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Been a minute between updates but things are on the move with a substantial amount of repairs to be had. - Holy floor been fixed - Right front pillar fixed - Right sill remade - Right lower rear quarter remade - New rear floor pan in the boot 3d904725-98dc-4666-b1f2-f9bdbbd451d6 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 3c8cfab5-6107-4b6c-924c-2f7c49f25f78 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 17de332b-112d-4601-bf77-dc4c73734943 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 3b639e92-8942-49af-af03-6ea4bc055638 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 94e522a8-c18c-4c60-8a82-26e9c4a83bb1 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 1b07f222-6b08-40d8-ad2f-19270c41a93d by phillipbaines, on Flickr edfd3bf6-9c9c-4c55-acb5-80341ccee12d by phillipbaines, on Flickr f7c8545a-a1f8-4c94-9e4b-4280eaaa5569 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 116f590a-ff08-4b1c-b045-145ef69c077c by phillipbaines, on Flickr 53068741-48d8-4683-a98d-3032f0ac35a1 by phillipbaines, on Flickr e498cdeb-ed50-4c9b-b9c8-4e1a57eac2ed by phillipbaines, on Flickr 36d3bdb7-55df-4b20-a03b-0d42f8436635 by phillipbaines, on Flickr acd40d63-21a6-4d2e-aace-2b1b67df6597 by phillipbaines, on Flickr 51166180-e67e-4ed7-bc57-41eb5d1ce77b by phillipbaines, on Flickr d0ae0966-5447-422e-8630-44d082bc2258 by phillipbaines, on Flickr c1272d08-bb1d-4075-b309-dcaf3c8cbb05 by phillipbaines, on Flickr Right side done... panel man moving on to the left. Updates to come! ca3681d5-1c41-4886-b412-dfc58522c1ec by phillipbaines, on Flickr Discussion:

Restored. I decided to only paint the chassis rails, as the inner guards didn’t really lose any paint during the wash-down, and there was no way I was going to make that look nice without major work. I reconditioned the brake master while I was there with the brush Like a new one, only worse.

Its still alive and working, Maintenance so far - Random bushing for wof New spark plugs were from the 80's Got the dual fuel tank working, not well but is working TO DO Some sort of AC system Some sort of sounds New carpets, get door cards and other interior bits fixed Try to get the old fella with other pink jag to sell his mint pink seats Keep outside as is, rat rod'is look, Make the exhaust a bit louder but keep the jaguar tip/ends for looks re-chrome the bumpers (maybe)

I do enjoy that we swap parts between us that we'll never use/need. In other newds the weber rebuild kit I required was over $100 and out of stock anyway so I bought a cheapie clone for $220 on the tard. Started right up but I will need to play with the idle mixture as it cuts out after sinking the jandal. The pedal travel doesn't quite get the second throat to open all the way but I'm considering this as a fuel cost saving measure. If I'm having to floor it in a land rover I have other problems in my life. The throttle cable brackets are only temporary that will be there until they break at the boat ramp. I still need a filter as all I have is a ramflo firestarter.

So I removed the rear bumper and inspected a little surface rust on the RH reinforcing mounting plates which consisted of three layers, the tail panel and two plates stacked together. And of course the meat inside the sandwich had gone off . removing the first layer was easy enough but the second layer even though I made Swiss cheese of it with the spot drill it took with it as much of the tail panel as possible while fighting all the way

I wasn't really paying attention, but on a few of my laps I put together I was just going into 5th at the end of the straight (while braking extremely early!). So around 185-190kph I'm picking. With a 4age 170 was max velocity. It's so much faster in a straight line than what it was when 4age powered! Biggest learning was that I needed to leave it in 3rd on Higgins/Esses and use the torque to pull it through. I found having 5000-8800rpm of usable power very useful, and it never dropped out of vtec.

This is looking great Damian!!! Very impressed. Now that you have it right side up I am figuring you'll soon be starting on the cabin construction. Here's some inspiration for you.. (I feel you will do a neater job though..)

Is this other projects fred material?

also do the yanks measure horsepower differently to us or something? guys on the rx7 forums are like "yeah I want something streetable, not too crazy. probably in the 650hp range" motherfucker have you tried driving a rwd car with 650 horsepower? there was a norwegian guy who made a jibe about importing a US car and "two hundred horses fell off the boat on the way over"

You heard it here first, @kpr loves a power fc

Some quality work going into this!

At least you put yours under a tarp. You have seen my place haha.

I'll probably get it floating and then put it under a tarp with the rest of my "finished" projects.

