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So, long time no update. I have been holding off as shit was so nearly there for fucking weeks but kept on dragging on... Early September it got shipped off to Wellington; Then early October it arrived back home with a very excited son of a truckie.. Then I got the list from the cert man and was pleased/kind of surprised how short it was; - Needs rear headrests - Extra size on the driveshaft hoop mounts - Front seatbelts needed to web clamp type not inertia - Change a vac hose for proper auto stuff - Wheel alignment That was it and apart from sourcing the seatbelts it was all done in that weekend with the help of some butty ramps I had made for this sort of thing; So if anyone needs a brand new set of vertical fit reels, hit me up. Then I waited for the cert man to approve all that and get the plate done - this was another couple of weeks... Then the compliance man was on holiday and couldn't do anything for another couple of weeks... Then I realised much to my disappointment that the head was probably cracked as it was using water and pressurising the system That will teach me to not get things checked by professionals and just trusting to the prime cause. So while I was waiting for the compliance man I dragged out the spare head out of the container and sent it to Mean Machine for crack testing. This came up sweet but the valves were dodgy and the surface was a bit banana. So I got it surfaced and the valves and seats recut, plus I got a spare set of injectors rebuilt as i didn't want to fuck up the newly sorted head. Getting it in and out was not too much of a drama with a bit of channel clamped to the forklift forks. I didn't really take any pics of all this as I was on a bit of a mission, just this one of the freshened head put back in place; New gaskets, head bolts, slightly thicker oil plus filters plus coolant and much money out of my account and the jobs a goodun. Then fast forward to today and we have this very very exciting situation early this morning... Resulting in this even more exciting situation this afternoon; Ah shit yes. Anyway there is still a bit to do, I am not happy with the radiator situation as it is pretty much relying on the fan even at road speed. I can fit a standard Safari rad in the same hole but with much bigger collection area, plus I have some cunning plans to duct more air toward it so at least on the open road it isnt cycling the fan. Still I'm pretty happy, it has been a long but satisfying road. Beer will be drunk tonight I imagine....

Almost 2 years ago a chassis dyno popped up for sale on TradeMe with a starting price of 15k - I was immediately interested (after looking for quite some time) - so I called the owner to get some information on it. It turned out to be an old Vane 4000 bed with a Telma cc130 retarder, which had been upgraded to modern DTec data acquisition and brake control. Sweet! After talking to the seller for a while I got the impression it was rather traction limited with its smooth, small diameter rollers. It also sounded like the DTec wasn't that great at steady state retarder control. I threw in an autobid of 17k (my entire savings) and lost.. But over the couple of weeks that the auction was held, I got to thinking that maybe I could make a dyno for similar money? Google led me on a path to some pretty cool DIY dyno builds.. I thought, if they can do it, why can't I? - The only difference is that I'm not an engineer at all, bar 3 years of light fabrication work and the skills I'd acquired working on cars as a hobby. So after losing the auction I rang around truck and bus wreckers with no luck finding an eddy current retarder. Damn! - After a few weeks of hunting I found a Telma AC83-00 on Ebay in the UK which was a couple of decades old, but still new in the box. The quotes were quite horrendous at first to get it to NZ but with a very helpful seller who also sold the retarder to me for much cheaper than his listed price, the deal was done. I was pretty stressed for a few months as I had just sent a big chunk of money to a random bloke in the UK with no tracking and no contact with the shipping company - but 3 months later it finally arrived. You know that feeling you get when you buy a cool new car? This was almost better than that. 390kg potential paper weight...

Finished up what I think was all the fabrication and welding on the body. So gave the inside a good clean, sand and then sprayed some epoxy primer down. Came out really nice and smooth! Scuffed back the bits that need to be nice as they aren't being covered up once the interior is back in; wheel wells, strut brace and the b to c pillars. Also went around all the seams and applied some seam sealer, matched to the factory look. Then it was ready to spray the base coat and clear on. Really happy with how it turned out, got all the visible bits nice and glossy! Got some basecoat matched to the brown colour of the dash and spayed some on the dash top piece. Sprayed some flattened 2k clear on top. Got the outside, underneath and engine bay mostly sanded back, hopefully done by next weekend so it can be epoxy primed. Not really too sure on what order to do things from now though. Would like to try and avoid having to mask it up multiple times and having to sand the whole thing in-between each process.

