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Annual update. Still haven’t begun the manual swap, I got tempted by looking at yahoo for wheels and used the money I’d been putting aside for flywheel, clutch and associated bits n pieces to purchase a new set of feet. Sold the 17’s nice n quickly, turned out a few people wanted them, but first in best dressed. After just missing out on a few nice sets of wheels off yahoo I put a few local wanted posts and the lovely chap @sr1600 reached out saying he had something that might tickle my fancy. He sure did … 16” work ewing III’s. He lives not too far from me which made a test fit nice and easy. I really like the look of them, oldschool styling but in 16” which helps with ground clearance, and don’t look as big and out of place as the 17’s did. I’ve spent a few hours taking off some black paint and polishing bits that had dulled off while being stored. Maybe next year I’ll start that manual swap … but don’t hold your breath lol

Quick update: I pulled the head off the old engine to re-use on the greytop bottom end. It ran fine other than the bearing fail so I'm fairly confident it will be fine - if its not I have a few other heads to chose from. I flipped it upside down and left some glycol in the cylinders overnight, nothing leaked past the valves so that's good enough for me. It was pretty filthy thou, which wasn't good enough for me, so some all brite to the rescue: It came up pretty reasonable - not perfect, but will do the job. It also got a good internal degrease and clean up. I took all the buckets out, cleaned them all up, lubed them up and refitted. Then using a TRD gasket I torqued the head on: Cams, pulleys, timing gear etc etc all underway and starting to look the part. I need to give the gearbox a birthday then its pretty well ready to lift back into the car.

I guess we don't get crates anymore, as it's a brand new mazda big cardboard box motor. unfortunately there will be no christmas this year kids

Cylinder head is not cracked, and it's extremely unlikely that the block is either. The plot thickens. Or doesn't, whatever.

2" blocks in the back (added to the already reset leaves)...stting on bumps now but will sort that out. Front needs to come down a little further yet but otherwise I'm pretty happy. Will look a lot better once the lame ass factory steels are gone as well.

Any change to the braking system requires cert. Including changing the brake pedal to a skinny one instead of fat auto pad. Even if using factory parts. It is not the pedal setup the car left the factory with. Wof audit man used our workshop as a neutral zone to go over a vehicle that someone had flagged, owner tried explaining he was using the loophole of using factory parts. Audit guy asks if the brake pedal is the one that specific car left the factory with, owner says nah i swapped that too as the original was too wide. No loophole exists. Even my XC, don't even have to change the pedal box, just slide out the shaft the pedals hang on, and slide the manual pedals on. Still a fail due to brake pedal itself being changed. Not trying to go on or be a dick about it, just don't want anyone getting caught out. A bit shit when all things are equal, but rules are rules.

Is it getting revinned or something? The manual donor car is N/A right? if so it wont be too useful for some manual parts as most of their manual parts are different as mentioned (cable clutch vs hydraulic, live axle vs IRS so different driveshaft etc). Wiring is the easiest part - simply bridge two wires together at the inhibitor switch and the car thinks it's in neutral so will start. Then run two more wires for the reverse light switch. You could definitely drill out the clutch master cylinder holes while the dash etc is out and then just cover them up with bungs or tape, and then you're good to go when it comes time to manual swap, rather than awkwardly try drill them out later on. For both my Diamante and Evo wagons I had to pull the dash to get better access to the firewall, with having to weld in a bracket on the latter. I think on the Starion the clutch pedal and master just bolt in.

Time for a 30k service, all looks just fine and it just does the shit i want it to when I want it to do it. Apart from the main batteries shitting themselves a few weeks ago, but a few hundy later and that is sorted. This slight lack of battery lifetime probably stems from the cert man disconnecting the battery without checking that there were actually two and the still connected one shorting itself out for a non specific amount of time, but enough to erode a bit of the battery box. I found the evidence of this a bit later in the piece, and hence I wasn't surprised the batteries went awry. Thought i would tighten up a couple of noisy tappets while I was in there anyway. I'll check the tyre pressures and jobs a goodun.

