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So I got another jalopy, I was searching for a decent triumph sedan when I saw this Lada for sale on marketplace. I thought "Hell, I haven't seen one of those for years!" so promptly went and got it to ensure I wouldn't miss out on the soviet driving experience. My impressions of the car are that it is great - for a car from 1970, by the time this one was made in 89' it was woefully obsolete. I understand they kept making them until 2010 in russia, and 2012 in egypt! The car had been in one family from new, and had been outside most of the time - very little rust and the interior is fine, but the paint was sunbleached to almost white from its original dark beige. I am rather enamored with its factory tool kit, with the tools all stamped cccp. I scoured the oxidation off a bit of the paint and found a good match, repainted it in the driveway, now just need to paint the windowframes black, swap the tyres onto a sweet set of fiat ward rims I found, then have some sweet proletarian adventures.

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 got some different mirrors. These are "sport" mirrors. They were standard on 454SS trucks , with the powerful bathurst winning two hundred and thirty horsepower 7.4 litre engine coupled to a 3 speed automatic transmission. These were well known as being extremely fuel efficient, Toyota copied the fuel injection system for the first gen prius and were not able to get the same economy on petrol as the SS I have a theory that the SS's incredibly low fuel consumption is because of the small mirrors so I'm expecting to get a result where my 350 actually makes petrol go back into the tank. Also now I can't see behind me as good but I don't care because I'm not living in the past maaaaan

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.

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

Boot all painted up now too, for a complete novice like me, it was pretty tricky getting into all the tight areas , but came out pretty good overall imo.

Spent the better part of my day today fabricating my own fan shroud. This car came from the factory with one of those meat cleaver spec 4 bladed fans of death, and at some point was changed to a Chrysler 18" clutch fan. It didn't draw much air, so I replaced the fan clutch with a brand new one, and had a bit of success but it wasn't to my liking. I decided it needed a fan shroud, and I sure as shit wasn't going to be forking out upwards of $500 for a new one. I just made it from panel steel, folded it up, and welded the corners to match the style of my truck one. Was a bit of mucking around involved, but I'm happy with how it came out. Now when holding my hand in front of the rad, you can feel it draw air through every inch of the core, instead of roughly just in the middle. Win. Spray painted it and mounted it this evening. It won't be hard finding some Auckland traffic to test out my revamped cooling system. The factory looking "22" sprayed on there is only there because I keep forgetting what size my radiator is The start, I made it 100mm too tall so I had to cut it down from this Welding it together the same way as a basic Chrysler one After some work on the sandbag with a mallet, the top had nice clearance and I was ready to make some mount brackets All painted, with the "22" as a half ass attempt at factory ink markings Installed and functional! Fingers crossed this keeps me cool at Beach Hop and cruise events. I haven't had years of metal fab experience but it's a satisfying result - I think the Valiant needs one now! Next time I'll have a go at putting some swages into one for a bit of detail.

More goodies.. Shoes, pads, LH thread wheel nuts, rocker covers The Mr. Gasket breathers have been display pieces on the shelf for ages so it’s good to finally have a use for them

Its all go. Have had front and rear factory bumpers rechromed at Shiny Bits in Geraldine, came up mint as. Have ordered and awaiting a Motorsport 3D dash from aussie to fit the Haltech IC7. Fits in the location of factory gauge cluster so makes it nice and tidy location to mount the dash. Retains the factory air vent etc. Toby has polished my BBS lips and all my stainless trim for the car. So its all straightened and wrapped up in bubble wrap ready for when the cars painted. BBS Centres need a repaint still but all the new hardware and repolished lips are looking tops.

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.

Leonie used her connections / google to source some solid carbonic anhydride: Strictly speaking we probably didn't need to remove the sound deadening, but it was already flaking off in some places, possibly had rust under it, and it'd just be weird blasting and repainting a whole car and not be bothered to get the deadening off. It wouldn't feel right. Like a silly billy I didn't get any good vids of us smashing it up. 1. Pour onto sound deadening 2. Listen to the snap crackle and pop of the deadening cracking and releasing from the metal. The cracks are cool to watch appear; sometimes there's enough force to launch bits of dry ice 3. Remove the ice 4. Take to it with fingers/hammer/scraper and it just crumbles off It was very cool to play with this stuff. For the deadening on the tunnel etc we just held some dry ice against it using a towel. Not hard to do, and very fun! Before: After: Happily there's almost no rust under the deadning except in a couple of places. The worst place is where I expected some surface rust to continue under the deadening, on the rear right side seat. But it's not bad. If I could weigh the deadening I would - it's pretty beefy. Somewhere between 15-25kg we think. Now the car is basically ready for blasting... some final zip ties are lurking here and there and I'd like to have a go at removing some seam sealer in places and scrub off the worst of the caked dirt. Here's a shot of the car just before we removed the deadening. We've got a date for blasting: 11 oct