JB Weld is a miracle, when it hardened to a putty consistency I flattened it out, pushing it under the lip, and looked good (put it on dash of other car in the sun to speed up curing)... And cranked up good with no fuel spills, ran it 10 minutes to cycle coolant and cure header paint... And a quick hoon with no bonnet... No probs apart from some hoses needing tightening, plus the upper arm is pretty close to the tyres, hopefully an alignment will improve this... And bonnet on and time to wash off 3 years of storage dust and grime... to Mr Sparkle... And down the bottly for a celebratory ale... Another check and nothing amiss, still need to fit air cleaner and fan shroud, plus top up trans fluid... And deserved I reckon...

Ooooh its been over two months since I updated this thread. I have not touched this engine since stashing all the bits under the bench out of harms way, throwing a blanket over the main block on the bench and spending most of my time since then buying up many Micras, working on the housetruck and building the mezzanine floor in the shed. Oh and some of that paid work thing too because we do have a mortgage to pay. However - I still have a little bit of progress up my sleeve to report before we get up to real time. So I can do an update and hopefully soon I'll be back into working on the engine. I'm very much looking forward to moving in upstairs because I can whittle away on the project even easier. Well at least I think it'll work out like that? There's still a load of sawdust to create yet before we can move in though. So where I left off last time was in making the start of the adaptor plate/engine side of the bellhousing. I needed a flywheel to work out its depth, due in part because I am intending on using a concentric slave cylinder, one that was left over from the Ford Mundano that we had robbed ages ago for its engine to fit into the Viva wagon. I had a Subaru Leone 1800 ring gear to suit the gearbox. I needed a clutch setup to suit and started hunting a variety of places. I found a brand new subaru Leone clutch disc going cheap on trade me so I snapped that up pronto. Now a suitable pressure plate. I was just going to buy a Subaru item but had realised that it wouldn't have worked - hence my question to you all in the last update - but no one on here came forward. Someone on retro rides forum won the prize though and guessed the issue. Whilst out on a run, my head clear and thinking of things it suddenly dawned on me that the pressure plate tension straps would now be in compression due to the Hondas anti-clockwise rotation (or clockwise when looking at the pressure plate). Luckily there's loads of clutch components available for early Hondas with their anti clockwise engines and I ended up sourcing a new pressure plate from a mid 80s Honda accord/prelude that would fit the bill and suited the new subaru leone clutch disc I'd already bought. The pressure plate was cheap from Rockauto - turning up only 5 days after ordering. They always amaze me! Clutch sorted and sitting on the bench. I could now measure up and start on a flywheel. I had Dylan @ThePog draw up a cad file of what I wanted- the right diameter and pilot holes for the adaptor bolts. He suggested that I get them to leaser cut pilot holes for the pressure plate bolts while at it and this saved some time. Got my plate cut and picked it up from Dylan's - giving me another chance to marvel at his Dynafari. I first set it up and bored it out a 1/4 way through to fit perfectly onto my flywheel hub I had previously made (this hub also has the surface that the rear main seal run against)... I could then seat the flywheel onto the hub, clamp them down and drill right through into the hub. Drill out to tapping size, tap the hub holes, clearance the flywheel holes and finally countersink and spot face the flywheel holes to suit some fancy bolts I bought - these need to sit near flush with the flywheel surface to clear the clutch disc damper springs. Pics... Flywheel now bolted to its hub I set it up in the lathe for machining... Then gave it a skim. Checked it again, double checked it and then triple checked it. All good. I then machined the required step onto the face to suit the factory specs for the clutch. Next thing was to add the ring gear I add. Now this was a bit tricky because my lovely old Mitutoyo vernier calipers (one of the first tools I bought when starting my apprenticeship) were not big enough to measure that diameter. My old work place I did my time at had some lovely 600mm Mitutoyo calipers in a lovely wooden case. They were one of the treasured items of the tool room and I used to love using them. I had priced up some 600mm items from a variety of other brands but wayyyyy too expensive for me. I'll still keep looking because they'd be handy for many jobs. Might find some second hand. But that didn't help me when I wanted to do this flywheel now So I made an extension from some stainless I tigged together, replicating the end of my calipers. Taped in place securely and hey presto- I had a new updated tool. Never perfect like the real thing so I had to really triple check my measurements but managed to turn the flywheel down to give me just the right amount of interference fit I wanted from a shrink fit. Into the bench top oven the ring gear went, heated up and it dropped on to my machined step nicely. Cooled down and its not going anywhere. With that in place I rechecked it all and got the throw out on the flywheel down to about 3 or 4 thou. Super happy with that. My clutch kit now bolted on in place and I have something I can set my bellhousing depth to suit... I have added the required dowels and its all done. I'll get the flywheel, clutch and crank balanced together before assembly of the engine. So that will be the next update I think. Machining the spacers that will become part of the engine side of the bellhousing adaptor. Then I need to finish off making some chain tensioners to suit the oil pump drive chains. However I still have plenty of other jobs to do on the housetruck and the mezzanine. Those are a priority whereas this is just a fun little project. But I must mention that today whilst out on a bicycle ride we had about 50 various motorbikes pass us on part of a charity run. I spotted a bright metallic blue Goldwing 1500 go past and as it accelerated up the hill we were on it had that distinctive flat six exhaust note and just sounded superb! It certainly got me tingling and all I thought of was that sound coming from my Imp A good incentive!

