Mr.Mk1

What have I done recently.... Fuck all! my mate scored a Ute so we stripped it out and as Payment for doing it and storing it at my place he gave me the diff. It’s an H165 which is a bit bigger and gruntier than the standard H145 in it now. Ill get around to swapping it in at some point. It’s not a straight bolt in affair but achievable in a day with some wee mods. its got a new 2in exhaust all the way through with 1 reasonably new muffler that was kicking around, made a decent difference to performance, has a great rasp to it and dosent hit the ground or body! It’s like, slightly too loud but acceptable. I farmed it out to a mate at pitstop cause I fucking HATE exhausts. i put new carb kits in it. I put it on the dyno and made 64hp at the wheels, I thought it would be closer to 80 but no.. power to weight is a wonderful thing! theres a track day this weekend so I whipped the discs off and got them skimmed, kitted the calipers and painted, new pads. Brakes were getting very manual. i finally got that proper wheel alignment done, booked at another local shop and they rang to say nay, and sent me to Tony’s tire service on Blenheim Rd. They have some fancy Hunter machine that can cope with low old cars with small profile tyres. It’s great now! Haven’t driven it much since, it was pissing down when I picked it up so couldn’t cane it properly.

I’ll definitely farm out the shortening/splining etc but very handy to know!

Popped a datsun wheel under it for a laugh. Upside-down misery

I got this diff from Dan for less than labeled after deciding the hilux diff was too heavy, the caliper conversion situation, handbrake creation and it wasn’t lsd. this is! easily available, inboard handbrake and disc brake already. The GT2871r I had was pronounced dead due to cost of repair. Then a mate popped up with this, got it for a song and will be a nice wee upgrade whizzer. Heres another escort with CA. The angled engine bugs me, it’s factory but I can’t handle it so I’m going to upright mine. I’ll have to change mounts anyway, tweak the shifter to suit. I have a brand new genuine oil pump as well. If she blows up we’ll try again. its well documented these days how to do this head drain mod so will do that. Today I sorted out lots of nuts/bolts/screws and put them into an organiser case for the first time in my life, reorganised the boxes, tore the front and rear ends out, front off, bumper off ready for the spit this week. Had a scotch with the dog while sitting in the back seat. She was more interested in the reflections

Absolutely CA18DET still. I’ve been collecting bits and pieces as they come up, check trademe favourites every day.

Well I’m fucked if I can find the original discussion thread, if anyone can that would be sick but I’ve been looking for way longer than I should have.

The time has come! You only need to scroll up to see how dormant it’s been..got it trailered up in the weekend, time has taken its toll with rat piss and shit and surface rust in thin areas but she’s still great! after clearing it out and cleaning it, tucked it into garage. Then I cut the tubs out of this drum I’ve had in waiting. unfortunately the rotisserie is still down south so that halts progress, probably try score some steel and make another one.

I ain’t dead. My flatmate gave it a quick flat and buff while I was in ozzy so it looks a lot better now! Also shortened struts all painted and installed with mk1 golf shocks, cleaned up and under sealed the inner guards before that. ended up taking 2 coils off the Dobi springs to get it to where it needed to be. The ride is great, haven’t bottomed out or come close to it. i put the new 1/4 window rubbers in, they are great. Only thing was that they don’t stay open when hooning along, the rubbers too..rubbery and they spring closed. I could leave them open when it’s parked up to see if it helps mould. I drove to wanaka and back to be a wedding car with a couple of other 1200s. got a wheel alignment the morning I went down but they weren’t happy with it and didn’t charge me..blamed the steering box. (Which is fine and I’m sure has adjustment on the very centre of the top but oh well) Resulted in a pretty shit, bump steery, overcorrecty journey in the wind which was a shame, love that inland road. I’ll take it somewhere else. The trip back was better and with the radar detector on we had some good fangs some revolutions were pulled. Had shit gas in it for the journey but back to good stuff now. this weekend I got a mate at pitstop to chuck a full 2” free flow flanged at the headers with single basic sporty muff box I had laying around that was pretty new. I don’t usually farm out stuff I can do but I fucking rage over exhausts and he did a great job, cheap and quick. Now tucked up nice and tight, has a great rasp and crackle to it and goes better!

Haven’t done much because I’ve been helping a mate with his Ute. however I have had the struts shortened by nick_m, made a new brake hard line and got new front Rubber hoses. Haven’t seen struts because I’m in a foreign country but look forward to sewing it all back together with some new paint and going for a fang. No pics so See you at nats

Scott luxon donated some parts cause he’s a super GC. Rapt to have new ignition switch which means steering lock and actual key again! the quarter window rubbers are always quite torn up or hard so these freshies will be a dream!

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