Mr.Mk1

Pretty

Did 900km going down to Alexandra and back for Xmas, went great. Sucked getting stuck behind campers and boats through the twisty bits though! brother gave it a tune because we were a bit retarded according to the cam specs and It’s going great now. mate brought me a 120Y swaybar as part payment for cutting his rust, this is 4mm bigger and straight swap- so bare metalled and painted it all nice, new bushes etc. then snapped a bolt putting it back together. lucky I did cause I found rust in the rail, so out came two patches and in went rust kill, etch and new steel. Bolt came out while drilling so that was awesome. Took castor rod out to gain space to broken bolt and found those bushes to be pretty shagged too, so I’ll order some more.

THIS IS GOOD

Today marks one year since Bart and Karl delivered this specimen unto my driveway. Seems like longer? Been a funny year. Good journey, plenty of highs and crushing lows but it goes good, looks decent and I have all my fingers, so. Recently lowered it more in the front, electronic dizzy conversion with appropriate coil, sorted a genuine ignition barrel, new gas cap. my mate wants it for a wedding car next year so that will force me to cut and polish it after fixing a few bits where things fell on it or it fell on things (bonnet fell on engine crane, cracked paint, and lamp fell on guard, sharp dent) will be good have the peel gone fer good. good journey with good group of fellas, I thought I’d spruce it up and sell it down the track but it’s good fun so I doubt that will happen!

I did laugh out loud and shake my head

If you haven’t had a laugh today, read on. friday was a local holiday so I spent the day cleaning and sealing up the split I found in the gearbox.where the drain bung goes it has 2 vertical cracks, doesn’t leak till it warms up. Super couldn’t be assed pulling box out again so drained it, heated it up, brake cleaned,repeated, then RTV was applied. Then when it had tacked off added another layer. 24hrs later last smear and filled the box, added some ATF as it’s supposed to help keep things nice inside there. its held out mint so far. mint16 and I did some hoons and tunes on Saturday arvo with mixture and throttle, got it fairly good but lacked. Then I got him to drive home and he says ‘wow, you have have fuck all throttle...’ Had a look and it turns out THE GAS PEDAL IS BENT! he pressed, I watched the carb end and it was barely reaching secondary’s. i bent it up roughly half and achieved full swing. WELLL FUCK ME it was an Instant animal, I was fucking overjoyed! Pretty much what I was always aiming for but it just wouldn’t achieve. Has a twin carb sound to it, nothing on side draughts, but cool! Still had a quirk that we decided was def an air leak. so that nite I went out country for a mates party, car went great, 3300 at 100km, even has the torque to pass cars in 5th. On the way back I wound it off the clock but ran out of night vision at 150km. on Sunday I yanked the manifolds off, painted the flows again, replaced gasket, and zipped it up again. Then mint16 decided more tuning was better than doing other stuff so We went tuning again. Oddly it had developed a random, maybe every minute PSSST coming from the dizzy side or back. Sounded like compression when you turn an engine over with the plugs out. so we went to his lockup to get the vacuum gauge, car drove fine, didn’t really repeat the PSSST again. Vac gauge didn’t tell us shit. Also the fact we could pull the dizzy vac off and it wouldn’t stumble and die was very odd. Previously decided that cause it had an air leak it wouldnt stumble and die cause it was tuned to compensate because of a leak. then it struck me. Maybe we should take vac from the now useless choke/idle stability diaphragms..the 3rd port on the carb. the 2 on the right don’t appear to do shit, when on the mazda one was connected to vac hose and some was capped off. SUCCESS now we had vacuum, we had a stumble when we disconnected it and we had full dizzy advance when thrashing! So we had another tune hoon and pretty much ended up at the same idle and mixture we had before but with full throttle and advance to help.. wee bastard was proper singing. took it home, let it cool down and checked the head torque setting in case this was the reason for PSSSST. There was a very very minute amount on 2 of the dizzy-side studs but the rest were bang on. i then swapped in my HD crow valve springs, made a wee bracket to hold the throttle cable, tweaked the fuel hard line to tidy it up, re-positioned the vacuum lines, set the tappets and fire it up. All is good. Timing a little retarded. Advanced it a tad. then today I finally decided that after having my leads on backorder for months that they are likely discontinued from TopGun, so I wandered down the rack and found some bongo/econovan leads that looked like the go. tried them tonight and they are sweet, 2 a little long but very useable. I rage over leads that aren’t black. And one kept belting me so actioned a change. you can Also see a wee Shield I made to cover the alternator fan so I didn’t have to worry about it eating my timing light wires or hand. Now I just need the electronic dizzy, change coil and put the air box on, rack up some more miles and change the oil.