Got a small update from the panelbeater today. Fucking STOKED with the outcome Discuss here From To Looks amazing - in my untrained eyes anyway

Starting on the sump. Its going to be a pretty big job!

While I was fabricating the roller, I visited a bunch of engineers in the region and found that no one had a lathe big enough to machine it. Bugger. After getting some quotes from further abroad that would have blown my entire budget by themselves (15-20k). I decided that I'd just build my own lathe.. I jumped onto Ebay and ordered the cheapest set of linear rails I could find, including the ball screw and bearing blocks. 3-4 weeks later I got set to mocking up the "lathe" using the compound slide from my Stanko mounted to some adapters. Spinning the roll by hand with the compound slide clamped to the linear rail, I took the first test cut. "Fuuck yeah, this'll work" I said.. It would have taken forever to machine the 3mm x 25mm weld bead off, but I remember once when @kpr mounted his angle grinder in the lathe to cut through some hardening on a set of axles from memory? (that image is burnt into my mind, probably thinking it might be a useful trick one day. cheers dude!) The grinder worked really well and made short work of it. Spinning the ball screw with a battery drill.

Unbolt exhaust at the headers for drags? It's what a proper drag car would do And by proper drag car I mean a HQ with a tired 350/th350/2.75 geared single spinner 9 inch with a badly jetted 600 holley and one of those fake 3 hole scoops thru the bonnet and some rusty chrome rocker covers and an accel super coil and a moroso sticker and a jack daniels towel over the ripped rear seat top and a wildcat steering wheel with the center cap missing and a sticker on the back window that says only milk and juice comes in 2l

Today's job was to bolt the trans to the engine, fill the converter, figure out what starter I need, (there are Australian and US spec starters with different size pinion gears, mine needs a us spec one so that's good cause can get a gear reduction one off rockauto) , make a dipstick tube fit (fingers crossed this works with the firewall and exhaust clearance which is fuck all) , bolt the crossmember on and knock up a trolley to put it all on. The plan is to lift the body up and roll everything under the car to fit it, to avoid damaging painted parts

Bolting clean painted parts on with new bolts is satisfying

Richie came over and gave me a hand to prep some bits and then, i painted a thing. 2020-11-07_03-58-20 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-11-07_03-58-14 by sheepers, on Flickr

Last weekend it went back together and it’s good to be back dailying. The roof lining took so long + all my patience, doing a part then glueing clamping and leaving it.. Sealing the screens in was pretty frustrating, rubbers went a bit wonky in places/inconsistent shape/mess etc. headlining in, different drivers seat with way less tears (matching passengers is coming)

suspension was on point tho. till it broke. think a shock blew out aiding to the rollover. this wasn't the biggest jump..

