Leaderboard

With the differential out time for a dismantle and clean up Axles removed, can you guess which side came out easy and which side was a real bastard? However, this is the rusty side after a bit of a soak in some kero. it still had a gritty feeling even after being regreased probably pits in the bearing rollers from sitting in rusty grease, i hummed and hawed because the bearings are over $100 each and its not really mission critical, but ive decided Ill replace this rusty bearing while ive got it out, and because pulling the brakes and stuff off is such a pain in the dick on the van and im thinking of future me - however, the other side feels much nicer so it can stay. For reference, this is a RIV 9632 which is 35x72x27, which cross references to a 3207 bearing. Outer axle seals are 48x62x10, but thats an uncommon size so ive ordered 2x 48x62x8, as a bonus that puts the seal on a different part of the shaft, which is part of the hub Diff head off and cleaned up and repainted. Marked the pinion nut and pinion with a punch, installed the new seal (38x70x10/13) Another odd one, but is common across the 1100-1500-2300 family so had one already Other than dirty oil the inside was really good, hardly any wear nothing busted or chipped, and there anything i wouldn't have expected on the magnet. Diff is 43/7 ratio or 1:6.14 which is i guess how they managed to have the original 38hp 1100cc powered vans, a '1 ton' load rating! The 0-60ft times will be good, hah! Brake backing plates after a soak in teh parts cleaner and a quick sand blast Evaporust Paint Just evaporust on the patented (bevettato) 'AXIBLOCK' by RIV - magic stuff. Dug some likely candidates for replacing the rear shocks out of the stash. Ive already swapped the lower eye rubbers and bushes over, but did need to swap the upper pins for the eyes off the old ones. And a nice box of clean, replaced or repaired, repainted and thread chased bits to go back on OLD GROSSNESS NEW HOTNESS I did a quick experiment, rust converter and use up some not quite right coloured spray can just to see if some colour made it look better, and yep, sure does! I want to figure out a way to knock the surface rust/hard dirt/dry grease back without taking off the factory texture coating i have a few attachments on the grinder to try, but not looking forward to the days underneath that will be needed to do even a half ass job tbh Sand blasting is probably the way, but i dont really want to have it done in the driveway (can this even happen?), and cant really move it with everything off out of the way. Any idea on cost or not to dos from those that have undeside sandblasting done before?

No progress on anything but while I was doing some work today I came up with this little tune I'm a, fat man in a light weight car, Fat man in a light weight car, Keep going on about power to weight But I'm having second dinner by 20 to eight I'm a, fat man in a light weight car, Fat man in a light weight car, Dreaming of a time when my fast car flies While getting up to speed on a 6 pack of pies I'm a, fat man in a light weight car, Fat man in a light weight car, Thinking in a race that I'm gonna come first But I fit my overalls like a sausage thats burst I'm a, fat man in a light weight car, Fat man in a light weight car, The only racing cup that I'll ever see Is a well supporting bra with a bust size C I'm a, fat man in a light weight car...

Just got sent these pics from the late 90s. Was bought in Chch and driven up to Auckland, pretty sure it had a piston motor in it by then, as the rotary had been replaced after it died. Probably one of the last drives it ever went on!

I put the bike carbs back on and ran it up to the palmy swapmeet but on the way back it developed a strange misfire/stutter at constant throttle. I checked a few things before admitting defeat and putting the standard carb on again. I took it all apart and gave it a good clean with a diy ultra sonic cleaner but the stutter was ever present but not as bad? I didn't have time to investigate it too much as I had a roadtrip booked with it down to the west coast for a bike ride. I wanted to mount my bike on the roof for a couple reasons. It would free up all the space in the back, plus it meant I wouldn't have to worry about dragging all the mud and crap in. Using a tow bar bike rack is OK but meant I would have to take the bike and rack off everything I needed to get into the rear. I couldn't find anything suitable for the roof so I was determined to make my own. A visit to grandad one day and he casually mentions his old roof rack is in his shed at home and had been for 40 odd years. A quick look in the exact spot and what do you know. Grandad had this rack years ago on his mk1 zephyr. Under all the new paint, there's the zephyr green which he painted to match. Fitted it up to to van and it was perfect. I made new feet and gutter mounts out of old folder dividers from a file cabinet (not pictured) to mount it. The rack was too short to fit my bike in so I made a front bar out of an old rusty piece of angle iron and used some tubing from an old exercycle to make a dummy axle to mount the forks too. Perfect for the parts bin van. The 1,300km west coast trip went well. The roof rack survived, even when I forgot about the bikes and took a branch off. Luckily it was at low speed and the tree was mostly dead. I lost one alternator bolt, a second came loose, front left suspension has decided to start knocking, discovered a couple of leaks under the dash and with all our gear we were riding bump stops some of the way. Success.