I was given a box of these over 20y ago this was my last one I had kept in my hoard, so I had a big event coming up and car was showing some valve recession so treated it one last time

Got the sill 95% welded on just need to make the rear radius area that shapes into the wheel arch

Had a yarn, they reckon they are off LHD model... bloody useful being sold in NZ.

So the water pump was very noisy but somehow holding water so with a bit of a tidy up of the cooling system it’s back together but after a test drive I need to replace the heater hose also

Short but pricey update: I will never financially recover from this purchase On a lighter note, I picked up a PAC downpipe and manifold which will finally allow me to play the song of my people I would have thrown it all together but I decided it wasn't dumb to replace the clutch while I'm in here, so waiting on a new one

Parts turned up so the front is all crispy fresh again New head bearings,lower tree, legs etc blasted and painted, 50mm longer forks, new bushes and seals,heavy duty progressive springs and 20w oil. Rear end got some new drag specialties adjustable shocks so it's a bit taller all round. Rides much nicer, the front might be a little bit stiff, I'll see how it goes but putting lighter oil in can fix that It's got a lot more ground clearance so the lean angle has improved noticeably

And got these riverside stich wheels, 1st I pulled them apart to check my maximum fitment for new lipsThen imported lips from ssr hardware, pricey but worth it i think. Couldn't find any anywhere else, final fit with half decent 215 45tyres just for cruising on so i think its a good result and they fit great, could probably have done a bigger tyre in the rear but owell, would like to find another pair of chrome riversides for the front but mismatch will have to do right now.

