doullama

i'll just send em to a spring shop, from what I hear its not overly expensive

Max 80s grossness is my precise aim, was just trawling for pics of such haha. Cheers Clint, will look into sending springs away. I'll pull the blocks out 1st, mayy even be ok standard. Max height is just my spontaneous reaction after fixing ground-impact damage haha

As much as I can get away with couple of inches above standard would be nice. At the moment (lowered) It barely clears my driveway, and hz's are apparently prone to cracking in the control arms when fitted with lowering springs and standard shocks..

I'd just cut the spring-seat off and weld it on underneath (if its legal), failing that, are lift-shackles wof-able?

I'm looking at de-lowering the hz van this week, I'd quite like to raise the rear a little above factory height. Can I simply reverse the existing lowering block assembly to use them as lift-blocks and get a wof? Had a bit of a look in the virm but couldn't find much about lifting. Chur

Holden came back friday, had just about forgotten about it! Got some sweet rostyles plus some brown door cards and an 80's shaft-radio off @Threeonthetree, nice to meet you Neal! unbelievably (and probably in a fit of jealousy) my marina failed to proceed after coming back from auckland, sputtered and died in my driveway! Not too sure whats up with it, poor spark. Anyhow here's some pics from the beater, am hoping to have this thing complete in 2019, much work awaits

Great estate!

It should be noted that the rear 1/4's are being done only because beater needed something to weld the arch lip to that wasn't a shopping bag full of rust flakes and filler haha, watch as this chain reaction leads to a 30% new van

And started on a Friday no doubt. At least a van has reasonably simple lines and good access to everything, I imagine a rusty Car equivalent would be far more nightmarish

Panelbeater is still plugging away, both sideswages done, turned out the left side was just as bad as the right, just bogged better now into the rear 1/4's and arches, After that it'll be the Lh sill and the bit above it, bottom of Lh guard has some random unwelded patches too, which I suspect aren't welded fully because you can't weld to bog. Still need to figure out why the a-pillars are filling with water in the rain, @Shakotom are the a-pillars ok under the chrome screen-trim? Could even be a bad seal I suppose but seems odd that the water is only pouring in to the pillar-posts. This van is reminding me just how lucky I've been with Gm cars in the past haha, getting there though

If its not an ld28 powered series 1 au falcon forte', I suggest you return it

In breaking van-news, popped in to see the panelbeater today and oh wow what a great job hes done, cut out a strip about an inch either side of the RH swage from front door to rear hatch, plated/replaced more than half of the horizontal inner skin and formed a new outer skin + swage by hand, welded that in and it looks (expletive deleted) amazing. Im no fan of wallet-based jalopy repairs but this is one job i'm glad I farmed out, was getting a bit down on it due to that particular rust patch being so extensive/complex/structural. He reckoned the hardest part was bracing the van body while this was going on to stop that side collapsing haha! even had existing bogged over fatigue cracks in the side from flexing/flopping about in the past. The stuff thats been cut out is an absolute puttied/bogged/godknows mess. Am feeling much better about the project with that complete, have thrown more money at him to do the other side, which should only need minor patching in comparison. Pics to come!

Tis quite a bit aye, bit stronger (prior to rust-out) than some early car-based commercials for sure. Just a pity rust-repair panels arent really available for anything van-specific. Tom had the plenum replaced but still needs a bit of weather-tightening, after waterblasting I had to literally bail out the interior haha! lots of water getting into & pooling in the bottom of both A-pillars, which then overflows onto floor. unsure how/why thus far, tbh that's quite a way down the list

Hz is at the beaters to have both swages under the rear windows replaced, too ratty to (re)-fill and beyond my skill to replicate. depending on the bill from that may get the Lh sill, outer wheel arch and the panel above said sill replaced too. Bloody Australian cars, rust way worse than British ones! Austin is legendary, holding up to daily duties well.