yeah pronounced Hamish

Rear swaybar? Must be the bathurst edition? I'd recommend having a yarn to the repair certifier before doing anything to the undersides Covering anything with paint or underseal can lead to headaches , have had many customers do things like that then have to strip it all off again for repair cert inspection They may also have recommendations for someone to blast it if that's what it needs If you do need to get it blasted I'd strip it as much as you can so there's as little things to get sand in and overspray on as possible. The people who do it for a job are not the sharpest tools in the shed so it's not uncommon to see the chrome on shock shafts get a blast or other dumb things They are also only good at painting in their line of sight so be prepared to have to touch it up yourself Here's one I have on the hoist right now actually

@kws please accept my humble apologies for not getting back to you re marina bumpstops, I had a cursory look and can guarantee I have at least one. I see you may be in need of some other bits & pieces, I'm in putaruru (south waikato) and you would be more than welcome to have a sift through my assortment of marina parts if its not too far from home for you - save my next of kin from some of the hassle of dumping them someday. from rough memory I have 4 front doors, 2 of which are in great cond with black mk3 cards, maybe a whole mk3 diff/spring assy and driveshaft? A decent looking radiator, mk3 bumpers? lots of headlights including a pair of 7" lucas spotlights with lucas covers which would look great on your coupe, knowing lucas they probably put out 0.5 lumens, providing they still contain the vital smoke. Plus multiple bins of random crap/treasure - all sorts of small parts, mainly from mk3 wagon or mk2 commercial.

Yeah need different pistons for vvti to work. So will do rods at same time. Was going to do exhaust some time after hoist is operational. Thats on hold thanks to covid

I hear he's a bit tougher than the last repair cert guy. Go play nice... and let me know how you get on....

I had been told there was one in Balclutha that was good too, could be the Gore guy, maybe. Worst case is if i need to get the repairs done by a shop 'approved repairer', thats a hard nope. Hopefully i can show that im not a total numptie (IMO!) and "have the skill and knowledge to competently perform the repairs required" as most of the rust is actually pretty simple stuff like door bottoms and floor sections, no real structural stuff (except for the A pillar maybe) and whcile i dont want to set myself up for 3 more vehicles worth of repair certification, pretty confident ive got the skills and equipment to make a kwalitee fix What is an approved repairer? An approved repairer will have the skills and knowledge required to competently perform the repairs required. The repairer must have the correct equipment to perform the repairs necessary. The certifier will include all the repairer’s details in a file.

you're going to need to be vaguer than that.

Thanks Chaps, I think i may just leave it for now, and do what the man wants later. Once i have a man. (recommendations for south island repair cert folk?) I should really make a start on the paper work too. RE Weather, since i am a massive dork, i have previously prepared this: Top graph shows Dunedin is consistently ~4deg cooler, but has significantly less rainfall in winter and is less humid. Second graph also shows that its somehow less sunny as well, but I recon its way sunnier (im on the Mosgiel side of the hill tho) , and way less windy than Auckland. Also the sun is way hotter feeling when its out, but the air being less humid doenst hold the heat the same.

My old man helped me make up press tooling for the top parts Didn't get enough time to finish off the last piece this weekend though. Poor old girl

Fixed it. The linkages have just worn to the point that the gear selection was too far towards the dash and the shifter couldn't move far enough I just adjusted one of the shifter rods to pull all the gears closer to the driver (red). Now shifts beautifully Just used a 24 mm socket to loosen the clamp nut and pulled the rod up about 10 mm

I spend way too much time thinking about things to do to it, I'm not sure it's healthy. IRL it's pretty fucking great too, so many people fizz over it. I parked up in Mitre 10 on Friday, when I came back out there was a man lying underneath, he sprang up and pretended he hadn't been. I had a good chat with him but fuck that cracked me up.