Have had a heap of work on over the last couple of months, so really haven't managed to get much done on the car. That contract winds up soon though, and I might take a break from the side hustle work for a bit and focus on making some progress on this thing. I have managed to find a little time this week to continue on with cleaning up the rear end though. I've also spent time researching and purchasing heaps of parts I know I'm going to need down the line. Had quite a bit of FOMO about stuff going out of stock and becoming NLA, so I've now got pretty much every single exterior rubber trim piece sitting in the closet for when it gets painted in a couple of years time. Wasn't cheap, the local Mazda dealer loves me, hah. I've got everything planned and ordered for the new EM harness, it's the last major piece missing that would make it a runner. I've been waiting 2 months for connector bodies and pins though, and the tracking is stalled in China, so I'm losing a bit of hope there, might have to reorder. I've never had anything not show up from Aliexpress, but a couple of times its taken 6+ months :-(. I'll eventually run an aftermarket ECU in this thing (Have a Link Fury sitting on the shelf gathering dust), but I'll build the harness to mostly factory spec (although much better materials) with a couple of additions for WB02 integration, and anything else I think of. Then I'll just make up adaptor headers if I want to change to another ECU down the track. I've got an original S6 ECU to get it up and running on, and a Power FC there also, so lots of options. Gotta say, I've never seen overspray like this thing has. It's everywhere and bloody ridiculous. The vapor blaster at work has been getting a work out this week! This is what it the rear looked like originally. A lot of the overspray is clearcoat that has dust and shit all through it. Terrible grainy texture and makes everything look permanently dirty. After some attention in the blaster though, looks much more betterer. I dismantled all the wiring too, cleaned, blaster and rewrapped it. Looks factory fresh now. Also the the impact foam, as it was basically black with a reddish tinge. Looking much tidier, you know for something you'll never see. In with my latest order from Mazda were the rear bumper brackets that had rusted into oblivion. One day soon I'll reassemble that and get the bumper skin back on there. I've been in contact with Racing Beat about their twin tip muffler, as it's the only muffler I want on this thing, and they're currently out of stock of the center section (which I also need). They said to check back later in the year. It'll be spendy to get it over here, but ultimately worth it I think as I'll never have to worry about an exhaust again. I sourced a replacement rear spoiler for this, another stock S6 one as I really like them. The one that was on there was cracked, and had been glued on with some terrible bathroom caulking like shit. I had to smash it to remove it, as it was the only way I could think of without risking lots of damage to the boot lid. As it is, the paint on the boot lid suffered, so will get a super dodgy touch up in the meantime. While I had the trunk trim off I chucked some power on the rear wiper motor. It drew lots of current, and was really slow. Popped it out and the was like a ball of rust inside, super gunked up. Blew it totally apart, gave everything in there the big clean, reassembled and now it's like a new one :-). Ready for refitting. While I was in the mood for a couple of little jobs this week, I grabbed some plastic trim pieces from the engine bay. The air guide pieces that go around the headlights were just awful. Red overspray and trapped dirt, with all the rubber pieces attached to them brittle and cracked. Disassembled, cleaned up the plastics and painted them with CRC Black Zinc, as I find it adheres really well to PP plastic as long as you do light coats, and gives a nice OEM looking finish. I scanned the remains of the rubber pieces, cad'd templates and laser cut some new ones out of some rubber sheet of a similar thickness, then put them all back together after tuning up the speed nuts a little so they would grip again. Also ready for refitting. While satisfying, none of these little jobs do anything to get the thing closer to running or driving! Really need that order of connectors to show up! Might have to bite the bullet and reorder from another supplier. If these ones show up later, I can always make another harness and sell it I suppose. Will be back into hiatus on this for the next couple of months while I 100% finish up this contract, then make some more progress over the Christmas break I hope.

Have been a bit absent with updates here. Havnt done a lot in the shed since a pretty major back malfunction which looks like its going to require surgery to fix, i got a wee but done before it got quite bad so will fire a few updates through. For those of you interested in the XT250 soz but i had to PPSC it, ended up selling for a moonbeamish $5,000 pretty easily so was quite happy with that. I stripped it back to the frame and painted it, zinc plated just about every bolt and slapped all the NOS bits on that it came with, looked a million bucks in the end, probs why it sold for a million bucks. As far as the XR250 goes a had a bunch of parts turn up. this extra ginormous box turned up from the U S of A, it was 3/4 full of packaging and 1/4 full of this Clarke 16L tank. Pretty stocked with the quality. Also had a full decal kit turn up for once shes all back together. Blue '86 design seat cover also turned up from the states. Its since been shipped off to @64valiantfor some foam repairs and fitting to the seat. Shmancy Wiseco big bore forged piston turned up, this is a 77mm bore piston which gives a displacement of 277cc with every so slightly higher CR. it also came with a full top end gasket and seal set which was handy. Since im want to make it look all pretty tidy I decided to get the top end vapour blasted. im going to cerakote the engine side covers and couldnt be arsed spliting the bottom end so the cases can just get the scotchbrite treatment. Top end stripped and ready for blasting: Vapour blasting does such a lush job, its crazy how much it peens and seals up the alloy. After blasting I ran everything through @Flauskis ultrasonic cleaner. Its crazy how many beads still come out of thread holes and stuff when you think you already have it clean as, def a must do for any engine blasting I think. with the blasting all done I sent the head and cylinder off to my machinist and he did a bunch of stuff, started with boring the cylinder to the wiseco specs and doing ring gaps for me etc. then he surfaced the head, did a 3 way valve job on the valves and lapped them all in, the decided to tickle up the ports with the die grinder. Didnt get many photos soz but im tickle pink with the work. I've now put the engine back together, healthy doses of assembly lube, blue loctite and correct torque settings. man i love fresh zinc plated fasteners. Next up is restoring the plastics. this is a painstaking task and there is no easy way to cheat it, especially with white plastics. I tried cheating with the DA sander but it just doesnt do the job like straight line hand wet and dry sanding. Process to fix fucked plastics was razorblade - 320g - 600g- 800g - 1200g - 1600g- 2000g wet and dry. Then hit it with some cut on a medium speed drill wit polishing pad, wipe off cut then hit with a high speed fine polishing pad. just be careful to not hold for too long in one spot and burn though, I had to start from scratch in a few spots. Rear fender came up good enough, not amazing but will do. Sitting on the bike with new tool bag and rear indicators Next job is to do a DIY cerakote of the side covers and get the engine completely back together, then onto the rest of the plastics.

