Leaderboard

Decided to try and get this thing riding a bit nicer, previous suspension setup was a little soft and hit the bump stops a bit too often, and with the extra weight of a 4age it would of been worse. Went with a set of Fortune Auto's coilovers all around, since I'll end up chucking an F series or similar diff in and I have the skills to strengthen the rear strut towers. Picked up another pair of struts, cut them down and and blasted them. Wound them all the way down and the front ended up a little higher and the back's a bit lower. Might try and get the front down a bit more, to at least were it was. Made a stainless distributor blanking cover. Bought a Flo's upper water outlet, as it looked to be the much simpler and tidier way of doing the cooling system. Needed a RWD waterpump (inc pulley), thermostat housing and a little bypass pipe to complete the setup. And of course with everything else, when you change one thing you have to change something else. The FWD alternator bracket fouled on the thermostat housing, so I got a RWD one from Japan. Borrowed some Flo's 4age to K series engine mounts and made up my own. Sitting in the hole. Had to space the engine mounts out by 8mm, possibly because of the Cusco mounts being thinner than factory ones? Dizzy relocation kit installed, had to cut a bit of a hole in the fire wall for some clearance. Stripped the interior, pulled out the dash, heater, seats, carpet and scrapped off some sound deadening around the gearbox tunnel. Cut a big ol' hole for the J160 to fit. Probably didn't need to cut so much out, but to make it easy to drop out and fit, some extra clearance was needed. Also wanted it to sit up above the sills and chassis rails. Made up a gearbox mount. Added two extra body mounts further back so that it spreads the load a bit. Has heaps of ground clearance as well. The J160 shifter needed moving forward as it lined up with the end of the handbrake. Cut up the original shifter housing and welded it on to some ali tube and 12mm plate. Spent hours on our little lathe turning up the adapter bits. Works mint, barely any flex and feels like it should. Moved it 200mm forward from the Altezza position, 50mm more than the SQ kit and 40mm back from where the factory Starlet one was.

SUZUKI A100 I saw this at Kumeu with an 'offers' sign on it but CBF at the time, so grabbed the guys number. Rang him a week later to find he had been dicked about and wanted rid of it so I went and grabbed it. Motor was seized so separated with big hammers, cleaned up barrel and throw a new piston at it. Bike has decided it likes to seize after long periods of WOT. Will throw a bigger main jet at it one day. Is fine around the suburbs.

Small win... 99% sure I can do my chassis swap as a modified production LVV assessed and not as a scratch built.... A series2 on a later chassis is an example given in this sheet.... https://www.lvvta.org.nz/documents/infosheets/LVVTA_Info_02-2018_Modified_Production_&_Scratch-built_Low_Volume_Vehicle_Definitions.pdf That makes me happy.....

Long time no update. Car ran super well over summer, minus a little incident where I struck some slippery stuff (oil?) on the way up the bombay hill heading to Auckland for a classic meet. Long story short, front of the car hit the barrier, was lucky it missed the wheel and didn't swing the back end into it! 100km on full lock doesn't feel too good. About a week later we were heading to Leadfoot fest so had to quickly turn a repair around and get it presentable again... Slide hammer and a few dollys helped with that.

One thing did bug me though, with the headlight on there was no tail light only brake would illuminate. Got home today to check bulb and looks someone in the past has jammed a 21w/12v bulb in there. Which was a single filament and double contact bulb lol. Will get the correct 6v bulb and then everything should work properly haha.

I woodfired some pizza last week and they turned out pretty good, shall bring a bag of manuka for pizza purposes if anyone wants to give it a whirl

Definitions of what is scratch built has changed last year https://lvvta.org.nz/documents/infosheets/LVVTA_Info_02-2018_Modified_Production_&_Scratch-built_Low_Volume_Vehicle_Definitions.pdf

I hit a bit of a brick wall with progress because at some point I want to paint the engine bay and underside, and was trying to do things in a way which meant I could get that done, get the engine sorted and painted and in for good and then do things like make the exhaust afterwards Then I realised that was stupid and I was wasting time mucking around trying to figure out things with the engine on the stand, and whacked the motor and box back in . I need to get everything done then I'll take it apart for paint last Shifter mounted, i wanted it up high so it's not far from the steering wheel to the shifter, @RXFORD/matt from tin tricks helped me out again with that by folding up a shifter mount and putting some fancy holes in it And put the carb and hat on, the bonnet doesnt shut so I'll have to figure out what I'm going to do with that

The axles I have are essentially the early version of what ended up in the defender/disco. It means a disc brake conversion can use existing LR parts.

Come take one for a ride next time you're in the 09 m8

Granddad spec 1962 Super snipe purchased a few months ago. The 'ol Slumber is reasonably advanced for '62 with power assisted front discs, a hemi'ish head that makes casual observers by think there is more than one cam going on. Drive is through 3 on the tree. Plenty of torque - she can be left in top gear most of the time and pulls from pretty much standstill to motorway speeds. She's no lightweight track car though. 15ft 8" long, 1544 kgs and an oil change will take 15 pints or 8.5 litres. The paint looks like it's possibly house enamel, so I expect 40 seasons out of it, which is good as it has the usual 'nice from afar, far from nice' thing going on. There's minimal rust as the old boy I purchased it off seems to have sorted most of that out. Interior is glorious red stuff. Possibly leather but unlikely and lashings of walnut veneer. Picnic tables in the back for tea parties / lines of Raro etc. Since I've picked her up I've done a few things which I'll blog about with photos in the near future. So far : - Changed to negative earth so the pixies run the right way for radios and stuff. - Given her indicators on a stalk rather than the toggle switch that was cable tied under the dash - Found the horn relay (this took a lot of time...) and made it all horny - Re-upholstered the front seat to stop all the foam falling out from underneath and my ass sitting on the frame - Fitted a stereo, speakers and a sub - Made head and air come inside the cabin other than from that of the engine - Made it run on 6 cylinders - rebuilt the fuel pump Few other items on the agenda. Probably won't be slammed as it's quite nice to full her with 6 people and go for a cruise without loosing the exhaust. So, watch this space.