So I took part in a Datsun club event on labour weekend, was a great turnout, the drive over the mountain to and from akaroa was a bit hard on the three speed going up and down as I was avoiding overheating the brakes. But it made it happily without causing too much traffic. I might need to take the gearbox out and give it a once over and also a new clutch and output seal

Here's small amount of incar vid. Def not good laps and audio sucks a bit.. but it's proof it made it around the track! Sweet baby jesus 2zzge noises

And then we went racing.. going to leave it here with this tease as I don't have time to process incar etc yet, but it was bloody enjoyable and an serene experience to finally drive it on track. Filters wanted to fall out on track. Added some tape, but need to make some brackets to hold them in place. Probably be 3D printed? Shifter caused some issues. Some operator-related, some equipment. Had to make some fancy bearing retainers for one of the levers. I'd encountered this before with another lever, so I think it's time to look for the next solution to make the shifter more reliable under race conditions. Bedding in new pads was a bit of a mission. Offset of new disc meant no real clearance and had to wait for pad to wear down/stop dragging. This in turn created lots of heat and boiled the 2nd hand fluid (cause thats all you've got at 10:30pm the night before raceday - it was filtered through a rag at least). So rest of the day was dictated by bodgy fluid and pedal going soft which meant I just cruised and took it easy. Also continuously cleaning brake dust off white wheels is hard work. haha The good news is it's way better than it used to be. Ran a 1:23 laptime without really trying on 15yr old pads, and its got heaps more grip, handles better and doesn't get upset over ripple strips. It's a smooth ride with the MCA's thats for sure.

you should probably raise it and fit less dished rims with your small turbo

maybe fit a smaller turbo along with the big turbo, to help it spool up?

I think it's going to be a bit of a sunken cost where I end up paying more for something cobbled together and less effective than it could be, just for the sake of retaining the wrong kit that I bought at the outset i'm sure i can upcycle the downpipe into something useful though

What do you guys reckon

I've never heard of these having weak rods, this is very good info, I will now share it on every corner of the internet.

About 11 weeks at the rate you are going!

Our house is starting to look like a dodgy used car yard

You might already know this but when installing the impeller spin the drive shaft the correct way while pushing down on the housing, this will make sure the fins all end up the correct way.

Nice wee backtrack photoshoot with Aaron Mai. Pretty proud to see it finished* for now anyway. Came up good - def going straight to the pool room! I absolutely love the side profile shot of this car!

Surely the answer is to fit a big-ass turbo? Or just resell the second hand kit

Or my driveway

Maybe i tow the body up there roadkill engine swap it at a hotel and dyno tune it while im up there?

yes, road tuned with a wideband and some seat of the pants evaluation i think the edelbrock carb has its positive and negative aspects, but i agree for a basic cruiser type thing, they work fine

Center seatbelt has arrived from aussie, even has the missing buckle for the side belt! So that is now the seatbelt drama over. Full matching set. Should have welded seat brackets over the weekend but manflu.

Cut and polishnearly all done but need to give whole car a clean again and some finishing but there goes some decals ...2 days of sanding etc etc lots of clearcoat equals no burn through to base anywhere, except where i was a bit careless with buffer and cooked the paint but thats fixable... live and learn or something

Knocked together a steam box today and gave it a run. I have never been happy with how the dressed pine bends so might see if the timber recyclers have some thin oak or kauri I can use for the coaming.

I fitted the Haltech display mount into the dash panel I made and tried it in, but the shape was not close enough to the rest of the dash panels (first pic) so in the bin it went. I seem to like doing things at least twice, apparently. I had another spare gauge panel so I cut that up and welded in new steel to fill the gaps and some from the center panel that I removed when fitting the radio. Then fitted the Haltech mount to it. Now it fits in as well as it always has. I had to use some filler to smooth the shape out which was tricky with the shape. Not perfect but ok. As the old saying goes a blind man would be pleased to see it. I also altered the gauge pod so it is now symmetrical and gave that a coat of paint to match the dash. Looks much better now. I am also very busy waiting on important stuff to arrive so I can get it going. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Fingers crossed for a couple of weeks.

This was the rear custom treatment on my original MK 1 and I’m not sure whether to replicate it or have been thinking of changing to 40 ford coupe tail lights.

you guys having fun?

Upgrade to green top/taxi rods. Much stronger incase of LPG kick back. Seems logical while its out of the car.

Bash plate now attached with glue and silicon bronze screws. Of which were nearly $3 a pop. Ouch. This weekend hoping to flip it to finish the topside and sort a trailer.

Not normally a problem on stock cams, it's when you go more than 3/4 race cams.

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

Watched this interesting video on Quaife diffs on how they work and the amount of work to build them.

I got in there with the hot water blaster today. It was amazing how much greasy shit I managed to clean out. It definitely does need painting now though.

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?

It runs but it doesnt quite run, you have accepted the fact a rebuild is on the cards so id be scouring the internet for witches brews for freeing up stuck seals and doing semi scientific tests then if all else fails what would billy hol do

looks like it's going to be a great rebuilt - epic that you can find some NOS parts out there too !

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