Ow wow, didn't think it'd been that long since the last update, apparently it has.. So this time last year, I took it to Damon @ Rocky Auto, got him to pretend he was taking it for a wof and to make me a list (before putting it through for cert) . He wired in the electric fan for me, suggested I correct torque tube angle and couple other small jobs. Took the opportunity to fit up the Front Gaz Adjustable Shocks to match the rears.. Seeing as the Rostyles were illegal about 2 months after I had had them made all those years ago, I've been on the lookout for some suitable rims for Certification. Back in lock down I found a set of 5x 13x7 ATS Classic's in Germany, with the help of ebay and Google Translate I purchased them. Ended up waiting 5 months before they arrived, having to pay a premium for shipping, but gotta pay the cost.. Had them garnet blasted, diamond cut the face & lips, and then powdercoated & masked up. To keep it legal I had to fit a set of 215/50r13 Nankangs One of the other things Damon picked up on was the filler neck didn't seal with the radiator cap (standard type) so ordered a nice billet unit from summit racing. Fitted it up this afternoon and took it for its once yearly drive around the block, first time with proper pressure in the cooling system Discuss: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=20250

Fitting up well. Inserts and removable pieces are looking good. Its going to take a bit of bog before paint and a lot of sanding afterwards.

awwww unluggy

image-20170130_123129 by John Bell, on Flickr So the old man spotted this plastic bath toy at his local WOF spot a few years ago. They (not a marine workshop, a backwater automotive garage) were unable to make it run. The old man pestered them every six months for a while till they sold it to him on behalf of the owner for a reasonable price (for a lump of plastic). He then squirrelled it away in a barn until we built a shed at our place, we then squirrelled it away in my shed. I decided to take ownership of this project, and proceeded to do nothing with it, as is customary. I am far from knowledgeable about boats (or anything), but can run google and the telephone pretty well. It appears to be a Tuff Jet, they were built by a Whakatane based business for a while (now based down south). I believe this one to be a pretty early iteration, likely late nineties, early 2000's. Roto-moulded polyethylene 2.8m 2 seater jetboat. (Yet to put a tape measure over it, but later models are stretched an extra 400mm or so). Just over 300kg (I'd like to weigh it to confirm though), this one is fitted with a 2cylinder 787 Rotax as found in Seadoos of the late ninties. Quoted 110 Canadian HP. Some forum post on the internet says that the plastic hull has a UV warranty of 25 years, so hopefully the fact its been unused in sheds for the last 10 means I have more than 5 years of life in it. I poked around a bit and learnt that Seadoo used a highly advanced (for its time) all in one CDI that included an immobilizer using a security coded lanyard. Cool. My money was on that being quite shit, based on its resistance to do the sparks or allow the cranking. I was reluctant to bring it to a dealer to have its lanyard replaced / diagnosed until I knew the motor was better than it looks. Shorting the starter solenoid said it was quite fucked, and would not rotate, I freed it up, and a compression test confirmed, it was indeed as shit as it looked. IMG_20180926_183501 by John Bell, on Flickr SOMEBODIES BEEN IN HERE IMG_20180926_183510 by John Bell, on Flickr At this point it nothing happened for a few years while we brainstormed compact alternative powerplants that we were capable of making work. This would be a perfect opportunity to fit something modern, more efficient, and in known good condition. Naturally at this point I purchased the cheapest donor Jet-ski with the same engine I could find after trawling trademe and facebook marketplace relentlessly. I'll learn this lession twice. IMG_20200701_143340 by John Bell, on Flickr Amusingly the banana is supposed to make about 40hp more than a Jimny, and weigh about 1/3. IMG_20200701_165559 by John Bell, on Flickr WOAH IMG_20200701_165553 by John Bell, on Flickr RADICAL IMG_20200701_165544 by John Bell, on Flickr I feel (more) like a scumbag instantly. Popped it in the harbour one night after work, to try and assess it's health. 109576785_1549285395257880_4072391247589855252_n by John Bell, on Flickr 110336327_323032162200748_7293717375980309486_n by John Bell, on Flickr As you'd expect it had a dead battery, jumpstarting a thing that is always in gear is a bit awkward. My only experience of Jet-skis being a JS300 childs Jet-ski I was very impressed and thought it to be very good initially. Potato footage. It wasn't running 100% but appeared to go hard, until it stopped abruptly at wide open throttle in what suspiciously seemed like a heat seize, followed by a flat battery, followed by having to push it back about half a K across some oyster beds. NOICE. Speedo reckoned it was good for about 80km/h water speed though. I got a battery and did a compression test on the Banana yesterday, got an even ~130psi across both pistons, which doesn't seem massive, but its even, and it still runs and nangs the limiter so I think I'm gonna send it. So the Green Croc is covered in dust and reeks like 10 year old stale fuel, but now that @keltik and @Vintage Grumble have both purchased jetboats, its time I go and break down on a body of water with company, at some stage before summer I would like to swap powerplant, tidy up the plumbing and wiring, check carbs and fuel/oil system, and go get stranded somewhere. IMG_20201110_144127_1 by John Bell, on Flickr IMG_20201110_144119 by John Bell, on Flickr