Hey does anyone know the size of the firepit? Gonna grab a few bits of wood and if it's an outdoor open dealt I got some shit knotty badly cut but good wood to bring. Gonna bring a few bits of split stuff too.

Bank master Master banker Masterbaker Masterbader Mastebater Masturbator

Who knows about injector pumps? A bit smokey when you put your foot down (but otherwise fine) makes me think there is something worn in here... So whats the plan....? Firstly, I cant touch it until my mini is done... Last WOF was in 2018 so somewhat thinking of just putting it through seeing if the list is managable and using it from there. But long term I want to pull the whole thing down a do a chassis swap to a late model hilux/navara etc and build it up from there. Will respray and refit as much interior as possible to make as comfortable as possible. Only thing which would prevent that is if I have to rego as a 'scratch build' and do a cert from there. Otherwise would either repower or rebuild the running gear and do a disc brake/power steering modification. Time will tell.... Discuss

@Kimjon Would this option work for you?

Balls! I tried mounting the retractors on the factory holes...looks good, clearances are good, it's in the magic H zone...but they don't work on that angle. Mine are designed to be mounted straight up/down. So I think I'll need to do the double plate method after all. Edit: Is this a viable alternative? And imagine there's a double plate, mounted it would look like this - held vertical against a non vertical surface

Another small job I wanted to take on whilst the car was in bits, was to check the valve clearances. I had no history of it being done, and its a fairly important thing to check on these engines, and not hard to do. Valve clearance is the small gap that must exist between the rocker arm and the top of the valve stem. This gap allows for expansion of the parts as they heat up (mainly the valve), so that there isn't either excessive space between the two (valve won't open as far or as long, and will make a loud tapping noise) or too little (valve may not close, and can result in a burnt valve). Some engines have the means to self adjust, usually via a hydraulic lifter (those things that make Mitsis go "tick tick tick"), but on these older engines (and even some modern engines, like Hondas) the clearances were a scheduled service item and needs to be checked and corrected. On this engine it's nice and easy to access with the intake piping out of the way. It's just a matter of removing the valve covers, of which mine were leaking anyway. It turns out that a few of the valve cover bolts weren't even finger tight, so no wonder the oil was getting through the gasket! With the covers off, you need to use a socket and ratchet to rotate the engine so that the crank timing mark lines up with TDC on the front pointer. If its correct, you should find that No 5 cylinder valves are "rocking" and this is when you measure No 1 cylinder clearances. "Rocking" is the term for when you watch the rockers on that cylinder and you will see the both are at the same height, but if you rock the crank one way, one rocker will push down slightly, and if you rock it the other way, the other rocker will push down. Ford Cologne engines are a little special, so the layout isn't quite what you expect. Take note of the layout of the intake and exhaust valves, they aren't always in the same order. The clearances should be as follows. These are done on a cold engine (about 20c ideally). The exhaust has a bigger clearance due to the additional heat the valve is subjected to. When checked with a feeler gauge, there should be a slight drag on the blade, but not too tight, or too loose. You kinda just do it by feel and get to know what it should feel like When one cylinder is done, check the list to see what rockers will be rocking next and turn the crank (in the direction of normal rotation) until those rockers rock, and check the clearances on the opposing cylinder in the list. Easy. If any of them need adjusting, there will be a screw on the opposite end of the rocker, that either needs to be loosened or tightened to open or close the gap. Most cars have a locking nut to stop it rotating, but the Cologne doesn't, so turning the screw will adjust it, and it self locks. Mine were very tight, so I used a six sided socket and rachet to turn them. A little goes a long way though, so sometimes even a slight tweak of the screw will be the difference between loose, and the right amount of drag. Five of six cylinders had valves that were too tight to get the blade into, and one cylinder was loose as a goose. I don't know what this means, hopefully it isn't a sign of valve recession due to a lack of lead, but time will tell. It could also just be bad adjustment from a previous mechanic....

