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A while ago I updated the plastics on the 350, and had some graphics designed and applied by @Chunky_t via some ideas and inspiration from early 1980s KTM enduro bikes. I also fitted some flush mount sort of LED rear blinkers, as the original ones were prone to being ruined via crashes and were so cooked you could barely see them when on. I just need to sort out a reflector and bodge a number plate light so I can get this WOF'd and go get my full license. This is the result. 2019 KTM 350 EXC-F-43 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2019 KTM 350 EXC-F-50 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2019 KTM 350 EXC-F-57 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2019 KTM 350 EXC-F-74 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2019 KTM 350 EXC-F-114 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2019 KTM 350 EXC-F-144 by Richard Opie, on Flickr The #775 is tribute to my very much missed late uncle Tony, who passed away 11 years ago from MND. This was his race number on bikes. 2019 KTM 350 EXC-F-63 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Some work, not many pics. New brake hoses all round. Got some new front brake rotors. Mounted fuel filter under the car. I kind of made my life hard here. I should have dropped the rear suspension when I made the fuel hard lines and ran them right back close to the tank and used some short hoses. But I didn't. I stuck the filter here to make some room in the engine bay Then I cut the power steering hose off that doesn't fit my pump and fitted a hydraulic compression fitting to the tube. Got some hose and fitted some ends. Well, 1 end anyway.... Fuck. So now I'll wait for the mailman to rectify that...

Slapped the first coat of primer on the lockers and had half a pot left over so rather than chuck it out I kept going. So many drips and runs from epoxy coating last weekend looks like this weekend will be spent entirely sanding. Standing back and having a look I think I have to agree for once with @cubastreet that it looks so much nicer open than with a cabin. Maybe I need to revisit to slide over/fold up bimini/tent.

Woohoo!! Spun it to 6200rpm last night log only showed 2 knock events (not audible) in transition and I've got a whole heap of headroom now to up boost and have timing adjustable to go with it. Its ultra rich with weak timing as basically I'm starting from scratch again but I think I've got my head around how to get it set up and make decent power. Cheers HP academy without which my rods would have fallen out a long time ago.

Maiden drive to the chip shop. The vibration comes and goes. I can feel it in the steering wheel rather than my bum so probably the front end. Booked in for first of many LVV checks next week. Got this from a neighbour:

Picked up an AliExpress tungsten grinder Dremel attachment cheap, I'm rather impressed with it! Been using a silica carbide green wheel on my bench grinder for years, that's getting swapped out for a SS wire wheel now as I won't be going back to sharpening tungsten on it in any hurry!

I would 100% fit a centre lap belt if you have a suitable one to use. (As per the previous discussion) Busting your face up on the dash is (lap belt lyf) is heaps more preferable to ripping your head open on a broken windscreen. (Ask me how I know) Even more so because anyone sitting up front is going to be somebody you give a shit about. (Family, or a mate etc)

Photoless updates are pointless *sigh* but she’s been at SprintRE for the last 8 weeks. the new engine looks epic, and is ready to fire up. stopped by today to catch up with them. exhaust is complete and looks so damn good. looking forward to hearing it on Friday . had many curveballs get thrown around so far, mainly with the faulty Wilwood master and the fact that StealthRide don’t seem to acknowledge emails or follow up with warranty stuff. Wankers

So the vibration seems to have gone away so it was the wheels. I say seems to because it's a noisy old car and I'm deaf. Only problem is now I'm stuck with the crappy pizza cutter wheels. They look shit. THE CURE IS WORSE THAN THE DISEASE!

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOoSo6B There's hundreds on there though, just search tungsten grinder.

