ProZac

Ummmmm, so why are we modiflying? Just for some sweet capacity gains? Looking forward to that project, I've got some fly ideas

Whats teh dealio with the sump? I thought a rear bowl one wouldn't fit?

We do sell vacuum bleeders at reppie, but not in stock, have to be ordered. If you still having issues in a couple of weeks when I'm on uni hols Felixx i'll borrow my mates one and come have a go. I'm sure you'll have it sorted by then tho The powerbuilt one man bleeder kit is a joke, doesnt even have a valve in it . The Sykes Pickavant one is much better however, usually does a good job.

To be honest, i didnt even know there was a meet... But I'll be stuck at uni all day anyway, hah.

Oh, and are you doing it with two people? Bleeding brakes single handed can be a nightmare, even with so called 'one man bleeders'

For mini's with a single circuit system you bleed in the order: passenger front drivers front passengers rear drivers rear might be worth a shot? The way your doing it at the moment is correct for later model vehicles with split braking systems, but on a single circuit system i think you could be introducing air back into the system. What suburb of chch are you in?

Not familiar with your other thread, what kind of vehicle is this? I know with mini's with four drum brakes, the order you have to bleed them in depends on what type of braking circuit they're equipped with. Also, bleeding past pressure limiting (bias) valves can be a real pain in the ass, sometimes the only way to do it it with a vacuum beeder.

Maine Coons are so damn awesome... Ive been promised one when Laura and I finally move out of the city Your build is epic as always man, love it

Hmmmm, damn that is close. Take a wee knick out of the tower maybe?

We've had our 96 SWB Pajero, 4m40T, since 30,000 k's, has just ticked over 180,000. Only thing that ever took it off the road was the front pulley delaminating. Popped a new one on and it's sweet as. Needs the glow plugs doing now. Bloody good truck.

VQ30 my good man, the next gen v6.... Would go pretty well just behind the drivers seat i reckon....

Oh yes! ive heard about that.... completely mental...

Yeah, its been considered, but the other motors ive got in mind are much easier and probably cheaper to get a hold of... And have way better gearboxes... Still, it would fit pretty nicely. Was it someones project on the webs, or in a magazine or something? Keen for a gander.

Looking pretty awesome man, engine bay looks nice in the pics, will be in for a gander next week

Cheers bro. Progress would be alot faster if i could make up my damn mind and stop changing things .

Stupid Uni... In my second to last year of engineering, and the workload is really piled on, so no time to even think about touching the mini . Last major thing I did was get it up on the rotisserie, its all spin-able now. I have managed to sneak a few hour in here and there though. Girlfriend was out the other night so I made use of the coffee table to assemble my carbs. Every single part of these is either brand new, or reconditioned. I media blasted every bit of the linkages (including the springs!) and had them all zinc plated again. A mate of mine worked for Air New Zealand, and got all the alloy carb bodies and my manifold bead blasted for me, good bugger! Everything came out looking bloody fantastic really, super happy with the results. Although it looks like they are, none of these bits are painted, just really really clean. Getting my shit setup, its nice to work in the warmth with an episode of firefly playing. How did all this go back together? results of the bead blasting. I had some extra bits done so I could take my pick of dashpot housings, to get the best match for the pair. Starting to remember how it all goes... Oh yeah, thats right... Got some new filters from MiniSpares... Quality seems pretty average, but they'll do the job. How all the linkages turned out... It all moves nice and freely. I've made a preliminary attempt at setting it all up, but will balance it properly when its on the car and time for tuning. Today I found a couple of spare hours and tackled two jobs I'd been looking forward to for a while. A guy started advertising electronic ignition kits on the local auction site, less than half the price of the pertronix ones that have been for sale for ages. I've seen these new ones around on forums and heard good things, so for $100 I thought "why not?". Installation literally took about a minute. Cleaning the distributor took considerably longer, looks good now though! Treated it to a new cap and rotor also. Next on my list of jobs was some gauge cluster modification. This is basically a how-to on making your factory mini speedo way more complicated than it needs to be. Ive tried to get the factory mini speedo to look a bit smoother and sleeker. First on the list of things to do was a really good clean! I took the main housing and the light shroud to the blaster and cleaned them up, then painted in their various needed colours. I painted the main bezel semi-gloss black, as the rest of my gauges have black bezels, so it would look a bit out of place being chrome. Once I'd done this, it looks a bit funny having the coloured jewel lights in place... I gots to thinking and playing with an old scrap gauge, and figured that 5mm LED's would be an easy fit. I opted for water clear lenses, to add to the smoother overall feel. When i was purchasing the various colours i needed, I found some tri-colour LED's on clearance. "Awesome!" I thought! five of those, and that way I can chop and change their colours if I'm not happy. This is sort of a future-proofing thing, as I'll be installing a japper motor in this thing a few years down the track, so I;m bound to be changing some of the warning lights. Start with your tri-colour LED, do a little math to figure out what value resistor you need. Find the closest you can (470 Ohm in this case), and go to it. Each channel needs its own resistor. These are common anode LED's, so there is one positive, and depending on which earth's you hook up, different elements within the lense will illuminate. Theoretically you can create any colour with these, but because they're a water clear lense, the light doesn't diffuse nicely and you can see the individual elements in the lense with more than one lit. Heatshrink each wire separately Then heatshrink them all together I got the new traditional style bulb holder from work for a few cents each. I took the spring loaded contact out of each, opened out the hole in the bottom, and inserted my LED, with a little hot-glue to hold it in place. I did this while fitting to the gauge so the LED height sticking through the gauge face was correct. repeat x5 Voila! The top will be the alarm indicator, two sides will be directional indicators, and high beam / ignition for the other two. Looks nice and tidy with none of them lit also. Have ordered some braided looming to tidy up the wiring. Have some plugs also to be fitted. All in all, jobs a good-un!