So Hannah and I took the Imp for a two day road trip. Part business and part holiday. On Friday we drove up to Lake Rotoiti, Nelson lakes national park. On the way we checked out some old classic cars a fella owns who wants me to do a load of bodywork on. The Imp drove really well. The sun was out and the music cranking (some ambient tunes from David Tipper since you ask). We had a good coffee and then a nice walk on tracks around the lake. That evening we drove through to my olds place in Blenheim. A nice day out. Here's some photos... Chilled out at my parents, a feed of fish and chips, wine. A grand way to finish a day. Following morning we set to head home. Filled the Imp up, did some maths and allowing for a very optimistic speedo we reckon on around 40 mpg. Not bad considering the gearing at 100kph. Headed home, sadly into rain as a cold front was moving up the Island. Drove long way via Picton and Queen Charlotte drive because narrow twisty roads and go kart car... Over the Rai Saddle, sitting with the flow of traffic. I give the car some stick to pass a motorhome up the saddle and then when cruising down the other side the wee car does that thing.... 'JOLT!' The car does a small but very noticeable stumble. Like a tiny rev limiter. For those that have tuned megasquirt, or maybe other EFI, it felt like when you click burn. "What was that?" Hannah asks. "Shit- I don't know but it felt like an ignition thing, not spluttering fuel thing" I reply. We both go quiet. I almost want to turn the music down and listen for any untoward mechanical sounds that might be there. But I don't. I'll play it cool. Don't worry. Don't get Hannah worried. It was probably just a... fuck. I don't know. I'll just say nothing, drive a little slower and whatever it was will be a memory soon. The silence is piercing. Now I notice every bloody vibration. I'm watching all the gauges like a jet pilot. All the time my mind is going through all possible scenarios. What could that have been. What if we breakdown? 3km pass. It seems ok. I start to relax. Only one big set of hills to go. I pass another rental car, most likely the scurge of the kiwi roads, a Nissan Tiida. I dont know because I'm still having a mini stress.. 'JOLT'. Here we go. This is happening. This time its for good. The car dies and I have to quickly think where I'm going to stop to fix it and quick before I slow too much and that silver blob I just passed drives up my bum. I spot a forestry road on the right, coast across to it (whilst trying to make it look like nothing is wrong so saving face for all classic drivers who get the "oh old cars are so unreliable...") I pull to a stop and the engine splutters to its last road driven rotation with a bang. Bugger. Remain calm. Reception on phone? Not a chance. Tool kit in boot comes out and we go through all the obvious things, concluding that it is indeed the ignition. Annoyingly it was the ignition module, of which I didnt have a spare. If it were points I'd have fixed it. Such is life. Luckily the rain had stopped and double lucky that across the road from the forestry road we parked on was a farm house. The kind farmers wife took us in, let us use her phone and fed us tea and biscuits. I called a mate out with his trailer. We have AA membership however its the basic cover that would have got us to a garage. I knew a Garage wasn't going to fix this and we'd still have to get home. Yeah nah. Stuff that. Mate turns up with his trailer and we have a choice as chilled out trip home. We fed him dinner and it was all good in the end. Big thanks to @Sanfiddy for rescuing us! Oldschool spec favours. I only took one photo of the day... So that was that. On Sunday I removed the dizzy and then the module. It fails the tests as predicted. Here's the troublesome module... Come Monday and at my local wreckers looking for a module. I dont want to spend $120 on a new one when I'm about to fit full engine management. No luck locally but we were in Nelson on Tuesday and I found one at a wreckers there, cheap too. Fitted it that night and brooooooommmmmm The replacement was a proper Hitachi module whereas the one that let its smoke out was a no brand cheap one. Even felt lighter if that means anything. I took the broke one apart and it looks like a little cityscape inside- heck it would scare a Barry used to the kettering system... I also managed to score a spare couple of dizzies, converted with accuspark. My bench looks like a bomb went off in a hitachi factory... I'll need to fix them up, check them out and then I could always have a spare setup in case. That is until I fill the Imp with boxes of electronics and then there's no chance Mr AA man can help me. It'll be like every modern car- useless when broke. In other news- this turned up from China the day we left for the lakes... Its a brand new Hitachi 306 clone, all for not much more then a full carb gasket set costs. I had ordered this before I had scored all the other Megasquirt bits. Anyway- I'm still looking forward to trying it out because my worn out carb is about as good as I can get it. The new one looks so shiny. I'll report back with my findings on how deep the quality goes...

new page

Used to be red. Because Red is faster. Pretty keen on swapping over to the Mazda front end, Saw the chrome Mazda grill on Tard me, and it seems to be just a bonnet swap to make the Mazda grill work. Will know more when I get the donor. And the bonnets have to come off anyway. Rained off work today. So was able to sus a few things. I currently don't have a car with a tow ball. So the first mission was sussing something that can tow a car trailer. And a car trailer. Luckily my brother to the rescue. Has a towbar on his Toyota work shitter. V6 3L Avalon. Not the ideal tow vehicle. But better than none. And booked a trailer with the boys at Tool Hire Taranaki for Tuesday arvo. (Gotta time in with my brother's shift work, my own work, and the owner of the donors work hours) Think I might prep and underbody seal the engine bay while the motor is out. Attempt to get another 30 years out of it. Not overly worried about looks. I quite like the idea of patina rust repairs going on because work ute. And if I do the engine bay now. I shouldn't have to touch it again. (famous last words)