Just an fyi... Once upon a time, Lance the cert man pulled me up for the centre lap belt bolts in my Navara being the wrong spacing apart. They were too narrow. I had used the wrong holes on tunnel so was an easy fix but the width rule is there to stop anyones pelvis getting crushed in an accident if the bolt spacing is too narrow. So if you do end up fitting a centre belt to the orig holes just double check the hole centres are within the requirements (which I can't remember off the top of my head but I'l check my book later)

Suspension together. Wrecker mate has found me the bolt I need too. I'll chuck some stock gtr brakes on the front for now to get it running and driving. I had a set from ages ago so chucked a new seal kit in. Also wanted to solve the issue of having heavy steering. Hicas R32s have variable assist power steering. Mine was always heavy and I never bothered at the time to sort it, but it was the wires missing off the solenoid on the rack. So I found a spare rack in stock to make 1 out of 2. Unfortunately there are a few little bits I still need so start the 3 week timer for parts from Japan again...

With the workers last day on board today I decided I needed to move stuff around. finally got the 2nd ute off the lift and sitting on its own with no blocks/stands and with wheels on it. it is fully laid out as it sits. The rear link boxes and bars clear the ground too so I’m happy with that. the front end, the lower arm bush area touches down first but will need the bump stops set up to stop scrub line or whatever it is for cert. then I decided I wanted the deck and cab off it. so we lifted the deck, now it’s standing I can cut it up for the notch. we made up a frame that sits in the trusses, and used tie downs to which the cab into the air. sorted. Now the chassis can be finished off and the cab bolted back on once the small rust piece is finished. RX3UTE is now in the hoist bay and the hunter is at the door ready for nats. pics for fisting pumps

Because nothing cements your status as an OSer like a vintage 2 stroke.. It's either a 75 or 76. They were sort of a trials bike but were sold in NZ as a farm bike as they had a really low first. I reckon it looks cool, could make a great street hack or a board track tribute. But I won't be doing either of those things. Yet. It has a decompression lever on the handlebar for pulling the power back to lug it during trials riding, interesting feature. This one is on pretty sound condition. Missing one side cover but I've already found that. Hasn't run for about 30 years. Leak in petrol tank at the seam by the seat. Was painted in the more modern kawa green but I will find something close to the period correct metallic green for it. I've sourced a decal set too. I pulled the carb and threw it in the ultrasonic cleaner. It was fucking gross but came up good except the idle/pilot jet is blocked, it has corroded in place and I don't think I'll be able to extract it. I could try running a tiny .3-.5mm drill bit through it in-situ or perhaps run 4.2mm bit through the whole jet and try retap. The idle jet is common to lots of things right up to present day surprisingly (kx65 etc). I guess if I fuck it I do know where another carb is. Have soldered tank leak and cleaned rusty shit out. Will swish some rust kill around inside. It's running fucking mint. Pulses really nicely and the oiler appears to work. Next mish is to get tank on and take it for a strap then I'll go over the details. Not sure if it's a keeper, it kinda followed me home and the dude I got it off had other things I would like so flashing some cash for this was a strategic way to get first dibs on the other things...

It's pretty butchered tbh. Because I am a butcher. Kinda fucked the screwdriver groove...

try a soldering iron on the jet, good for direct heat on small stuff to help loosen it up

Bush lawyer alert!

I was giving the car a bit of a once over and realised the GT lid didnt have a number plate light. That would have been embarrassing. So I found a spare one I had and welded on a small plate to attach it to. I have no idea what it had stock and couldn't see what else it had to attach to so it is what it is. The biggest problem I had/have is fighting the cold. The first coat of colour I slapped on just sagged. So I waited a day for it to harden to take off again and try again with backup. A little fan heater and an outdoor gas heater. It was touch dry in about a minute. All I had was an LED bulb so I may have to put some tape around it as it looks pretty bright. Next on the vagenda is to change the wide rims for the old pizza cutters. I still get a slight vibration at speed in and out of gear. I think possibly one of the wheels isn't balanced correctly which is an issue I have had with the local tire man a couple of times.

