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Along with the underside tidy-up that I did in the last update, there were a few mechanical bits I needed to deal with before the next inspection in a couple of weeks. The first one was an annoying one; the leaking clutch slave cylinder. I knew the cylinder was slowly weeping fluid, and it appeared to be from the bleed valve. I wasn't too worried as it seemed to lose fluid quite slowly, and I planned to deal with it later. Unfortunately, on top of all the other things the WOF guy blasted me on, one of them was the damn slave cylinder taking a dump. It was still working fine (despite him using it as a reason for grinding it into reverse, nah mate), but it was actively leaking fluid out the front of the cylinder and down the bellhousing now. Balls. I was particularly annoyed by this, not just because it was one more thing the WOF guy didn't like, but because I had already rebuilt it. I sent it out to be resleeved in stainless and I fitted a seal kit I got from the UK. This time I didn't bother to strip it, I decided I would have the pros strip and rekit it for me, just in case there were other issues at play. The culprit lurks down here. In hindsight I should've painted it after it was sleeved (came back freshly sandblasted) It'd used half the reservoir of fluid just in the test driving before the WOF, and the drive to and from the workshop I removed the pushrod, boot and retaining circlip. The boot was full of fluid With the circlip removed the cylinder just slides backwards out of its retaining ring on the bellhousing, making it a lot easier to disconnect the pipe A big adjustable spanner is used to hold it whilst the pipe is undone I was recommended these pipe-end blocking clamp things by a friend, and I'll be darned if they aren't pretty handy. Normally I'd just tie a rubber glove finger over the end and deal with a glove finger full of brake fluid later, but this sealed it completely with no mess The inside of the cylinder wasn't looking too hot (and the piston was stuck at the bottom...) And some very fine marking on the bore I sent it off to the guys that sleeved it originally, CBC Brakes down in Christchurch, and this is what they came back with The seal had rolled in the bore. I honestly don't know how that happened, or when it happened. I had no issues fitting the piston, it didn't catch, and for it to have even been working as it was is a miracle. Either way, despite my embarrassment at having cocked it up and with only myself to blame, I had them rekit the cylinder with a new seal. I will say, CBC have been awesome every time I have dealt with them. Their turnaround is super quick, they are reasonably priced and the work they do is faultless. Now I've had them resleeve and kit the brake master, clutch master and clutch slave. I'm glad I had them do the brake master, I wouldn't want to find out I rolled a seal in that! No room for failure with a single-circuit brake system. The slave cylinder arrived back in record time, and I think they took pity on me because this time it came freshly painted and looking a million bucks. I quickly set about refitting the slave. I greased the end of the pushrod and refitted it into the boot The pipe was refitted, and the slave was slipped down into its retainer and the circlip refitted. A few pumps of the hand vacuum bleeder got fluid flowing, and I finished it off with the trusty one-man bleeder bottle. As an aside, when refitting, despite how much of a pain it is to have the feed pipe on the bottom and blocking the bleeder, the bleeder must be fitted at the top or you'll never bleed the air out. In my testing since refitting, the clutch feels much the same, which I guess is good. No leaks though, so I'll take that as a win and having it properly rebuilt now, hopefully I'll never have to look at it again. Now, two big things were picked up on in the "WOF" check. The RH rear wheel bearing was grinding, and there was play in the steering. I started with the wheel bearing. When spinning the wheel there was a definite whirr noise, which wasn't present on the LH side. I watched a couple of videos on Youtube, and ordered a new bearing kit. Do note that as my car is an Aus Marina it uses a Borg Warner rear axle, so the work I've done may not apply to UK cars, but I imagine the theory is similar. The drum has to be removed first, which exposes the axle Four nuts secure the retaining plate These are accessed via the big cut-outs in the face of the hub flange With those four nuts removed, the axle should pull free from the diff. Should. Most people say to flip the drum over and secure it with a couple of wheel nuts wound on a couple of threads, and use it like a slide hammer to thump the axle free This did not work, despite many many attempts. It got to a point where either I was going to pull the car off the axle stands, or break the drum, neither of which I wanted to do. I got pretty annoyed at this point, and after all my efforts I had only moved the bearing maybe 1mm as I could just see a lip of rusty bearing showing. A new plan was needed, so I bit the bullet and ordered a slider hammer kit that included the required fittings for axle removal. In the meantime, I took a look at the play in the steering. The Marina has a fairly well-known issue where the inner rack support bush on the LH side wears out, as it's made of nylon, and this allows for play in the inner rack. Because the rack can physically move up and down, this allows for play in the LH wheel. I checked for play when I first got the car, and I don't remember there being any, but I ordered a new bush anyway and put it into my spares. Now though, it's good I did, because when you wiggle the wheel side to side, heaps of movement. It is recommended to remove the rack, strip it down completely and then bash the old bush out from the other end. There are a few that have done it on the car though, and as I'm low on time and can't be bothered removing the rack, I chose to do it on the car. Before doing anything else, crack the tie rod end lock nut, as you'll need to remove the tie rod end and this can be properly stuck. With that free, remove the nut on the tie rod end and pop the taper using a couple of whacks of a hammer on the arm. Counting the turns, wind the tie rod end off Remove the lock nut, and after loosening both clamps, remove the boot. Be aware it should be quite oily. Interestingly the inner tie rod is actually serviceable and adjustable using a cup and spring setup As a note, the worn bush is #12 and retained with #11 screw The rack end is locked in place with #10 "locknut", which uses a stake on each end to lock both the tie rod and the rack end together so it can't come loose. I used my big grips on #8 "ball housing" wiggling it back and forth until the stake on the rack end loosened up, and then I could wind both the housing and locknut off. In the end of the tie rod is the cup and spring. Once on the ground I could separate the locknut from the housing. With the tie rod out of the way, you can see the worn-out bush. Theres nothing touching the rack The new bush is made by Nolathane in polyurethane and is part number 41044. I slid this over the end of the rack, and carefully drifted it into place against the old bushing. Before fitting I measured how deep in the rack the original bush was, and how long the new bush was, so I knew it was fully seated. The one catch is that if you aren't removing the stock bush, you need a new screw in the housing to retain the new bush. To do this you need to drill into the housing and screw in a self-tapping screw. I did this in the bottom of the housing as it was easiest for me to access, but in hindsight, I would fit it higher as I have had to use sealant to stop any oil leaking passed the screw. I couldn't find it at the time and only later noticed it in the photo, but the screw retaining the original bushing is there, with the orange arrow. The new screw I fitted is the green arrow. Looking at where the original screw is, I don't think you could access it on the car. If the bush comes loose, the worst that'll happen is that it'll stop supporting the rack and it'll be no worse than it was before, since the old bush is still there. If that happens I will remove the rack and fit the new bush properly. The instructions to fit the tie rod are fairly specific. First screw the lock nut onto the rack and bottom out the threads. Before I did this I used some narrow pliers to straighten out the stakes. Next, you insert the spring and then the cup, followed by the tie rod and its housing. Screw the housing down until the tie rod is nipped up and cant swivel, and back off 1/8 of a turn until the tie rod can articulate fully but still be firm (the spec is 3.63-4.18nm of force to move). Next wind the locking nut into place and lock it with the tie rod, making sure the adjustment is still in spec. Now, using a punch, lock the nut to the housing, and the nut to the rack, both of them have indents where the locking gets punched into Now slip the boot back on, do the clamps up, refit the lock nut and tie rod end (turning it the same amount of turns it came off). Refit the tie rod end to the arm, and its job done. I haven't driven the car since, but there is no play in the wheel when wiggling it side to side, and it was really obvious before. It will be interesting to know how the steering feels now. It's always been a bit vague and wandered a bit, it'd make sense since it had dynamic toe on the LH side. While waiting for the slide hammer to arrive so I could yeet the axle out of its home, I ordered a couple of transmission mounts, which arrived quickly. I did a bunch of research around these because original mounts are NLA, and the Aus cars use a completely different mount setup than the UK cars. On the UK cars they use a cross-member mounted to the body, and a single rubber mount the gearbox rests on. This