dmulally

Long coupla on my knees inside the boat just gone. 

I'm prepping to get the seat tops put in so am painting what is underneath the seats with three coats of epoxy before the primer and top coat. Havent actually figured out if I'll make them storage tanks or leave them as buoyancy tanks yet. I still have to cut an access hatch to help glue from inside as well as keep as an inspection hole for future. 

I have also been glassing the shit out of the outboard well. There is enough space now for a rise and fall bracket and I want it to be waterproof and strong. 

As I cut off quite a few strips of chop strand and woven I went around adding bits of tape around the mast and anywhere that took my fancy such as inside the stern where it all meets at a point. There is still more to do on the outboard well but the weather is so cold that it just isn't conducive to painting and glassing. Hopefully this rain fucks off soon and we can get a bit of sunshine. 

So whilst I'm waiting for the cert man to give me the call off the bench I'm making it a little more finished. It's still noisy as shit so I'm doing my best to quieten it down a little. I am mostly deaf and have tinnitus so every bit helps. 

1 hour ago, gibbon said:

how did you get on?

Still waiting for the call off the bench. He just had major dental surgery so I dont want to push him. 

He is 20 mins away so wont be a drama when the time comes. 

56 minutes ago, Bearded Baldy said:

No idea sorry mate. I know i polished the fucking thing at least 5 times during my apprenticeship though.

Christ you just triggered a memory. In my apprenticeship the factory owner had a flash ski boat and he wouldnt even let us look at it. 

I dont mean lifting up the engine hatch or anything. Literally in it's direction. So when us dickhead kids walked past we had to face the other direction and sort of crab walk. 

What a cunt 

1 hour ago, Bearded Baldy said:

Yep nz made savage. Old boss had a  16ish foot one with a 115 yammie. Went hard as a ski boat.

Do you know if they were the same company as the west island? 

1 hour ago, Positive Ape said:

sweet boat! solid glass? what make?

I havent torn off the floor but I assume it's all glass with ply/timber stringers. It says it is a Savage 350. It may be a NZ brand as it looks very similar to a Savage Bosun which every man and his dog owned in Straya but there are differences. 

10 hours ago, Bearded Baldy said:

OMC 4 LYF Y'ALL!

I have this nifty little Johnny in the wings which I quite like. Came from a one owner Barry who mentioned that he used the shit out of it but only in fresh water which seems to be true looking under the cover. Both barrels have 90+psi so I'm calling it good. 

On 29/06/2025 at 20:36, bigfoot said:

That motor looks cool as

There is a 15hp Chrysler for sale Im eyeing off as an aux kicker next to it. 

Considering I wanted to get a small tinny to test out my outboards I can state that I failed this mission successfully. 

Just putting these old pics and new here as I'll likely need it soon for LVV man. Nobody is allowed to look at the awful welding. Imp body shells are made from paper so it was a case of plug the blown hole x 1000. 

Got this from the M57 swap group on FB and putting it here before I lose it:

"Shift pattern is P-R-N-D-4-3-2, to match the original 4 speed auto shifters.    The standard tiptronic shifters only use P-R-N-D, and then disconnect the cable to operate Manual and Sports.      Fully Clockwise should be park - you can check by trying to turn the output shaft"

I guess that doesnt mean I have to faff about with the tiptronic either. One less thing to worry about. 

43 minutes ago, mjrstar said:

Yeah I have the height, but as it'd be a parking space too I'm un-keen to have to climb into a caged car through a reduced door aperture. Hence my thoughts of a drive on belly sort of thing. 

 

Maybe if I could have a real wide post setup with long arms I could live with a 2 post.

Happy to measure mine if you like. If you scroll up this page you'll see it. 

34 minutes ago, 440bbm said:

not the additional + -  for manual mode you can feel or is that part electronic

I assume it's electronic. 

On 21/06/2025 at 20:17, mjrstar said:

Has anyone gone down the route of a belly lift vs 2 post hoist. As I'm pretty much exclusively doing suspension inspection and wheel removal post race days, plus a visual check tonsee.if anything is broken underneath... and I'd like easy door opening access. 

I don't really have the urge to stand underneath the car. It looks like they come in a few different lift heights.

If someone has one and it sucks, please let me know. / tell me to get a 2 post etc..

How high is your ceiling? If it would fit I'd get a 2 post as it'll be more versatile.

Hi all. Need some help from the brains trust. 

I need to come up with a cable shifter that mounts to the dash. Only slight hitch is I'm trying to figure out the shift pattern. It's from an E60 and looking at the shifter in pics online it goes PRND. But I can feel 6 clicks on the actual shifting mechanism on the side of the box. So does that mean 7 stations? 

So ignoring that dilemma, as soon as I can figure out how many clicks I need I want to be able to make a cool shifter on the dash that suits the chev. Here are some cool ones for inspiration. 

1 hour ago, VitesseEFI said:

The whole project was a howling bastard. Took months. By about half way through I was just being stubborn. I don’t remember the rod being especially awkward, but it had plenty of serious competition.

The final kick in the nuts was that the howlingest bastard of the lot was the gearbox I fitted, which whines vigorously in all indirect gears. Louder than the Triumph box that came out in fact. 1 -3 I don’t mind that much. It sounds “authentic”. 5th though - that’s just annoying. I do have another box and all the special parts will swap over, though interestingly enough the Mazda box in my sons Spitfire (mated to a Ford Sigma 1.6) is noisy in exactly the same way so maybe we just need to develop a better sound proofing approach.