Since the engine was in limbo, waiting on parts and machine work, I started to hunt to find all the rust and fix it. The first place to start was to get the car in the air and have a good look under it. I knew there was rust in the LH front sill area, so I started there. This is the hole I poked in the sill at the auction when checking it over. The jacking point has also been flattened. Moving backwards to another common spot, the rear floor pans were thankfully very solid As is the "trans" tunnel. This bracket has some paint flaking from it, but otherwise is good The shifter assembly and rods are pretty manky, but I have new bushes on order for this. A quick paint will make it look spiffy The boot floor is good There is a bunch of surface rust on/around the fuel tank. Nothing a wire brush and some rust treatment can't fix. I need to drop the tank and see what state the inside is. I hope it's not rusty. Even better, another rust area I was worried about, the rear spring mounts, were perfect A loose bolt on the fuel tank. It's OK, not like it needs to be properly secured or anything... Moving to the driver's side, the floor was a bit on the thin side here too There were some definite holes, which later got the poky poky screwdriver treatment to see how big they were Finally, the rear tailgate seal lip is very crusty on the bottom. This has been leaking water into the boot when the car was washed, so thankfully, it's been stored indoors for its recent life. So in conclusion, the body is surprisingly solid. There is a fair bit of surface rust under the car, which will need to be brushed back, treated and painted/undersealed, but mostly it's actually just covered in mud under there; It needs a darn good clean. All the troublesome rust I need to fix is in the floors, one of the sills, the boot lip, and there is a small amount in the bonnet. The next logical course of action was to lift the carpets and see what was to be seen from the inside. To do this, I unbolted the seats and tipped them back into the boot, on the folded-down rear seat The carpet has a bit of a smell. The previous owner cleaned things like the seats and steering wheel, but I don't think he cleaned the carpets. I will give it a wet-vac before reassembly. The seats came out easily enough. With the seats removed, the carpet comes up easily enough. I needed to unbolt the lower seatbelt anchors as they go through the carpet, and there was a surprise screw under the LH side of the rear seat base (which was a pain to access with the front seats on the back seat...). The dead pedal was a pain too; I thought I could just unbolt it, but it turns out it's bolted in a million places under the carpet and not possible to do, so I carefully stretched the carpet around it to get it out. This gave me the first glimpse of the floors and inner sills The rear, as suspected from seeing the underside, was solid. Dirty, but solid. Yes, that is a massive nail... The fronts were hiding their rust In the photo below, you can see one of the other common rust spots - the seam sealer where the A pillar meets the inner sill. In this case, it's actually bursting out. I knew about this fairly early on, as I checked it when I got the car after watching the videos of when Garage Kei was pulling his Alto apart. Also visible in that photo was a reason for my potential death had I not lifted the carpet... What's that, I hear you ask? Well, it goes here It's the fricken clevis pin from the brake pedal. Instead of firmly pushing the brakes, the clevis just slid up and down the pedal. This definitely was not on top of the carpet, so I can only presume that when they had the pedal box out, the pin slipped down behind the carpet and wasn't seen again until now. I quickly grabbed a new split pin and refitted it how it should be. I also found the circlip on the end of the pivot for the clutch pedal was too big and fell off when I touched it. Needless to say, it is all going to get a thorough going over. Anyway, back to rust hunting. The driver's floor doesn't look too bad, just the one hole (for now) and the rust is doing its best Alien chestburster impression So, out with the big screwdriver and start poking Onto the other side. Thankfully, the pillar/sill, although showing some surface rust under the sealer, was solid There were a couple of holes in the floor here I got out old mate paint pen, and started marking them out Moving back under the car, I had a look at the LH front sill I started by using some big grips, a hammer and dolly, and straightening out the jacking point. To check how far the rust hole in the sill went, I had to remove the sill cover. Thankfully, with some gentle persuasion with the impact screwdriver, all the screws came out without too much issue. Other than the obvious rust hole, the sill and bottom of the guard are actually in good shape I also straightened the driver's side jacking point while I was at it Around the back, after some investigation, the seal lip was looking pretty substandard I'm not particularly looking forward to working out how to fix that, but it's gotta be done. The bonnet didn't escape some poking and paint pen That was all the excitement for that day, other than quickly whipping up a blanking panel on the 3D printer for the hole in the firewall where the old Auto shifter cable went I used the old dirty finger on paper method to trace out the hole I then imported this into Fusion, and traced around it After extruding it, sending it to my printer and printing it in PETG to withstand heat, this is what I had I'll get some nicer bolts and sealant to seal it in place, but otherwise it should do nicely. Moving on to last weekend, it was time to deal with the rust. I dug the welder out from the dungeon under the house, found my trusty grinder, body saw and finger sander, and set to work. I started on the passenger's side, and of no surprise, the scope crept once the abrasives touched the metal Until I ended up with a much bigger hole I cleaned up the edges, and zapped some nice new steel in place Despite good penetration, I decided to weld the underside too, just to make it nice, strong and tight. As close to seamless as I could It was hard to get a photo because it was so shiny, but the holes in the sill got the same treatment It still needs to be seam sealed, but I coated it in epoxy primer to protect it. It's not pretty because I don't like completely grinding down welds if I don't have to, as it can make them weaker or introduce pinholes, but the seam sealer will cover it all anyway. Moving to the other side, the holes got a lot bigger here I zinged this patch in with a few plug welds to tie the sill and A pillar sections together, since it's an overlapping intersection of panels. I cut back through just the sill, so there was exposed A pillar metal to weld to. The holes in the floor were next Once all the holes were filled with new metal, I epoxy primed them and then hit them with a coat of zinc-rich primer over top. I also sprayed this into the sills wherever I could access The next day, it was time to finalise all the work. I started by seam sealing everything, making sure there were no gaps or holes. This side was a little different. On one side of the pinch weld is the floor, the other is the sill. On the floor, I seam sealed it, on the sill I used some body filler to smooth it out The filler was sanded and then primed. I wasn't aiming for perfection, just to smooth out a couple of low points from grinding the welds back. Once the seam sealer had cured, it was all covered with an epoxy top coat. This will seal and protect it all. The majority is either under the car, hidden by the carpet, or under the side sill cover. Only a small section will be visible. This is the same basic treatment the Marina got, and I'm happy with how that's holding up. I still need to tackle the boot lip and the big hole in the bonnet, but I need to get the seats out of the boot before I can work around there. All this messy work needs to be done and dusted before I can even consider building an engine in the garage, so with parts starting to arrive, I need to sort it soon.