mount is attached to the very end of the tail housing on the gearbox, Whilst the Aus cars have a pair of mounts much further forward on the gearbox on a pair of plates and brackets The orange arrow points to where the UK mount would be on the gearbox The stock mounts are a weird Z shaped thing, and mine were trashed. I had an idea I could probably find a cotton reel style mount that would work, and after much digging around the internet I found someone on the Aus Facebook group mention they had successfully used "series Land Rover gearbox mounts". Some more digging, and I came up with a local supplier of NRC2054 Compared to the original mounts they're a bit taller, but I have no idea how compressed those old ones are Getting to that point wasn't too hard, I supported the gearbox on the jack and removed the bolts for the "cross-member" which is actually two brackets linked by a brace. This allowed the mounts to slide out The new mounts are metric 10mm studs, so I had to drill out the smaller imperial holes to fit, both on the chassis brackets and on the gearbox brackets (that was fun...). What came next was like trying to assemble a jigsaw with only a vague picture, and a bunch of bits that don't fit together. It sucked. Because the mounts are on an angle, everything has to slot together nicely in a certain pattern, and nothing fit. I ended up having to remove most of the bolts from the brackets on the gearbox, so I could pivot them around, and jack the gearbox up and down Everything had to remain super loose until eventually it all fell into place, all the bolts went in, and only then could I tighten them all down. Some use of the big lever was needed. Paint marks because ADHD life The gearbox definitely sits a little higher now, this was most obvious by the fact that the top radiator house was now firmly trying to occupy the space the radiator fan does. They've always had a slightly touchy-feely relationship, but this was beyond acceptable. I had preempted this, by buying another radiator fan mounting kit. I wanted to move the fan over to give the hose more space anyway (I mounted the fan to the radiator out of the car, before I had fitted the top hose and realised the fan cannot be central on the radiator), so this was my chance. I snapped all the little ties off, using a metal trim tool on the fan side to gently twist it back and forth until the head popped off I moved the fan over and gave everything some nice clearance and zipped it into place Ample space Technically it's on the hotter side of the radiator now, so maybe it'll work more efficiently. Finally, the slide hammer arrived (to be fair, it arrived after the weekend. This work all happened over the course of a couple of days) I ain't playing around now. I tried asking nicely. I attached the fitting to the hub And screwed the hammer into it Three decent thumps, and the axle was out. It's amazing what you can do with the right tools. Forget Loctite, rust is the best bearing retainer I pulled the axle out and cleaned the oil off it It's not really any surprise I needed a slide hammer to remove it, the manual does call for special tool 18G A284 "impulse extractor", which looks suspiciously like a homemade slide hammer. To say it needed replacement might be an understatement To actually replace the bearing you either need to press it and its retaining collar off, or just do what everyone does and cut them off. I stuck the axle in my vice and zip-tied the retaining plate away so I had less chance of cutting that off by accident I fired up the death wheel and got cutting. The retaining ring was first to go Once it was cut most of the way through I stuck a chisel in the cut and a couple of hits split the metal and it slid right off The same happened to the bearing. I cut through the outer race in two places and broke it away I removed the balls and inner cage and then cut into the inner race. Once again, when I was mostly through it I smacked it off with a chisel You can see here I only needed to cut so much of it before the chisel just forcefully cracked the rest of the way. It only took a couple of hits to split. Also note the dull grey area to the left of the cut, this is the reason you must wear PPE doing this, as that's where a chip of steel must've broken off and flown off at high velocity. You don't want that in your eye. Strangely the races of the bearing seemed pretty ok considering. This was the worst damage I could find; a couple of marks on the inner race It's interesting to note though that you can see where the bearings run on the outer race, it must've gotten hot? With both bits loose I removed the axle from the vice and shook them free. Now it was time to fit the nice new one The kit comes with the bearing and a new retaining ring. Do note when fitting these that the bearing has a raised lip on one side (facing up in the above photo), this must face the hub flange when fitted Making sure the retaining plate was in place, I carefully slid the new bearing onto the axle and mounted the axle into the press. I'm using the old retaining ring to press the bearing on, as it will only exert force on the inner race of the bearing, and having been cut it won't bind on the axle shaft. My biggest socket gives the press a flat surface to work off (slightly bigger would've been nice so it could sit on the ring not just the raised bits in the middle, but it's not often I'd need bigger than 36mm) Here's the old retaining collar being put into use I slowly pressed the bearing on until it bottomed out With the bearing in place I slid the old ring off, and the new ring on. The old ring was then used to press the new ring on And done The bearing spun smoothly by hand, albeit with some resistance from the grease inside the bearing I gave the housing a good clean up with a scotch pad to remove any rust that might stop it sealing. It was pretty manky I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I read others have done it, so decided to use a very thin smear of sealant on the surface the outer O-ring seals on. The old bearing was the type that is just a friction fit, but this type relies on that O-ring to keep the diff oil where it needs to be (along with the bearing being sealed). I carefully slid the axle through the backing plate and into its home. I gave the hub flange a couple of hits with the soft face hammer to make sure it was seated. With the four nuts tightened down on the retaining plate, the drum went back on Finally, the wheels were refitted. Before lowering to the ground I spun the wheel and noticed it had a noticeable rumble when spun. Asking around, it appears this is normal for new sealed bearings due to the grease in them, and even bearing manufacturer SKF suggests running the bearings for a few km (or 10 minutes) for the grease to break in, so I'll give it some time and check back later and make sure it's all working as it should. Once on the ground, there was one last job on my list and that was to replace the bonnet cable. The old one was really stiff to pull, and half the T handle was broken off, risking the other half breaking off and being a pain to open. Doing some googling around it seemed like the MGB bonnet cable was able to be used, so I ordered a CHA460 To remove the old cable I had to remove the front grille, and that gave me access to the cable and bonnet catch. The cable loops through the release lever and is then secured in that little screw thing. The cable outer is secured in a clip on a bracket to the left I undid the cable and removed the clip, allowing me to remove the cable I undid the nut holding the handle in place and pulled the cable through the car. Refitting the new cable is just a case of putting the cable through the bracket, securing the handle with the nut, and running the cable through the engine bay to the bonnet catch. The new handle body is a bit smaller than the old one so I used an appropriately sized washer to make it fit better Unfortunately the CHA460 is too short. The cable inner just makes it and can be secured in place, but the outer has no chance of being clipped in place. From my measurements the outer needs to be about 155cm long and the inner 160cm or so. The cable works as it is, and works really well, the bonnet is much easier and nicer to open, but I need to secure the outer, maybe with a clip or just a zip-tie to that hole there. While in the area I finally took some time to adjust the bonnet properly. It's always sat a bit off, and I've had issues with the bonnet popping when driving, which led to some bodges to make it work before the last WOF check. I undid the bodges and found the adjustment slot in the end of the catch pin was so full of gunk you couldn't see it at all, so after some digging it out, I could adjust it properly. To free the center pin up, I removed the catch and put it in the vice. Using my rattlegun with a slotted screwdriver bit, I gave it a quick jab of the button, which instantly freed the pin up. I refitted the catch and adjusted the pin to the spec in the book; A= 50.8mm I had to wind it out significantly to get that measurement, it was at least 10-15mm too short. I used the slotted adjustment holes in the catch to move the bonnet left or right when closed, and get the gaps nice. After some playing with the hinge adjustments Along with the little rubber bumpers I was finally happy with how the bonnet shut. It sits a little high in the middle at the back due to the seal, so I'll need to look into that, but otherwise it's good. That's pretty much the car buttoned up again and ready to go. I did do a string alignment to check how the toe was, but I'll do a write up on that later as this post is already getting too long. I'm two weeks out from my next inspection, which I've specifically booked as a "pre-WOF" inspection, or a WOF that won't be entered into the system if it fails, just in case. Surely I'm running out of things that it can fail on?