Got the intake all done with a K&N filter, looks pretty good I think. Took a guy for a drive that knows transmission things up the road and back and he reckoned the trans was sweet, shifting how it should, just the engine was massively down on power. Tried to diagnose the problem myself but I couldn't really figure much out. It was throwing error codes for the secondary throttle and knock sensors. Discovered the secondary throttle sensor was only used for traction control so I didn't need to worry about that one. Was hoping the knock sensors were just reading high because the timing was out, so I took it to Danny's Autos in Palmy to go on the dyno and see if they can tune it and figure out what's wrong. They got it on the dyno, they were just bringing it up to speed and fuel started pissing out everywhere. One of the fuel hoses going up to the fuel rail split, don't know if it just happened or if it's been like that for awhile, but we never noticed any fuel in the valley before, where as there was heaps in it then. So off came the intake and manifold to replace it. Whilst they had that off they had a look at the knock sensors and they had seen better days. The wiring pins were pretty corroded and the casings were cracked. They sourced some new OEM ones and chucked them in. They also found one of the breather hoses had a split, as well as one of the igniter modules was only firing 1 of 4 cylinders on that one side. So basically this has only been running on 5 cylinders all this time. Thought it didn't sound quite right haha. The steering rack also decided to start leaking power steering fluid out of a place the fluid shouldn't be. Beach Hop was the next week and the rack had to be sent to Auckland to be rebuilt. Managed to get the engine back together and drive it home on the Tuesday night and pull out the rack to be sent off on Wednesday. Luckily they got around to rebuilding it fairly quick and sent off again so it arrived first thing on Friday morning. Got a different igniter module from the wreckers off a SR20 and it ran waaaaaay better! Chucked the rack back in Friday morning and took it for a WOF, passed with flying colours, so went and got some rego and now it's all legal!!!! On Friday/Saturday the fuel pump must of came out about a dozen times, half of which were on the side of the road. Went for a bit of a drive and the fuel pump kept dying for some reason, thought maybe the wiring in-tank was a bit dodgy, replaced it all and soldered every connector, that didn't make much difference. Discovered that if I gave the pump a good smack it would start back up pumping a bit more fuel or just die completely. Decided to get another fuel pump from Repco and chucked that in. Turns out the brand new "genuine" Walbro pump I got off ebay was shit. Went sooooo much better again!! Took it to the 4 & Rotary Jamboree show and shine at Manfield on the Sunday and took home the Best Commercial Piston trophy. Then on the Monday took it back into Danny's Autos to get dyno'd. Made 100kw at the wheels which I thought wasn't quite right (should be closer to 200kw?), but he reckoned it was running right and just the reading wasn't that accurate, he had trouble getting into 4th, kept changing down, so had to do it in third and that was maxing out the dyno's rolling speed. It had good consistent 02 sensor readings. Took it up to Beach Hop on the Wednesday. Had no issues other than getting some brake fade through the windy bits between Waihi and Whangamata, we think there must of still been some air left in the lines. After that happened I was changing it manually between 2nd and 3rd gear through the windy bits, rather than just leaving it in drive as it engine brakes way more. Survived all through Beach Hop, including going up to Whitianga, Kuaotuna and Onemana as well as cruising up and down the main street lots, the rear bumper took a few scrapes, I think it needs some titanium stripes underneath! I think it was one of the cars that got some of the most attention. Managed to get all the way back down to Marton, then when I was overtaking up a hill, noticed smoke coming from under the dash, so quickly pulled over and checked it out. The transmission sump had either smoke or steam since it was raining coming off of it, also smelt very burnt and the oil was quite dark. My parents caught up and we decided to just keep driving. I then noticed it was revving at 3500rpm at 100km/h, where as it's usually around about 1800rpm. It was only changing from first into second gear and that's it, if I took my foot off the accelerator it would drop straight down to idle. It was a slow drive home from there at 70km/h. Next couple of days I pulled the trans out, pulled off the sump and it had quite a bit of metallic build up at the bottom and just smelt very burnt. I guess it's always been slipping, as to why it didn't make much power on the dyno. Dropped it off today to get a quote on being rebuilt, so hopefully it's not too bad. It used about $400 worth of petrol over Beach Hop, which I think worked out to be 15 l/100km. After driving it for about 1200km I have decided the seat definitely needs redoing, it's way too hard, would also be nice to sit a bit lower and further back as well. Also the accelerator pedal has your foot at too much of an angle back, so gets sore rather quick. Shouldn't be too hard to fix as the seat changes should help and just modify the pedal a little. Also the door latches + door seals are terrible, takes way too much effort to get them closing right. A softer door seal might help, and you can get bear jaw latch kits that are basically a bolt in thing for these which might be the go when I have the spare money.