Trying to picture it... I think you'd find the diff would move in a pronounced arc with one significantly shorter than the other... In which case you may aswell just stick with a panhard rod... Must be possible to add a panhard mount to the center of the diff housing though? Even if it's not in the center of the diff head. Good to hear your sticking around in NZ man

That dynabolt idea is genius.... Could have used that a couple of months ago in exactly that situation.

If you can tell me what the thread you need for the fan switch I should be able to track an 85-90 deg one down for you . M16, or possibly M14 are the most common i think, but i haven't hunted for one in a while.

Get a 0-1k Ohm pot, that should give you heaps much range to get it into spec. I think temp sensors are normally positive temp co-oefficient, they incresase resistance with higher temperature, but you might want to check that with a multimeter and a pot of water on the stove. *warning - techno-babble below* If they do increase resistance with higher temp, then you'll want to wire the pot in series with the sender, this makes things easy as it'll all stay nice and linear... Get it up to normal operating temp and set the pot so the gauge is in the normal temp range. The problem you might strike here is that the sender may have a different range than the factory vauxhall one, so you might not use the full sweep of the gauge. No really a problem aslong as your aware of it. If the sender decreases resistance with higher temp you'll want to wire it the pot in parallel with the gauge. All those older style of gauges are just amp meters, so if its this way around, and the gauge is recieving to much current and going full scale, you need to shunt some of the current away from the gauge to ground. Using the same process you'll be able to get it working alright What was the reason you can't use a vauxhall temp sender? Swing me a PM/text if your after a seperate temp gauge, should be able to sort something . The ones I'm going to use in my mini are pretty damn cheap, but they do the job, and dont look to ricey