i ordered a new intercooler ages ago but it was coming from auz and they went into lockdown right when i ordered it so it took 3 months instead of 3 weeks. anywho it turned up and i went about making it fit. its wider but not as high as the one that was on the car. a quick note about the intercooler that was on the car. its an R32 GTR intercooler that i put on the car about 2007 and it has been through hell and back and it took it all. it stoved the side of Spencer's soarer in, its taken literally hundreds of hits into curbs and driveways and fucking all manner of shit and its never had a leak or a broken tube or anything. this thing needs a place in the hall of fame. so yea, new intercooler will flow WAY better than the old one and the dyno will tell the story. i made a new bracket thing to hold the cooler and it had two mounting holes on the bottom but because i cant use the top ones i thought id add two more to the bottom just because. i only had a small piece of square aluminium so i made it round and welded them on. 3the new intercooler sits about 30mm higher than the old one too so thats a good. at some point imma make a front air dam for this thing. 2021-09-25_06-12-31 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-09-25_06-11-50 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-09-25_06-11-58 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-09-26_05-10-21 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-09-26_05-10-43 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-09-25_06-12-12 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-09-26_05-10-37 by sheepers, on Flickr

I've been driving this around a bit, still sorting some stuff like minor coolant leaks. But on the whole it's great. I started a bit of a resto on the wheels but ran out of patience and so just painted them fairly half arsedly. 2 meter rule! Havent swapped the tyres over yet. Can confirm that LSD works good, but it's still a fairly narrow window between bogging the motor and over revving and just spinning the front up off the launch. But it's infinitely better than it was. I bought an NCP91 Vitz ABS pump from a wrecker. So hopefully this can output wheel speeds in a digestible manner for my ECU. I found a pinout for this pump, and repinned my plug for it. Except I didnt check the main power and earth wires, for god knows what reason they swapped them back to front. So it blew a 60 amp fuse that I had to drive to Tauranga pick a part to replace. Fixed that and plugged it all in. So after some mucking around I got it sending can frames to try decode. It turns out that Toyota canbus of this era runs at 500kbps and the abs pump regularly sends about 5-6 distinct frames that seem to be largely empty and useless data Two frames have a value that just increments from 0-255 then resets to zero. I managed to isolate the value that changes when you put your foot on the brakes. But that's it! No wheel speeds, yaw, or anything cool or useful. I wrote some code so that instead of getting constantly spammed with all of the messages over and over. It will only show you what's changed since the last time that same message arrived. So if you spin a wheel, if this makes a value change it should show you which frame and byte the data is in. But, im still not seeing anything. After a few hours of mucking around I'm a bit stumped. Possibilites are: -The pump doesnt actually output wheel speeds over canbus (seems unlikely, as these motors dont have a speedo drive in the box anymore, and it communicates with the power steering) -The pump requires some sort of wakeup command from something else on the factory can network to begin transmitting wheel speeds (seems unlikely, as I'm geting brake pedal signal, and it's spamming useless stuff out anyway) -The wheel speed sensors have been revised, and my existing sensors arent compatible with this pump. The last option seems most likely. So next thing to do is source a wheel speed sensor from an NCP90 to test with. Why cant things be easy? They are but I make them complicated

With the Ute sorted, its back outside and the cars are shuffled back inside. Back to the Van. Dropped the rear axle for a cleaning up before refurbishing the brakes/new lines etc. This is the underside of the van - i know it looks like shit, but it's mostly flaky underseal/paint, dirt, 50 yo dry grease and surface rust. All the rails are solid and unbent, the floor is a bit saggy but thats from being loaded, not rust. Ill try popping that up a bit with a bit of wood on the jack under the thin cross members. I think ill clean up and brush repaint in the factory grey mainly around all the mounting points and areas that will be hard to access with the diff back in the way so it doesn't look too restored/fixed before i sort out a repair cert, and the rest ill give a tickle with the wire bush while the diff out and just brunox or something to hold it steady. Diff oil was actually not too bad, and given the amount of oil on the outside, there was a surprising amount still on the inside. Ill replace the diff pinion and outer axle oil seals too once i get them off and note the specs to order them from the bearing place. Only one broken fastener, which was one of the captive nuts for the sway bar mount so ill need to cut the floor to weld that back in. Always very impressed with the quality of Fiats fasteners, they very are rarely the issue irrespective of the state of the crap they hold together. These have an axle/hub setup like a beetle or kombi with the drum and hub as one unit, held onto the splined axle shaft with a big fuggentight castellated nut. Pass side rear brakes where already disassembled when i got the van, which requires removal of the hub and drum, and that hub slid off nicely. I suspect a leaky axle seal was probably the cause of the original brake issue but as a bonus it kept the spines well lubed on that side! The driver side on the other hand was pretty dang tight. The spline and hub rusted together. The man in the book has a special tool but i dont, so cobbled this up. It was stuck on pretty good! But eventually it popped off. Reference photos for drum reassembly below also show everything inside the drum is present and correct, which is as expected as the handbrake worked pretty good before, interestingly also has fairly low wear. Crusty spline will need some cleanup but a blast with brake cleaner already made a big difference. Ill probably replace the wheel bearing on this side while im in there 4x150 steel hub with integrated bearing, aluminium with steel lined drum. Brake surfaces are like new, no appreciable wear or scoring, the pass side is slightly worse, but still very good.