Learnt a lot in the past month and a bit. Main thing being that you should probably lube your fuel injector o-rings when you go to put them back in. Got the engine running, was only running on half the cylinders. Discovered there was no fuel going to the rear half cylinders, so decided to pull out the injectors. Took them into town and put them on an injector tester and nothing happened. Was told they can gunk up after sitting for awhile. So went off back home and gave them a spray with some cleaner and smashed them on the ground until they started clicking freely again with power to them. Got them all sounding really good, so in they went (without any lube, thinking back it should of been something that should of come to mind, but I guess I was just in a rush to get it running!), as they went in they must of torn the o-rings. I got the intake and everything back on and together and we started it up again. Ran mint!! So turned it off to see how it would start again, flat battery. Chucked the charger on, and then decided we'd put the wheels on, piece it a bit more together and go for a drive up the driveway. By time we got it together and off the hoist, a few hours had past and so had a decent amount of fuel past the o-rings and into cylinder no.5. Cranked it over and it didn't want to start very easily, so gave it a few more attempts and finally started up with a lovely knocking noise! We thought maybe it was just something loose in the bellhousing, as when we first started it we quickly realised there were no bolts in the flex plate to the torque converter. Anyway drove it up and down the driveway and then back on to the hoist. Decided over Christmas we'd pull out the transmission to have a look in there, other than the weights on the flex plate being ripped off by the torque converter there was nothing that obvious. Started the engine without the trans in and it still had the knock, which was a disappointment. Our neighbours Tony and Jason, who are a bit more mechanically minded came over on Boxing day after hearing that it wasn't transmission related, and went over everything they could think of. Eventually after a good few hours we narrowed it down and decided to check how high each piston is coming up by sticking a threaded rod with a nut on it and turning the engine over by hand. Got around to cylinder no.5 and it was about 5-6mm lower than the rest. Was obvious at this stage that we had a bent rod that was caused by hydraulicing the engine with fuel. Out came the engine, onto a stand, flipped over and then pulled the sump off. It was pretty bent! The crank smashed up the bottom of the piston, but other than the rod and piston everything else looked good. The engine is now at the rebuilders and injectors have been professionally cleaned with new o-rings. The buggered o-rings on the injectors. Since I had awhile off work over Christmas and the engine debacle halted progress a bit, we decided it was a good time to sand out all the runs in the clearcoat and give it another couple of coats with some flatter clear since I wasn't quite happy with the last stuff I used. Used some PPG autothane clear with flattening base in it this time. Was way easier to spray, looks waaaaay better, a lot smoother and a more consistent flatness. Also the extra coats covered the rust up a bit more, as before it didn't seem to be covered well in the rusty areas. With the engine out it was a good time to go through and tidy up a few things. Made up some stainless heatshields that cover the wiring on one side and the fuel and brake lines on the other. Also wrapped some of the exhaust in heat wrap to try and help keep some heat away. Ignore the plastic cable ties, the ones that came with the wrap were too short, and I'll change them soon. After trying to drain the coolant I decided it'd much easier if there was a drain plug, rather than having to disconnect a hose and having it run straight onto a crossmember. Next thing to do was sort out the fuel filler. Turned out the u-bends I bought for the headers were the correct size I needed, so took one of them, cut it to fit and welded a breather pipe on the side. Made a stainless pipe that goes from the 1 5/8" u-bend to 2" on the tank. Also added some gas struts to the rear bed lift up part. Whilst under the rear end noticed the rear airbags were only mounted on the bottom with bolts and no washers. This was mostly because the mount was so close to the diff tube and the airbag mounting holes had quite a small PCD, you couldn't fit much else in there. Came up with these plates that mount to the airbags with a countersunk screw and then have the studs stick through the outer of the slotted hole in the diff mount. Heaps of room to get a nyloc nut and washer now. Was running out of stuff that I could think of to do, so my Dad made a start planing and fitting the Matai wood planks that I bought quite a while ago. Fitted in they looked a bit weird being natural, too bright or something. Had some Japanese stain lying around that we tried and I quite liked it. So went and wiped that all over it once it was fitting well. Then wiped over some Scandinavian oil and came it out really nice. Got the windows installed, he still needs to come back and finish them off. The front window stainless trim doesn't fit as well as I'd hope it would, sorta sticks out a bit, but we're sure it's in there properly. Probably a combination of the crappy re-pro rubber and trim not being 100% right to start with, as I've heard of a heap of people having troubles with windscreen rubbers not fitting nicely on these. Supposed to be taking this to Nats in less than 6 weeks hahaha

Cut off the h150 brackets to mount onto the h165. Will need to make sure I weld these on perfect! aiming for a non cert swap as the diffs are practically identical Yarns heeeeerre

Need to do updates more often so they're smaller! Put the tray on as I needed to see where I could run the fuel and brake lines. Also borrowed a pair of wheels off one of my parent's cars, to test the tire sizing. Bought a fuel filter and made a stainless steel bracket to hold it. Made some mounts for the rear bumper to bed brackets, as they were welded on before. Got out the LED tail lights that I've had for ages and made up some stainless brackets and polished them. Started running the brake line out of copper-nickel tube. Also got some 5/16" lines for the fuel lines. Made some stainless clamps to hold them all together and to the firewall and chassis. Made some bits for the column change linkage. Top middle piece mounts on the firewall around the column and has some little stoppers that make it so the gear stick needs to be pulled out to change from certain gears. Left bit is what goes over the stoppers and pivots with the gear stick to push the rod bit down, which then pushes the right piece down and change gear. Thought at first it would have to be some super complex system with cables and stuff but this way was actually pretty simple to make work. Then I needed to make up a indicator on the column to show which gear it was in. Drew on up in Solidworks and laser cut it out. The accelerator cable needed some modifying to work, it's wasn't quite long enough to reach the pedal, so made a new bracket that moved the housing closer to the throttle, which allowed for more cable out the pedal end. Then all it needed was a plate with a lot in it that bolted to the pedal to hold the little ball on the end. Have had some big train air horns for ages. Couldn't find anyway with enough space to fit them, as they were originally mounted together in a triangle shape. So pulled them apart, made some new brackets and bolted them up under the cab to the chassis. Need to just run some lines to them. Some boxes of stuff finally arrived from America. They included some front windscreen stainless trim, door panels and the surrounding trim. Might replace the door panels one day as they weren't as good as I thought they'd be for the "deluxe" spec ones. Also arrived were some wheels. 15x8 Artillery steel wheels with baby moons and beauty rings. Spent ages trying to figure out what colour to paint them, didn't really want to go red (what everyone does) or black (spent too much money on them for them to be hidden). Decided a bronze colour would look good and hopefully not too out of place. Then spent more time trying to find a nice bronze.

