Truenotch

Almost finished the aluminium work now.

More jobs done. This random looking combo will turn into a duct to feed the air box. It will get cheese cloth draped over it to make a shape like this, then will be coated with resin and chop strand to create the part. Then it'll fit here with a short length of 6" hose and a flange on the air box inlet. Did a bit more folding too. The radiator and inlet ducting it almost finished. Still needs the endplate done for the filter end. Gave it a test fit with the guards on. Still need to trim the new part on the bonnet.

It's nice to keep making progress on this. I got the bonnet back today. Jason left a bunch of extra glass on the new part in the middle so I can trim it to suit my bumper. Jason is a clever dude and has lots of experience with fibreglass. He's keen to do more custom jobs on the side, so sing out if you need any fibreglass work done! Gave it a test fit and it needs about 8mm lopped off so it'll line up properly. It's hard to visualise without paint, but it should end up looking quite good and will be a shitload more aerodynamic. This is the car that gave me the idea: I also picked up my freshly rebuilt front shocks today and reinstalled them. The wheel arch area looks a lot better with fresh paint! Also got the rear springs back from getting the rate checked. They came back at 330lb - I always thought they were 280lb. So I reinstalled the rear shocks. The rear end is good to go now.

Another small job ticked off tonight. At the last race meeting I had a bit of a moment under brakes where my foot slipped off the brakes while trying to heal-toe into the far corner at Taupo (turn 11). This meant I didn't show down enough for the corner and sent me sailing off into the gravel trap. I went to stab the throttle to get it out of the gravel and couldn't find the pedal! Turns out the linkage between my pedal and the original throttle lever had broken, so the pedal was just flopping around in the breeze. I'm pretty sure the linkage breaking is what caused my foot to slip of the brake (that's the story I'm sticking to anyway...). Between races I had to figure out a quick solution - the item on the left is the result. It's made from a piece of 3mm plate that was a special service tool donated by the Coleman race team. The linkage on the right is the new one I made up today. It's a stainless turn buckle with left and right hand threads for easy adjustment. I found it at the fastener shop and bought a couple of Teflon lined rose joints to slot in there. And in place... Man footwells get dirty!

More from the fibreglass man. I don't need this opening anymore, so might as well block it off:

The new seat sits next slightly further back than the old one, which is great for leg length, but means that the steering wheel is now slightly too far away. I already had a 40mm spacer behind the steering wheel, so figured I needed to find or make something that was around 60mm long. The other issue is that the car is quite hard to get in and out of. Making the steering wheel removable would make life a lot easier. After asking a few people and a quick Google, the NRG quick release came up consistently as a quality option and also happens to be 60mm long. Win! I'm pretty impressed with the design and finish - it helps to justify the price. The cap screws that came with the kit are slightly too long, so I'll need to go bolt shopping tomorrow. Ive also given my bonnet to a friend who does fibreglass. He's moulded the headlight covers into the bonnet and done a couple of repairs to the underside.

Haha, cheers. Those are old cardboard $10 bins that we took to Fieldays with us.

Did some arts and crafts today: Went round to @Rhyscar's place to use his folder and came back with bent versions of the above picture. It fits together as expected and the bumper still fits. Bonus. The radiator gets the full lot of air from the main entry to the airdam and the air filter takes it's air from the grille. Hopefully this forces enough air through the filter to give a proper cold charge. I still need to make the cover and side plate for the filter duct, but it's coming together well. Here's the radiator entry from below. From the radiator's point of view: And the air filter's point of view: Now I need to figure out how join this bit to that bit:

Ticked off a couple of jobs today. Added a couple of dust boots for the top arms on the 4 link. Thanks to @Threeonthetree and others for the suggestion. It flexes well through the normal stroke, but struggles a bit when you disconnect the shocks and let the diff droop to max: I also played around with spacing the bump stops down so they actually do some work. That gives me about 65mm of shock stroke before the bump stop starts touching. From there the bump stop can start adding extra "spring rate" and make for a more predictable ride over big bumps. They squish out quite far at full compression. This was at full articulation (right side right up, left side at max droop). And now there's a tiny amount of clearance for the top arm at full compression.