forgot to post these. first is R32 GTR intercooler core design. second is plazmaman core. 2021-09-28_06-56-17 by sheepers, on Flickr 2021-09-28_06-56-26 by sheepers, on Flickr

Correct

You're looking for Warrick Stapleton haha.

This is the guy you want to get your work done by

There's only one repair certifier in Dunedin https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/resources/specialist-repair-certifiers/docs/specialist-repair-certifiers.pdf

That surface rust underneath looks perfect for POR15 to bite into and work well. Get rid of all the flakey stuff with a wire wheel and start painting. I've used it heaps now, for about 10 years and fuck it works well at 'encapsulating' the rust. Things from 10 years ago are still looking fine. Its not UV stable but that's fine because 1: its underneath and out of the sun, 2: you're in Dunners. There is no sun......* My local place has stopped selling por15 because the importers have changed again. We've now been trying an oz product which is a blatant rip off. Works the same way but actually brushes on just that bit nicer. But I have no idea yet as to how it lasts but from they way it sets, its finish etc I think its going to be fine. https://kbs-coatings.co.nz/products/rustseal?variant=30214166315061 *Not true. Back in the Dunedin 'summer' 1973 there was a mysterious hot thing in the sky believed by many to be the sun. To this day its still not proven though.

Those spacers must have the same spigot system as the arms do There isn't a maximum height but that's because they usually are not that big, around 40mm is the most common size from memory

It seemed like the best compromise. I imagined keeping a nice line of pull would be pretty key. Also Matt's off-road Recovery did it that way before the Morevair, so that's good enough for me.

VTNZ are very good at being useless sometimes talk to land transport about it and see where that goes

In a few years when all the first gen leafs have a 50km range they'll be worth nothing. Then all you'll need is a motor controller, bms and some big lithium cells from aliexpress and you'll have a cheap electric car.

Can get a Toyota OEM bellhousing to suit R154 also. The 2005-2012 Hilux came with a R150 behind the 1grfe.

twin turbo 2gr is going to be wild. race ya to finish twin turbo 80 series builds! couple thoughts, a j160 will almost certainly not take the torque of your planned engine, and neither will nearly any mx5 diff option. a friend is putting a vq35de into his mx5 and will be producing subframe adapters to fit an r200 diff. given youre a fabricator i imagine you can simply do the same. check out flying miatas ford 8.8 diff conversion and copy that for an available diff. tremec tr6060 would be my pick. otherwise a cd009 or r154 would probably be suitable options.

Man, making fuel lines sucks heavily! Was ok in the vice for a start, but vice is a metre away from everything in the shed and there’s like 5 metres of line.. cable ties and clamps as I went helped a bit.. At least the brake lines are copper-nickel and much easier to manipulate (he says, having not made them yet..) Also got the hood skin goo’d to the frame and spot welded back together. Used Bostic and it was fucking awesome! I quickly buffed and painted the throttle linkages, hood latch and a fuel tank vapour breather this arvo too, have some clips soaking in vinegar.

Now it's time to figure out how to get drive to the little supercharger. I had two choices when I started this project, make the drive system simple and compromise on the position of the supercharger making the manifolds awkward and difficult to fabricate, or mount the supercharger where I wanted it and get creative with the drive system. I close the latter and so the fun begins. I have started with the obvious and essential bits, a pulley on the crank and one on the supercharger. I had a nice disc laser cut to weld into the Sigma's factory crank pulley to allow attachment of the supercharger drive pulley. I modified a 8mm pitch timing belt pulley to fit the supercharger and also made one for the crank. It all bolted up alright and now I need to figure out the bits in between.