Well, life has been a bit mental in these parts of late... But its getting back to normal . Got the garage all cleaned up and the mini righted. The Axle stands punched a couple of holes in the floor, but nothing too serious. Once the cleanup was done, and all the neighbours were sorted, i had a couple of weeks to fill up, as uni was on hold till we had another venue... Time for some mini-work! Ive actually been pottering away pretty steadily on it, but dont usually find the time to take photos. However, I made an exception today, as I decided it was time for a thread update . With the new holes in the floor, I decided I'd flip it over and do the underside properly. That means new underseal and a coast of paint the same as the body. This meant I had to build a spit to mount it on. Being a later body, it doesn't have a hole the entire way through, and I didn't fancy making one. I made up these mounts to the logical places, and they seem bloody solid. I can lift either end of the car on them and shake it around without any issues, so should be all good. No photo's of the spit frame, but its just a basic A frame made from 50*50*2 box section. One part from this car I was thankful to not have to overhaul was the rear arms. I dont have the facilities to line-bore them, so if i could avoid that job, all the better. Luckily the ones from this clubman were in A+ condition, as its done such low K's. Did take a whole day to clean the underseal off them, but they look bloody good now with a new coast of paint. The metro calipers are all rebuilt, back together and ready for paint. I ended up making a tool to install the seals properly, as I kept bending them trying to do it with a pin punch. I've been a regular at my Dad's work infront of the sand-blaster. This is the lasest box of bits from the other night effort. Should be about the last bits I have to do. Once the body is on the spit and mobile, I'll roll it outside for a day and spray these all with POR15. I've been bloody impressed by that paint... I've used it on my subframe. I had this blasted (to big to fit in cabinet), than sprayed it just before the earthquake... Bloody hell this paint is good. It had the contents of my garage fall on it, got burried in mud, and there isn't a scratch on it. Bloody awesome. Wish it was UV stable and I'd use it everywhere, hah. Note to anyone else wanting to use this stuff though, dont apply it to new clean metal, it wont stick. It needs really rough surface (blasted is perfect) to key into, and if it has a little bit of surface rust, even better. I sprayed it without thinning through my shitty gravity feed gun, and it came out okay. A bit thick, but easy to manage. I bent the frant brake pipe by hand around some scaffold tube, came out really nice, should do the trick. Ive decided to go with the center clocks. Got hold of one in KMPH, and gave it a once over... Which turned into a complete dissassembly, blasting and painting all the housings, and replacing all the bulbs and holders, hah! Atleast I know it's done now I suppose. I painted the inside of the main housing white and baked it in the over to really harden it up, came out really nicely, and should disperse the light properly for the back-lighting. I scraped all the old sealant out from the main ring, cleaned up up and painted it black to match my other gauges. Re-sealed the glass back in with urethane adhesive sealant... It sure isnt budging now! Looks really tough with the black surround aswell . Ive bought a 100mm VDO tach, and have an oil pressure gauge that will be mounted infront of the driver. I also have an idead for some warning lights infront of the driver, but it need some more thought at the moment... Will draw some stuff up tonight and see if it'll work. Popped in my wheel bearings, and shimmed up the balljoints yesterday. Don;t know why I put that job off for so long.. was actually pretty easy. Lapped the pins in first aswell ofcourse. How many thickness' of shims do you usually get in a ball joint kit? I could only detect two different thickness'... And there were a boat load of them, I've got heaps left over for next lot I have to do. These hubs are brand new, a fellow i met had bought them from minispares, but they arrived with damage to the threads, so i picked them up really cheap. Fixed them up with a thread file, and they're good as new... becuse they are.. heh . Gave the calipers a lick of paint and popped them on, along with the GreenStuff pads. Should be up to the job of stopped the wee beast . Had to hunt for ages to find the ERA bolts i bought for mounting these ages ago... Found them in the end though. Found another rear bias valve and pillaged it's piston. Modified the housing so it's now adjustable. Bonus of this is now I have two pressure springs. I've cut down one of them (the oe installed here) which will, in theory, give me more range of adjustment for the rear bias. Time will tell I suppose. If its a no-go, i can always put it back to stock. I went a bit mad on Mini-spares, put a pretty big order through, but it should be almost everything i need to finish it off. This is one of my favorite purchases, a 2.2 turn lock to lock quick rack. Will really be like a go-kart to drive now! This is my mini-wardrobe.... Chocka full of either new, or reconditioned parts... Now I just need some more time! Cheers reading my dribble, or if you just flicked though the pictures, cheers for looking .

I can weld nuts to the underside of it when I have it if you like? Might end up cracking later on though unless you can find some stainless nuts... Turbo looks pretty damn big spiffy . PS: Please put a link to your discussion thread in your signature, its a pain to find it every time

Spending some coin I see Will get your stuff welded up quick smart... I'm afraid with my shitty welding it'll look pretty poorly compared to all your fancy new shiney bits! .

Well, the officer isnt actually wrong, you put 300kg's on it, your tyres will deform, and your u bolts are bound to be atleast 1mm lower. However, clearly stated it says the measurement is to be done with the truck unladen, durhhh, moot point. They definately have better things to be doing than pulling over people helping the city out. Ive met some damn cool police officers over the last couple of weeks tho, feel heaps better for having them just down the road.

Yeah, most definately lucky. I'm in the first block north of Bealey Ave, its all pretty fucked really.