Another message from south today, a photo of the to-do list with only one thing remaining and a photo of the new boot edge. Not a lot else to report, just started a new job at Mount Shop, so energy is directed into that and hours have changed so I don’t have as much shed time after work. I flicked some satin black on the dash top and will pull some black vinyl over the dash pad..the weird green interior will slowly make its way out the door so I started with something that’s not going to be accessible soon as dash related things are a screen-out job. Sourced some demister vents too, mine are sun buggered and cbf making fins to complete them. The new ones aren’t from a b-body but are pretty close so I’ll just linish them until they sit into the recess nicely

Founds some new to me wheels to throw on when its ready. 15x8 Rays Eng. Tex Rides. Naturally had to test fit them Then started the process of tearing down whitey for loom removal. Removing the front guards revealed more rust in the usual spots where the water drains. Ahh well...

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.

So all conditions have been met and title/council willing we'll be setted in mid Nov. Once its all paid I'll do a financial wash up of it all to show where the costs were. I mentioned earlier that the whole process as resolved in a decision for us to stay in our current house where we'll undertake a restoration of the existing villa and build an extension + new shed. I'll share some of the detailed plans once they've been drawn up but there is some DIY parts of this project I'll start with early... Unless it gets boring I'll just keep adding to this thread... One of the biggest bugbears I've always had with the house is the ugly roughcast which was put over the weatherboards in the 80s. There is nothing overly sophisticated in getting it off but it is very rewarding.... chuck on some heavy metal from my youth and go to town with the crowbar. The condition of the boards on this side are all pretty good (its the northern aspect) but the otherside I'm expecting to have to reclad.... I'll probably do all the work to get back to bare timber and then pass off to a profesh for painting.

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.

Lets drag this thread up from the dead ! its been about 4 or so years since this project had any love. Carina has been in 3 different storage locations. And in this time I've moved house 3 times. finished a qualification . and managed to buy a house !! After so many years, and moving so many times, and everything changing so much. Its hard to get started ; some times when you look at it all, such a huge daunting project full of half finished jobs and ideas, things start looking like a insurmountable task. So what do you do ?? you just look at it for awhile, look for one little job you know you can do, you break it down, ah, you make a list. and start from the top! Great idea ! So I made a list and then in my typical fashion, I just did what I do. . . I did none of the things on the list at all. hahahah I just picked something I didn't like and decided that I can do this better .I think , and with that thought I finally started , it wasn't long till I was right into it again . but ah, anyway Ill shut up now, and show you heaps of the pictures. this was how I left it, and I didn't like it, because the hoses are under allot off stress to make the bend, I can see this being a failure point. I tried to find some silicon hoses , that have sharper 90 bends at the ends, but they all have short tails and the long side here is 350. So i just decided to start again. because this all ties into the water bridge and the clearance issues there too. you can see the blue marker where the belt is going to touch. The idea , is I make the flats better ,first and then, tighten up the angle. and hopefully there will be more clearance. I was very nice here and just softly tapped it down with a panel hammer. making sure not to distort the other side, it worked better than I though it would Now I just have to tighten up the angle at the top of the water bridge . this was a bastard , its just kept bubbling up this black spotty stuff and making dirty as welds. eventually I ground enough away and welded it again then I got a nice puddle , and it flowed much better. (I'm only at home fabricator my welds are very average) here you can see that huge angle change First part done, now for the piping small adjustment has added allot of change, I hope its going to be enough clearance at the end . More supplies ! here my angles aren't as accurate as I wanted , it was meant to come out further and also parallel to the timing cover, I think I cut it a little short. and on a slight angle but it is what it is. will have to make use of it . this fit up, is not tacked, just sitting in place no tension, a lovely fit up. couldn't have done it better if I tried this is so damn hot, no one tells you when you start tig welding, just how obscenely hot aluminum gets to weld I had to hang it like this cause I couldn't touch any of it even with welding gloves on. Trusty block of wood, third hand, weight, prop, holder thingy and that is the cooling system update. seeing as that was going so well I decided to redo some more things. Some of this stuff when I do it I don't really have a end plan as such , some times its just trial and to see what its like . and then if it looks like it'll work then ill do some more research and ill make a plan later on. So the bonnet was one of these idea. where later on I would work out if it was going to be fiber glass, or I leave it to the panel and paint shop to make it look mint. or just who knows I have to cover this spinning thing with something ah shit I lets chop it up and see if I can hide it. Yeah that sounds like a good plan . . . . and then we have this monstrosity But as of now I think I can make it better. I never liked how I had left it and well now is a better time than any to give it another nudge. this is a hack job at the back of the bonnet, at the time I had no idea how to blend it all in, so I just did this, to get a feel for it. and as you can see it was a mash of a job. if I had been a little slower I could have made all this nicer right from the beginning. But its a lesson learnt. pencil line is how much i am going to trim off, this is al the way around destruction ! Tacking it all back in, but welded. back edge trying to keep it flat. this was going fairly well here. So much tacking, this took like 3 hours to weld up. do a weld., blow it down with compressed air. do this over and over. Another thing I learnt is I should have finished the extensions, completely. whilst it was off the bonnet. because effectively welding 3 strips the whole way down the entire bonnet added a shit load of warpage and heat. so much grinding !! almost there. out side done had to re trim the inside to give it strength again. i am unsure of the level of grinding i will do on the inside, i want it to look nice but i am also going to seal it all so there is no point of going hard out if the seam sealer just covers it all anyway. all metal , no filler yet......... but. yes its very very not flat. and it will need filler for sure, I hope it wont crack . time will tell. Now if I had to do this again I would go about it completely differently. There is so much i would do differently. I learnt so much doing this, and one thing I now know is warpage lol . I can make shit warp hard out ! I learnt this the hard way, so this was a valuable lesson. I will take this information forward in my next welding project. I cant do anything about it. I don't have another bonnet, so this is just going to have to be it. until I learn how to fix it, or what ever will come in time. so some of this is up loaded in the wrong order. the pictures get out of sink. but anyway , i hate the stupid rod bonnet stand thing. Its useless and it has to go ! here is it going. now I know it looks weird. but with the charger and throttle body, no gaps in the guards or on top of the strut towers. this is the only place they could go. and well for the convenience , I choose to have these and not have the bonnet hit me in the back of the head again. the first 3 times was enough Next is guards , front, and indicators, head lights, why wont it all line up? you can see here how much has been cut of them, that and no lower front valance, leaves no support for the out side of the guard or headlights. So i measured heaps of shit, found out the guards I started with were all beat up., and the mounts were all pushed back in. so I needed to make a slide hammer attachment to slide hammer the mounts back into place. This meant I needed to bend some 10mm by 50 flat I have kicking around. which means I get to play with fire ! and its a great excuse for me to use my new to me Oxy set ! shit yeah I love this stuff. ! finally the indicators fit well, the guards are where they need to be, and I got to play with a some new tools yay , no what else needs forming !?!? ah yes I need to add a support to the guard as its still pretty weak on that outer edge. heat up some 8mm flat bar, its super soft so will be mint for supports. strong, but they'll bend if then get pushed. smash flat. welded some nuts to the car. this will get finished welded on later., they just tacked there for now. this is the drivers side inner guard, you can see the guard support and the mount for the front bumper. So now the front is on , its all bolted, its firm, it has strong proper mounts, the bonnet is looking a bit better. we have a upgraded water bridge. and some bonnet stays. ! Fuck yeah I love finally having a shed again, I have been waiting for so many years to get stuck back into this project. ! This is my happy place making stuff in the shed at home!