Also this week I modded the towbar to be a receiver type, the towball was sitting a wee bit too high, the last time I hired a digger we had to fork the trailer up onto the ball. Now it sits lower and can be lower again if I need it, but the bare socket is no lower than before. Im just waiting for some pins to arrive.... Then as I had some 65x6 box spare I added one to the front, along with a shit-ton of bracing. If I ever get a winch I will just mount it to this. You can also see the extra strop hooks I added a while ago.. I have two separate leads on short blocks, if either comes through I will be cranking that rebuild.

Got pretty frosty the other day. Bonus 125 in shot Some more bits turned up, cap and stat for the new radiator and core plugs for the block. so I gently smashed them in with a BFH and a socket. Love the look of fresh new plugs in a freshly painted block. Stole the alternator mount back off the van engine and cleaned that up. Also had a test with my crate of alternators while its easy to access and, looks like a rwd twincam alternator will bolt up easily if needed. Popped the cleaned, rebushed and painted generator on for now. Pop Cant do too much more till i get the head back from the engine reconditioners with new valve seats and guides, and since i havnt taken it too them, i may be a while. Have picked up the reconditioned radiator tho, very happy with Radiator Services in South Dunedin. Good communication, job done well by people who know what theyre doing, for a reasonable price. They even added a fan temp bung (factory fan is constant - ill upgrade to a triggered system) for free as they rang me to collected it earlier than they said it would be ready and id only just noticed i forgot to ask them about it. Ended up with a cut down core from a second hand Nissan Patrol radiator, because getting a new core in the size and spec needed (3 row) was crazy expensive. This certainly wasn't cheap, but was a lot less expensive, and vans always need a solid cooling system.

i see it’s warming up

I can check it out mid week, if not sorted by then

Was actually there a couple / few months back kicking tyres for someone on here. Post lockdown BS means my time is even more limited. If no one sorts you out flick me a PM in a few weeks and i'll see what I can do. That mad man Chris ran past PaP a million times recently and is pretty local, maybe hit him up and see if he's able.

After triple checking my timing and putting the standard carb back on, it still wouldn't fire up. I checked the tappet clearances and noticed the exhaust was very tight at tdc and therefore 'open'. I checked and had to adjust all the exhaust tappets. Turns out none of the exhaust tappets were ever fully closing and therefore I never had a sealed chamber at tdc! Next pop it started up and idled great. I picked this up as a runner, but no idea how that could have been. I'll recheck the tappets another day when its warmed up and do a compression check. Oh well. Proved it wasnt the bike carbs, so they'll go back on tomorrow.

After delivering the filter elements just before Christmas, discovered the base plates were missing, and had to order those too. So another months delay, but what the heck, it's been a while already. Delivered the base plates, and the engine guys were finally able to run the engine safely, without worrying it would suck in a lose bolt or some such. Due to the time it had been there, they had been having to move it around a bit, which wasn't doing the engine any favours, so was recommended to run it under load on the dyno to bed in the rings. Getting it to run properly turned into a bit of a drama, when carbs were set correctly at idle it ran very rich higher up the rev range. The temporary solution was to wind the jets down to lean out the mixture. The permanent solution will be new jets and needles. Might get some leaner BBR needles from the Maxi HL, to compare to the Marina's BAD. Finally got it home today. Nice to hear it running, and to reverse it off the tow truck and drive it into the garage. Clutch working well, no trouble engaging first or reverse. A couple of things will need attention, lots of travel in the brake pedal, despite the calipers being overhauled, no doubt the rear cylinders will need looking at. Rev counter not working, supposed to be ok with the Powerspark distributor, will need to check the wiring. Pulled out the back seat, which is a brown cloth one from a later car, since I want to keep the original vinyl seats for authenticity, and the matching cloth front seats have completely different mounts anyway. Underneath I found two of the quarterlight rubber hinge blocks that I'd spent a year scouting the world for, and had finally found in a paddock near Invercargill. Wonder where the other two ended up. Anyhow, here are a couple of videos of the engine running. OCD will require turning the filter mesh and clips to line up properly.