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Last week this lovely thing here... ..got replaced with this old lump.. (photo taken while bleeding the cooling system) I wanted to give the flat six a little look over, check some things and sort out a small oil leak that in retrospect I should have just ignored because it turned into a mini ball ache. I should just accept that any engine fitted into a British car is destined to leak oil to some extent. I started operation leak fix by sliding the engine off the engine stand onto the big table, glad to have made the table, the benches and the stand all the same height, then standing the engine on its end. I popped the sump off and started pulling the oil system pipework apart.. The aim was to stop the oil that was seeping out between the oil filter pedestal and the crankcase. I had previously tried sealing it externally with some gloop but it was too awkward to get in there properly. You can see the residue in this shot.. Oil creeping through between the pedestal pipes and weeping through the card gasket I'd fitted. But i discovered I couldn't remove the pedestal fully without removing one of the exhaust studs and there was no way that exhaust stud wanted to come out easily. I tried a bit of heat, cooling the stud with spray, two nuts, vice grips. I really didn't want to risk damaging it. Luckily I was able to pull the pedestal out away from the case enough to squirt sealant into the gap after a thorough cleaning. Smeared the gloop in neatly with my fingers, pulled to pedestal up tight with its bolts. Happy it was now sealed up I reassembled then painted the area.. All the various gubbins back in place.. I like this shot.. While the engine is out I checked the oil pump drive chains. They seem fine and no slacker than when fitted so no need to adjust tensions. Whilst checking them and looking over the system I worked out a better (simpler) way I could have made the system that would use just the one chain. Future tinkering if I ever needed to but for now it works so I'll keep running it and check it every so often. So while this has been happening the Datsun A12 is back in place. I had to fix another hole in the old muffler I'd built for the Datsun. Its pretty rotten in places. The temp gauge reads too high - I suspect the only way its changed is from different wiring in the new dash layout due to larger wiring having less resistance. But there was no change in temps shown with the flat six. Very weird. Anyway, in order to stop the Datsun temp reading 120 C I added a variable resister inline on the sensor wire.. Adjusted that until the temp was where I guessed it should be, measured the resistance and looked through my stash of bits.. Found a resister close enough.. Its now fitted with teminals and covered in heat shrink. While on the subject of gauges I had the fuel gauge I'd ordered from Ali express ($15 delivered). As a bonus the delivery folks involved squashed the box and added patina to the lovely black bezel. Ho hum. But at least I have a gauge that matches the Trisco temp gauge (poor mans VDO).. I bought this gauge knowing full well that it most likely wont work accurately with my Imp fuel tank sender. I wired it up on the bench with a spare sender and to my surprise it actually reads bang on .. Only issue is its not a damped system. The gauge responds instantly so the needle does flutter about on rough roads but one only needs to drive along on a straight smooth surface for a few seconds to get an accurate reading. I rummaged through my extensive supply of various dash bulbs, many of which are Nissan K11 items. Found some green ones for this both this and the temp gauge for a nicer glow. I'll change the one in the oil pressure gauge to match. I have also had a load more leds with controllers turn up from Ali. I'll be having a play with some under dash floor lighting and some lighting in the engine bay. When I re-did all the wiring involved with the new dashboard layout I added in a spare plug to suit a spare Toyota speedo hall sensor just like what I'm using on the Subaru transmission. Earlier in the year I had machined up an alloy adaptor with two different threads. One end to suit the sensor, the other to suit the Imp speedo cable. It all tucks away up under the dash. With the Datsun installed I was able to try it.. The speedo cable on Imps is driven off the passenger front wheel so spins at road speed. I had not bothered to check what the ratio of the speedo output on the Subaru box was relative to road wheel speed. I didn't even have any idea what it could be. I just took the imp for a drive prepared for some completely errant reading, either way too slow or far too fast. However the gauge gods must really have been in a good mood with me recently because the speedo reads almost bang on. Wow. This has saved me extra bother because if it was completely inaccurate I was prepared to swap back in the original mechanical strip speedo for Datsun duties. Now the swap between both engines is even easier. I've driven the imp about in the last few days and I'm always really impressed with how well the little Datsun engine goes. Its so neat. Its a torquey little thing. Although not even close to the smoothness of the six, or anywhere as quick, it still makes for a great daily drive. But I'm really looking forward to going back to the hopefully leak free Honda.. fingers crossed.