Over the past month or so, I have removed almost everything from beneath the floor. Painted lots and brought heaps. Dropped the engine and gearbox out too, a lot of stuff is rusted and unusable. Including the power steering lines, which are rusted through. Matt, folded up some 2.5mm plate for me to fill in the gap between the the lexus and chevys pinch welds. And welded it in. Today after the PN hot rod club shed raid had been through, I trimmed off the rear quarters and tail pan. And fitted up the new EMS tail pain that just arrived from America. and the EMs rear quarters, I've had for a few years. Not sure where the bumper filler panel came from, but its pretty mint. Ordered a flush pop up fuel cap from a motorbike shop in California too. Same as Matts on his pickup. Matt put his skills to good use and welded on all the extras I made for it. Including a water/spilled fuel drain hose tail, a bolt to act as a lock from in the boot, and the filler tube and vent tube, ready for hose clamps.

Done! went pretty well in all. Got it smooth enough to not want to bother cutting and polishing. again, it looks exactly the same as before so these pics are just to show it happened, lol. got the stainless trims into the rubbers too, The front bottom piece was a total cunt, had to get the mrs to help.. Longest of them all and curved each end so it kept trying to pop out when it came under tension. And the force needed to push it in was more than needed to fold it in half in an instant so it was a nail biter. Simpson gave me an original boot mat, one side is yuck but overall tidy. I recently ditched the MDF sheet I was using because it rattled so it’s a welcome addition. Pining to fit the new headlining and goo in the screens

soo my wheels arrived and couldn't help but slap them on and tape my flares on for a test fit, they fit perfect and look nice and aggressive. The height needs adjusting a little bit/lowering but am slightly limited by my rear arm angles but will get onto that later down the track when I do a new diff setup. looks rad though. got a package from Barry at mrp too, wildwood big brake kit, lower arm traction brackets and some orca's. its enough to get me going for now and hopefully some good lap times.

So fast forward almost exactly 3 years... I'd been buying and selling projects to try and scratch the itch, but to no avail. I'd also been busting my ass to try get myself back into a financial position similar to pre divorce. I'd been fortunate enough to buy a house just before the market went nuts here, and made a bit of pretend money thanks to capital gainzzz. Because of this, I began the hunt with some fairly specific requirements, essentially wanting to buy another car just like this. But I quickly found that the FD market had changed a fair bit, with NZ stocks being mostly worn out shitboxes for 15- 20k (and I paid 12 for the original car!) and a similar spec car from Japan being closer to 30 by the time it landed. As the months went on, I started to get impatient, and almost went down the STi route, but then this gem cropped up on TM And by gem, I mean, rough as guts bag of shit ex Japanese track day hack, but the price was right.

Been a bit slow but painting isn't all that interesting.... Have all the major panels in epoxy now... Still making more of these skins, been surprised how popular they are, even sending a set to ozzy this week.

I had a close call the other day! A rather high truck popped its tow ball bang into the center of my tail light, no panel damage thankfully. They agreed to sort it out and paid for a set of brand new rear lenses to be shipped over. In the mean time I had 1 old L/R lens on the shelf so I could keep on driving. We've managed to put 8,000km on the old girl in the 6 months she's been back on the road! Up and down the South Island with no problems so far. I've probably been a bit hard on it in my excitement because the clutch is feeling like it may need replacing soon, might pay to bed the next one in properly first... I still want to lower it some time, but the current height is pretty handy with how many gravel roads I find myself on. Perhaps air bags are in it's future? We'll see, for now it's too much fun to drive to put it back in the garage.