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?

Well, that didn't take long. I knew I was on borrowed time with the gearbox but didn't expect it would come around this quickly. So, I had the new tyres fitted yesterday (Yoko AD08r in the correct Turbo size), fiddled with the old brake light switch (since the replacement is AWOL) to stop the brake lights from being on all the time, and then went out to bed the new brakes in. The car was running great, it ran smoothly and was responsive. The brakes have good feel, with no shudder and the gearbox was shifting great. A few hard stops and a KM or two later I pulled over to check the wheel nut torque (not going to take the risk of not checking them after a brake job again, after the wheels nearly coming off on the Corolla). Of course, the wheels were fine, so I pull back onto the road, gave it a bit of throttle, the turbo spins up, boost comes in and then suddenly It just free revs. It felt like it popped out of gear, so I clutch in, into neutral, into second, let the clutch out, and nothing, just revs. Oh no. I roll to a stop at the side of the road and try a few more gears, nothing, I can let the clutch out with it in gear and nothing happens, doesn't even stall. I can push the car forward when it's in reverse, which is not good. I fire off a quick text to let my Wife know I might be a while and call AA to arrange a tow. "Yes, I am about 1.6KM away from home" I confirm with the rep on the phone... At least it looks good, sitting there, waiting. Whilst I waited I took a quick walk back to where I stopped to check the wheel torque A quick sniff test confirmed that was a nice trail of my fresh, rather expensive, Honda MTF gear oil. There was also a small amount under the car where it sat. After a fairly short wait, a friendly chap with a truck arrived winched the old girl aboard and dropped me home again. The Tomcat repaid his help by leaving a large amount of gear oil on the truck bed, and on the road where the car was loaded and unloaded. So what went wrong then? I jacked the front of the car up, confirmed it had no drive to the wheels and slid under to find out why. That'll do it. The shiny bit the arrow is pointing to should be inside the gearbox and shouldn't be visible. It also explains why the gearbox weed everywhere as the seal was wide open without the shaft to seal it. I did some careful levering with a prybar and popped it back into place. I'd be very surprised if this is a new issue... I suspect I'm not the first one to lever that back into the gearbox. Whilst under there I had a good look around. Noticed a couple of minor coolant leaks I will need to attend to, but also noticed this rear engine mount completely missing its nut. I found a new pre-loved nyloc nut that fit, and wound that on nice and tight. Who knows, maybe that will fix some of the movement in the engine. The driveshaft has quite a lot of radial (up and down) play when inserted back into the gearbox, which confirms my suspicions, both about the condition of the box, and why it popped out; the gearbox bearings are stuffed. These gearboxes do not tolerate being neglected, and being over a litre of oil down when I got it, I suspect it's not had a good time. When Rover had these boxes built, they chose to use hi-tech ball bearings with plastic to retain the balls. This probably seemed like a good idea at the time, and they worked well for years, as long as the plastic didn't get old and the gear oil could keep them cool Above is an example of the bearings used in the PG1 gearbox; uprated steel cage bearing on the left and stock plastic cage on the top right. Unfortunately, the bearings Rover used seem to wear badly no matter what (they tend to get pitting in the races and go a bit grindy), but when coupled with low oil and high temps, the plastic can fail, causing the bearings to no longer be sufficiently retained, as per this extreme example where the plastic has broken and the balls have all converged on the lowest point. This sort of damage is what can also break the flange off the diff center. So I suspect mine has either started to break down the plastic, or the races have worn to the point there is excessive play. The popping out drive shaft is the usual giveaway of bearing failure. With the driveshaft back in place, I have drive to the wheels again, so once I refill the gearbox with the cheapest oil I can get, the car will be mobile enough to get out of the garage and into the drive, where it will sit in shame waiting for me to rebuild the gearbox. I will be stripping the gearbox, replacing all the bearings, and oil seals. Uprated metal caged bearings will be used everywhere they are available. Whilst I'm there I will also be doing the clutch. I'm hoping to keep the Type A torsen diff, but I will need to check it's in good condition once the gearbox is split; if not, I will need to increase the budget and add a Quaife to the list. After that, the gearbox should be damn near bulletproof. I was really hoping to get more than a couple of KM (literally, I've done sub-10KM since I got it) out of the car before it seriously broke, but that's the British car game I play. Every day is a gamble.

recently purchased a car that I know I'll be keeping for many many years. it's been a long standing goal of mine to own a B body mopar, so to own this is beyond words this is the project log of my 1968 Dodge Coronet Deluxe, a true California survivor car. the car spent much of its life baking away in the San Diego heat, driven here and there by its elderly owners until it came over here, in 2006 ish. whilst never complied, it's a credit to the previous owner, who went through all of the essentials and gave everything a freshen up. Covid allowing, I am aiming to have it on the road this side of Christmas. as it stands, it's a base model '68, with the original 318 and 904 auto. Runs super nicely, and receipts show the motor was rebuilt (standard spec) in 2000. Photos are of how it looked upon purchase cheers!