Fake news This still exists, its not full of rat droppings and looks basically how it was left (bar some extra cobwebs). The boy was stoked to check it out. Pretty happy as that the seats haven't been eaten up by rats and the engine still turns over all good by hand. I've just moved back to NZ and now living up close to where it's stored. Slowly getting the new rental setup and shifting all the stuff that I left at mum and dad's over. I'll start sifting through the car parts and bits and pieces soon, then make a plan on the next step with the slow burn build. Stoked the shed hasn't fallen over yet as the posts have all rotted out haha. See how we go anyway. Chur, Tai

It's a 2GR and I'm not all that fussy about engine sounds but this sounds clean and F1 like @22.40:

painted the everything the other day. I went down to the paint shop and asked for something appropriately hard for a chassis, got given a tin of chassis black. "is this that shit that never really goes off and just gets everywhere?" I asked suspiciously. "nah" said the guy behind the counter. "look, it's got 'fast drying' written on it". both the guy behind the counter and the assholes who made this stuff were full of shit. "fast drying" relative to the geological epochs involved in forming it's bitumen component perhaps, but that's about it. at least it's sprayable with a gun so I wasn't ambling around with a paintbrush dripping shit everywhere. began to get a nagging feeling that I wasn't 100% sure exactly how all this stuff goes back together. chassis has also gained an appreciable weight in entombed blast media but hopefully it'll eventually makes it's way out driveshaft hoop arrived, and... oh.... at least it's another bit of wisdom I can pass on to the next guy in fact... will the DRIVESHAFT even fit? err.... obviously the length was always going to be wrong but I was hoping i could at least be a cheapass and just cut and modify the forward end of the old shaft. the gap between the rails is 75mm give or take, and the driveshaft is pretty much exactly the same. the rails aren't perfect box sections, there's a 5mm or so overhang lip on the inboard ends, gosh I'm so tempted to just smack that down with a hammer to get the clearance it's starting to look somewhat purposeful now at least. several onlookers have been fooled into thinking that the "hard work has been done" sorting out the mounting for the gearbox actually took a little longer than I expected because there's just so many good places to do it, it's hard to settle on one. I eventually went off the extension housing bolts, onto a little welded block on the top of the chassis (which I think the big radio support yoke doodad bolts to?). This is largely because I forgot to weld crush tubes back here for a mount and didn't want to set three litres of tar on fire by attempting to do so now. Only really started mocking this up (Bunnings umbrella steel again) then realised it needed proper bushings. surprisingly hard to find off-the shelf spindle mounts with an imperial thread these days. BUT, easy to find mounts for british stuff. So I have a whole bunch of rubber mounts To Suit Norton Commando heading my way Also began reassembling the suspension because I need to make this thing mobile again. Unfortunately found the polybush suspension kit for the rear completely nonfit for purpose, in fact it's totally fucking rubbish. Most of the bits are just dimensionally wrong. I rechecked the packaging and sure enough it says Rotoflex GT6, but I have been able to use about a quarter of the packet, even with modification. The control arm outer bushes are too small and literally slop around, the inner one doesnt even have a top hat/thrust section, the rear spring bushes were far too long for their steel tube (and for the spring).... just crap and I'm still pissed off about it stay tuned for next time and I'll tell you about my amazingly silly 3d printing adventure

Maybe with the ride height being so high it’s affecting the float level in the carbs?

On another note did some more tuning got the new version that can be tuned all the way past the moon out to about saturn! Behaving nicely had to do some bizarre shit to the timing but I've now got it not freaking out under boost. Turns out what I thought was degrees of timing was an adder/subtractor number what I was looking at was plausible for timing numbers but wasn't....... More you know. So now I know which way to alter things to get the timing output going where I want it.

Long coupla on my knees inside the boat just gone. I'm prepping to get the seat tops put in so am painting what is underneath the seats with three coats of epoxy before the primer and top coat. Havent actually figured out if I'll make them storage tanks or leave them as buoyancy tanks yet. I still have to cut an access hatch to help glue from inside as well as keep as an inspection hole for future. I have also been glassing the shit out of the outboard well. There is enough space now for a rise and fall bracket and I want it to be waterproof and strong. As I cut off quite a few strips of chop strand and woven I went around adding bits of tape around the mast and anywhere that took my fancy such as inside the stern where it all meets at a point. There is still more to do on the outboard well but the weather is so cold that it just isn't conducive to painting and glassing. Hopefully this rain fucks off soon and we can get a bit of sunshine.