It'll come as no surprise that I've paid for a lot of alignments in my time, and as on most cars they can only really adjust toe, it began to irk me how little value I got for my money. With that in mind, there is one thing I have wanted to try for a long time but never really been bothered to do, as it seemed like too much work. A DIY string alignment. I will say off the bat, I know it won't be as accurate as frickin lasers on a machine worth tens of thousands of dollars, and adjusting the toe without a hoist is a pain, but for the cost of... almost free, it's good enough. I had done a lot of research and even considered spending the money on a pair of nice toe plates that you use with a pair of tape measures to check if the wheels are toed in or out, but the idea that it couldn't identify if the wheels were "straight" but actually both pointed off to the same direction, didn't sit well with me. And then I found this guy's video online, and it seemed just easy enough that even I could make a string alignment work The basic theory is that you run a pair of string lines down the sides of the car. With certain measurements, you make the string lines parallel and then measure the distance of the front and rear edges of the wheels against the string to check toe. This method will only do toe, but that's all I need to measure. Having just done work on the steering of the Marina, and it being decades since it's probably seen anything resembling an alignment, I wanted to check it before I went too far on the road again. Years ago I marked the steering column before removing the steering wheel, and when I last refitted it I fitted it to the marks, which meant the wheel was off center for whatever reason (maybe wasn't straight in the first place). I fixed this by just moving the wheel a few splines over, and it was close enough. Before checking the alignment now, I foolishly moved the steering wheel back to the marks, thinking it would be a good idea. In an ideal world, you would center the rack, center the steering wheel and then do the alignment, but I don't have a centering hole in the rack as the UK cars do, and I didn't want to have to measure tie rods, so this is close enough. I fired the car up, and using its freshly rebuilt clutch slave, moved it back up and down the driveway a few times to settle the suspension. Before setting up, always roll the car forward, not backwards, as this can impact the alignment settings. Next, I checked and set all the tire pressures to the same 28-29psi Then I set up the string lines on my four axle stands. Almost immediately I noted that the string I was using wasn't right, it was too thick and "fluffy", you really need something like fishing line for this, so it's thin and accurate. Regardless, all I needed was a ballpark figure, so I pushed on. I pulled the string quite tight by rotating the axle stand The first hurdle for me was that I don't have center caps, just a big gaping hole. That makes it a bit harder to measure from the center, so after a few tries of different things, to set the string height I settled on my camber gauge with its top edge sitting at the center of the hub and the bubble flat. The height doesn't have to be 100% accurate, just close enough to the same for both wheels on that side. The string height is set by moving the center of the stand up and down for coarse adjustment, and then sliding the string up and down on the stand for fine adjustment. Next was to measure the distance from the center of the wheel to the string. You need to factor in the track width of the car with this, so that the strings are straight and not slightly tapering off, as the front and rear track are not usually the same. In the Marinas case, the track is 1333.5mm in the front, and slightly narrower 1331mm in the rear. I wanted the string to be 80mm from the rear wheels, so I measured that from just in front of the center bore, at the height of the string. Ignore the .45mm extra, it's really hard to be accurate when also taking a photo. Because the front is slightly wider, I needed to remove the extra width from my measurement, which is 2.5mm across both sides. Halve that, and you get 1.25mm per side. So I needed my string line to be 78.75mm from the wheel on the front. Moving the stands at the front and rear until I got those two measurements, on both sides of the car, and I finally had a pair of parallel strings. Not too hard! Now it was time to measure the toe. I used my calipers on the wheel lip to check the distance to the string line. Protip, make sure your wheel weights aren't in the way... Having checked both sides, I knew the rear was square as the front and rear measurements were the same (good test of my string lines), but being a solid axle I expected that. The fronts, well... The numbers were messing with my head a little, but from that I had 11mm of toe, but not in or out, they were pointing off to one side. They were pretty well parallel, but not straight. This is where the string line has an advantage over the toe plates, it can tell me the wheels are pointing off to the side but only had 1mm toe difference, the plates would tell me there was 1mm toe but not that they are pointing off to one side. This was due to me moving the steering wheel on the splines. Darn. I straightened the steering out so the wheels were more or less straight and then moved the steering wheel over on the splines to straighten that out. To settle the steering I had to push the car back and forth again, which meant the poor thing got its tail out in the rain. With the faint sounds of rust creeping in, I rolled the car forward and set up again. This time all I needed to do was set the string the pre-measured distance from the wheels again Round two was a lot better, this time it looks like I'm slightly pointing off to one side It appears I have about 1mm of toe in on one side, and I'm pointing off to one side still. I need to drive the car and see how centered the steering wheel is, I suspect it might need to go over one more spline, but since it hasn't really stopped raining, I won't be venturing out just yet. Once I have the steering wheel centered, and the car tracks straight, I'll get some fishing line, set up again and see how the actual toe is. The setting in the book is 1.6mm combined or 0.8mm per side toe in (wheels closer together at the front edge than the rear). Over all, the string method seems pretty good. It'll suck to have to actually adjust anything since any time you move the car, move the strings or make any changes you need to set things up again, but you can probably get fairly quick at it with some practice. I'll play with it more, on my other cars too, as a quick basic way to make sure the toe isn't wildly out before having someone check it properly on a machine (if needed). I wouldn't bother with a machine alignment on this Marina, since there are no more adjustments than toe, and this isn't a daily driver, as long as it's in the ballpark and drives straight, I'm happy. My daily, or track car, should really be checked properly for handling and tyre life reasons. I can definitely recommend giving it a go, it's a fun skill to learn and pretty low cost if you have some measurement tools, a set of four jack stands (or similar things to tie the string to on each corner), some fishing line and some time.