Nice work man, stick it to the cert man!!

So updates: Offer going in today on place Will @Willdat? kindly checked out for us in Marybank. Crossed fingers. Job offer accepted and start date is 9 Feb, hopefully moving down the weekend before around the 31st Jan. Doing many many jobs here in Whangarei to get this place ready to rent out. Curtainsider truck is kindly being loaned to us from my partners work, and my cousin is driving it down with all our stuff as he was a logging truck driver until he retrained as a draughtsman, so that's awesome! Two things we need to sort: 1) A forklift at the Nelson end to offload, as the truck doesn't have a tail lift, and we will be palletising our stuff to make it quick to load at this end. Have sent a message to Nelson Forktrucks but just seeing from you lovely folk if anyone has other ideas. 2) Somewhere near the motorway in Wellington to park the truck overnight on the day before the ferry crossing, that is safe to leave it. We will be travelling in convoy with us in the cars so we can ferry him from the truck to accomodation and back, but yeah, need somewhere for the night, happy to pay if needed. Will post this in the North Island chat also. Many things left to do, but also so many things seem to be lining up for us which is awesome!

That’ll do it. Cut off goes the wrong way.

Oil and water...... has the coolant passages in one of the turbos failed?? they old enough with some water sitting forever its possible?

Got it welded up. Stood on its own wheels for a hero photo outside. Still lots to do, but its shape is locked in now.

Nick the sparky came over yesterday and gave me a hand and we pulled the head off the thing. No obvious issues with the headgasket and the block isn't cracked so that leaves the head. I'll take it to Hytech and pressure test it and see what happens.

