fuel

Not the worst thing that could follow you home! Hopefully pre-WOF goes ok. Loving the mushroom oil filler cap.

Is that an oil leak under it already?

So I realised I haven't posted interior pics yet, check out this 1990s refit. The original 'Oyster' interior is gone and replaced with Recaro seats with matching grey & black cloth trimmed dash, door panels and carpets. The cloth is a bit harsh especially on the door panels when you're wearing your jean shorts and new balance shoes. They also just spray painted the Oyster arm rests and the paint is chipping off on the driver's door. My plan is to find a replacement 78-82 style dash, door panels and A/B pillar trims but maybe keep the seats (after retrimming them), carpet & centre console. You may see in the above pic the seat back recline knob is broken - it's like this on both sides so I searched around and turns out a pair of Porsche seat knobs are the same and got them for $30 delivered off eBay. I just had to transfer the little spring clip inside. Tell me how lame it is here:

Small update - gave it a super good clean, clay bar, machine polish and then ceramic coat on top. It easily has the best paint out of all of the cars in my fleet as it was repainted almost 20 years ago but only travelled 15-20k kms since. Also had a box turn up from JEGS - Borgeson power steering box to replace the leaky 60's style separate ram & control valve, Ridetech steering box brace & full door/window rubber replacement kit.

Update please!

I was going to say could be a clutch master/slave problem but those NZ-new povo pack GLX's have cable clutch I'm sure. Does it go into gear when the engine isn't running, but it doesn't when the engine is running? could be a problem with the clutch disc itself, perhaps exploded springs etc. The F5M21 boxes in those don't really give much trouble and if need be a replacement should be fairly cheap and easy to find - you can use a box from the next generation model if you're not coming up with many options for that gen.

Wilwood brakes finally on, and polished up the wheels a bit. Bilsteins are in but as they are mostly hidden I didn't bother snapping a pic. Still waiting for composite monoleaf to arrive as they have been on backorder for months. Turns out the rear wheel bearings were already replaced in 2017 about 10,000kms ago and the bushings in the strut rods (rear lower control arms basically) are flogged so that's perhaps where the rear wheel play is coming from. Next up is to sort out the engine bay wiring mess, when one of the previous owners put in the crate engine they disconnected the coolant temp sensor, carb idle stop solenoid and ran a separate wire to the electric choke element as the original one seems to be problematic (when connected the Choke lamp on the dash remains on permanently). Originally I was thinking finding some aluminium heads, better carb (or maybe tuned port injection from a C4/Camaro) and headers but the more I think about it, and the fact that this vette is far from matching numbers original example and that I'm in the land of cheap LS engines I think I will LS1/2 swap it when a cheap truck engine turns up nearby. But doubt this will happen for years at the rate I'm going haha. Disco here -

Small update, replaced the 20 year old Goodyear Eagles with some Cooper Cobras (only had two choices in the 255/60 size - them or BFGoodrich which haven't changed their pattern or compound since the 80s for 30% higher price) More RockAuto orders coming in - gotta love getting Bilstein shocks for under $100 a corner

Couldn't help myself. Needed to ditch those heavy cast iron leak prone calipers and replace all the brake lines anyway. Splashed out a little more for the 6 pistons up front (even though they visually look like a 4 pot). I need to replace the rear leaf spring and sort out the play in the rear wheel bearings before I can swap them on.

Apologies if I missed this somewhere, but how did you adapt the timing belt drive to the ZL engine? Unless the ZL-VE is not timing chain like I'm led to believe.

Ah yeah I watched a youtube tutorial vid of the process and noped out of there, living downtown with just a parking garage I can't really handle this myself so I'll palm it off to a local mechanic who knows what's up. I have to check the rear suspension at some stage, it's definitely been lowered but it's not overly stiff so it probably has height adjusting rods in it rather than a stiffer lower spring.