Right, the corona has blown into a big ass project which is cool. But i've decided to take my time with her and do it right. Since i'm currently operating out of a single garage crammed with shit for the next year until my new 4 bay workshop gets built ive decided to put it aside for now, not forgotten but just waiting its turn. As i've gone too long without something old, low and obnoxious to drive I kicked a few dollars towards a young man selling an old 7 series. I actually drove beside this car a while ago on the motorway thinking how much i love old 7 series and it popped up for swaps on facebook a few months later. I dropped the guy a message to see what sort of real cash $$ he was after and decided at the time since I was balls deep in the corona project that I couldn't justify another vehicle so nothing really came of it. I had some money recently for a car and decided to flick him a message and see if it was still available. Somehow it was and we sorted out a viewing. I arrived and was told the car had a fresh wof the day before. We had a look over it and decided it was worth test driving. Took it out for a drive and decided to offer him about 3/4 what he was asking. Grudgingly he accepted, we did the transfer online and i drove off in a new 7 series. So, here's a photo of when I got it.

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...

There shouldnt be any hate, that shit is cool. I have been pondering EV converting my townace ute for my next major project. Here is one i looked at a wee while ago, boy has done a super nice job.

These two from my brothers phone didn’t make it onto the daily updates..just an after pic with quarter panel on

I know a few people will be disgusted by this, but I chucked my personalized plates on it. I have new ones on their way that are the right size and style for it, but I did keep the old Black ones. I haven't really done a lot more to it yet as i'm waiting on a bunch of shit to turn up from Ebay. I have on order: A new rear BMW Badge, new auto gear knob (old ones fucked) new Brake accumulator as the brakes are showing all the telltale signs of low nitrogen, new plates, Momo bosskit for my Momo Indy steering wheel, Dash mat and some stickers. I sorted some 100%, definitely real, totally genuine BBS wheels for it and will sort getting the thing on it's ass ASAP as it'll look a lot better. In the meantime here's some photos of it in all it's Bronzit - Biege glory after a decent groom and some new rims. Side note, was an older couple that owned the lambo - She was driving and it took him at least a couple of minutes to get in it.

Quick update, went out to the rally car shed on the weekend, which has had a tidy up and beer fridge installed. Some shelves have been set up and tyres sorted, plus the car is on the rotisserie... Roll cage done and in the process of being approved... And this shell is pretty good. So much better than dicking around with the old one.. Engine mounts made... So good being able to spin it over... And a new sump has been modified and leak tested. Main mission on the weekend was to check clearances... And trans mount made up. The bloke doing the welding is a truck tech, so everything's pretty beefy. Long ago gave up worrying about weight... And on the way home called past engine shop to check fitment on the actual block... So a bit of progress. Latest name for this thing might stick (it's had a few). Gentlemen, may I present you, the Fat Escort... (might even paint it like Roger Clark's Cossack Mk II... )

So yeah, kinda stopped taking pictures of things like wiring and the like. But fully rewired the bike. And installed an aftermarket regulator rectifier on the back of the oldschool generator. Also managed to get it running. What a cunt. Jesus, i've kicked over a few bikes in my time. But nothing as cunty as this. It can't be cos of the compression ratio, as these are like 8.5:1 or something. My japanese 4 cylinders kick over easy as. So must be the ratio or something. I'm not a small unit, and i can jump on the pedal only to bounce off due to it being on compression stroke. Mental. I gave the tank a quick satin black to get it complied. I have a full AMF sticker set in brown and orange to decorate the tank. So once its complied, i'll gloss the tank and pop the stickers on. Here is as it currently stands. I'm trying to get it complied in the next few weeks. Just chasing some paperwork misery. So will see how it goes. Once its complied, i don't know whether to cut it up straight away. Or enjoy it as is. Likely the latter, as riding it around the hood was a blast. Not only did i feel like a crim, it was actually really pleasant to ride. Will update my compliance process in detail as it unfolds.

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

Now to figure out how to get drive from the crank to the supercharger. This was always going to be just a little Heath Robinson involving 2 belts and a lay shaft to bring the drive aft about 180mm. I mocked it up using thin plywood, hot glue and a piece of dowel and after a bit of mucking around I have the basic dimensions sorted. Now I can start fabricating something more substantial in steel. I also machined up a small pulley to accept bearings, this pulley will be the tensioner for the lower belt. The upper belt shouldn't require an additional tensioner as I can tension the belt when I position the lay shaft assembly. I am expecting this drive set up to be very noisy indeed!

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.