So, I've had the car just over a week now, and it's been a busy old time. The more I dig into the engine that came with the Alto, the more dire it becomes. I'll go into detail as I go, but I'm starting to think the $10k quote the previous owner got for the rebuild might not have actually been that far off, considering almost nothing is reusable. In a huge turn of luck, I was very fortunate to be offered a Suzuki Cappuccino engine by a friend in the local Kei group. It was a spare for his race Cappo, but had been a good running engine when it came out of the donor. I never thought I would be able to source a donor, let alone it being local. So of course I jumped in the parts hauling Honda, and loaded it up I got it home and with the help of my wife we unloaded it, and I managed to rig the engine stand to work on the tiny little engine. It's pretty much at the limits of the stock stand. It had been stored in a workshop, so is pretty dirty externally, but before I bought it we stuck a borescope down the cylinders and checked them out. We couldn't see much because the cylinders are so small, but they didn't appear rusty. The timing cover came with it, thankfully, as mine had been cut in half for some reason The exhaust manifold has cracked and been welded, which is better than my current one which is still badly cracked Interestingly, the Cappo runs a 90 degree adapter on the oil filter, whilst the Alto runs the filter straight into the block via a cooler I wasted no time in starting to strip the donor engine down. First was removing the oil filter adapter. Three bolts and it pops off Next was the exhaust manifold, which has two nuts and two bolts holding it on. One of the bolts is hidden up under the turbo flange Came off suspiciously easy Next was the intake manifold. There are a couple of other things to remove first, like this long guy coolant neck I tried to get the small hose to the intake manifold off without damaging it, but in the end it wouldn't give up, so got chopped The intake manifold is held on with a series of 9 little nuts. This was made a little easier by the injectors and fuel rail having already been removed by the previous owner Fairly easy to remove, really Instead of the massive thermostat block the Alto has, this engine just had a small block off plate with a coolant temp sensor in the middle of it The engine was looking pretty small with the manifolds removed Whilst the tub of Cappo parts was filling up. Note the ziplock bags, labelled, with bolts in them... something the engine rebuilder that stripped the Alto engine was lacking. The next day I started on the actual tear down. My plan is to completely rebuild this engine from the bottom up, so it's all new, and will last. I probably could've run this engine as is, but I didn't want to risk it (with good reason, as I later found out) Removing the timing belt was the first thing I needed to do, so using the manual, I set the timing at TDC, making sure the cams weren't 180 out Next, I removed the spring and bolt from the tensioner. This was a real prick to remove, as the little pin it pivots on was seized in the front cover. I had to tap it with a hammer back and forth to get it to move and then slowly wiggle it out Once the belt was removed, before progressing further, I set the crank to a certain position as per the manual. As it says, this sets the pistons in a certain height to prevent the pistons hitting the valves. I could then remove the cam pulleys and rear timing cover The cams on the F6A engine aren't actually in the head, they are in cam boxes on top of the head. Annoyingly, it means if you have a "valve cover" leak, you have to remove the camshafts (and timing belt) to change the gaskets. After removing all the screws, I carefully lifted off the cam boxes This gave me clear access to the head, with the rocker arms and hydraulic lash adjusters (lifters) I carefully removed the rocker arms in their pairs, and placed them in an organiser The lifters just slide up out of their bore. I started with some needle nose pliers and a rag, but in the end just pulled them out with my bare fingers Intake side done A good reminder to limit how much sealant you use. This orange RTV was all over the place, and in the case of this lifter, inside it too The Alto reconditioner didn't seem that concerned, since they dumped all the rockers and lifters from that engine together into a container with no care but in my case I'm keeping everything labelled and organised Next was to remove the head, which caused a slight issue... my hex socket was too big to fit between the valve springs. Nothing a visit to the bench grinder couldn't fix though Head bolts removed. They always have a very distinctive burnt oil smell Head removed Finally, the treasures inside have been revealed. Stock/OEM style head gasket present The bores looked good, considering the unknown ks Number two has some slight marking in the walls. Cant pick it up with a fingernail though. Hopefully a hone will clean it up The pistons were looking good too, quite clean, with no missing bits As you can see in the photos above though, the coolant passages were a bit crusty... so when I removed the water pump... it was nasty. I gave it a clean up, and I will have the block cleaned by the reconditioners, so it should be fine. Flipping the engine over, it was time to remove the sump and gain access to the rotating assembly Looked pretty good inside. Nice and clean, no real burnt on sludge. I suspect this engine was looked after I removed the oil pickup Now it was time to remove the pistons. One by one, I undid the conrod nuts, removed the cap and pushed the piston down and out The bearings have some wear, but were fine. Most important was that they were consistent It's bloody hard to show, since it's so shiny, but the crank also looked great The main bearing caps needed to be removed next. Once again, bearings looked pretty good (darkness on bearings is just old oil) Crank also showing no signs of damage And compared to the thrust bearings I removed