Spent a few more hours sanding the chassis down. Once that was done I borrowed a rotisserie off our neighbour and made some brackets that bolted through the bumper mounts. Worked really well, was very balanced and didn't want to spin around by it's self. So then sprayed some epoxy primer down. After much deliberation I decided to paint it with some Hammerite. Since it comes only in certain colours I bought some silver and black and mixed them until it reached a colour I was happy with. Was quite difficult to paint as it was getting lots of overspray on parts I'd already painted and drying too quickly. But eventually got it reasonable enough. Isn't quite as dark as it looks in the photos. Now the chassis is done it was time to start on the front and rear end. Did a bit more welding and tidying up of the front clip, once it was all stripped down. Made some solid mounts for the front since the rubber ones weren't really doing anything as it's already solid mounted. There's quite a few bits to it once it's all in pieces. Going to take awhile to paint it all. Sent the front end to get sandblasted as it's easier to get someone else to do the bigger stuff since it doesn't fit in the cabinet. I did all the little bits which took most of a day. Bought some new brake rotors, pads, shoes and a rebuild kit for the rear calipers locally. Have purchased everything else to rebuild the Jag front from England, which should be here next week hopefully. Gave the rear calipers a tidy up by sandblasting, replacing the seals, better condition slide pins, new pads and a coat of paint. Now they just need new hoses.

Made some mounts for the gauges. Also made a mount to add some strength between the pedal box and dash. The wiper motor was just dangling around with the single mount so made another that connects it down to the bottom of the dash. Once they were made there wasn't much else that needs access from behind the dash so I welded the dash in. This is the second heater mount I made, the other one didn't look right as it didn't go up as high and wasn't the correct angle. Attached it with some rivnuts on the original firewall stiffeners or whatever they are. Found a high stop light in my pile of parts so decided to make up a bracket to sit on the seat frame. Gave all the dash parts, cowl vent and handbrake a sandblast and rustkill ready to paint. Painted with 2k gloss black. Made up a new brake line mount on the diff because the other one was fairly close to the exhaust. Have ordered a new line and fitting for it. Finished all the lines for the airbags. Here's a video of them working, the back still goes up very quick but that should hopefully slow down once there's more parts/fuel.

Went and bought a bunch of things to finish of the air bag system. Got a couple of water traps between the compressor and tank now. There's already a decent amount of moisture in them from a few fills as you can see. Bought a pressure gauge as well, just to check on what it's doing occasionally. Trying to get all the correct fittings for everything to work was a mission haha. The 3/8" line coming off the tee is for the huge air horns that I have, it's sooooo loud! Waiting on the laser cutter at work to be fixed so I can cut out some brackets to hold all the lines in place. Undersealed the running boards and the radiator panel. Split apart the grill bars that were all the riveted together so I could sandblast and paint the backside of them. No progress pics but here's some of them done. Painted the back ones cream underneath because they were originally that colour on top but they have some blue overspray on them. It should mostly clean off with a scotchbrite, as that needs doing all over the body panels before it gets clearcoated anyway. Started to assemble the front grill/radiator panels. All went together well apart from the fastener sets I got from America not having the correct amount or just missing things all together. As you can see in the above pics I also assembled the park lights, I had new lenses, bulb sockets, gaskets and chrome surrounds but no new housings. The original ones looked pretty bad before I pulled them all apart and gave them a sandblast, but cleaned up like new with some silver zinc paint. The new bulb sockets I bought were double contact ones to run park lights and indicators on a dual filament bulb, but I had some orange/amber LED's laying around that fitted, so may use them and just have parklights in the headlight housing and have these just as indicators.

Fixed all the rust holes in the lower radiator panel. Forgot to take photos of the progress but nothing really exciting anyway. Bogged up all the pitting in it and gave it a couple coats of paint, along with the brackets that go behind the grill bars. Made up the air lines that go to the rear air bags. Made the left hand one with not too much trouble and then made the other side incorrect, as it had to go a different route because of the fuel tank fittings, and would of fouled on the deck frame. Got it right the next go though. Of course had to give it a test!

Have now finished both inner fenders. The first one seemed to come out better for some reason, had a bit nicer shape to it, but they aren't too noticeably different. At this point I pulled apart the whole front clip and took the fenders, radiator support, lower grill panel and a couple of fender supports to the sandblasters. Got them all back and epoxy and filler primed the inners, then bogged up all the bits that needed doing. Didn't really need much at all, pretty happy with how they turned out. Painted the radiator support at the same time, should really try and have more things ready to paint at once as I've already gone through 4 litres of epoxy primer and paint and a decent amount is just waste. Primed and painted the inside of the fenders as well. Every time I mask up the patina I realise how much easier it would of been to just paint the whole thing haha. Need to give them and the inners a coat of underseal now. This is the lower grill/radiator panel, it needs quite a lot of rust repair. Have already done a patch in the middle awhile ago but haven't gotten around to it since. The grill is going to be great fun cleaning up the backside and painting Again should of painted the whole truck haha. Painted the deck frame with hammerite and then installed it and c--notch cover into the bed. The latch works how I'd hoped it would. Added a gusset on to the bed frame hinge as it didn't quite seem strong enough when all the weight of the wood will be on there. Received the cut windows back. Got green tinted ones because I wanted some sort of tint and grey looks too modern/yuck on old cars. ' Ordered a couple lengths of 1/2" aluminium tube and bent up some of the air lines for the valves to air tank.