I should update the post to explain: The roof in one of my trucks leaks. My delightful staff members put my mulitmeter in a bucket and chucked it right under the leak, so I got a new multimeter sent over It was that new MM which was telling me 6v batteries had ~ 12v charge EVIDENTLY one needs to turn the knob to DC rather that AC (not that it says either DC or AC on the MM face) or else one will see roughly double the battery's voltage on the display I went back, retested the EV and have tentatively diagnosed one dud 6V battery (the one a 12V sprayer was hooked up to)

The thrust rods and swaybar are now refitted to the vehicle. The swaybar saddle bracket things are very annoying but we got there in the end. Today it was blowing a gale so I retreated to the shed, which was very loudly groaning and popping in the wind. I popped the clutch cable out. The pedal end is almost inaccessible for my sausage fingers, but I got it unhooked by pushing hard on the firewall side. I decided then that the brake booster bracket looked too crusty so I unbolted that and chucked it in the blast cabinet. Primed painted The removal of said bracket revealed a little rust bubble on the firewall. Luckily it wasn’t deep. I gave the area a scotch brite, and prepsol. then hit it with some primer Then I pulled the shield off the booster and gave that a blast and a prime. Then I gave the booster a good scrub and bolted the new master cylinder on. I have some colour matched 2k paint the panel beater gave me, but no way of spraying it, so I may have to splash out on a touch up gun.

wellllllll how's life after 13 months with a problematic st170. to be honest.....its not that bad... the engine check light is on all the time and the car has no issues... every now and then it feels like it loses some power...and when I check the code it's usually timing has advanced.... I've been clearing the codes and off we go again...it fucking hates 91 and seems better on 95/98 more than NPD 100. flew through a WOF in August that was the year ownership mark.. not as bad on fuel as all the brits complain about. just gave her a service today..new oil ,filter, air filter, some fuel system cleaner... see how the next tear goes... I fucking hate the dual mass flywheel....may do something about that.. apart from that ..I would love to get back to work on the mk3s....but I have my nephews mk5 here that needed a replacement motor....thats been a bitch and still not running ..need to swap another head on.... and I actually have mates that aren't into cars....( fuck I know....strange ay)..but those men have teenage boys now with cars aswell so I find my self pretty popular with shit cars living in my driveway .....makes me feel like I should apologize to my dad for some reason......and I get more contact from them than I do there dads now lol.... but 1 day I will get back to it........also had to work through this past lockdown.... hmmmmmmm next year maybe

Just to make it entirely clear. If you aren’t keen on the rules and you are invited, don’t come. Make your own event. I make these events because I want to do stuff I like with my mates and put a lot of hours into making them happen. I love nothing more than seeing people come and have a good time at my events. It’s genuinely the coolest feeling. I put these on with the help of few legendary people and we all put countless hours into making a safe and fun environment for dirt skids. Every event I have created that I’ve charged for actually cost more than I collected and I am entirely fine with that because I do this for fun and not as a way to make money. There are much easier ways to make a few $$$. Truth be told I took 18 months off holding events because it was mentally overwhelming dealing with the amount of negativity that people would direct towards something literally wouldn’t exist if me and my mates didn’t put some effort in. Im really not trying to sound like a dick but it’s also extremely dull to be on the receiving end of and I have zero time for it anymore. So with that said, here’s a very crappy photo of the main track after a week of weed killer. The field is rather un flat but the altitude makes it look otherwise. Flew a drone above the track today to get this photo and didn’t have auto focus on (because I’m a spoon). But will head back this weekend and get some nice video of the area to get the pine growing.

Well aware it's been ages since I've updated this. Life has got in the way a bit and because I've decided to go full fucktard on it I'm just going to take my time and get it done right. Not much will happen over the next year as we are in the planning stages of getting my new 4 car workshop sorted. in the meantime I can say what the plans are. I've picked up an all alloy 3.5l V6 2GR-FSE which I will be building up as a twin turbo engine. Looking for 500whp on high boost. That's heaps for this little car The MX5 Front and rear subframes are still going in with the D2 Adjustable Coil overs I think, I might adapt a J160 6 Speed box to work with it Unfortunately although I love the Rays wheels the new stud pattern is going to mean I'll need to sell them for something else. I've decided to go with a set of Work Equip 40s in 15x9 - Hopefully all round. I'm going to powder coat the centers the same shade of turquoise because so many people either love it or hate it and I'm all about pissing off purists. Hoping to run dual exhausts with separate pipes for the wastegates Not sure if i'll be keeping the blue paint, may look at going to something like the old-school factory Toyota white color. Will see how things go as time and money disappears. For now here's a pic of my 2GR when I picked it up

I love how the engines look like they're from the 1920s. Def not a powerhouse. But has torque for africa. Was a bit concerned how the 4 speed box would be. 1st and 2nd are fine for around town/hills. Will see what its like on the open road once its complied. Currently doing the dance with compliance people. Go in one day, they give you a list of things you need. And horror stories how you can't register it if it doesn't have this sticker, or before the 1st of November cos if the new abs rule yada yada.... Go in the next day, literally the opposite of what was said before. Don't need the exemption required the day before, but need a different one, as what was acceptable documentation yesterday is not acceptable today and what was not acceptable yesterday, "oh nah mate, thats fine" today I don't know... Help a fuller understand.... Why can't it be easy. Should be a solid process. Not down to some persons mood on the day. If they're in a grump, then it makes your life misery. Should not be like that.

So yeah, many years ago I met this cool dude called Chris. He lives in Christchurch. Apparently he was a born loser, but I liked him anyway. It turned out he was a bit of a badass, and was into the devils bikes. He had an Ironhead Harley. A handsome dude with a handsome bike. I was in love. Every time I'd call in and visit Chris, id have to pop into his shed and sit on his Ironhead chop. It was just the coolest thing. I knew I had to have one. Fast forward a few years, and an auto bid on a friday night. And I had purchased this non running, broken gearbox, POS. Yay, just what I need. More projects. But I enjoy self inflicted misery. So yeah, cool one. nice. Took my shitter of a ute all the way from Wellington to Wellsford to pickup this turd. Had my dad rolling up with me. We share a love of misery, projects and motorcycles. So both were equally excited at the prospect of acquiring another non running project. Both of us never thought we'd see the day when either of us would buy a Harley! Low and behold, April 2021, I became a Harley owner. Who would have thought. Made it all the way home. What a mish. We stayed in cambridge. But boy, a lot of driving in a turd of a ute. A relief to have it back in the garage. I'm sure the Harley would appreciate its new stable, adorned with French vehicle memorabilia, and sharing its space with and Italian stallion Laverda, a Miata, and some of japans finest 2 strokes!