from my last Alto, which were almost completely worn out, these are great I got a little stuck here thanks to a rear main seal housing that didn't want to come free, so moved onto testing the head overnight. With the head upside down I poured some coolant into the chamber on the head. It didn't immediately leak through the valves, so that was a good sign The theory is that if the valves are sealing, as they should, there should be no coolant leaking past them. Leaving it overnight showed that two valves had a slight seepage You could trace the line of coolant from which valve it was I marked the valves for future checking. I'm sure it'll just be some carbon on the valve seat So, back to the stupid rear main seal housing. It is held in place with a handful of bolts, and two philips head screws. Dumb idea. I managed to round one off by trying to use my rattle gun to shake it free (which I have had success with before), so for the other one, I used the recommended impact screwdriver After a few good whacks, it came right out My only option was to drill the head off and hope the rest came out without too much of a fight. I used progressively bigger drill bits until the head popped off Which meant I could finally remove the crank The remains of the screw did just wind out easily The main goal here was to thoroughly clean all the gasket surfaces, and measure the bores and pistons before the block and head have a date with the engine reconditioner this week. Cleaning the sump flange on the block gave a nice half and half After much scraping, and some wire brushing, I moved onto checking the bores. There was no point in sending it out for machine work if the bores were over spec Its not the best way to do it, and certainly not the quickest, but I bought a micrometer and set of T gauges It was a pretty steep learning curve getting the T gauges to measure properly, centered in the bore and not reading too high or too low. The manual calls for four measurements per cylinder. Two at 50mm from the top and two more 90mm from the top; two inline with the crank and two perpendicular. I marked the two depths on the T gauge since I was sick of using a ruler each time The trick was to line the gauge up in the cylinder, and then locking and unlocking it whilst gently wiggling it around to center it first, followed by unlocking it, tipping it so one side goes down into the bore further, locking it and then tilting it up straight again (which pushes the gauge slightly closed, accurately measuring the bore) and lifting it out to be measured You can see from the sheet I made that it took a few tries before I got repeatable results. I started with cylinder 1, so had to go back and redo it once I had refined my skills a bit The last measurement I wanted to do was checking the piston skirt. To do this I had to remove the conrod. This is where my first real surprise came about. I began with piston 3, which I had noticed was a little stiff to move when wiggling the conrod back and forth, unlike the others which were smooth. I used a pick to remove the retaining clip And then using a short extension bar, I carefully hammered out the pin. Piston 3 took a bit of force to hammer out This was why. It turns out the gudeon pin is cracked end to end, right through to the center Unfortunately this has also damaged the little end of the conrod, marking it up Thankfully all the others came out fine, but I will need to buy a single new conrod, which ain't cheap. Moving on to measuring them, this was a bit of a pain once again, until my technique got better. All pistons were within spec I had a quick idea to use one of the conrods that came with the Alto, so I grabbed the best looking one and stripped it down I don't know what kinda of horrible pain and suffering this engine went through, but the two good rods both suffered from massive heat in the little end. Both pins were discoloured from heat, as were the top of the conrods. I decided not to risk running them, so back in their box they went. Speaking of a hard life, check out the skirt wear on the Alto piston vs the Cappo one Interestingly the bigend bearings in the Alto were non-original, so I'm guessing it was bearing slapped at some point before it all fell to bits Cappo bearing left, Alto bearing right With the block stripped, I did a quick comparison against the Alto block. Other than the bolt-ons, they are the same block. The only real difference noticed is that the Cappo block is drilled and tapped for the oil filter adaptor, whilst the Alto one isn't. The Alto oil cooler seal should still be on the outside of the holes. Alto left, Cappo right Why I'm not using the Alto block, its badly pitted The last job I needed to do this weekend was to strip the head so that can also be skimmed. This means valves out, springs out, stem seals out It was a bit awkward to do with my cheap new spring compressor, but it did the job pretty easily A small magnet on a stick was used to fish out the collets Again, the previous rebuilder didn't care But I do The last few valves being removed Job done, I removed the seals with some pliers I will send it all out to be cleaned and skimmed/honed this week. I'm still a little while off having all the parts I need, but at least I wont be relying on anyone else to do their bit once the parts do arrive. As a bonus, I wanted to quickly pop the front bumper back on the Alto, just to keep it safe. This required refitting the slam panel and bumper support It turns out having all the bolts in your slam panel is for chumps, broken off bolts are where the cool kids play. I'm a chump though, and not cool, so I drilled out and tapped the broken bolt There is shockingly little in the front of an old Kei car. To be fair, I don't believe late model ones are much better, certainly the HA36S Alto wasn't. With the frame in place, I juggled the bumper a bit and fitted it It's got its little face again, likely for the first time in a year or two I know it'll need to come off again to refit the engine, but that's a future me problem.