I got my throttle pulleys machined down to a smaller size, so they can open the throttles all of the way (Thanks Dad!) So this is all now working GREAT. and it's super snappy. So I started doing some tuning to try figure out the area just off idle, and why its such a bag of crap. I found that adding considerably more ignition timing helped a lot, and increasing injection timing to around 600deg (usually 400) However, at a fairly early stage I managed to blitz one of my ethrottle motors with about 100 amps too many haha. It still worked, but smelled funky. Well, it ended up crapping itself. So I've ordered another one but it's still a few weeks away which is annoying. Since I couldnt do anything else meaningful for that stuff, I figured probably a good idea to take all of the exhaust completely off and check it. I found a worst case scenario leak for my extractors on both sides. There were signs of a small leak coming from somewhere between the 3 pipes, up the middle of them. Blargh! Impossible to get to this to fix it without cutting everything up. I was fretting about it for longer than it actually took to fix. I cut off the collectors just slightly up past the 3x pipes. Then fully welded both halves, flattened it off, then welded back together. No more leaks and it solved what one of the ticking noises from the motor was. Even if these extractors eventually crack or something. I'm still absolutely stoked to have made these myself. My new fuel rails turned up, but I havent had them machined yet. But fits a lot better. Given the available space I think I'm gonna give up on having a front feed airbox. So thinking dual sides instead. I guess these could both rejoin around the front and grab some air from on top of the radiator. Or I could have air intakes behind the headlights, and go back to a full height radiator. Which probably isnt a bad plan. I cant fit the entire thing on my printer but I can do half at a time. So just banging one out to test fit. 2GRFSE Scheming "Since I am doing this, may as well do this" Since I need a custom rod for the 2GR destroke scheme. Has made me consider piston options. The factory piston is typical Toyota stuff, fairly big and chunky/strong. But for high rpm the lighter the better... No point in reinventing the wheel if something else already exists? I found a 94mm piston from a 400cc quad bike that runs 10k rpm from factory. Cheap and easily available, and nice and light! It has a 22mm pin so might even fit the 2GR rod (apart from that the rod is too short) So I've ordered one of these to test fit and see what sort of compression ratio will be achievable. A destroked 2GR doesnt end up tooooooo far off the geometry of the Opel Calibra DTM car which was absolutely hectic. I wonder if you could grind the journals down to lose another 9mm stroke out of it... Would only need 4.5mm taken off one side I think? Just to be 100% clear though, none of the above are detracting from getting the car onto the dyno ASAP! Once my ethrottle motor turns up, its ready to go. 2GR Destroke comparison for future scope creeping:

extension housing finished, installed and cynically painted in a coat of hammerite direct-to-shit silver. presented on this angle which just so happens to hide every single weld, how convenient. Ended up having to ream it out as the selector rod kept getting locked up mounts welded up and pretty much finalised, these are comprised of 80% stock triumph mounts on their side and 20% bunnings pool umbrella stand. chassis came back, one of my guys got to play "mark all the cracks" uh oh. as suspected, it was definitely time for a birthday. (Also, are all chassis welds this bad under the paint?) RHS lower wishbone attach point lots of other bits came back at the same time I was having a mental health moment earlier, the diff did NOT have a drain port. It does now. crush tubes going in for where the mounts will sit. I guess I could have welded the brackets on directly but it might've made getting the engine back out a bit funny. Plus the chassis is so thin I'd much rather have the big bolt sandwich Frustratingly I don't have half the suspension bushes that I need, otherwise I'd probably have the chassis repainted and all the doodads back on it this week. Also waiting on a new clutch and drive axles.

