was to sell it the new owner is unlikely to do the same too. So I chucked an advert up on Gumtree and forgot about it. Had a few queries from Consul Barries as the Thames shares the same engine as a MK1 Consul, but apart from that all was quiet. And then about two weeks back I got a message from a chap based in Melbourne who is having a 1960 Thames 400e pickup restored and he was keen on my parts. A deal was struck and I spent a few days clearing enough crap out of the way to get to the parts with my engine crane. The stuff was bloody heavy and I'm not the biggest fella out there, so I had to get creative about moving the stuff around. Turned Mrs Flash's Moke into a little tractor and it worked like a charm. And that's everything cleaned, wrapped and strapped down to some old Bunnings pallets and ready to hit the road down Melbourne way.

Took hours and hours to mill all those little clamps. Most of the time was spent on setting up for each one. I'm not winning any awards for neatest brake and fuel lines. I'll make a bolt on cover to hide the mess.... 'protect'.... the lines where they cross over the chassis rail. The gearbox cross member offers some protection already because it's about 40mm lower.

3 years later!… poor old wagon sat for a year between Wagnats as we moved house and then had no where to park it. Built a shed and got it to its new home. not long before Wagnats 24 I noticed a small amount of petrol under the pump. Rockauto to the rescue. Note cars with aircon have a return style pump.

Bit more rust repair, on the passenger side doors, which are pretty good apart from the corners which have been bogged or brazed before. Starting at the rear and working my way forward Very happy with that! Leading edge of the rear door had been brazed and then rusted again Chop chop, bang bang, buzz buzz, grind grind The outside of the Inner corner was a bit tricky to get to without removing the door, but the power file and my little air wizzer got in there ok. Put a bead down the leading edge as i folded it a bit tight. Outer turned out good. Rear corner of the front door had also seen some braze Inner was the worst on this one, had to chop a lot of the outer off to get access to it, but should have cut higher as well Inner turned out pretty well I broke the golden rule (its always worse than you think, keep chopping!), I should have cut more out, i started chasing holes, and ended up putting in another patch and got impatient with the hot stick and warped the skin. Fek. Good thing the leading corner of the front door doesnt need any work. oh well, more bog for the bog gods More rust for the rust throne

No actual updates other than today’s flex session. although I did notice that I had the “diagnostic” switch turned on, so it’s basically had its timing set to 10 degrees for his knows how long rather than 17degrees. Dick. it has now got an expired wof so need to sort that.

Flat six in Cut away under the seat base and the tunnel as per on the green imp. The air saw was so perfect for much of this job which means much less grinding dust everywhere. I've marked out where I'll cut away a little bit more. I'd rather give it extra clearance now than ending up with it potentially knocking against the steel on a bumpy road etc later. Cut off a couple of superfluous tabs sticking up on the transmission for the same reasons as above. Oh I also couldn't resist a photo of the two power plants next to each other. It's hard to gauge sizes from the pic though as the Datsuns wheely stand 2000 is much lower.

Managed to pick up a pioneer lonesome car-boy component stack which consists of a kp-707g cassette player, cd5 equaliser, gm120 amp, I already have a gm4 amp too, and a pair of ts-x9 to top it off, it also came with a pair of small ts-1655 speakers and a Kex-70 tape player too. spent afew hours cleaning with a tooth brush and metal polish to get rid of some corrosion and got it looking presentable. tried to bench test the setup but it doesn’t seem to be playing ball, I got it all connected up, the tape gear spin if I falsely load it without a tape, but as soon as I load a tape in it doesn’t seem to have enough juice to spin the tape. I don’t know enough about this stuff to pull it to bits. I also need a volume knob as the one on my cassette player has been snapped off so if anyone has a spare sitting around would be much oh appreciated. also pulled the original floor mats out of the boot this weekend and 40 years hasn’t been super nice to the rubber on these and the drive side is starting to crumble apart but they are near impossible to find so will do for now, gave them a scrub up and they came up pretty nice.

It’s at this point you need to take a deep breath.

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.

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.

I got the viva all ready to run through final compliance and a hot Rodder friend offered me a couple of old ford Ys at the same time and I’ve always wanted to build another hot rod so had to make a decision. The vivas gone to a great home so made the sale a lot easier for me. I need to learn how to chop a roof and am excited for the challenge.

This make some things easier.... I bolted the don't-fall-on-me props on so they can't accidentally be knocked out. It's a bit bottom heavy with all the suspension still attached so it does want to come back down.

Whatever you do, do not accept an airport pickup from this man ^^ Bort kindly offered me a ride one time, which I was happy to take, but then at several points on the trip I seriously feared for my safety and death flashed before my eyes. Sliding around the back seat of the angry V8 Valiant coupe (2 door sedan?) with no rear seatbelts as he did the imperial ton passing slower traffic on twisty roads. I was not entirely comfortable with that situation. Drive it like you stole it comes to mind. Then we were regaled with stories of how he rolled a car while younger, and other interesting motoring calamities he had encountered - whilst entertaining, did not add to the feeling of safety. Then we were relieved of the near-death experience when he decided to do some road levelling with the sump of the aforementioned car, and it decided to drain the lubricating fluids, rendering it inoperable for the remainder of the event. Hence the nickname "Sumpson" was acquired. Then IIRC @yetchh gave me a ride back to Christchurch in his 121 which seemed to have an intermittent fueling problem and so it wasn't being super reliable either, but we made it. Such memories. TL;DR - if you don't want to die, don't travel to Hanmer with @RUNAMUCK

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.

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

Spoiler alert! Lamp is from a third gen Camaro ** discussion here - https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/74793-helium-elbows-magical-rx-7-fb/ **

** Discussion https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/74793-helium-elbows-magical-rx-7-fb/ ** As 3-4 months of winter snow is coming up in just a few weeks I'm going to take it off the road and do a bit of a refresh. It needs a bit of a tidy up body wise as there is some faded/crazed paint on the passenger guard and door, and some little bits of surface rust here and there to tend to. I've salvaged the Racing Beat Road Race header and Power Pulse pre-silencer and main muffler from the parts car And picked up some Enkei EK98 15x7 -3 wheels which could do with a bit of a tidy up. The lips have been painted silver and I want to take them back to polished metal. Not keen on the black centres either, looking to go a metallic silver or bronzey/gunmetal. Also found the original owner's manual

Just a small update - not long after getting it I put it through the Ontario equivalent of a WOF, the "Safety Check" which it passed not needing much. With new plates (old owner takes their plates off) and ridiculously expensive mandatory insurance it was back on the road. It's first legal trip was to the supermarket, where someone in their oversized Datsun prompted used my bumper (and 2 day old fresh plate) as a parking spot. I now have a dashcam & tyre valve stem remover kept in my glovebox for these times. Bought many a box of service items from RockAuto And some Solex locks from 'straya maaaate because the original lock barrels can be opened with almost any key and it has keyless entry anyway. Also had my first break down, can you spot the problem? ** Discussion https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/74793-helium-elbows-magical-rx-7-fb/ **