Finished off the left side of the inner fender and have nearly finished the other side. Decided on where to put the fuel filler, so went and bought a flush pop-up filler cap so it can be hidden on the c-notch cover. Came with a steel weld-in bung, was really good quality over-all (unlike the chinese one I tried first), but didn't like how the cap had a slight roundness on top, so chucked it in the lathe which fixed that. Bung welded in and cleaned up. Wanted the c-notch cover to be painted some sort of satin black but also to be pretty durable. Decided to try and give some Hammerite a go. Looks pretty good I think. So went a head and painted the airbag tray with it as well. Since I mounted the two compressors too close together to fit standard 90° fittings in the intake ports, I had to make some of my own up. Turned the thread down so they wound all the way in and then cut off the female threaded end and added some turned down hose-tails. Finished fittings welded and painted. The original trim that held the rubber on the bottom inside of the doors were pretty rusty so folded up some new ones and gave them a coat of black paint. While I had the paint ready I gave the fuel tank a coat. Moved on to the latch for the bed that lifts up. Bought a coupe of bear-claw latches from Ebay and made a box for it to fit in, which then gets welded in to the box section frame. Made it that way just so water and crap wouldn't fill up in there. A package arrived last week as well. An Accuair E-level Air Management system.

Sandblasted and zinc sprayed all the parts that go inside the doors. Also stripped the rubbers and glass out of the vent window frames, sandblasted, epoxied, primed and painted them in 2K black. Did the same to the door and bonnet hinges except did them in the blue. I have already used just over 3 litres of blue so far! Will need to get some more at some stage. Now that all the glass has been removed I made some wooden templates and sent them off to get some new ones cut. Should be done next week sometime and then the doors can be assembled. I have also made a start on the inner guard where the engine was too wide. Have changed my mind many times about how to go about this. Decided it was easier to try and make in two pieces rather than attempting to get one the right shape and fitting nice enough to weld. Although it ended up being made in 3 pieces, because the front compound curved part ended up too small. Worked out really well this way, as I just started with a rectangular sheet of steel with the edge folded, then just trimmed it down until it fitted in the gap. Once it was fitted and tacked in I could make up the compound curved piece to fit. Test fitted it back on and there is heaps of clearance, wasn't sure if there was going to be enough at first. Took it back off to fully weld and sand. Has come out pretty good and it's all quite smooth/blends in very well. Made a start on the lower flange. Needs to raise up in the middle where those two lines are to clear the engine mounts on the chassis.

Bolted on the fenders and sprayed some underseal on to them. Moved onto sanding down the doors ready to paint. Needed a little bit of filler in a few small dents and some spot welds right in the middle, otherwise they're really straight. Happy with how they came out, will give them a wet sand and polish since a few bits of dust landed in there when I was painting. Next up was the bonnet. Used a strip disk and DA sander to remove as much rust and paint as I could and then used the sandblaster to remove the rest I couldn't get to. Finally got a couple of runs, not too bad though as one gets covered by the latch panel.

These updates are getting a bit big, should really post more frequently. Made a new badge for the front of the heater since the old one wasn't in the greatest condition. Think it came out pretty good, but I reckon it could be better. Will give the low areas a paint and see how it looks. These are the dies I used to press it. Here's the finished thing made from 0.7mm stainless. Got the parts back from chroming. Shoutout to Wanganui electroplating for not charging for them to be done. My parents had some bumpers there to be done as well. The ashtray is a bit pitted but the raised bits aren't too bad and I was thinking of painting the low stripes anyway, so should look fine. Discovered there was no gap for the seat belts to fit between the seat, so bent up some 10mm steel tube and welded together some ovals for them to pass through. Made some new ecu mounts. Spent more time drawing up the triangle cutouts to look right than anything else. Couldn't quite get enough length from the wiring to mount them all the way back as I would of liked, but this will do. Took the rear fenders off the bed and took them, the runningboards, splash aprons and a couple of bonnet latch panels to the sandblasters. They did a good job so looks like it will be staying patina for a bit longer haha. Primed them all up on the weekend, would be soooo much easier if I was painting the whole truck! Sprayed some paint on today, pretty happy with how it turned out! Will be undersealing the fenders and running boards but gave them a quick spray with what I had left over. Was going to strip apart the front clip to take to the sandblasters, but decided not to as I still needed to finish the cutouts in the inner guards for the engine, as this was way easier to get right as one piece. Will sorta look like this except the bottom profile will have more of a "S" shape to it. Going to be a lot of work but hopefully should be able to blend it all in nicely.

Ha, awesome. I've lived in Masterton for the past few years and have seen you driving about in this all the time. Sounds brilliant. Didn't know you had a build thread here. Good work with the a14 on Dell'ortos, I like. The homemade engine cradle is a nice bit of kit too, I'll remember that for future projects.

Gave the hinges a bit of a polish and made some nylon washers, it all should work well I hope. Need to find some wood for the bed now. Decided I should go back and finish mounting the front sway bar. Started by making some new mounts since the ones that came with the rubbers weren't very nice. Bolted it all down in the right place and stole the sway bar links off the rear since they need to be changed anyway. Needed to cut out the side of that gusset sorta thing on the front end that I made ages ago since the sway bar hit it when the front raises up. Another thing that my parents picked up in America was an ashtray that goes in the middle dash panel, since neither of the RHD dashes came with one. Could of used the LHD one but wanted to keep that dash complete to hang on the wall or something haha. Had to get a second hand one since they don't sell them separate from the whole dash panel, and they were never made in stainless so it will need to be painted or chromed.