With my interior in much better shape, I decided to turn my attention to the engine over the lockdown period. Lockdown gave me a chance to really spend time working away at getting things cleaned up under the hood. The coronet is still equipped with its original 318 (5.2L) LA series Small Block V8. These motors had never been intended for performance use, and had not been thought of as much more than a replaceable, run of the mill American V8. Over the years, your typical performance part companies have developed parts to turn the 318 into a great street/strip performer. Most guys will always start with bigger cubes, the likes of the 360 come to mind when building a small block Mopar engine, however due to limited availability here in NZ, and with the 318 being a production engine for many Aussie Valiants, it makes more sense for me to work with these smaller engines and see what I can do with one. I don't want crazy power for this anyway, my aim is to keep it as a bit of an all-rounder. For now, I decided to clean up the motor in the car, with the addition of a 4 barrel intake and carb setup. I decided that my daily driver Dodge truck would be better off with an economically minded 2 barrel, so for me, it made sense to simply order some gaskets and swap the intakes over, seeing how the linkages and all that are identical. While I haven't been for a test drive, the Carter AFB carb has this running really nicely. I replaced all my typical service items (fan clutch, water pump, belts etc) and gave it a fresh coat of the correct red paint, instead of the orange that it was. Pretty happy with how it turned out overall, it'll definitely look the part until I start looking at more serious upgrades in future. As far as the auto goes, it moves and shifts nicely, but I feel it could be a bit tighter on shifts. I might look into a way to improve this, but am not super familiar with the tricks of getting an auto hopped up. The 318 as I bought the car, in full standard form bar the TTI headers. After some resto-work. The most satisfying part was making new HT leads to replace the tired old grey ones. And a super quick vid of how it sounds.

Scored some monsoon clips of this extremely tidy one lady owner l200 my mate has in their padock. So now I could finally fit my passengers side monsoon to the lancer, these are the finer things in life for sure!

Successful afternoon / evening yesterday. Dropped the gearbox in my lunch break, whipped off the clutch and flywheel. Turns out the flywheel in the car was a 135 tooth so have put that away safely in case its needed again and installed the new ring gear on the 132 tooth flywheel. Relatively simple process, used a propane torch to heat the old ring gear, bout two minutes of round and round and it came off with a couple of light taps with a hammer and punch. Placed the new one in an old hooded barbecue and waited until it was at 250 degrees (manufacturer recommended 280 but couldn't get that hot) and it all but fell into place, couple of whacks with a block of wood and it was seated. Had the box back on last night, fresh oil in and fired it up to test. Decided to call it a night rather than finishing the wiring as I want to hide the external solenoid under the battery tray to keep it tidy. Cant recommend Phil from Wood Engineering Services enough. One call to 0800RINGGEAR and he knew exactly what I was after and had it on my doorstep overnight complete with tips for fitting. Hopefully get back to the shed after work and get stuck into the wiring

I think its been 4 years or more since last posting on here and now its time to get back in to it. So I found this rust bucket cheap and thought Id buy it and see if it was worth having or if it was going to be parts for my wagon. Here is the two sitting together, that sedan was made from bog but it was complete, running and some how legal. It had a bodged up turbo set up with a front mount intercooler on a non turbo B6 DOHC engine but this and the wheels seemed to be the only things not factory about it, from the history I have heard these items appear to have all come from a yellow BFMR 'TEGZ", A 2000s show car. First job, swap the 17s with the factory steels I used to have on the wagon, find the guys stripped the hex off the nut...... lots of swear words and a new 13mm drill and a spare hub from the shed, I didn't have tyre rub anymore. Next was my 4 cylinder turning 3 cylinder. Lucky I am an absolute hoarder of parts and had a complete non turbo B6D motor box and loom sitting there. Stuck this in, only took an afternoon to swap it all and had it running. Drove it a few times, about 500ish Km and the bottom of the drivers door fell off, into the garage again... where its mainly been sitting for coming up 2 year. So started chipping off paint every where to see what was and was not metal. So off come all 4 doors, Bonnet, Boot lid. all full of rust. I had a full pre-facelift turbo front so the went on. Found a 1986 ford laser ghia sedan at zebra so all four doors came off that, then a trip to whangarei to get a boot lid, swapped all the electrics, trims and glass over as its all different, NZ production laser vs Japanese production familia. Now the fun job of getting a couple of hole in the boot floor welded up. Now just waiting to get it painted. Zebra had a 1991 Ford Capri XR2 Turbo, very rare car but could not save it unfortunately, but it gave me a full turbo engine and loom that was stock and 90% the same as the BFMP. So this got taken out in the morning and then swapped in the car by the afternoon. Adapted the capri engine loom and ecu to the familia body enough to have it running. Found the engine had been over heated and the head was slightly warped even though it was advertised as "running engine swap". once again lucky I had a complete spare off another engine I own that as a cracked crank. So this went on. I now have a completely stock running and driving BFMP with almost no rust. Since then I have just been slowly perfecting items. Finding oe intercooler mounts, factory mazda FC/BF momo wheel, Digital Turbo instrument cluster, also been finding and restoring period audio gear for it too! Found these brilliant Alpine 6420 Speakers for the parcel tray 7kg each!, found my 80s pioneer amp to drive them and an 80s nakamichi cassette head unit and modern alpine 4inch components hidden in the front. Now just planning how to convert the v belt on the alternator to a multi groove so I can up grade the size of the alternator on it. Ive spent a lot of time mating the capri engine loom to the body/dash loom as there was a few issues that were throwing me off the actual issues. After replacing a few sensors and things and triple checking what Ive done its perfectly mated up. Loads more to come and the whole story of the wagons too.

Minitruck minitruck minitruck! You know you want to.