New box is good! Took a few clutch cable tweaks to find the sweet spot. Didn’t get to test it on the open road but looking forward to it. Yesterday I made new gaskets for either side of the carb spacers between the body and the manifold, trimmed back to factory the bits I added to the actuators to bring the secondaries on earlier (when I was persisting with the vacuum setup and seeing what it would do), and blocked off that unnecessary vac takeoff. Also evened up the float levels, were close though. it fired up just off the key stone cold and idled like a champ. It has no choke. This is amazing! Must have had an air leak before.. pretty damn happy, will do some more tuning on Friday cause it’s canty anniversary and working can GTFO.

5 forward gears! Just need to fill it and go for a test. and the new wheel nuts from mint16. He also checked over the timing last week, I was paranoid I would put a hole in a piston cause things just weren’t lining up like they should but it went really well, and wanted a second opinion turned out I had an extra vacuum hooked up I didn’t need and it allowed the idle to be lowered enough for the timing marks to be bang on.

Fed it some new engine mounts and trimmed the gearbox mount-2-xmember bolts..they were almost touching the member and certainly did while driving resulting in rank vibration and noise.

Went for another drive and all went well. Also ditched the vacuum advance on the twin carbs and made my own actuators. Lots easier once the vac gear was out of the way and I could cut off the wee leg the diaphragm arm went onto that was fouling my previous design. not in a rush to put them back on just yet, will keep putting miles on the engine. Maybe when I have it apart to put the HD valve springs in once it’s run in

..Another 4 hours and the box met the engine. jesus so fucking sore and tired and angry. the spines on the clutch plate got a bit caned and it just wouldn’t go home. Ended up putting old clutch back in. Outside the car this time. also put standard single carb on, as yesterday I had twins on and it was shitty. Today it hauls fucking well!!

Engine came back, put er back together, looked sharp as a pin..acid bath ate all my paint off the block so hazed it again. engine guy gave me some syrupy green assembly shit to use. I found it way too sticky and I had trouble with bearing caps sticking and trying to spin so had to re start that a few times. went in beautifully, always usually a jerk to line up the box. oil pressure straight away, ran like a clock. 25 minutes at 2500 to run in the cam then went for a drive to the hills to bed it it. on the second run it started making a funny noise. Bee lined for home and it got much worse, yay. dropped the oil and it was great. Wiggled everything and it was tight. out she came. the fucking flywheel came loose. Despite being torqued to spec and loctite 10hours prior.. so stoked it’s not shot, perplexed how that happened. Also found a torn engine mount and the gearbox mount mite be poked too. then I spent 3 hours trying to get the fucking gearbox lined up, had a big ole rage and went inside.

Yeah, most of my friends use them and Ive found them real good too.

Engine Reconditioning Services, tai tapu

Got word from the machine shop that I can pick my engine up on Thursday! it came in at under half what I expected to pay so I’m fizzy! they did new bearings throughout, frost plugs, ground crank, acid tanked block, resized rods, measured up the rotating, removed + cleaned + tapped and bunged the crank. tore the engine out after work in preparation, jazzed on a long weekend refit and run in. also got some lock nuts and maybe some freebie chrome wheel nuts. good week

I got the old gal some new boots. Always planned on wider and 13in anyway. mate sold her van and kept the wheels so had no use for them, I’ve always liked Jilbas so once I test fit and they cleared, we struck a deal! Two were pretty grubby and brake dust starting to eat into them but they cleaned up pretty well with some truck wash, my electric toothbrush and a fine steelo pad. SSR Jilba 13x6.5 Type A. Nankang 175/50swith decent tread. Now I know how much I need to lower it, the front especially. It’s quite high at the x-member.