That's sad news about drag day! Here's hoping your boss buys a new work car in the next couple of weeks? It's a shame, cause I won't be able to install your new windscreen banner now:

prius motor swap its been a long strange trip on oldschool.co.nz these last 15 years. But here we are

So obviously the motor was pretty much junk - the eccentric shaft was about the only usable part. This wasn't too much of a problem, as the car was comparatively cheap, and I'd bought it expecting to rebuild the motor anyway. We priced up all the parts, and it was going to be about 6k to do it correctly. I mulled on it for a while, and decided for not much more money, a crate motor would be a far better option. All new plates, all new housings, as well as all the little fiddly bits and pieces that come with the crate motor just made it a much much better option for longevity. After all, I just wanted a nice fun weekend toy that I could cruise around in! Also while the motor was out, I decided to fly up to Auckland and give the engine bay a quick respray, as it was in fairly awful condition. Rotaries and their under bonnet temps tend to melt paint off, and obviously this thing had seen some time at race tracks! So for a real quick and dirty spray job, it actually came up really nice. And this is where things started to spiral out of control...

Hello. turns out i purchased a front beam for a kombi that was suited for 68 bay window and every split window bus. this kinda bugged me as i had already put adjusters in it and the bolt holes didn't line up. so i remembered i could get a kit from Fresh Kustomz in aus which i could install myself. i priced it up and i was also trying to get a rough idea on price from a chch company on what they would pay for my current beams. they became a bit difficult to deal with and in the mean time i clicked a buy now and i had the kit from aus in a few weeks. the kit is a 40mm raised beam kit ofr a early bay window ball joint beam. It comes with 2 laser cut ends, adjusters and stays to help the beams strength. i was going to do with myself with the likes of @bobby1930 and @Geophy but all our lives are rather busy and trying to get all the stars to align was a bit harder than expected. so i hit up @oftensideways to see if he would be keen on doing the job for me. discribed what needed to be done and he said he would be keen. the following weekend @Mrs 64valiant and myself headed down to drop the beam off. watched some bathurst and caught up with Jones family and meet a few of there friends over a bit of a bbq. a few weeks goes by and i know Sean doesn't really muck around when it comes to jobs so i flicked him a message to see how he was getting on. received a few images back of it all mocked up on his welded table and starting to come together. he said it would be ready the following day so i said i'd head down on the Saturday coming. So off i went for a drive to Ohakune. and now its Monday. Super stoked! well worth the trip! next on the list. I wasn't happy with the fitting of the horse shoes i was given for the rear suspension. so i was after some dropped adjustable plates. I had been trying to get some from a local supplier and we were not having much luck with all of his suppliers and i mentioned type 2 detectives, he had heard of a few dodgy stories from the company and didn't want to buy the product which is fear enough. I said i would. it took me a while to get around to doing it. ended up making a call on the 4th of this month to the company over in uk somewhere, was really helpful and put a link in a email address and i clicked the purchase and it was sent the following day. i had been tracking the item and was suspicious with how long it would take to get to nz. turns out it would be 10-12 days. not bad at all. and this leaves me here. i really wanted this back on the road before beach hop and the new arrival but main goal now is to make some solid progress and get driving again.

New metal

forgot to mention, a supercharged 1UZ pulling hard at 7200RPM sounds pretty ace.

and yip, then i painted it. now got the back of the boot lid and the boot seal area to finish and i can start priming the outside. 2020-11-17_08-09-25 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-11-17_08-09-18 by sheepers, on Flickr 2020-11-17_08-09-11 by sheepers, on Flickr

Runner system printed.

Finally Cut the horrid mess of a rear guard. That's the Lexus inner guard you can see poking out. Also welded the modified panel from the spare wheel compartment back on. 200-300mm further forward than it was on the Lexus. 15inch wheel still fits no worries. Few more filler panels needed in here, for the last few holes. New panel rolled and swaged made up to go above the ems panel. Both sides all tacked in, and ready for final welding. The boot is going to need a lot of massaging, cutting, and additions, as she's a bit of a mess too.

