fantapants

So been slowly plodding away at this still. Chrissy is hard to keep some steam up. But the back of the car is nearly finished. Fuel tank is all done and fuel lines sorted to the front of the car. Had to modify some top arms, but the wheels are on and everything kinda basically works lol

So a quick bit of back ground (sorry this is the first place I've had to keep 2 build logs going and I'm a bit slow on the follow up lol) I've had the car since 2007? Give or take. She had 80 thousand and was in speccy beautiful condition. Plan was always for a simple clean blacktop 20v and daily. We then moved to tas and fast forward to 2014, not much had changed. She had wheels and suspension but that was it. I started to gather bits, 3sge and 6 speed, ecu etc for a conversion before my first boy was born..... Then in late 2014 I was admitted to hospital for a mystery condition. Turns out I had had a severe reaction to a common medication. This admission lasted 6 months and left me permantly disabled. Im pretty lucky with the depth of side effects considering what it put my body through. So the last 5 years have been predominantly rehab, learning to walk again, and gain basic functions back. Over the last 18 months, things have progressed well, and ive been abke to start playing again and have made some solid progress. I'm under the pump a bit to get my car running by the time Leo my son starts school full time in the new year. So hence the recent burst of enthusiasm lol. I'll try and keep things clear and logical but feel free to ask for clarity in the discussion thread...

Sorry lads, I havnt been very clear about things. So yeah, it's a Nissan based irs in the rear. I had a s15 cradle, and a few mates sorted out all the arms and hubs and shit. So I've narrowed the cradle 100mm to allow for all the stock suspension geometry to remain, but allow it to fit in the bum same as a series. (1410mm ) I had always wanted to make it so I could avoid all chassis mods, and I could have easily managed it if I left the cradle further #down. But I really wanted good ground clearance, and importantly, good arm angle on the suspension arms at a nice low ride height. In the end I ran out of talent with bending the tubes, and had to notch the chassis in one small place, and make some small box sections out of sheet to cover the holes for the front uprights. They are small enough that the rear seats still fit fine with no physical intrusion. Other than that, it uses the front trailing arm mounts on the chassis as the front locations. And small 20mm raised pads for the rear locations (using the same trailing arm mounts but in the vertical plane) this will allow me a small amount of rotation in the cradle to compensate for if I have got the cradle plane off lol. The diff is a 2 way 4.3 r180 a mate donated from dirty Nissan. The axle is the worst part of it. With a budget of virtually nill, the idea of a custom axle is the correct way to go, but simply impossible. So preface, this is NOT the right way to do this. But I need the car running and I was curious if I could make it work. So Nissan rear ends have an offset diff design with 2 lengths in the axles. So I made it so I could use the stock short axle as the long side, a d then had to shorten one axle by 100tmm. I did this by machining the axle down (once shortneed ) and machining the guts out of the old spline.. then used a tight shrink fit and pressed (smashed with a big hammer) the spline over the end of the shorter axle. Then I ran a small weld around the spline to add a little oompf to the grip in rotation. (Note all welds have been done with a filler known as weldmold 880. This stuff I use for welding chromemolly bike frames. It is a machinable stainless steel alloy specifically designed for anti crack properties and is very ductile. It is gorgeous to weld with snd is fantastic at joining dissimilar metals .... very much like 312 if you have ever used that ) there is no real faith being out in the axle, this is just a solution to get the car moving and the project stumbling to some sort of progress lol. If it lasts I'll be stoked, if it doesn't, well I knew I needed a proper one done. The engine is indeed a beams 3sge. It's a bit of a mongrel. When I bought it 6 years ago, I was under the impression it was a rwd 5th gen. But it turned out to be a cobbled together 4th gen red top from the caldina. :/ it was this that brought me here in fact. Old mate Roman and his rwd converted beams gave me hope lol. He has been instrumental in helping me get tot he point I'm at now with the engine about ready to go in. I have made my own quads mount, cos you know.... and I modified the stock manifold. Again not perfect, but I had access to a lot of free 2 inch tube and bends, so did the secondaroes out of 2inch stainless lol. The exhaust is all 2.5 inch (very very crowded in the tail) I have modified the water path to suit rwd rather than pull the head and swap gaskets over. For me this was simply cost prohibitive lol, and the easier option. I'm waiting on some more gifts from a mate on the mainland to get started on the engine mounts. I will use the same trailing a small mounts on the front as I see for the cradle. Will make sense once I start with some pics lol.

So. Attempt 37.4 with pics. Have welded out bendy boy. And played with slow pulse. Not my preferred style, but nice to learn things and the results were ok.

Yeah so this guy, he knows. Got it sorted thanks.

Yeah thanks lads. I do all the forum stuff on the phone, so I'll go hunt the settings. Cheers

#nailedit Hey does anyone have any suggestions on how I can change the size of my pics ? The limit of 3.9mb per post means I can only get 1 pic, and a lot of the pics are saved as bigger.... any tips ?

Moving along. The exhaust is a hell of a tight squeeze. 2.5inch stainless. Ground clearance was my primary goal .... hence the stupid amount of effort lol. In the end I'm gonna have to hard mount the back end of the exhaust to keep it from banging around. I have a flex join to alleviate the binding (I hope lol)

So close to bottoming up the sump today. Just need to eel the bolt tubes and she is Apple's. Finished the trap doors and also installed a cross guide to the pickup..

So made some moves on the sump today..

So this is the discussion place.... lol Feel free to ask questions or critique my disaster lol

Hey guys and gals. Hopefully this is ok, it's a build from Tassie. Anyways, 82 ke70. Has had a few different plans. But currently desperately need to get her running for early next year. She has spent the last few years on a rotisserie, but progress has been good lately. It's work is almost done, chassis and body work basically done and engine well on the way.