dr.wylde

Oh yeah one more thing. sooooo the lower control arm bushes look like Nolathane, the upper arms. Original factory rubber and although old nowhere near as flogged as the Nolathanes. say a lot doesn't it.

where was I? oh yeah that whole front end is flogged out , so the car ended up looking like this so now , I'm looking at rebuilding the entire front end , all the steering , brakes and suspension. what was supposed to be just a few bushes has now snowballed into more than I anticipated.

Ever heard of the snowball? yeah , well that's kinda what's about to happen here. however before I get into that , I better get this thread up to date. Over the remainder of July and August since my last update.I reassembled the engine , new gaskets , new bolts so on and so forth. now that I think about it the reassembly was a mini snowball in itself. next on my to buy/ do list was the front suspension bushes and then tyres . over August I fell really Ill with that flu thing that was getting around, so while sick in bed I sprung for a full bush kit for the Stato, after that I saved some more pennies and bought a pair of tyres for the front of the car . my plan was to replace the suspension bushings in the front end as the current nolathane ones were crumbling away into nothing. then put my new wheel tyre combo on the front. simple right? hahahahaha yeah the old girl wasn't done with me . I had some time off work thought I'd start tearing into the suspension. Lots of swearing jiggling and fighting ball joints and getting nowhere drove me to disassemble everything in my way, every nut,bolt, bearing - flogged!

so I put the cam back in Have Advanced it by 4 degrees to bring the powerband a little lower in the rev range to compensate for the 2.6 diff . so the plan is to build the car to match the cam .

so , for the last 10 years. I've had a cam , in an engine. that's being choked out by restricted exhaust manifolds , a 2.6:1 diff . and probably generally shit tuning. and I did 5000ks in it haha. the funniest thing though, and mods you may tell me off for this. one of the arguments I had with my ex-wife was kinda funny now I think about it. She drove the car for a short period while I sorted her car out ( bad idea) anyways after a week, she's spouting off at me during one of our weekly arguments ( this was in the final year of marriage when we just weren't getting along) " I know that old car better than anyone" do you really? hahahahahaha small ironies. anyways back to the car . I have two options either get a tamer camshaft or........... build the rest of the engine car to suit the cam. thoughts please in the the discussion thread. pic for fred

Update Time. been slowly working away on this, pulling the engine apart to get to the timing chain. Timing chain/ marks check out . was set up as per dot/dot , straight up. well the 9 link gap between marks. hmmmm , ok not what I thought then. so then I went a step further, rockers, pushrods and lifter came off and out. disassembled more of the car. thought to myself, you know what time to solve this mystery once and for all with the cam , pull it , check for markings and check on the Internet. and this is what I found. Crower 56502. first, that's actually pretty cool. second, ohhhhh that makes a lot of sense. it's a fairly aggressive cam for my application. I'll dig up specs. one moment please

that was the plan , wind it over on the rock and see if the valves are even. I ran 12 degrees originally with no vac advance , but when I had the vac advance rebuilt I dialed back the distributor to 8 degrees . total advance is 34 and when it has run well , this is where I've had it .

I was off work for a few days following some minor surgery. thought I'd work on the car. Inside the bumper was all rusty and scaly , wire wheeled that off with the grinder and blew some black paint at the insides and all the brackets. sadly that's all I have , but bumper is now back on the front of the car. However......... so those of you who have followed from the beginning will remember that the engine that resides between the chassis rails in the car was a rebuilt unit that was built and then possibly/potentially stored before I got it. because my OG donk shat a piston ( still have that by the way) Anyways I got the AFR gauge to determine my idle mixture as I wasn't having any luck with the vacuum gauge method. now I've done my due diligence, the entire ignition system is pretty much new and it works Carb is also reco'd and functional. even with the idle mixture running at 14.2-14.7 the vacuum signal is only reading a steady 13. definitely too low . I suspect it's incorrect valve timing which would make sense as the internals are new ish and have barely done 5000k since I dropped the engine in. All it's bad idling ( I just thought it had a lumpy cam) it's stumbling and that stranding incident. it all kind of makes sense now. compression test came back at 115-120psi all round, also too low. anyways, next job is to pull the engine all apart and check the valve timing on a cam I have no clue what its specs are . I did find a video on YouTube from Uncle Tony's garage about using the Keith Black method to determine whether it's timed correctly. anyways for now I'll leave it there as I'm going to take a break from it until next month while I gather some parts and Tools.

it is , I just had it at the back of the car so I could take a snap

also gave it a new alternator. not really much to post about but meh! new 120amp instead of the factory 55amp. hopefully enough to future proof any other mods that require electrical stimulation. however even with there new alternator I'm still having electrical issues, lights dim and flicker . seems like the overall system isn't getting enough power , so now I'm looking at battery terminals and leads as well as all my connections. but that will be for a future update

so had a quick moment over the Anzac weekend. didn't really achieve anything except tidying up around the garage where I keep the car , sorted and arranged tools and various other bits. one part that I bought 6 months ago that was a bit of an impulse buy , I didn't need it but I wanted it was a chin spoiler for the WB series. s am debating whether to fit some fog lights in it. what do you lot think?

quick update factory tacho is now installed and in , had to use the lens off the original clock . but it's in and all wired up and everything works baby steps.

hey chaps. quick update. so the Caprice models had a tacho from factory. long story short I've been looking for one for years and finally I found one ( that was for sale at a reasonable price) I've seen some go for hundreds of dollars. anyways, I bought it and it isn't in the greatest shape, truthfully I thought it may need some internal repairs. however wired it up and get presto it works. Snapchat-1665840364.mp4 now to install it properly and to ditch the factory clock. oh and as you can see I now have an AFR gauge. also well worth the investment as now I have the idle mixture dialled in . plan to get the carb well dialled in for its full potential. that's it for the next few weeks as busy with life and need to save some money for the next step.

One thing I always thought that let the car down was the wheels. I love the Steelie and Hubcap combo but they need some loving. On top of that I'm a little over the Stock look and now the car will need a bit of a makeover anyway so I thought I'd treat the old girl to some new Shoes. Show her that I still care