Welcome to Daves Instrumentation Adventures So I thought I'd better test the idea on a single runner before after I've already purchased 5 more MAFs the black stuff is using a 3d print pen to join the 2 parts. My only red roll of filament was still on the printer printing the other runners... Restrictive? Probably not. Results are decent, and it is insanely sensitive. The wobbly bits shown here are reversion from having god awful cam timing. Which smooths out once rpm gets up a bit. But it's looking promising as a good method for balancing throttles and the bank to bank VVT stuff. (Apart from that my bonnet wont close now) The horrible reversion stuff mostly happens just off idle, when rpm is 1000+ and it's steady idle it gets a nice smooth signal. So should be okay to use it to balance the throttles.

Ah yeah,they all fit in sideways no prob

The Gtir is still very buried in the garage. but found a few hours to myself the other day and decided to mince about on this a little. A while back I brought a pulsar gtx2860R for it. I very nearly got more carried away and brought a 2867 but decided to be a bit more sensible for once and got the 60 taking the gamble on that due to the compressor wheels being the same size I might be able to swap compressor covers took next to no photos but turns out it was as simple as swapping the comp cover backing plate over she all bolted up. so now I have a ball bearing factory looking turbo that has 1mm bigger turbine wheel and modern aero. my car for whatever reason had the waterlines removed from the turbo so I’ll have to make water lines and probably a new oil line unless I can fit a restrictor to the factory oil line some how but overall great success

no real update , just Decided to host a hardpark on the lawn for all my twin square light cars

Update, featuring pictures I can see as well as you. I spent a whopping 5 pounds on a set of Chi-an-eez detail brushes from Amazon. Best fiver ever. / An average workman credits his tools.

Apparently, they are going to ship it Monday... I got in touch with the dudes son who is also involved but I've only been dealing with the dad mainly, and he's going to make sure the old man puts it on the courier first thing Monday So we'll see...

Oh my, long time, no update! Been plenty going on, Datsun nats last year was a washout but we made it up and back and now we prep all over again for south island nats here in Chch. Poor car has sat neglected, occasionally pushed out to make space, fingers well and truely crossed as I reconnected the battery and thankfully it fired right up, went for a shakedown after spanner check to fill up the tank and then it all turned to shit. Rough running under load and a terrible idle, managed to limp through a few sets of lights back to the shed. From here I went through everything fuel pump, filters all checked out, spark plugs not so much, pulled them all for a good clean, reset the points, tweaked the timing and everything was back to normal, who would have thought, after a year in hibernation all it needed was a good old fashioned Italian tune up, if only that was first instead of a half day pulling everything apart! With gained confidence I went about shoveling second tier issues thorugh the 3d printer, first was blanking caps No more coins falling silly places, much likeing that I can also print the size for later reference. I lost the fusebox cover some years ago, new ones are painfully expensive if at all available, few measurements and As checking spark plugs is about the only thing I do to this motor, may as well make that part of the strut cap Have a few other bits on the run, centre cap test came out pretty good, real deals should print overnight Not all the work is plastic, a tame machinist is working on some other bits, hopefully they will be ready prior to nats

I have been told by people who do not know me well that I can have an intimidating presence, but regardless given my height, surly nature and resting bitch face I may be able to help....

Bolted the turbo to the manifold and its surprisingly easy to fit turbo and manifold back in Gave it a good wiggle to check clearance and its got enough

Been working on the rear door, have the lower sections all done just need to do some sections up higher

Heres a better photo I've gone thru the loom and marked it out will clean up paint maby new bits too nothing fancy just simple