There seems to be a few options I'm seeing so far https://www.mamotorworks.com/corvette/product/corvette-1980-1982-fiberglass-rear-spring-340-lbs-performance-602830 https://www.duntovmotors.com/rearsuspension.php I'm not going to lie, I already have the jean shorts and new balance shoes - just missing the heartbeat of America hat haha

So this Pacific widebody kit looks to have had some DOT legal side markers added to it, but the lens from the rear left was missing and I needed to find out what the donor car was, I could only go by the intact lens from the right side After a quick little search I found it was from a C3 Corvette so off I went looking for a new part it just happened to be attached to a whole car More here in its own fred -

So as I was looking for a side marker lamp for the Pacific kit on my RX-7, this C3 Corvette was offered to me for a price I couldn't turn down. I figure I could sit on it for a few years and possibly bring it back to Australia or New Zealand and sell it for a nice little profit. It looks to have been in Ontario its whole life, but so glad none of the previous owners opted to winter drive it as there is no rust anywhere on the chassis or birdcage. At some point the original L-48 engine was removed in favour of a 333hp 4 bolt mains/Vortec head crate engine, still with Rochester Quadrajet & cast exhaust manifolds though It has a whack '80s/'90s cloth retrimmed interior which I am not so sure about keeping just yet, and the glass T-tops are cracked so I need to get replacements for them My wishlist is to fit aluminium high comp heads, a TH200-4R trans to replace the TH350, headers and a composite rear leaf spring. Right now it needs rear wheel bearings and the brakes having a good going over.

Apologies for new school spam everyone @loest8 I reckon the next best wheels are the 18" Prisma wheels from the Atlas. They look good on everything but the Atlas.

I can look for another set if you want, or maybe when I sell the Passat it'll go minus the wheels. I paid CAD $550 for them without tyres but one or two need refinishing (which I have a claim lodged with our Ministry of Transport here after I hit a pothole damaging tyre sidewall and marking the rim, should hopefully cover getting the two less than perfect wheels refinished, the other two are already near mint)

So the Racing Beat sway bars and springs finally arrived after almost four months, and an additional $200 donation to the government - so much for NAFTA right? Though I got a nice payout from the insurance company for the little hit and run last year, supposedly they couldn't track down a replacement bumper and valued the repair at $1250 so they just opted to cut a cheque instead and send me on my way to look after it myself. They'll probably sit for another four months before I get around to fitting them. Disco here -

Ahh with that engine it's basically a RX-7 GSL-SE sedan! Let me know if you need any 13B injection parts - I have a near complete '84 GSL-SE parts car with the same 13B EGI engine.

one out of a NZ-new V3000 should be the same plug arrangement perhaps different rpm shift points. Wouldn't be surprised if one out of a 4cyl Sigma will be the same too.

It's definitely there - close to the firewall behind the radio.

It's a KM175 trans with a TCU located in the centre console behind the radio on the top of the 'trans tunnel' bump. It does not have kick down cable, it gets throttle reading from the ECU's TPS and electronically adjusts line pressure to suit. No FWD Galant/Sigma/V2000/V3000 auto trans has a kick down cable, even the most basic carb models still had a TPS stuck on the carb feeding signal to the TCU. When I've seen similar era Mitsubishi TCU's fail usually you get funny things happening like losing reverse or torque converter lock up clutch being engaged right away which stalls the engine. If you unplug the TCU or if a sensor is faulty or missing it will go into mechanical fail-safe mode where line pressure is default high and you can only engage third gear or reverse mechanically and the torque converter just slips to make up for lack of other gears. Not engaging first gear and slipping 2nd could be a TCU fault though, who knows. I would pull it out and check the state of the caps - you'll find a FWD Sigma or V3000 TCU could probably be substituted in just fine (for troubleshooting purposes at the least anyway).

Does any model of that gen Echo/Vitz/Platz/Yaris have electric PS?

. Discuss how delusional I am here:

It's no Mariah Motorsports/Kent Racing cassette slot kit, but it is a Pacific kit from the early 80s that didn't break the bank. Not a fan of the rear wing though, I'm going to see if I can make it work with my existing 3pc wing.