40 p/w not too bad really, shed looks brand spankin

Been mucking around a bit with Hz, rot-hunting mostly. Water blasted off heaps of primer and filler, no more than expected really. Worst of it (so far) is probably the belt line where the turret mounts onto the "ute" bit at the back, pulled the carpet off inside & looks like the windows have leaked over the decades & rotted out the junction of upper, lower & inner skin, in fact someone's added an overlay inner skin to brace the sides (glued on even) , but the 6 inner pillars are more or less floating. Some welding has been done here but some has been subject to a space-age solution. (Panel steel glued on & filled) Will probably have to remove the inner bracing & extra inner skin to patch the original. Would dare say this will warp the sides a bit but they're already pretty warped! Bit hard to see in the pics as the inside looks awful with various paint/glue/fluff/80s pubes etc. should have just fixed the lil bog-blowouts & called it good haha. Unfortunately most filler is over bare metal so will be an ongoing thing unless the body is blasted/dear god no

My arch-nemesis

Had a tutu with new van today, had a pretty bad manifold leak tick so checked the nuts, no1 was finger tight, tightened it but no joy. Luckily there was a spare if equally crap (hate the thin perforated stuff) mani gasket in box of spares, chucked it on and found this van was suffering from the same issue as the austins k-motor, mismatched inlet & exhaust flange thickness. Had burnt out the old gasket in 6-odd places. Cut up some more 'shims' and no more ticky-touring whipped the aircleaner off during this, good thing as there was no filter inside! Will order another but in the meantime: improvise, adapt, overcome. Next thing temp & oil pressure gauges, suspect it might be getting a bit warm but no way to really tell. Already have a gauge/sender for temp so just need an appropriate adaptor thing for whatever the 202's sender hole thread/size is vs whatever the sender I have is haha

Thy will be done!

Cheers Tom, good to meet you too. Will do, i'm sure you'll see it again Hopefully with extra "buxom vixen riding a polar bear into battle on the martian plain, armed only with a whip" murals haha

Another van = a collection! Picked up @Shakotom 's Hz van today, had wanted one for years, and as time goes by they're certainly not getting any easier to find intact, or cheaper for that matter. Nice solid base for a panel & paint, and the 202/ three on tree combo is perfect. First H series holden, and i'm quite impressed, remind me of a GM B-body car without the pitch/yaw & bordello spec interior. Was a comfortable, relaxing drive home. Gets a better ratio of thumbs up to confused looks than the marina! The list: exhaust leak to fix sand, bog, sand, bog etc paint top & bottom rustproofing re-sprang for offroad stz oem hubcaps cheviot turbos new weatherstripping soundz 330ml can ejection port chloroform, duct tape etc profit

Prepare your eyeholes, tis a van update! So far nothing has broken, which makes me rather suspicious. When i replaced the head I just filled the rad with h2o, thought i'd better chuck some coolant & a thermostat in. With the thermo in it started dieselling on shutoff, I managed to overcome my inner barry and leave it in, and fix the dodgy linkage that was causing it to idle a little too high. Carbs dont have fancy electrical wizardry solenoid. Has gotten lots of use lately, several inter-city trips etc which has been cool. Also picked up a rather cool but somewhat rotten parts ute/lawn ornament + parts from yet another ute thanks to Ben the car-wrangler (not sure what his username here is) so now have even more surplus parts for my next of kin to scrap in the future. Funnily ended up with yet another 4k motor, had given one with scooter-pile to blizzo as I really only need one spare, Ben had one lying around and was like hey, you'll want this! I was like "nah its all good just gave one away".. "yeah but this one has a k50 attached" yeah fair enough so in the back of the ute it went. Most importantly I now have genuine leyland(tm) seat mounts which will allow me to put the seats back a little further, which will improve comfort considerably, and a pair of navy xtra-cheap commercial spec door cards just like it used to have. Had to fight numerous, large, BL lovin' white-tails for these.

Apparently there's another one in matamata, hence beginning a south waikato vs piako district Marina van rivalry, which I have the upper hand in as only I know about it.

Gutted I missed seeing your ute thursday @tortron, wanted to foam over its champagne gloriousness

May well do, usually take february in its entirety off anyway. Probably take actual station wagon haha