Dodge goes in for its first wof in my ownership friday, thought i'd get the new outer tie rods on. In the past i'd always done these with a jack and a hammer to separate the joint. This time I was armed with an aliexpress balljoint separator, the wind up sort - amazing, should have got one years ago. I spent a bit of time measuring and remeasuring to try and avoid the need for an alignment and I reckon i've got it pretty bang on, certainly good enough for a car which will be lucky to see 1000km a year. While I was at it I greased and cleaned up all the joints in the front end, couple of zerks were broken or blocked so luckily I had a box of aliexpress imperial zerks handy. I think I am going to start hunting for a 4 barrel manifold now, upgrading from a carb that looks like it should be on a lawnmower ought to really wake the car up.

cracked into the Toploader and took more paint off. Then rust proofed it after the drill battery died. Photos not loading so that’s all I have for the efforts haha

The 24v pump might just have rusty connections or a dead solenoid.. I'd be tempted to see if it has any life in it direct via jumper leads.. A decent 24v pump if low geared enough might have the balls to lift the deck depending on ram diameter. EDIT: That red lever is almost certainly an ejector seat handle.

@Dudley is working on my car so I don’t have to, but it means I’m in the shed doing jobs I’ve been putting off. I hung the air hose reel that I bought about a year ago so I don’t have to coil and uncoil the hose all the time. Thread taped all the air fittings everywhere, and coz the sand blaster drops sand everywhere every time you open the door I made this little shelf for the sand to land on

She’s all tacked in place and front screen just needs the top bar narrowed to suit what was cut out of the centre of the roof.

Been a productive afternoon. Tank still needs quite a bit more. Round 3 Fight

Don't mean to brag but I can do a fuel tank in 20 minutes HMU. Anyway stick little jet valve in the pump cradle no more fuel starvation...... Was also a little plastic spacer that came with pump to hold screen open. Lesson learned slow the fuck down make sure there's nothing left in box before bolting shit back in.

Yes, but the CCM says that Rotarys are only allowed to use missile switches for everything and the switch panel has to be covered in camo material.

both of you get out of my thread

What possibly could go wrong did go wrong. The MC needs new seals. I thought it might and should have had it done earlier. Anyway I found a reasonable replacement rear rubber spring seat as one of the ones I had was a bit nackerd. I fitted that and now the car sits level. So I lowered it down and dragged it out for a wash and to see how it sits. The ground outside is not level but it’s the best I can do for now.

