Doug Hill

Mk1 seems to work. Board is hinged, will flip up horizontal to give access to where I can hide my lollies from mimi-me. The lower horizontal board can be folded up behind the drawing board, but is very important for holding cups of tea. 

Figured out the fine adjustment knobs (angle indicator has a vernier scale) and the overall alignment. 

Will need a disasembly and good clean up.

I will need to find suitable rulers, will probably just make some moubts and epoxy them to a 500 and 300mm clear ruler

now I can hide in the spare room like a loner 

Because I'm too cool for CAD and im sick of using the kitchen table. Drawing board project. 

Pretty much impossible to find any info on these NTI units, but I'll figure the fine adjustment out while I pull it to pieces and the ADHD on to a totally different project 

The answer is VTR1000 with Yoshi pipes then. All the range of a gen1 leaf, all the fuel economy of a land cruiser. 

2 hours ago, Mof said:

The wif will be in the market for a bike in a few months. She had her eye on the cb500x or maybe vstrom 650. This has put another option out there...

It's the resale that worries me. I got the moto morini ~ 9 months ago, that's in the same boat

What about a KTM 390 Adventure?

Only mentioning it because I have one to sell on behalf and I think it's a lovely little adventure thing. Self plug. 

XSR900 GP is the titties. 

All we need now is a new SRAD. Or even just find me a decent old one 

2 hours ago, Nominal said:

@tortron ever tried to adjust the accuracy of a bmc Smiths speedo? I’m keen to give it a bash.

I did with one of my Morris Minors 

And then I replaced the speedo with a spare so it worked again

You're meant to hammer the whole key in while the pulley is installed, I should have added that to the instructions 

Our outdoor high voltage DC components are tin plated, or silver plated. So one of them will do the job 

Use a di-electric grease 

Your key is now in the caple hands of NZpost, so you should see it around May 2nd 2026.

I'll have a look at work tomorrow, pretty confident I'll have a bit of 4mm in stock 

You can make a new woodruff key yourself with a little bit of key stock. If you send me the width/length I may have a bit here I can send 

On 21/04/2024 at 13:47, Alfashark said:

Relevant if it's a newer car (I struck this issue for the first time on a 2010 model): Sometimes you may need to tell the car via OBD2 device that it's a new battery, so it doesn't try and pump a squillion ergs into the new battery...

Always made me giggle, our old 2005/6 E61 wagon was an IBS (Intelligent Bowel Syndrome) car and needed battery coding, plus sensors etc. 

My Camry Hybrid and Prius both do not require that. Go figure.

Popped the engine back in at some stupid hour last night. Nice to have the original back in the frame, the spare was from a later ugly era GT. Side note, I am desperate to get the new shed built

1 hour ago, GregT said:

Have you got the cover for the cylinder head ?  That at least should be polished. It's the one thing that makes the ramair versions stand out.

The spark plug cover? I'm missing one of those. Seem like hens dicks to find too

Slowly putting the GT125 back together. 

Built a 20t big bench top press to do the crank, all the cheaper presses I looked at were poxy piles of shit. And of course I didn't take pics once I finished it

Ignition timing set. Just finishing off getting the right surface finish on the side covers, it's kinda half ass polished in all the pics and how the bike arrived. So keeping it that way. New old stock emblems coming for the covers. 

Cases all glass blasted and re-treated, pretty chuffed with how they look.

Now on to the carbs, need to remember to order the intake gasket thingymabobs from somewhere, strange wee carbs the VM18s. The resin/phenolic spacer inside the bore is not listed in the Suzuki parts book, but it looks like you can get a newer and much sexier alternative nowadays. 

So my final hurdle is, some parts of the frame aren't super tidy but it is original paint. I'll have to see how the OCD vs originality battle goes once I put the engine in

8 hours ago, Alfashark said:

VR6+T is a very common mod, and there's shitloads of material online about it, plus a wad of aftermarket bits. 

The engine itself has been around forever in various configurations - 2.8 12V, 2.8/3.2/3.6 24V. Yes, they're heavy but as mentioned, they've got a lot of meat in the block.  15° angle between bore center-lines, so they run a conventional inline-6 crank and firing order... Add to that the asymmetric port length between cylinders (inlets are on one side of the head, exhausts on the other) and they sound absolutely awesome.

1000hp+ is achievable - Just spend 30 seconds on YouTube looking for VR6 Turbo Mk1 and Mk2 Golf conversions...

We had a mk2 3.2 TT with a little exhaust and I always thought it sounded like a masturbating Wookie. Really lovely motor otherwise

1 hour ago, Thousand Dollar Supercar said:

Quad cams on a transverse V6 which was originally designed for longitudinal / RWD applications. It's recommended to change the tensioners and sometimes the water pump at the same time. I haven't watched the following tutorial video, but I see it's nearly 50 minutes long and the description says "..this one isn't for the weekend enthusiast and its a very hard job to do".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz8dhpncSss

They're not that bad to do, no harder or easier than a transverse Jap v6. Just the frequency is more often,  60km IIRC. 

Helps being a mechanic who works on stupid crap though

156s are lovely things, always wanted a V6 one but thought the Bolo Radish Telstar was a better drive. A friend had a manual 146 GTA, was a problem child but had some charm. It felt like it was going to swap ends on mid corner bumps, very exciting to drive. 

Usually the wee hat jobbie will have two pressed out contact areas. I think I have a heap of old honda switchgear so I can have a gander when I'm back home this week 

It should have a little brass or copper hat thingy-ma-jig

All the premium EV stuff had resale like an S class merc, it's absolutely wild how anyone can comfortably piss away 100k in a couple years just to own a car. 

Litium seems cheap at the mo and I imagine an LFP battery is cheaper to make than a Li-ion due to no nickel or cobalt usage. I'd probably take 50% with a grain of salt and end user costs with a grain of salt. It would be reasonable to expect production costs lower than ICE soon, but not purchase cost

Misalignment will wear splines like that. As will lack of appropriate lube.

Check crank thrust too. Then measure the clutch stack height and try find some proper specs for the parts you're using 

If the stack height is wrong the diaphragm may be touching the disk (almost looks like it has kissed the springs) and this will then eat the clutch and thrust bearings in the engine 

https://evsandbeyond.co.nz/ev-ruc-petition-to-parliament/

Don't need assisted brakes. Job done