May be of no help but I found a random WP pulley today that’s destined for the bin if you want it

I was looking forward to driving it to work the other Saturday cause my work car is boring, but when I did it was flat as fuck, boring and generally disappointing. when I got home I put the timing light on it to find it had moved a little, so tightened. Needed a warrant so I put a standard carb on, so it had choke and wasn’t a jerk to start for them. hosed gas into the engine when you shut it off. pulled it apart and cleaned it, did the same thing. then discovered the power valve actuator was frozen up Freed that up and it was mint, but The morning of the warrant it started doing it again. passed with a clean sheet! Was a totaI knob to start afterwards so I hotwired it and wouldn’t rev out, popped and banged, so chugged it home. They didn’t mention it doing this to them so she must have behaved. more of the same. Have since thrown the twin carbs back on. it pulled a bit under brakes so I ripped the other caliper off (did the opposite side before last warrant) and: one Piston was a bit scabby so used a spare and got it back together, cheers to mint16 for the bleeding help! cheers also to the above for making my sweet rocker shaft spacers. likely overkill but it’s a cool old school mod which replaces the springs with a brass bushes to stop the rockers moving laterally under revs I also modified the mazda air box a while back so the bonnet closes over it. required me to cut most of the base, push down at front and then fill the pie-cut section with panel steel. and found out the hard way that if you leave the key on while you go check something else, it can get ultra hot,produce a lot of rank smelling smoke, drip Brown shit out of it and fail! Lucky I had a spare generic one, cooked one was a GT40. I have a new one, but I’m planning to go electronic dizzy soon so needed to be a non-resistor type. Heres a shot of the current state of play. I used to have the fuel line running over the rocker cover into a tee, but discovered that the factory hard line will reach with a little bending. Much tidier and safer.

Gary at PAD Motorsport, chch

Certainly improved, would be happy with it if I hadn't already driven er with bike carbs on ... Now has a bit more noticeable punch I reckon a few more tweaks to the actuator shape and I'll be getting somewhere

I decided I'd make some of my own actuators to see if I could make the arm longer and change the fat of it so it moved the secondarys more/sooner. After a few volumes, I gave up. it was a Shit, confined by other bits it would try and hit or you clear that part then the shape is wrong and it would essentially jam wide open. So as a compromise I just built up the part the screwdriver is pointing at, so it engages the secondary's sooner. Will have a test hoon tomorrow night

Nah fail, it was better but no full secondary's. Pissed about with it all afternoon but never got there. I noticed the dizzy wasn't advancing so I put mine in, tweaked the feet of the secondary's so it's just about touching the primary's actuator. pulled the diaphragms off and they checked out, put back on with some sealant on the gaskets. I though maybe the airbox might affect the vacuum situation so I also sliced the bottom of the air box, pushed it down to where it cleared the bonnet and filled the gap with panel steel. Didn't get to test drive it but didn't seem to change with free revving on the spot. A keen mate decided I needed mirrors so went and scored a few from some wrecked Cedrics, I made a pair from the best of them, cleaned up well. Stoked with the look, sedans look best with rectangles as opposed to round sporty ones. were now cooking up some 13" wheels so I can utilise the golf shocks and lowering springs I got a few months ago. likely have to reset the leaves too but it needs to come down. I like the current wheels but they..aren't 13s

I was in the shed for about a minute last night before I noticed a linkage rod on front carb had over-centred, so righted that and it seems to have full travel incl secondary's . So I'll test that on the way to work tomorrow!

Today I decided to try my twin carb setup so I could dial it in. once the exhaust was sorted ( fucking thing came out right under the modified gearbox x-member so had to trim excess threads and piecut pipe, it plumbed up easy and with some gas down the throats it fired straight up! went for a test fang but had no vac secondaries. didnt like to idle but have hooked up vacuum hoses and it's good now. yet to re-test. i have a wee video but can't upload