After the bitter disappointment of the failed "WOF" I've been non-stop working on plans to move forward, and yesterday I put the first of these into action. The main thing that stopped the WOF in its tracks was the underside of the car. I was told the underseal had to be completely stripped off, and all surface rust had to be removed. The easiest solution was to "go talk to such and such" and have it sandblasted, treated and recoated. Now, if this was for a re-registration inspection for a car that was de-registered (like the Mini was), this is a request that can be made if the inspector has a reason to suspect the underseal is hiding something like rust. Ironically, the underside of the Mini was coated in the exact same underseal, and flew through re-rego check. For a standard WOF, for a car that doesn't need re-rego (the Marina rego has been on hold for almost 30 years, thanks previous owner!), this request is way out of the scope of an inspection unless the whole car looks like its been under the sea (which happens occasionally). The Marina is neither de-reg, nor does it look like it's been under the sea. I didn't call the guy the WOF man was recommending, but instead spoke to a very helpful chap at a local sandblasters, who is known for doing work like this on cars that are rusty underneath. His opinion was that it was best not to touch the underseal and to leave it as is as it was still doing its job. Removing the whole lot would be a huge amount of work, since the tar-based stuff is meant to absorb impact and deflect things like stones, sandblasting wouldn't really strip it. He couldn't think of any reason someone would want to strip the whole lot off, unless it was a full resto, and needed to go back to bare metal. After a good chat with him, I felt confident in my next move. Despite having seen it briefly on the hoist during the WOF when I asked to be shown what the issue was, I had built up a far worse picture in my mind of what it looked like under there. The only thing for it was to grab a scraper, a wire wheel, and roll under the car and have a look myself. For the first time, I put a car up in the air on my really old, really solid screw type jack stands. These go higher than my usual ratcheting type, and I needed all the height I could get. I took the wheels off and went for a tour with my torch. This is the surface rust at the front. He made it sound like this was life threatening and an absolute horror. It's the underside of the battery tray, welded to the inner guard. I wire brushed and treated this with Brunox. One thing I will agree on is that I didn't do a very good job of cleaning the old rust flakes out of the chassis rails when I replaced the rear valance and floors. I blew it out with a compressor a bit from the top, but clearly I just moved it around and some of the flakes were too big to even come out the holes. That was entirely my own doing, so I'll own that. In terms of the underseal, I spent ages under the car poking around. These are the worst areas I could find The worst areas, the last two photos, are in direct proximity to the muffler and it looks like the heat from that actually dried out and cooked the underseal. Beyond that, the underseal although dirty, is actually in really good shape. it's stuck on well, still soft and doing its job. I started with the nasty job of wire wheeling all the loose and flaky underseal off. I was going to use a scraper, but it didn't touch even the flakiest bits. The wire wheel did a good job on the dry stuff, but barely touched the areas around it where the underseal was still nice and soft. I'd hate to try and actually remove the whole lot. No photos of this, it was super messy and I was trying to just get it done. Once it was all cleaned back, I coated all the areas in Brunox, a rust converter and treater. This should stop any surface rust from creeping back. This was step one. While the Brunox was doing its thing, I changed to clearing out the rails of flakes. I did this with a combo of my air compressor and a long flexible magnet. Stick the magnet in the helpfully placed holes and go fishing It would come back with a nice little collection of crust. Rinse and repeat. Using an air gun I blew as much of the smaller stuff as I could out the holes in the rails, from all directions, and then using a combo of air and the magnet, caught anything else that was left. The magnet was good for smashing up the bigger bits too. It was a long, messy job, but I ended up with some nice clean holes This is what happens when you fit a towbar and don't use crush tubes Since it'd been a couple of hours now, the Brunox was nice and dry and ready for me to give it a coating of black zinc paint. This will also help to protect against any future rust. While that dried, I moved on to the big bad rust inside the boot It's a prick of an area to actually work on without removing the boot hinges, so I had the bright idea to try my soda blaster on it. This is a cheap gun, on a compressor that's far too small, and firing baking soda at it under pressure. I didn't expect much, but I had everything already so it cost me nothing. It's not perfect, but it knocked the lighter rust clean off and the deeper rust cleaned off so the Brunox will be able to work on it. I treated the rust with Brunox and then coated it in black zinc to seal it. Finally, we were back to the underside again. I finished the job by giving everything a nice fresh coat of underseal. Because the new underseal is pretty flat, it's obvious it's not hiding anything, but seals and protects everything. Its looking 100% better. I'm pretty confident now that the underside is looking as good as it could, for a 50 year old car. I have started on the mechanical repairs that were mentioned too, but that'll come in a later post as I'm having some struggles with that. Another WOF is booked, at a different workshop, in a couple of weeks. I've got plenty of time.

I can't quite remember the exact moment that I suddenly became aware that I needed an FD RX7, but it became a full blown itch over the next few weeks, checking trademe and FB marketplace pretty much daily - but also noting that the price of these cars was starting to tick down, and a lot of stuff wasn't selling. So the third time the price dropped on this one particular machine that was already in the cheaper category happened to coincide with half a dozen beers in my gut and before I knew it, I was the proud owner of a 1997 FD3S so it arrived on the back of a truck, which I am told is how these vehicles generally prefer to travel from A to B It was a quiet day so I anticipated this wonderful opportunity to dig around the thing and see where and how I'd been hoodwinked, but instead the towie turned up at exactly closing time so all I could do was roll it into the shop and bugger off for the weekend.

I (of course) have the advantage of seeing at least some of the circuit in real life (impossible to photograph)and I suspect the cooler has been installed to cool 100% of the system (apart from the 24V pump). @rusty360's idea of pushing the spool (I didn't know that was a spool) by hand will be awesome tomorrow. Above the big hose to the PTO is a black steel tank that seems very robust. I wonder if it's designed to hold pressure?. I guess not, but I'm not sure. That black steel tank doesn't appear to have a filler.... but the Hiab does have a filler and an orange tank, and it looks like the orange Hiab tank has a gravity fed hose that feeds the black tank. The orange tank is empty. I dunno what's in the black tank. Unfortunately the hydraulic hoses in and out of the 24v pump are smaller than all the other hoses, and evidently this complicated system worked two years ago before one hose 'blew' (read: It wore out from dragging onto the gravel roads) so I figure I'll get a guy in with another Hiab to tilt the deck up, replace the 'blown' hydraulic hose, fly in some hydraulic-oil, repair the wiring as best as I can.... and then use @Hemi's "start the engine with the PTO engaged" approach. If it's all a disaster I'll have wasted my money and time and will tow the truck to my property, dig a big hole and bury it. Seriously I will. But if the deck goes up and down I'll sort out all the brake lines etc. and drive around the island tipping shit wherever I like. LOL!