Sounds like it needs rewiring with a new ecu so it doesn't throw a rod out of your new engine

Big upgrades power wise if anyone's interested cheers

20w oil was a bit much, too harsh over smaller bumps Put 10w in and it's better Wof booked tomorrow, technically needs a cert for adj suspension so stock ones back on for now , I might do a brake upgrade later so will get cert once it's finished /probably never

Yeah, fair call. I think my list of stuff for the manual conversion is 1. that hole for the clutch cyl and bolt holes 2. (red car) drill out the spot welds on the bracket holding the manual shifter stuff in 3. (black car) enlarge the trans tunnel hole and weld above bracket in 4. take my two manual transmissions and take them both apart to swap the bell housings over 5. restore the manual drive shaft (it's longer) 6. swap the red car's clutch over and hope it's factory / not modified too much (was using a cable instead of hydraulic) 7. figure out + get a master/slave hydraulic setup 8. figure out what the heck I need to do to make the electronics think it's in neutral 9. find a certable solution to relocating the transmission mounting points 10. swap over the brake pedal and hope also fine re: certification 11. hope this all works nicely with the larger transmission tunnel and that I don't have to get hammery to create foot/pedal clearance No harm in doing some of it ahead of time...

One of the things I love about this job, is that after 25-30 years, I make amazing discoveries when I make stuff like this: Rare and precious wisdom like, the put crossover resistors so you can fix the "serial is backwards" fuckup (JP1, JP2). And even better: serial works even better when you plug it in. Oh, and those computer screws you hoard for 20 years, eventually come in handy

All of my MAFs turned up, so I got 3 of them on and gave it a rev up to see what happens. It works fairly well for high rpm/load, but the pipe size is too large to show anything at low airflow. But low airflow is the area where I most need everything to balance. The results were very jiggly looking, partially because my ehtrottle PID settings are still a bit whack. So, need to get ethrottle better sorted. Two things needed working on to get it good enough to be drivable. Firstly, my TPS sensors needed to be on a different rotation than a direct bolt on, in order to show the full 0-100% throttle range. So drew some adapters like this: So I printed some spacers from PLA which worked alright, but, wasnt really rigid enough. So the PID values had to be weird to stop it jittering a lot. So once again, GC to the max Stu cut me some alloy ones. He sent me a pic along with an unrelated graph that he must be half way through drawing on the paper... My other problem is that I need to support the cables for the e-throttle motors a bit better so they dont flex when it pulls. Easiest thing to do here was just build something into the front two trumpets. One side needs to be higher than the other, in order to clear the VVT solenoid. I've got these printed and fitted up, and now it's much better. Then, I've just been being a shit head revving it up in the driveway on stands. To see how the fuel wants to change. Is the new intake is worthwhile? I hope so, because its been a ball buster to make. I only managed to get some results from about 8000 to 9000rpm, because I forgot the widebands reset when the engine stalls. But in that region the motor wants around 8% more fuel than before, which is fairly promising. I still need to figure out the VVT offset amount that is needed bank to bank. Once that is sorted, might see a 10-12% increase overall compared to before. Hard to say, and I'm not one to just wildly speculate It sounds a bit more intake-y now which is cool. I forgot that the rev limiter is set a bit higher than before, woops... Well, oil pressure is still pretty good and nothing exploded yet at 9370 rpm I've been struggling to get the car to behave nicely just off idle, but I think I've found some improvements. I've found that I can run the exhaust VVT down to around 800rpm without issues, and retarding the exhaust cam by 20 deg (which puts it on the "normal" timing home position) and it behaves considerably better. I found my cruise control switch in the garage, so I've got this wired up again. I can hopefully start getting some low load areas dialled in nicely soon enough. Keen to see how it compares on the dyno! I'll print some shorter trumpets as well, and then some spacers too. so I'll have a few combinations of runner length to check. Hopefully I'm roughly in the right sort of range currently.

My Raleigh grifter in almost the same blue had the grifter before car haha Also found the fan for motor thats not missing a blade

Long time, no update... Screwed my back and have had months and months of therapy. Its coming right now so ive got stuck into this again. New radiator - old one sprung a leak Driveshaft sorted for the W55 Carbs vapour blasted and rebuilt New MSD ignition with limiter Engine turns over, has spark, good compression. Just the fuel system to sort and a list of 1000 other little things. Hopefully skids by Monday.