This wasn't on the list of "must do's", but when Hayden @Miniman76 put this seat up for sale I had to say yes! I've been wanting a seat like this for quite a while. It's super comfy and the seating position is slightly better than the old seat. It sits me a bit more upright and slightly further back, which has straightened my legs out slightly (good thing). The downside is now I'm about 20mm too far back from the steering wheel. Luckily the solution is only a purchase away: This is about 20mm longer than the current boss spacer I'm using and has the added bonus of being a quick release. Not cheap, but it will make it far easier to get in and out of the car. Another job on the list is to make aluminium ducting for the air inlet and radiator. I was originally going to add a divider and make a crude system to direct air into each cavity. I changed my mind and am now using all of the "mouth" of the bumper for the radiator and the gap above pushes air into the filter area. Here's the initial CAD model: The air comes through the mouth and then up here to go through the radiator: And with the bumper on: I've got a sheet of aluminium and @Rhyscar has a folder, so this should come together relatively quickly. I'm starting with a blank canvas to keep it nice and tidy. After that's done the focus will move to building a fibreglass filter housing and air duct to join this bit to the air box. Discussion:

I've started on the list of jobs now, starting with adding bump stops to my new rear shocks. I wanted to make sure they would be protected from bottoming out. So I removed the springs and took the suspension to full travel. It looks super sweet with this much tuck. The diff head touches the floor: The top links touch the body: The top link bracket almost touches the body: And yet, the shock is still MILES from reaching full travel: This is great news for the shock as it will never violently bottom out and reach the bottom of its stroke. On the other hand it's bad news for the body and the handling characteristics over big bumps, so I need to sort it out. At the moment I'm planning on trying to space the bump stop down but I might look at going to a longer bump stop with ribs. After a bit of research it turns out they can be used as a suspension tuning tool - have a read about it here: http://www.superstreetonline.com/how-to/chassis-suspension/modp-1104-the-bump-stops-here/ I've also sent the front shocks away to be rebuilt. They've done a fair bit of work since the last rebuild!

Back in January I decided that it was about time I went racing again! I hadn't driven this car since Easter 2015, so it was well overdue! I had loads of jobs lined up that I wanted to do before racing it again... Needless to say I let life get in the way and didn't get around to doing most of those jobs... So did a quick oil change and took it for a hoon in January at the Taupo round of the Manawatu Car Club's summer series. This gave me a full day's testing on the Saturday and two classes to race in on the Sunday. Seat time is exactly what I needed! This gave me 2 lots of Qualifying and 6 races on Sunday. I'd recently started a new job and the racecar looks great in tow behind the big red Ranger: The racing was good and close, which made for a lot of mud collecting on my front bumper! The car was going well and I was back down into the 1:42's. I qualified second for IB cup and 6th for SS2000. Here's race 1 - it was going really well and I was catching Mike in the grey Levin until my throttle pedal linkage broke in the braking area of Turn 11... Managed to limp it home by pushing part of the throttle lever with my toe. DNF. Race two was better and I had an awesome battle with Ethan Coleman in his 12A Turbo Mini: Race 3 was a handicap race and was wet. Had a few moments but this is the standout. Missed 4th on the downshift, then dumped the clutch to fast when I found the gear - from then on it was a wild ride! The IB cup racing was good too! I qualified right at the front of the field and managed to stay at the front of the class for the whole race... But I broke out of the time bracket twice and got 20 seconds added to my time which put me 4th on the results. Race two was going really well for the first couple of laps, but Volvo rear bumpers are stronger than fibreglass AE86 fronts... Skip to 2:50 to see the hit. That dislodged my bumper and caused pretty bad tyre rub. Another DNF. So a busy race weekend and the list of jobs has only grown longer!

I'm gonna be racing, so will be there.

Will you still exist when this project is finished? Your resto thread has been a foundation of the forum for so long now!

Was that in an MR2 or a Peugeot? I'm sure it happened in both cars.