All go here this week. BLG Engineering sent up my 4 pot rear calipers, so my mate is currently making brackets for the diff for these. BLG Engineering is currently building some coilovers for the front with camber plates, and 4 pot wilwood fronts, so those should be here in the next few weeks. Also picked up a set of refurbed 15x 6.5 and 15x7 SSR Formula Mesh for the car as another option for wheels, one of the 7s has been damaged so will probably relip to 8 or so for the rear when i get too it. But for now will keep the car rolling with the new stud pattern of 4x114.3 Also had a mates car for a couple of days so test fit his Works CR01 wheels to see what that looked like, \

Bonus photos of repaired rust in hatch and helper blackbird who likes to sit next to car and eat meal mates while grinding and welding happens

Just a small update - not long after getting it I put it through the Ontario equivalent of a WOF, the "Safety Check" which it passed not needing much. With new plates (old owner takes their plates off) and ridiculously expensive mandatory insurance it was back on the road. It's first legal trip was to the supermarket, where someone in their oversized Datsun prompted used my bumper (and 2 day old fresh plate) as a parking spot. I now have a dashcam & tyre valve stem remover kept in my glovebox for these times. Bought many a box of service items from RockAuto And some Solex locks from 'straya maaaate because the original lock barrels can be opened with almost any key and it has keyless entry anyway. Also had my first break down, can you spot the problem? ** Discussion https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/74793-helium-elbows-magical-rx-7-fb/ **

Yeah that works good. Apart from one bolt that didnt want to go in its home it was a piece of cake.

Brady at BLG Engineering whipped me up a set of new coilovers for the front and camber plates Also made new 4x114.3 front hubs and mounted a set of 4 pot wilwoods. He also supplied a new wilwood master cylinder and prop valve as well as rear rotors & 4 pot wilwoods to get mounted to the diff.

Got a few goodies on the way for this. But this week, Managed to score a old school Haynes manual off Trademe so that was a handy score. Got so much detail in it, right down to how to rebuild the motor and box Also had a clean up of shed and sorting parts out, Pic of the cleaned up S5 RX7 box the car came with. Like new, unsure on internal condition so going to strip it down before it goes in the car to save any future headaches. Thats all for today!

That turbo Vitz I mentioned appeared at work today. “Golden Eagle” intake manifold.

High build primer is like sanding chalk! Coming out ok but taking a lot of sanding!

Hi team. Long time no posting, since my kombi wasn't really going to be going for summer i thought i would get this on the road. well i had thought about it and then a mate asked to use it for his daughters school ball so i ended up splashing out and spending some money on it and getting a wof. the wof fail list was - speedo not accurate - rear door latch missing bolt - fuel leak in tank - Brake light switch to secure - high beam light in dash not working - front seat LR to short - brake shoes worn out - brake hoses toast - rear bump stop missing - front bump stop worn out - RH outer tie rod end worn - Pitman arm joint loose - LF wheel bearing toast - idler arm bush worn - carburetor missing bolt his one recommendation was to raise it LOL and here i was wanting to lower the rear a sly 20mm with the deadline of this week i said to go ahead and just do it all him self. 3 days later now and i have this There are a few things i actually want to do but with the kombi been on the hoist and been away for the weekend made it so much easier. after destroying my last set of tyres at the wedding i had been offered the ones that are now on it for a cheap price and they are 245 60 14 just a bit wider than the last 225 60 14 so thats the reason for the rubbing in the rear. will fix that with some smaller tyres and maybe lower it another 20mm in the rear talk about why i should use it more often and that your glad i got it going here

The car is running now. It struggled a bit at first and I was wondering why it wouldn't start and idle. Then I remembered the coolant temp sensor wasn't plugged in, so it had no cold start enrichment. Plugged that in and it fired straight up! The next job on the list was to fill it with coolant. My radiator doesn't have a filler neck and sits well below the highest point, so I had a friend chop and weld the top water fixture. This gives me the required offset to easily hook up the radiator and has a wee filler neck so I can actually fill it with coolant. I've also added a stainless coolant overflow tank. It's all working out to be tidy, so I'm happy. Both radiator hoses were very simple. The top one is just a 350mm straight piece and the lower is a trimmed factory Altezza hose. Got it out in the open air for the first time in a long time. It feels great to be able to drive it out of the shed instead of pushing it! The exterior will eventually get a tidy up to match the engine bay. It's fairly ripply and in need of a respray. Parked up next to @Mitch.W's AE while he prepared for a drift day: I took the car for a cheeky hoon up the road and it felt good. The engine sounded happy and pulled through the revs well. I'll get it onto a dyno for a safety check and then the engine's basically good to go. It's not far from "completion" now.I'm waiting on a few suspension and brake parts to arrive, then it can get reassembled, aligned and hit the track!