Nothing too exciting has happened, just lots of little things, hence why there hasn't been many updates, but I thought I'd better do one before I get too many more photos. Rust killed and painted the back of the dash today. I'm tempted to weld it in to the cab but I know that I will regret it when I need to fit the wiper motor, heater etc behind it. Pressed the holes in on the airbag tray, looks heaps better! Needed to weld some box section behind it as it warped quite abit. I'm thinking I might paint it with some black crinkle paint. Had the certifier come and have a look at how to mount the seat belts, since the upper back of the cab is a thin double skin. Came to the conclusion that we needed to slide in and weld some plates in behind the skin and door frame. Hard to see in the photos but the inner skin has quite a weird shape to it; curves out and then back in and around to the rear window. It also slants down at an angle, so that's where these brackets come in. Took awhile to figure out how to make them as I started off trying to shape them to fit the curved profile but that was a fail, then realised that they could just be flat plate at the two angles. Drilled some holes, hoped they were in the right place. The plates fit through a gap up by the headlining. I could only just fit my hand in there, caused a lot of pain trying to get them fitting right. They were perfectly in the right place so plug welded them in. Also another two plugs above and below the nut. Scored a handbrake for a few dollars from the vintage car club Cleaned it up and cut some holes in the floor Because the dash has been swapped from LHD to RHD there wasn't any holes in the firewall for the support brackets. Instead of drilling holes and having some horrible looking threads and nuts sticking through, I made up a mount and shorted the bracket to suit. Need to do the same on the other side now. Welded in the cowl vent pivot/gutter thing as well. Gave it all some decent coats of paint so hopefully it doesn't rust again. Put the rubber seal in but it's too thick and hard so the vent sits a little high, will have to sort a new seal one day.

The dash now has all the rust fixed, really happy with how it turned out. Took maybe close to 10 hours to just weld it all up though. Should only need bog in a few places, the rest a few coats of primer will fill nicely.

Haven't done much more to the dash apart from fit it into the cab, as I am undecided how to approach the rusty holes under the gauges yet, a bit too many complex shapes! My Dad had a 55 Chevy steering column laying around, so we started to mock it up. The shaft out of that column had been welded in multiple places so we found another column that had a mint shaft and it was also longer so didn't need an extra universal joint added. The outer tube of the column was pretty average, had lots of extra holes, cutouts and had been shortened, so drew a new one up in Solidworks and got it put through the Tube laser at work. It's now made from 2 inch stainless tube.

Longest exhaust build ever! What a stupid idea it was to design it like this haha. So far has 5 pairs of flanges on each side if you include the ones at the end of the headers. Will have another pair after the diff as well. Got some flexi's and welded them in, as well as the rest of it. Need to put the tray back on now and see where the rest of the exhaust can run out the back. Made some mounts, after making them incorrectly to start with. Had the rubber hanging under tension where-as it should be compressing, otherwise it would most likely tear the rubber in half. Also made some gussets for the 4 link brackets since they didn't quite look strong enough. Might make some to tie in the other side as well. Need to make a start on the fuel tank soon. Any recommendations on an in-tank fuel pump to use? Don't really know much about them, 255LPH should be enough? Tank will be about 220mm deep if that matters.

Done a little bit more. Tried the x-flow underneath but there wasn't really enough room. Move it back to here and looks pretty good. Can be dropped out from here as well. Resonators go somewhere around here. Ran out of stuff to do on the exhaust since I don't have the pipe or flanges yet, so went and filled in some more holes in the floor.

Finished this patch Made a start on the exhaust and realised I have a problem with it fitting between the crossmembers. It's going to have to be made of lots of different sections with a heap of flanges, otherwise it won't be able to be removed or fitted. It's fairly tight just to get the x-flow bit in. Might be better if I put the x-flow underneath, so then that whole section to the headers can be one piece and just drop straight down to remove. Only problem with doing that will make the exhaust sit very close to the ground, but should be fine as it won't be as low as the running boards. Will run a resonator on either side in the middle and hopefully those sections can be slid out the back if there's a flange just before the diff kick-up.

A little more rust fixed. Getting good at it now!

All un-needed holes are now filled! And is now covered in etch-primer.

Filled 3 holes today, then got sick of it and attacked it with a stripper disk and an orbital sander.

Took the cab outside for the first time in 6 and a half years to sand blast the firewall. Look at all the holes!! Right hand side floor and lower firewall are getting replaced with some new panels that are on the way from the USA. Have filled about a third of the holes so far, out of about 50 holes in total!

Fixed some rust and filled some holes. Along the bottom isn't rusty holes, just pitting unlike what it looks like it the pics. Both patches had seams filled with lead through them which was annoying! Fixed them up the best I could, will figure out a way to paint/blend them back in.

Got the compressed superlows in awhile ago, so here's some pics:

Was told to change the 4-link bushes from the rubber ones to some spherical rod ends, as the previous ones loosen the locking nut when the diff twists and the spherical ones allow more twist. Had some spacers spun up out of aluminium, hopefully they don't clunk too much. Also started designing an Aluminium fuel tank.

Made the extension parts on the front end for where the sway bar mounts to. Cut out old piece that looked like this: Fabricate a new piece that fits in nicely. And another piece for strength. Weld, weld, weld Mounts like so, just waiting until I get some sway bar link bushes first before drilling the holes, as the current ones are pretty stuffed and pull it over to one side.

Installed some MRP RCAs and some rear superlow springs which made it higher, so now has even more rake than before haha. Will get them compressed once they have settled a bit. Got sick of the tires rubbing on the plastic inner guards, so pulled them off. Also rolled the guards and then undercoated everything to try and prevent rust. No longer rubs at all, so that only means it needs to go lower!