The work good when used correctly. The older ones can often be had for 100-150$ I've seen a couple in the kast few years. Just got to be quick

that didn't take long. its been a minute since i done an update, so lets unload whats been going on in classic motorcycle world. got a family photo like my dad did years ago. went for a few rides between and then it was time to do cold kiwi. all packed up headed down with @flyingbrick @MostlySuzukis and a mate called pete. myself and marnix cheated a bit and had our gear and tent taken down to ohakuni the week before hand, but set up camp went for a ride around the local region went up the mountain with a couple of the guys we were camping with had word there was a storm coming with some crazy high winds so we tied the tent to the bikes. probably should have tied my bike to the other side as i woke up to the tent inside out and on me at 230am and woke marnix who was on the other side of the tent. the got winds of 100kph and other bikes fell over during the night. cc in @flyingbrick we packed up and headed home after the miserable night and stopped off on our way home at some spots and made it home to a happy daughter a good clean later spotless and lubed chain we are up and riding again. this time to the Hamilton motorcycle club night not long after that i decided id ride it to work, fouled a plug and got pissed off so changed out all four plugs. while doing that (during work hours) i left a lead off and thought the bike was completely fucked. i was pissed off to say the less during the time that i thought it was fucked. some more riding, this time to kawhia. another month passed now and club night was on again, quick ride out to raglan before hand during these last couple of rides the clutch was slipping at say 140kph and 160kph really bad. so i got some new clutches which i found locally and this was my next task. a few free minutes and a daughter wanting to work on grandad garys motorbike we were all go. oil all drained and wiggles magic wand to help i don't know what i'm doing at this stage, but i'm following my noes quick count up looks about right. clutches now soaking in new oil and time to put it all back together borrowed a torque wrench from a mate and made sure i didn't over torque these clutch bolts back together with a half fearing cause @flyingbrick is a sicko and really likes it like this quick ride to raglan to test the new clutches patted a random dog while i was pondering life but when i got home, i checked the oil and after a couple of rides this bike was still burning oil like no tomorrow. so time has come and the valve stem seals are now to be done on the trailer and off to dads best friends house who has kindly offered to help out and has some really good knowledge of motors and engineering we got into it and stripped the rest down till we came across needing a few different modifed tools. so we stopped, malcolm modified some tools and we caught up today to carry on. but during that time i put on my big boy pants and sat my full license for my motorcycle. took my small honda monkey over to Revs motorcycle center in paeroa went for a bit of a hoon while i was over there and yes i passed my full license but back to today. Malcolm made this handy air compression thing to full the combustion chamber up with air and hold the valves up while we took the springs off to reach the valve stem seals it was originally a spark plug of mine. he also had to modify his tool to press down the springs cams off and into it (well went over timing and a few other things) here we can see his tool that has been modified over the years watch the next video with volume off or down, the air compressor was still getting up to psi. and check out how toast this were. we were on a roll! had a good rhythm going and got them all done. cams back into place and started to put all the bolts back in that held the cam in place. when out of nowhere, one decided to snap under no tension at all. putting a end to the day pretty fast! i can get new bolts which is alright. ill try locally and see if i can get them fast. but for some weird reason we were missing a couple of dowels too. so ill get a couple of them and we should be good to go again. been that dad modified this bike and mucked around with it heaps back in the day, these bolts are a bit rough and i can understand them been fatigued just look at the top of the bolt. anyway, that's us up to date now here is a photo of when malcolms 38 ford was in nz hot rod magazine back in may 1992 with his supercharged 327 small block chev bored to a 331 in it. and a small glimpse into his shed for max barrie points

To play elimination. Red lever engine PTO in neutral, start truck. Sound like you have something working with the thud, this could just be lines pressurising and flailing about could also be trying to do something. The white box would control the main divertor valve. Broom and tipper are powered by the PTO by the sounds and maybe the hiab was* powered by the pump. The pump could also just be and emergency thing/ added later. I would highly doubt the electric pump would be powering the broom itself as that would kill the battery even running in not much time. Would power a hiab just fine though. Back to where I was. Red lever up/ engaged . Truck running in neutral white box switched to hoist and then flick between and up down and see what happens. Perhaps check after each click to see if oil starts being produced somewhere.

Would have been easier to start with a BMW, no need for indicators at all then.

CCM has recently been updated to allow polished checker plate

The rusty shit is definitely concentrated around the coolant filler cap, someone's taken it off when the engine was hot for sure, but that could've been anytime really, it was a bitch to clean it off off Finally bought it home and after seeing it the wife has come around, big time. In her words "I just assumed you'd bought another absolute piece of shit"

Earlier this week, I adjusted the rear brakes up, and adjusted the handbrake. I'm still not 100% happy with the pedal feel. But I'll give the cunt another bleed once the engine runs/there's vacuum on the booster. Moved on the the kick panels. They were more or less intact. The passengers side had a wee bit broken off. I reinforced it with 3m aluminium foil tape, (I have done some unbelievably whorey shit with that stuff in the past) and glued the join with arelditie. The driver's side in particular was pretty worn from year of the driver getting in and out. I cut some whole where the speaker pockets are forward of the A pillar. Then bought some self adhesive vinyl off ali. Unfortunately the "don't care, no responsibility" approach of China post saw is creased. And the lines are still visible. I scuffed up what remained of the original paint. And decreased it with prepsol. Traced a larger outline and cut it out. And it turned out okay. Is it perfect? Hell no. Do I care? Also hell no. I think this stuff is meant for doing furniture repairs. It's quite stretchy. And while I dunno how UV stable it is, I think you could easily use it on a motorbike seat. Pics.

I'm sort of trying to avoid messing with it too much, especially if it was going to need re-tuning etc. If the turbos give up I really can't say if I'd go hunting for another set of twins or go with an upgrade. Someone does appear to have replaced a lot of the hoses in the rat's nest, PO said he'd gotten in there to replace a solenoid so perhaps it was him It's got an Apexi power FC (with a hand controller - for when I want to press some buttons and make it explode?) Honestly they are just such a gorgeous car I just had to have one. Like everyone, I wish I'd bought it ten years ago for half the price, but that's life. And it is so refreshing to deal with a 90's car for a change (sorry fellow oldschoolers) not everything is broken, there's no rust, there's aftermarket support, the manuals are in english... coming from the starion to the FD is absolute night and day

Then I hit the first major red flag - I'd been expecting an "ohh, THAT'S why it was cheap!" moment, and perhaps here it was: Excuse me what the fuck is going on down here? I do not appreciate busted wires and shit. At first I thought a rat might've gotten into the engine bay and chewed through the loom, but I found the rest of the wiring wrapped around the crank pulley shit, I hope it isn't anything importa-aaaand it's the oil metering pump so just to tell you guys how to suck eggs, that's the pump that feeds a wee bit of oil into the chambers to lubricate the seals. Now I did a bit of reading and discovered that the pump on the FD is a stepper motor controlled one, so presumably that means when the wiring got torn out of it, it just failed at whatever flow rate it was allowing at the time, as opposed to stopping working altogether. Hopefully that position was full tit max flow. SO, how long had the pump been fucked? Normally this would throw a fault code, but this thing has an aftermarket ECU so no dice I very politely contacted the previous owner and he said that he'd never seen the busted wires, and frankly knew nothing about it. One interesting tidbit was that he said he had had some boosting problems with the (notoriously finicky) sequential controls on the turbo, had replaced a solenoid, but the problem had come back shortly afterwards, and that that was when he decided to sell the car. Why is this topical? Because when the metering pump loom was torn to bits, it pulled a hose off the vacuum chamber for one of the solenoids! So there's every chance that this occurred pretty much the last time this car was driven. Needless to say it's on premix now.