Great Uncle has a Triumph Mayflower that he replaced a Datsun 1200 Coupe with in the 90s, he wanted a display piece for a hood ornament and model.

Have prepped outer sill, done any repairs on the inner sill that was needed, sand blasted and jammed some 2k epoxy on ready for the outer to go on this week

After the huge disappointment that was the first track outing, I made some changes and gave it another go. Per my last update, the BRZ was now running damper adjustable Cusco shocks all round, 1.5 deg front camber, STI subframe stoppers, and Endless brake pads. I didn't grab a lot of photos this time, but we had an absolute cracker of a day Blue car squad rolling again We started the day with the training sessions, and already I could feel the car was more playful and giving me a bit more leeway before pulling back on the fun. Once out in the actual track sessions though, is where the changes really shone. The biggest difference was the brakes. The Endless pads are 100% a better option than the Dixcels. I was leaning very hard on them all day, with lots of late braking, and not once did they overheat, smoke or give me a firm pedal. A night and day difference from what I was having to put up with last time. This made a huge difference in my confidence. The other change was the VSC unit, taken from a 2017 car, which was definitely giving me more freedom and not pulling power when coming out of corners like the 2012 VSC unit was. Even in standard mode it was better, but Track Mode gave me the freedom I was looking for last time. It did still catch me at one point though, when my tyres weren't as warm as they should've been, and I got a lump of liftoff oversteer before the hairpin (some upper Muppet messed with his phone settings, so no telemetry on the videos this time ) The Cusco shocks honestly didn't excite me that much. Yes, if you dial them up high they get fairly firm, and it's unpleasant on the road, but the difference on the track didnt seem to be that big. I suspect if you used anything other than stock springs with them, it might make a positive difference, but I am unable to lower the car due to my driveway. On the street I run them about 15 clicks from softest (out of 40) and on the track I was running 30/35 front/rear. In saying that, the camber bolts set to maximum 1.5 degree negative did give a sharper turn in, I would recommend these. My fastest time on the day was a solid 1:30.58, a huge decrease over my previous PB. A long way from my first track day in the Jazz where I got a 1:50.33 Annoyingly, there were some glitches in Racechrono (like the 153-127kph on the back straight) but the times were consistent. Compared to my fastest last time, 1:32.21, I was now braking way later and carrying more speed on the straights (a byproduct of the VSC unit not cutting power anymore). Last time, it looks like I had more speed in a couple of corners, since the only way to go fast was to carry as much speed around the corner as I could. If I could combine the cornering speed of having bad brakes, and the rest of the later sessions, I would've been pretty rapid. Here were the two fastest laps, a 1:30.74 followed by the 1:30.58. I did have to slow down after these though as the oil temps were getting too high (it briefly peaked at 130c before dropping - Oil pressure was holding strong considering). One mod I would recommend for regular trackday users, would be a proper air-air oil cooler as the heat exchanger does a good job getting the oil to temp quickly, keeping it stable and dropping it quickly once you back off, it just cant keep the over all temps down enough. Over all, I had a blast. The first outing was disappointing since the brakes let me down, but this time there were no issues, just me and the car going corner to corner. Sadly, I decided this would be the last time I track the car. I have taken it to where I wanted to, experienced what I wanted, and had my fun, so the car is for sale. Even if I still own it in January when the next trackday is, I'll be taking the Honda instead to give that it's turn.

I got it back! Yay, no lynch mob required, just messaging family and other people many times

The tank is located high in the frame, so it can feed the carb. Im really happy with how it's turned out.

Made this exhaust. Twin pipes out of a single cylinder. That's how to complicate a simple problem.

Straight to work

Good choice to fit Morris Minor tail lights

for the second time, no, it does not have an oil cooler of any type.

last job on the pre dyno to do list was replace the water in the radiator with coolant and give it a flush. the water circuit is full of oil. the engines fucked.