I got it all running again with some plastic printed bits to hold the fuel rails in. Obviously not a good solution for when the engine fully heats up. But lets me make some progress until the other bits turn up. I wont drive the car but I can at least start the motor up etc. With this new intake, a lot of the wiring is now much more hidden which is nice. So it feels like a worthwhile idea to try and get the visible wiring on top of each bank running a bit nicer. So I'll do that at some point. It idles nice and low, can get it down to 700-800rpm at the moment, and throttles arent adjust yet. Speaking of adjusting throttles... Previously I made a small tube with a MAF fitted in it, to balance them up. Seemed to work fairly well. Now that I have a Thunder ECU to use, I have an absolutely enormous amount of IO at my disposal. What to do, what to do... Since the Toyota style MAF used in the vitz etc is now quite an old part, they're at end of stock prices... $20 each on aliexpress. I've already got one, so I've bought 5 more of them and the plugs to go with it. I will run a MAF on each cylinder and see what it shows. I'll need to validate that each MAF shows similar output. But will be interesting to see if it shows much of an imbalance. I wont leave them in there long term, but it will be good for two things... Balancing all of the throttles relative to each other. Which is a bunch of fiddly adjustment of linkages. Then also balancing the cam offset left to right for VVT. When I went to the dyno, one bank ran leaner than the other. When correcting the fuel values, there is/was a 6% difference in VE bank to bank. Which is huge. If they could both match to the highest value, I guess that's potentially a 3% power gain just from adjusting a number in the software. The cam timing doesnt match properly bank to bank, if you just base your zero point from "home position" with no cam advance. One bank is effectively slightly advanced relative to the other, due to tolerance stack I guess. It will be easy to balance up the bank to bank offset in software, with the MAF results. Since I need the airflow to be fairly smooth, my MAF test pipes need to be longer than my actual runners will likely be. But, like I said, it's only there to help setup the mechanical parts of the engine that are irrelevant to runner length. I will still take it back to the dyno as I'd like to see how power compares. I've got 6x of these to print and they take 10 hours each. But no rush as I wont have the sensors in 60 hours time anyway. ha. I spent a bunch of time migrating my tune to the Thunder, but havent plugged it in yet. The only pins that I need to move from existing are the canbus wires. Easy!

Got the shell and doors home this week ready to start assembly. Ended up flow coating the exterior so came up so good. Thing is like a mirror. Now time to put it together without scratching anything haha

Sorry for the lack of updates but it I am lazy when it comes to having to use a photo host site to link pics but it looks like you can direct upload now. It is almost complete at this point. What a journey. I’ll see about posting a few more progress pics.

I had also decided to paint the fuel tank a bastard soul red with some hectic flakes in there. photos do absolutely no justice but this looks like a disco ball in the sun. too bad it'll never been seen!

Thanks to @Truenotch for sourcing me some Michellin tires. I got the white tire ink pen out and did some scribbling. lots of test fitting the repro parts, of course they mostly fit like crap. so a lot of this stage is trying to remedy that

I had also put a gold Xirallic in the clear coat for the TRD side, and a Blue Xirallic for the Britten side

Then next was the classic TRD themed side. As a Toyota die hard it was an easy choice. This side took much longer, had to re-do sections due to the fine line tape lifting in spots, the 3 layer pearl base coat, extra lines to mask. this side took around 6hr. Overall super happy with how it turned out

Ive got a separate instagram profile for my car stuff so my family doesn't get punishment with all my Barrying. https://www.instagram.com/muncies_chop_shop?igsh=MXY4bmI3Y2J4NXd3Zg== Also on YouTube under Muncies Chop Shop Hopefully have some more interesting content on both soon as i want to start peddling tunes to people.

All finished and ready for the Motorbike Show next weekend. It's not perfect, but it looks very presentable. I ended up painting the front mudguard, bellypan and the bottom of the LH fairing panel and the colour match is pretty good. I'm happy now the wiring is tidy, secure and safe, the grey panels look great, I've fitted stainless-steel bolts and screws wherever possible. It's now a lot more reliable and fires at the first prod of the starter. Although I'm happy with it I'm not in love with it, so it will be for sale to make way for????? Stay tuned!