Phwoar Jesus it looks good! I removed all the extra stickers that didn't need to be on the bike and boy does it look clean with out them. I don't know if I had mentioned, but I thought I had lost a side fairing that said suzuki on it. Well I found it yesterday after cleaning up the shed. It was the only reason why I hadn't put the full fearing on yet. I also pulled out dad's visor and put that on the bike as well. The other day I found some polish, so had a go and cleaning up the tank. Bike was looking good I removed these mikuni stickers too. Managed to stick them to the tool box for safe keeping. Need to find a left hand mirror as we dropped the bike when we were out at kims in the trailer. Apart from that things haven't changed that much around here.

Dad would be laughing at me. I certainly was laughing at myself.

I've recently inherited this 59 Dodge Kingsway from my father who has owned it from 1977. NZ New, 3 speed manual 230ci flat head six (could be a 228? not entirely sure) and wanting a place to document the restoration. Plan is to keep everything entirely original. Dad used it as a wedding car in 1997, overheated during a wedding and has been parked up ever since. Any resources for parts, general advice or encouragement would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to discuss!

Push to break drive so you can engage* PTO needs drive through the gearbox to operate so clutch mist be in the " relaxed" /drive position. I read this and got confused for a sec so clarifying

Yes, as long as the pump is not loaded you can start it with the PTO engaged and it should work fine

Can start a truck with the pto engaged , ones at work we do anyway if the air pressure has been built up. Is it stuck in gear? Could always drop the driveshaft if you really want to try it out. You will need to have a good hose from your pump to your ram before doing anything else first.

I'm not 100% sure how the system works you got. But normally you would engage the pto which would get the hydro pump running, then move a lever or switch that controls the hydro valve - that would then let the oil fill the ram and lift the deck. The tipper control might be electric over hydraulic?

That would explain a few things. Thank you. At risk of sounding stupid: Can I pull up the red lever with the engine off, start the engine and then expect to see hydraulic-oil pissing out of the fitting where I removed the blown tipper ram feed hose?

Normally you need to push the clutch in to engage the pto to drive the hydro pump.

@kws something you mught find worth investing in is a scrub board. Its for setting toe as a dynamic measurement. You drive across it and the top moves from the toe and shows a combined measurement. Often measured in feet per mile of sideways travel . Between 0 and 5 in is pretty good for most stuff. They come up on trademe every now and again

Wild arse guess: Any chance of stuffing the 24V pump into the Ram for an empty lift to get to the rest of the wiring/tubing hoo ha under teh deck?

Wheels can poke out, tyre tread has to be covered to at least the height of the hub center It's kind of a grey area, and one thing that grinds my gears somewhat If you read the wof virm, everything requires this But a vast percentage of even standard vehicles don't comply with the wof virm to some extent

Sigh. Found a little plastic gubbin sitting on gound that has obviously fallen out as i was manhandling the pump i remember seeing it at base of pump cradle when it was on bench. Haha for fucks sake I'll be an expert by end of this upgrade. Bonus points if you can tell me what it does. Oh and I'm booked for a wof on Thursday so there's the deadline to be back to running Naturally Aspirated.

There's enough gear on board to diagnose easier with wideband and the computer setup to tell me what's going on. Have a suspicion new pump may be slightly shorter so just isn't on bottom of tank. No worries I've fixed harder. 1 change is easier to back track on.

Finished joining the dots. It sounds perfect, not too loud, doesn't get raspy with a rev. I'll post a video some time. I'll put a tail pipe on once it's all together and I figure where it's going to run. It had a slightly noisy lifter sound this time which seemed to dissipate with time and I noticed some fan belt squeal too. Perhaps I couldn't hear those things prior when it was uncorked. Will investigate. Stoked to get to this point. It's no show pony but good enough. Final engineering tasks on/around chassis are to mount spare wheel hanger a bit further back, as the muffler occupies the position where that was. Build the handbrake caliper mounting. Finish gear shifter things. I got an auto column shifter from an early Previa at pickapart which have a similar 4 speed auto. It also has an overdrive button. I need to check out lever linkage ratios but have a pretty good idea how that's all going to go, half of it's already built. Probably only other things are to build an additional fresh water tank which will occupy void above the trans or down low in front of radiator above front axle to push a bit of weight forward to counter the engine setback and spare wheel shift. Also think about mounting a trans cooler - I'm not sure if I should do this now or just wait till it's on the road and measure trans oil temp to get a feel for size of cooler needed?

It's doing some weird shit it felt like it was running out of petrol so I put it 50$ in that stopped it but there is a slight surge at full power that hopefully is the fuel reg playing silly buggers with increased flow of new pump. Hopefully the new regulator cures that or its tank out again to see what's going on.

New pump fit the factory pod pretty well wiring was same gauge plug was different soldered the joints and covered using the submersible fuel line that came with the pump as I didn't trust the heat shrink I had. Old fuel filter on pump was utterly rooted pump itself looked fine. Managed to salvage the factory flexible hose and reuse on the new pump.