When it came out the side behind the wheel= louder than standard, it has a 3" pipe and a stainless straight thru muffler. My boss took it to a muffler shop to get the cat removed and headers fitted. The muffler guy cbf fitting the headers so cut the cat out and changed the muffler instead. Boss was a bit ?? Anyway When I lowered it I chopped it off at the muffler= very loud, made all the plastic on the rear cab wall rattle Side exit in front of the wheel= somewhere in between Eventually I'll re do the exhaust , fit the headers and probably make it a little bit quieter I disassembled the grille and painted the inserts black and fitted new headlights the other day, front looks a bit tidier I looked at new grilles on rockauto and they are pretty cheap ($180 ish) but freight was over a grand so nope nope nope this grille will be fine

This style of B body Mopar, was new for 1968. With the coronet of this shape, came the Charger, Road Runner, Super Bee, with the Charger cemented into history and Hollywood fame with "The Dukes Of Hazzard". Whilst often overlooked, or at least they always used to be, most Coronet's never quite enjoyed the fame of its higher-horsepower counterparts, instead often being relegated to police or taxi service, or being grandmas run around car. My car lacks options, it's the lowest spec model (Deluxe), with only a few options installed at the factory. With Mopars of this era, the VIN number, and "Fender Tag" are a great way to find out exactly what options your car came with. A lot of die-hard enthusiasts obsess over detail and options, and since Chrysler offered so many different options, there's a million different combinations, making for limited production numbers for certain cars that have select factory options. This car keeps it simple. It came with an AM radio, chrome side trim, and fender mounted turn signal lights. That's it. And I think that's what makes this car perfect, it's very much a bare bones car that gives off a nice "street car" vibe. You'll notice it's a Post car, which means it has pop-open quarter windows and a solid B-pillar, as opposed to the "hardtop" variant displayed in the advertisement above. Part of the reason that it's a post car, is because it's a very early build car. It has a build date of Jan 22, 1968, with the dates on the engine, and the rest of the parts ranging from September to December 1967. I don't think that the hardtops had been put into production until a few months later. First order of business, was to start on the inside and work my way out. After 53 years, the interior had seen better days. I was the first to remove the carpet, marking the beginning of the revamp. The headliner had been ripped to shreds, so that needed replacement, too. I took it to my upholsterer who made quick work of the headliner, and bolstered the drivers seat back up for me (I'm 5 foot 9, and could hardly see over the dash for the sunken seat). With that done, I threw in my new ACC nylon loop black carpet. I'm quite happy with how my interior is shaping up. I'm thinking I'll install the factory thumb wheel radio, and detail the dash up next. I'm loosing the tach in favor of the factory style one. photos say it all really, so I'll stop typing and let them speak. The interior, with original white door cards, original carpet, and its '70 Charger R/T bench seat. Installing my rockauto carpet, excellent quality and I'd buy this again in a heartbeat. Really taking shape with the fresh headliner installed.

Nice, iforce ate shit. Oh well here's a current photo. Casually waiting for Cindy to open the door so I can come back over, sort the storage in NZ then ship it over.

Okay, Here are the rough points system so far, subject to change, and for extra stuff to be added onto. 1: Budget challenge For every dollar spent over the $500 to purchase the car, you will be penalized 1 point. For every dollar under $500 you will gain 1 point. This is just for the purchase price. We didn't include spending money on wof stuff as most cars will more than likely need a little bit of work to get to wof standard if they don't already have one. 2: Working features You will lose 1 point for every feature (eg. AC, central locking, radio etc etc) that doesn't work. So the more features your car has, the more chance you have to lose points! 3: SPEEEEEEEED! This one is pretty simple, we will find a suitable space and have a good old fashioned drag race, elimination if it's not wide enough for more than 2 cars. 5 points to the winner, 3 to 2nd, 2 to 3rd, 1 to 4th. Anyone behind that will get nada. 4: Economy We will all fill up at the same petrol stations along the way to determine who has the most economical vehicle, I'd say the points will go much the same as the drag race. Bonus points for the car thats the worst haha. 5: Form & Function We will cram as many people in each car as physically possible. 1 point per person, there will be 2 children coming along which will count as 0.5 points. 6: Public opinion Seeing as we're doing this over the holiday break, we will park up somewhere (queenstown waterfront, picton waterfront etc) with good human traffic and get the public to vote for which car they think is the best/coolest over the course of 30mins. 1 point per vote. This will be each team's chance to woo the general public with their shitbox. 7: Lap time This will be done on the last day, if we go on the molesworth as planned, each team will complete a 500m stretch of the gravel road. Fastest time wins. Or if we go via kaikoura, we'll do a lap of the kaikoura go cart/drift track each. Same points as drag race. 8: country of origin This is where we've rated the shittest cars via their country of origin. Points for the riskiest country Italy- 100 points France- 80 points Rest of Europe- 30 points America- 50 points Russia- 30 points Korea and china- 25 points Straya- MINUS 20 points Then the usual rules, make sure you've at least got a wof. Don't be a dick. Etc etc.

The tank this came with was so fucking yuck. I had to get rid of it. I just bought a repro factory sportster tank. As i just want to get this complied first. Then it will get the chop. So yeah, not a fan of the ape hangers. So pinched some bars from dad off one of his Bonnevilles (Hinkley not OG) which also have 1" bars. The front forks stanchions were rust fucked, and not a big fan of big rake bastards. So tracked down some OG one. Had to do alot of checking and cross referencing, as the 1977 is meant to have Showa (not grower eh Chris ;)). But this had Kayaba forks. Which were only on 73 and 74 models. So thankfully i checked and didn't pay heaps for the wrong stanchions. Looks good with flat bars (and new front and rear shocks)! You can see the sprocket cover and kickstarter installed here I also got some new tyres, which transform the bike. They're Shinkos, i'm too cheap for firestones and avons (i went that route with my XS650, and youch. not again!) I must say, i like the tread on the rear Shinko even more than the firestones! The sidewall transition is just perfect.