I shall follow this with great interest as my GT6 engine isn’t the healthiest. Not sure I can stand loosing the 6 cylinder noise though.

My old standard 10 had a whine in the diff so I swapped it for a herald one and it was worse but better gearing. 

I'm convinced that with old triumphs if you don't hear some sort of whine you might as well keep driving to the audiologist as they have some bad news to hand signal to you. 

On 07/06/2025 at 05:52, cubastreet said:

It looks so nice open to my eyes. Would a removable cabin be an option? Kind of a ute boat.

Yep it would be an option and I'm building as per the plans to keep that idea open. 

1 hour ago, gibbon said:

that's a good point too, I'll ask CDC if their off-the-shelf axles come balanced. The LLVTA lists "axle modifications" as requiring a cert but reading into it, it looks like they might be talking about live rear ends more than anything

My Imp goes to LVV this month some time and the engineer mentioned he needed to look more into what the cert process is for half shafts. If you go down that path tag or PM me and I'll let you know what I needed. I just got the paperwork from the engineering shop just in case. I'm not sure if I'll need to get them crack tested or not. 

On 09/06/2025 at 22:46, gibbon said:

what's involved with chopping and changing CV axles? can different CVs be swapped around on axles easily enough or do you have to cut and weld the axles? 

 

 

 

For my VW to Hillman which were different diameters the engineer put them in some angle iron with one having a shim to raise it and with a groove added to each tip for weld to go in he butt welded them. 

They then got spun up on some fancy massive machine to balance them and get a report for LVV and job jobbed. Cost me maybe $300 all up. 

As for Triumph diffs, I recall putting a herald diff in my standard 10. Wish I never sold it. Was a great grocery getter. 

Another option is a pop top although I feel that's for warmer climates where you'd want somewhere to chill out of the hot sun. 

Just thinking out loud and would be really keen to get some feed back on a cabin and what looks in proportion. The whaler is an open boat and for those who camp on them, they generally use a tent. Owing to the mentally unstable NZ weather I'd prefer a cabin for which I can store my bedding and stuff so I don't have to have all the lockers full of shit. A slight safety factor is that if all the lockers are full of crap, they are no longer buoyancy tanks which would be needed in case of capsize or significant leak. Plus I don't want to be tripping over tents whilst swanning about in the cabin let alone pissfarting about with erecting a tent in a storm. 

Some pictures help with what I'm mulling over and be cool to get some feedback. The official FB page is pretty cool but owing to whalers being in the minority there isn't much discussion on them. 

This is what an as per the plan whaler looks like (professionally built clearly) with the open cockpit and from what it looks like just a day sailer. 

Here is a picture of a similar Welsford design with a tent. 

Here are a couple of low cabin roofing designs which would be pretty functional to sail with and look minimal and sporty, but inside would be crawl space only and only for storage or sleeping. Not really for sitting out poor weather with a book or cooking in. 

Here is a high cabin approach which would be ok to sit up in (it is flat bottomed so unable to stand up in) and cook in. Interestingly enough this cabin is on a whaler. You can see the coaming around the cockpit is higher than a normal whaler and rises to meet the cabin at the half way mark. 

This is the interior. The flooring seen here is in place and can be 100mm lower without the floorboards and sole supports if comfortable walking on the bottom panel. 

Below are a couple of examples of a sort of mid point between crawling around like a dickhead but not having my nose rub the cabin ceiling when I sleep. Note that the coaming/cabin sides are relatively low but the roof and hatch have a more distinct curve in them to get some height. If you scroll back up to the low designs you'll see the roofs are quite flat by comparison. 

One thing to note is unlike the whaler above, I'll be making my cabin smaller and just sleeping on an angle in a V berth. So the centreboard case will be half in and half out. Which means a door can only be put in on one side of the case. Unless there was a matching door on the other side which was only just containing a cupboard for the navigation equipment and a galley rather than an actual entry point/companionway.

This is how the owner of a pathfinder got around the c/b case being in and out. With something like this which I think is pretty clever. I don't know the pathfinders well but assume the higher cockpit floor in front of the door is for where your feet go when sleeping. 

Open to any thoughts or ideas. Still not ruling out a tent. Just would prefer something more permanent. Especially as I'm only sailing by myself and possibly a dog. 

6 hours ago, Stu said:

Shit this is awesome! Congrats on all the hard work. Must be seventy billion hours in this.

Cheers mate and the others for the kind words. It's actually a nice relaxing break from fencing and rusty old car projects. I genuinely look forward to my weekends spent working on it. 

34 minutes ago, datlow said:

 

Durp

work has a $50k one 

I shall steal it back from one of our other sites 

Good stuff. Make sure you share the pics please! It should pretty quickly tell you if it's worth jumping on the end of a 6 foot cheater pipe hanging off the crank bolt or not. 

On 02/06/2025 at 20:19, Rookie said:

I have separate engine and gearbox controllers, both are standalone units, I'm not sure what you plan is, or how the ecu for the m57s have been hacked these days? but for me it was a no brainer to go stand alone units so that there was no fuckery involved.

Plans are for architects. 

This is the one I'm using.