These are 'feet' for the sump. So the engine can stand upright. Good chance ill break them off at some point so I printed a hole up them and bonded in some steel dowels. Started bogging.

Low level stuff here but worthy of sharing? The car is still going great, I have taken the computer back a couple of times as the car was prone to kicking back on cold starts and to raise the rev limit slightly. No problems though and no charge so A++ to PAD Racing again. I've been driving the car quite a lot since the last update and noticed that the steering was getting nastier and nastier. The front wheels were squealing on roundabouts etc. I jacked it up and found that the front lower arm, inner bushes have died on both sides, disappointing really, they were only 15 years old! While it's up in the air I have a couple of other things to do, the rear brakes are iffy, I think the wheel cylinders are getting a bit tight, I'll sort that out. The LPG tank is a bit on the small side (about 57l I think) which gives me range anxiety, I also had to mount it back to front when I fitted it which means I can't see the manual level gauge. I have a much larger 80l tank that I will fit to the boot while I'm working on the car. I have a couple of other odds and ends to do, I'll keep you posted.

Dads DakaRGV is pretty much ready to go now

tidying a few things up with the tune. i had no speed signal so the ECU didn't know if we were moving or not. with an E throttle that makes quite the difference. so i put a wheel speed sensor in the back so now it knows we are moving. the other major thing that needed sorting was the rev limit, it was set too low (6500) and it was pretty harsh. so now th rev limit is a more excellent 7500 with a really nice cut that just works. lots of little things were made better in regards to coasting to a stop, the fan coming on, part throttle curse, just more drivability. the other thing that we did was add a bit of timing up top which coupled with the higher rev limit it made 275 killer wasps at the tyres. keen for drag day TBH.

Back to the story at hand - with the motor now ported, it left me with quite a dilemma. I bought this car with a specific budget to get it all done and dusted. I procrastinated for a few months while figuring out the next step. I even debated using the stock twins and the existing bolt on stuff, but deep down I knew that the stock turbos would just end up hurting the motor. One of my other good friends is a bit of a encyclopedia for turbo knowledge so I turned to him for advice. I was after something that could flow 400-450hp without giving away too much response. The ideal turbo would have been the Borg Warner EFR8374, but I couldn't afford a $4500 turbo. So the next best option was this guy: A Borg Warner S300SX-E, sorta the poor man's EFR8374. I chose a slighter smaller than usual 1.0 AR twin scroll turbine housing in an attempt to keep the boost threshold at a reasonable point, at the expense of some top end power. Given the most powerful car I've owned before was a 220kw turbo 4age, giving away some horsepower wasn't a real concern! I made another trip up to Auckland to dress the block up and install the motor - the turbo looks fucking huge compared to a bare bones 13B! And pretty snug in an FD engine bay too Because pedantry, I replaced most of the bolts on the motor, and engine bay, with shiny new gold passivated ones. I also splashed out and bought new coolant and washer fluid bottles, as the ones in the engine bay were all fucky. I also made the unusual (apparently) call to retain the stock OMP. Everybody says they fail yada yada yada, but I've not seen any concrete evidence that the electronic ones do. And also modern ECU tech can control them, so why the hell not? Modern ECU tech also means I ditched the Power FC once again, but this time replacing it with a Link G4 plug in It also meant a decent fuel system upgrade in the form of 1050cc primary injectors and 1550cc secondaries fed by one of the other wonders of modern tech, a brushless drop in fuel pump, capable of suppling well over 500hp worth of fuel. Thank god the days of Whinebro pumps are over! With this in the hole, only minor fabrication was needed to get it ready to fire up!

Went for a drive today, it’s going better than ever apart from the hot start problem witch may be related to the worn out ignition switch witch causes a misfire sometimes. Speedo is working well, 30 MPH works out to be about 58 KPH I can live with that, side mirror blew off but luckily it landed in the car, PCV is wonderful, oil stays clean and way less fumes, I am wondering about slotting the distributor for more advanced, I set it max advance all ready and I am running 91 with no pinging. On the hunt for some 600-15” tires, my front tires are old and hard like they are made from stone

Last minute missions for beach hop. Built the exhaust with no mufflers, Was so loud, had the bomb rap going on but bit too loud haha. So chucked a couple of mufflers in last night. Gave the old siren a bit of a birthday before it goes in the truck. Mount that and we are good to go for beach hop next week.