the wife and kids went away for the day so I snuck downtown for some filthy rear end action Having being informed that the gear carrier was the weakest point of the diff, and that the diff is the weakest point of the car, it seemed the simplest solution to replace the whole unit with an "I Can't Believe It's Not Quaife" LSD. The maintenance manual talked about carefully spreading the carrier bearing caps with a Churchill tool in order to extricate the carrier, well mine just fell straight out, but I decided to not be worried about this and forge ahead. By the looks of things someone has been in here before. Another thing to do was install a drain plug, and that's already been done. It was difficult to see originally because the entire diff looked like a small planetoid consisting of mud and oil. Surprisingly had a lot of oil still in it. Going to give it the mega clean off but I'm doubtful it'll ever get clean enough to repaint it. Incidentally the carrier on this on is in good condition, perhaps it's worth something to someone pulled the rear suspension and hubs to bits, which was shitty and greasy but not difficult. Did some research and couldn't see any truly compelling reason to not send the drums off to the sandblasters along with the rest of the bits and pieces. The buggered bushings can stay in place because I suddenly had an ancestral memory from decades ago and remembered; I still have a set of rear poly bushes in the garage! I bought them shortly after I bought the car, did the fronts which was a huge pain in the ass, took one look at the rears and decided it'd keep for another day. Incidentally the radius arms and lower wishbones in the rear already have polybushes, guessing the previous owner was slowly replacing them as they crapped out. They actually look pretty good and sometimes I wonder if a quarter-century old bush is actually better than a modern pirate part made God knows where pulled the rear leaf apart and wondered why it has "MAZDA" written on it, very odd. There's apparently some button guide thingies which are supposed to be between them but they are long gone there is now a large and growing list of things that I am waiting on which is preventing anything from going back together. Ergo the only way to progress is to pull things more apart. I also have some major grudge purchases like new engine mounts, probably a clutch and a cambelt and all the other bits and pieces you really wished you did when it was in bits and easy

I’m going to just leave this here as @RUNAMUCK would say, pissing cheese

With moving out of the shop and starting the new job, I’ve made the tough decision to send the ute away So long…. to Sprint RE.. gave them quite the list of things I’d like to have done, along with a few of Jason’s own ideas. that will give me a much shorter list of things to do before cert, like washer bottle hose, wiper wiring, new brake discs, wheel alignment, 15s and bumper mount brackets to the chassis.

This is how it sits with the coilovers fitted. will swap out the 180lb springs for something more like 200/220lb springs or even bigger yet. as it sits, the coils clear the upper arms, but only just, so will move everything outwards 10mm and it’ll all be spot on.

I had to swap the front coils to a heftier rate coil. then tried on the 19” DriftRs thoughts?

Triangulated 4 link completed. decided to cut off the factory spring mounts and relocate the forward lower link further forward. now I need to redo the brake line mounts, handbrake cable mounts, shocks and mounts, bracing for the fuel tank. I will set the ride height to have around 40mm between the chassis and diff and fit a bump stop either off the side of the chassis or find a Coilover with a built in bump stop. ideally I want to relocate the tank to go under the deck too

Decided to pull the nugget out of the current diff (was going to use the one in the new 4 link diff). glad I did, check out what I found!!! a 3.72 lsd the stock nuggy is an open 4.1 rocking horse poopy I have found, and look at the condition of those gears!! I need to find some coilovers now (QA1 or affco style) I have QA1 PROMA Star DS302’s in the front. will need something with slightly more travel in the rear.

Found the no run issue. coolant seal failure , caused by minimal to none existent sealing around the J port/devcon fill area. everything is coated in a grimey rust. one of the oil control rings were stuck so most likely pumping oil into the housing too. Jason and I came up with a game plan. acid dip the lot, clean everything out and inspect side seal clearances, apex groove clearances, fill the water jacket within the housing, machine in a o ring groove into the housing. paint the plates and housings, reassemble and looking frickin sick. all bearings, plate surfaces, e shaft and housings are in great condition apart from the rusty sludge. im glad it never ran, it probably saved it. will likely ditch the new apex seals for Mazda seals if the groove tolerance is too high. it’s in safe hands now though. Won’t be cheap, but will be much better