Replaced all of the hoses while I was at it. Probably not necessary but it meant I could have as few hose joins as possible. The vented anti-syphon loop inside the head compartment was starting to crack and was leaking salt out the cracks. If that bit is starting to go, might as well renew the lot. That white PVC sanitation hose is a right cunt to work with. Comes on a roll and refuses to lay flat until you smoke it with the heat gun. Then only one shot to heat the hose and push it over the barbs on each connection. It does NOT come back off. And every connection you undo doesn't leak coolant or oil or ATF on you...its far less palatable. Hopefully I won't be needing to do that again for a long time. Next weekend's job is clean everything up and get the boat ready for labour weekend at the Mercs Oh yeah, we had a race on Saturday to Bowentown and back. Won the division which was nice 😀

A typical simple holding tank installation would put the tank above the waterline. You leave the outlet valve closed, the tank fills up - then when you're a safe distance from land, open the valve and gravity does the environment crimes for you. The easiest retrofit tanks are 20L jobs which you just bolt to the wall inside the toilet/head compartment. The main reason I decided against this was that 20L might not be enough. It might get you through the night, but it's mighty inconvenient when the tank is full and firing nasty stuff out the vent line. So we're going with a 60L tank mounted in the same place as the electroscan unit. As this is not going to empty by gravity, I've added a diaphragm pump. It will be easy to add a Y connection before the pump and run a riser up to deck if I wanted to use a sewage pump out station. Everything lives under the forward bed. As the solenoid pack for the windlass was in the way, I moved it to the other side. It's supplying a hundred or so amps so had spare power for the toilet flush pump and the diaphragm pump for emptying the tank. Added some fuses and a switch. Kinda hard to make all this stuff neat but this will do.

It's actually really awesome news that your biggest problem is such a minor oil leak. As that means there arent any of the way bigger problems which are possible... You could add a capacitor to the fuel signal and it'll smooth out the needle jumping around. No idea how to figure out what size you need, seems like a @h4nd sort of problem

Awesome, make sure you are not too far away from Brightwater cos then the extensive Pog shed capabilities become available to you. The Wakefield/Brightwater area is nice anyway. Definitely ping me when you are here.

The 4 displays of the dash unit as they didn't load with the other pic's. Not sure about the white display with the handwritten bits below.

Bit slow on the updates here so ill do some over next couple days to get us up to today. I dropped all the engine parts down to PPRE in Wanganui which included the 3 NOS Mazda plates that i found. They got into the build and my fat plate i had was usable but not as good as the 3 new other plates i had. Decision was made to try track another down and after hours on the internet, posting on fb pages, phone calls round the world i somehow managed to find a NOS Mazda fatplate which i wasnt expecting Rohan from Xtreme Rotaries in Aussie knew of it and got it in checked it over , packed it and sent it over to NZ for me. PPRE then worked their magic got it all built up with all the goodies, lightened, balanced etc etc Spec list ended up being: NOS Mazda OEM Plates S4/5 High comp rotors Green Brothers billet PP and CNC machining of housings Green Brothers intake manifold kit, oil filter pedestal Billet Boss bearing support Billet front cover Billetpro EWP adaptor Franklin Engineering Pulley kit & alternator kit Full function engineering trigger wheel kit Plate castings smoothed by Tony at Vison Autoworks Polishing done by RKM in Tauranga So thats now at home ready to go in!

I’ve just spent an hour on the scraper, degreaser and scrubbing brush and have removed a silly amount of shit. unfortunately the paint seems to be missing from the chassis once the dirt comes off… so I’m going to get in here this weekend with a steam cleaner and get it clean enough to bomb some paint at. Any recommendations for what to paint the engine bay with that’s quick and easy and black and isn’t going to mind a complete lack of prep?

I took the car on a pilgrimage to one of it's former homes today. Dick is shutting up shop at the end of the year, after 50 odd years in the business. He was over the moon to see the car back on the road and looking presentable.

I needed four new tyres, so a good time to swap wheels. Just got its second wof which means I've owned it for a year now.

Hey all, It's all but 99% confirmed that my partner and I are moving to Nelson early 2026. Formal contract incoming on Monday for my new job, my partner has the ok to work remote, and then we are looking to purchase down in Nelson with the paperwork for that already well underway. (Have a few properties in mind but have yet to make an offer, but pre-approval pretty well sorted). Just wanting to know if there are any regular OS events happening in the area, even though I've been slack at attending the ones here in Whangarei. Definitely will need to change my username when I am no longer in Whangarei and don't have a KE70 haha. The Datsun/Safari/RB project will be coming with me but not straight away, fair bit of organising required to move it as it's still very much a project and will depend on our situation with garage space etc where it ends up. Please let me know what I need to know! Keen to be more involved with OS things as I'll need to make some friends

Best of luck mate. I can tell you that interisland moves are def a serious mish. I moved from Whangarei to Bluff in '94 and am in the process of moving back to Northland. So much more shit to sort out thirty odd years on.