Stop procrastinating and do the bloody fuel pump Dave! That voice in my head got better of me today. I got absolutely covered in shit and have lightened a few kg of dirt and gravel from back of car.

now the bodykit, I can kinda live without. Initially I went looking for a very stock machine but fate would have it (and not for the first time) I ended up with something very much the opposite. It does look like it'll unpick easily enough if the day comes, although that would mean buying stock guards and a stock bumper and most parts aren't cheap. So I'll stick with the kit for now, the downside of this is that I'm limited to exactly bugger all wheels that will fit. As mentioned it came on Enkei 3 piece wheels which sounds nice, but they don't fill the guards, and sit way too far in (even with the 20mm spacers there's extreme wheel rub if you even think about steering. I thought about changing the lips, I thought about changing the barrels, I thought about how that would mean spending 5k just to end up with some beaten to shit centres just to keep the wheel snobs happy. So I cheaped out and got some 9" -20 Rota RKR's because they're pretty much the only thing that would actually fit, straight off the shelf. Realized what I needed on Friday, found some for sale on Saturday in Cambridge, @RXFORD was coming through on Sunday, they were in Auckland Sunday night, and one of my customers was driving a truck straight past on the way to Whangarei the next day, the system works! (compared to the time I tried to bring a starion engine up from CHCH, which wore out it's welcome with about three different OS members, and THREE YEARS LATER, having never actually arrived here, was sold sight unseen) Despite being only an inch smaller they seem absolutely tiny, it's taken some getting used to. But I can turn corners now. Oh but the previous owner had wandered off with the lock nut key. He sent it up to me but it was too late, I'd already created this piece of art what is it? it's a small piece of pipe with five castellations cut into it, hammered into a slightly larger piece of pipe, and welded up with great enthusiasm and little ability. but it did the job! oh and with a socket welded crookedly on the end because I still had half a rod left and by god I was going to use it

Needed the beefy BW diff upgrade for the power from the super advanced OHC 1750 lump

No matter how small or insignificant the job seems, it's always a good day when you get to tick an item off the snagging list. Some of you may recall that I fitted a Mitsi L300 wiper setup to the old Thames earlier in the year. As part of that task I had to cut and shut the wiper arms to suit and I ended up using small 3mm diameter nuts and bolts to fix the Thames ends to the Mitsi arms like so: Well suffice to say that every so often I've had to retighten the nuts as things worked themselves loose. I've had visions of a wiper blade parting company mid stroke and the remaining part of the arm gouging a nice track in my unobtainium windscreen, so earlier this month I ordered in a pack of the smallest diameter pop rivets that I could find. Even better was that they were coated black so no need for me to faff about with a rattle can. Picture of the win: I had to ease the holes open an extra 1/2mm to accomodate the new pop rivets, but it's all done now. The snag list is now down to 24 items.

Hi all my front brake discs had a small warp in them and i was getting pretty sick of them at the same stage of wanting bigger ones on the bike, front and rear. both of them were smaller than i needed but not by much. done some digging around and checked in with a wrecker locally to see if he had a rear disc for me, turns out he didn't but knew which one i was after. so visited boyds motorcycles and order that and a sprocket two tooth smaller. photo of the old disc on top of the new one. bit of a difference in the rear, going from a 220mm to a 240mm smaller sprocket to bring down the revs at cruising speed and due to the chain length been a funny length not to much smaller but the smallest i could get for the rear and i have the biggest i can get for the front. got that sorted and one chain length taken out of the chain, put back together and sorted out the front. this is how much smaller the discs were and how little were grabbing on the pads i mean it worked and stopped well, but nice to know that its grabbing a bunch more now. new pads and i have gone from a 290mm to a 320mm front discs same again with the difference in size my mate giving me a hand putting everything back together gave the pins a bit of a birthday while i had them apart and back together don't ask me why the front fender looks so green, something weird going on with the lighting in this image anyway. thing stops really well with the new discs and pads in. a while ago i was riding with @MostlySuzukis and a mate out to raglan, we have coms while we ride for laughs and to catch up while we ride. anyway he was following me out to raglan and i heard a scrape as i was cornering, my pipe obviously scraping on the ground. with in seconds of it scraping i heard mostlysuzukis speak over the coms "JESUS those were some bright sparks!!!!" thus been the 3rd or 4th time id touched the muffler now and not overly happy about it at the same time happy i am leaning the bike over enough im scraping the muffler. ever since then i never really trusted myself leaning to the right, didn't want the pipe to catch causing damage or worse me falling off from it. i had spoken to @Kimjon about visiting and altering the pipe to be in a better position and i finally got the chance today to head out alter it. pulled the main headers off and found a small issue as we levered the pipe to remove it que why i used exhaust wrap to hide all the sins that were under it previously. figured out where we wanted the pipe with a few improve things and made it work from there figuring out angles and how to make it high and still functional few different shapes going on in there I had my old exhuast hanger that I got off @flyingbrick which we re used again. This time instead of using 1million washers @Kimjon made a couple of small spacers up on the lathe. Finishes it nicely and makes it look way more professional. all one peace and here is a before and after anyway this is me up to date for now. next up will be to rebuild the front shocks, i think they might be leaking some oil and the seals are probably toast would like to get the headers sand blasted and painted in some kind of heat pant or just cleaned up also time to go ride and get this bike over a bit more, get the most out of the tire!

Hello. So the day came for my wof check. Woke up this morning and put my thermals on, sweater on under my jacket and headed out for my wof check. turned up a few mins early and old mate was under a datsun sunny giving the A12 a oil change. Mentioned i had a wof booked in, to which he was surprised cause his darling had booked in the datsun to be worked on. None the less he said and scrubbed his hands clean and passed me the wof sheet to fill out the information for. Made some small talk and he went over the bike, we made some more small talk and headed inside. During the small talk he said, well you now have a wof, but it runs out at a less than ideal time. So make sure you book in early to make sure you'll have one for summer. I paid the man and went on my way. A celebratory ride to Raglan. Then to my daughters daycare for Matariki lunch. Fry bread is the best. But how cool is that, first wof since 2009 on the old girl. I figured you might ask who done the wof. Well I got a photo of him so you can all use him.

I finally found some 42mm stainless bends and straight tube for the header. Price was good as well. I made up some paper templates, so I would cut the angles correctly from two 45deg bends for the 2 into 1 merger. Fuck they are expensive to buy made up and are not that hard to make. I used some 45mm for the one bit which I will need to reduce the end back to 42mm. Anyway, it's a start back into it and hopefully I can have it tacked mainly together this weekend.

I made a start on the fuel system today. I made up a bracket that bolts to the fuel tank bolts which mounts the low pressure pump. I think I will get some new hard tube to take it to the front. The old tube is a bit damaged and I may go up a size from the 1/4" that is there. I have been hunting for an appropriate surge tank. If I fit it in the boot I will need to have it in another container to stop any fumes from getting into the passenger compartment. I see smaller ones made for mounting in the engine bay but even they were to big for the Minx. Then I found this Edelbrock unit which is very complete and will fit perfectly where the old battery tray mounts. The battery will go in the boot now anyway. I haven't pulled the trigger on buying one yet but probably will.

Ohhh yes some mongoose motomags to complete it nicely