Chopped up the tee and had a play with turbo placement Decided higher is better and the turbo cleared the air con compressor better with the flange stuck right on the manifold. (And I didn't have to wait for the other flange to arrive) That left a bit of a gap to try and make something nice to fill Had some ideas about chopping bits of tube to suit but nothing worked. Since all the cool kids are 3d printing stuff I got my metal 3d printer and made up a adapter Yes it's ugly (no I'm not showing the inside as it's worse) It's less bad after much grinding

Hi Michael Brother and I just picked this beautiful 59 up . Drove it 500 miles to home . Used no oil, no water, heaps of gas, but a wonderful driver. How are you going with your engine repair? By the way, we have 57 and 58 Plymouth Savoys also, one is 250 Flathead, other is 277 V8. Regards. Ted

Yes this is normal for a 1930s english car

Wiring is done except for plugging 3 connectors in to transmission meh I'll do that when I do driveshaft. Only crossover pipe to be rejigged i put up with the rattle for ages because it worked but was hard on v bands so I'll tuck it up a bit higher then turbo can go on. I could put a battery in and check for oil pressure..... I've got the weekend to get everything done i am expecting some water leaks so have forgone anti freeze till I know its not going to need revisiting. All in all maybe 4-5 hours till i drive again. Nice!

I bought the speakers as Jaycar had the 5" front on sale for less than half price. The 6.5" were at normal price but I grabbed them as well. Today I fitted the front, so now I have sound. Tomorrow the rears. I have also made up a new dash panel. It still needs work and is not a perfect profile match to the rest of the dash but close enough that I will be able to fudge a blend between them. I don't have anything other than a vise, a couple of bits of angle iron and hammers so it's turned out quite well for using the cave man technique. The reason for the new dash panel is I have gone digital with the Haltech i7c. I did want to keep with Smiths gauges but to be honest I got SFA information out of Robinsons, so I decided to go plug and play. The Haltech display has 4 different displays, or you can create your own if you want. Since the audio unit is digital It will all fit in ok.

ropped the car off to the painter early June and hes been ripping into it since then. Got the outside all primered and blocked ready for paint. Hes spent some hours on the block but its come up straight as! Once we got it prepped we got it up on the rotiserrie to prep and paint the underneath. Undersealed, coloured and cleared as well as up in the inner guards. And then it was time to paint the inside and exterior so back on the jig

Just brought this motor set up i test drove the parts car monday started run well was alil loud no exhaust ect but was a fair price 1300cc suzuki 4 cylinder 5speed Jimmy motor Came with everything to run carb loom starters ect spear coil and starters Means don't need to modify frame or hopefully keep all steering breaks atlest to test drive engine bay verry small And cars light so should move along fine clutch felt good on test

Heck, it looked pretty tidy in the first 3 photos

4k swap would be more likely.

Well, not quite running by the weekend. I've ticked a lot off the list, but still need to get fuel stuff sorted properly. The main thing that I've been scratching my head about has been fuel rail mounting. The bendy rails looked like they would work okay, but the mounting tabs were in a bad spot. I tried the straight rails, which is an easier shape to work with. However the rails hit the runners before they could go in far enough. Then I remembered you can buy little extension caps for injectors. So I bought some of these and now it's good with the straight rails. But then I've still needed to figure out how to hold them in the right place. It looks like hanging some brackets from the front of the throttles will work best. I was originally planning to get these cut from flat plate, but looking at the price for printing and not too bad. So I've scope creeped some complexity into the shape, so my car looks more like a tower crane or something. (Actually can barely see any of this from the top when engine is together) After printing 6x trumpets and fitting them up, I also decided that was a total prick to try and get the screws in and do them up when you have to try and do it from the sides. So I've added some holes through the trumpets so you can get a long allen key through. I've chamfered the holes so hopefully they dont whistle. The little round dingus on the right hand side of the picture will be what holds the cable for ethrottle on that bank. I will need a few more test prints to figure out the right position and angle. Then I'll send all of the brackets off to get printed.

Dyna bolt a plate into the painted floor. Can bolt an eye to it and chain your motorcycle down to it as well