crazy_rich

For use on the road I'd imagine this would need design/material cert, It would need to be case hardened to extend the life of the ball too. Using rose joints to lower the steering rack tie rod end is relatively easy, but most the time it gets a bit dodgy modifying cast or forged control arms to accept one, hence why those adjustable camber control arms are very hard if not impossible to certify for road use. Still very interested. For a race car this could be a very useful trick.

yo, cant help but I'm keen to hear how this works out for you, could be a good way to correct roll centre in lowered old fords.

thats weird, i get old seats from farm hiluxs/courier vans retrimmed all the time, no problems finding material in rotorua

Interesting, have you been able to find vinyl to match or not been too worried about it? maybe I need to extend the search to the far shores of the north.

every time we get one back its def not the same colour .. buuuut i work with long term lease vehicles (aka from 1984) . so all they want is the truck to make cof .

sweet as, thought that might'v been the case

thats weird, i get old seats from farm hiluxs/courier vans retrimmed all the time, no problems finding material in rotorua

Interesting, have you been able to find vinyl to match or not been too worried about it? maybe I need to extend the search to the far shores of the north.

Hey, I'm wanting to retrim the drivers seat in my cortina, I've got someone lined up to do it but we're having trouble finding some new vinyl to do it. We've tried all his suppliers but no-one has anything. Anyone know of anyone who specialises in supplying materials for retrimming old cars? any help would be much appreciated.

rare spares list a few on their website. hard to judge quality by the pics though. http://www.rarespares.co.nz/

dont piss around mate, if its not already been done, replace everything, waterpump, cambelt, tensioner, idlers, its not as expensive as you might think, and much easier to do now, especially if your planning on revving the bajesus out of the poor thing, last thing you'll want is to be relying on a cambelt/idlers of unknown condition, though if its new, ignore me. shot.

How long has the engine been sitting idle for? my bet is your injectors have seized up. Are your plugs wet? Had similar symptoms with an fj20 510 and a 4age kp60, it was the injectors both times. I got mine flowed and checked last week to eliminate the problem and was told they were all completely blocked, most likely due to being left dry for so long. If the o-rings around the top were rooted, chances are the injectors aren't in much better shape. Looking good though, and oh so close!!! (jealous man typing)

here's my rather brief list in a rough order of acquisition

'79 ford escort 1300L.

'91 nissan bluebird FE saloon.

'85 Holden Commodore 3.3 Royale.

'74 Ford Capri 2000gt.

'95 Mazda capella.

'89 Nissan Bluebird 1.8 SSS.

'79 Mazda 323 bugeye wagon.

'73 Ford capri 1600XL.

'74 Ford Cortina 2000L Auto.

'95 Nissan primera T4 turbo.

'92 Toyota Corona 2.0 wagon.

'87 Range Rover Vogue 3.5 auto.

I've still got the 2 capri's, the cortina and the range rover. None of which are of a warrantable standard. or even go for that matter. A for awesome.

I wish I still had that escort, It was a minter, only ticked over 70,000km when I sold it, was poo brown to boot. And the 323, was relatively rooted, but was a jailbar hightail, it would have come up good with a bit of work. Still, having another 2 cars would make it 6 cars that dont go rather than 4. I already get enough stick as it is.

good thread, its interesting to see whats hidden in the shady closet of oldschool's motoring history.

hey, I've owned a few of these, sedans though, mine had rust in the rear chassis rails, in the seam where they meet the floor, and around the windscreen. I've seen some go in the front of the rear wheel arch, and behind the rear bumper behind the arch too. Best bet would be to give it a thorough look over. As has been mentioned, the SR engines are notorious for doing cams due to the spraybars blocking up, lots of valvetrain noise (rattling/high pitched knocking) is a dead giveaway. The ca18de's coilpacks and ignitors tend to give trouble. It'll most likely be a ca20/18. I dont know alot about the single cam ca's

other than that, they're primo cars, its just a pity the old datsun genealogy is still so prevalent in the rust issues.

oh really? must have been a common fault, I found that if the tripmeter was reset it'd start counting again until a certain point, usually around 160km, then it would jam again. I can remember back in the late 90's the peugeot dealer in town got done for fitting tripmeter jamming devices to new cars they sold to skimp on servicing. Christ knows how they thought they would get away with it, maybe holden dabbled in a similar scheme?

still cracks me up that that heap made it into some dudes car collection... i mean wtf... seriously....

vk's freakin rule. is yours injected? that thing did some sweet top gear one wheel burnouts.

hahaha oh man, that dudes selling my old commodore, fuck thats funny lot 19. bet its still got 170thousand odd clicks on it, speedo was jammed. paid $200 for it and raped the bajeesus out of it back in the day. seriously surprised its still around. kinda want it back.

Started on the rear end over the weekend, I set the diff up to get an idea of how much room I had up there, decided to reset the springs 2" for a start, so they're away getting done this week. Then managed to remove the rear shock turrets without too much butcherage. Hopefully next weekend I can look into welding the new ones in.

Spent tonight messing around fixing a fuckup involving placement of my o2 sensors. Pity I dont have much room under there for the exhaust.

Also dummied up a brake on my diff to figure out what rotors I need to run with the mounts a mate threw my way. Turns out the early 90's maxima rear brakes share the same dimensions as the p10 but with an extra hole, should do the trick. I have a feeling the P10 handbrake cable is going to be just too much long enough to be a cunt, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So yeah, hopefully I'll have some leafs back soon and I'll put the rear end together, I've started making a jig to hold the diff straight while I weld it up, should be interesting to see how that goes. I'll keep ya'll posted.

had a neighbor come over once inquiring as to whether i had anything left of my car to grind, adding that i must buy my grinding disks in bulk. I apologized and asked him if the noise was a problem, he just laughed and said he didnt give a fuck, hes got double glazing, reckoned I'm way quieter than the old residents anyway. Must have just been curious. gotta love living in a fairly bogun area, no one cares about how noisy we are at all really, neighbors usually just rock on over if we're having a party.

yeah, i guess that'd explain it, rather cheap way of fixing the problem thats for sure.

got any advice on 4 linking Dan? been doing a bit of research today, my main concerns are

-having enough room for the top arms as I want to retain a useable rear seat

-being able to use urethane rod ends yet still having adjustable length arms as I do not want it to be excessively noisy, and you know what nz roads are like.

-being able to engineer a turret of sufficient strength to support the forces of the spring without a roll cage.

- would using the front leaf mounts in the body to mount the lower arms work?, I also have upper mounts where the swaybar/anti tramp rods did mount, though I think that would make the top arms too short.

I'm not really open to the idea of a triangulated 4-link / satchel design as I'm going to run a panhard rod anyway, and dont like their binding tendencies.

running adjustable height coilovers in the rear is an obvious choice, but due to the front tyre being so close to my strut, and my unwillingless to want to ruin the look of the car with flares, I dont think i'll get them in the front easily, which makes putting them in the back seem rather ridiculous.

just throwing a few ideas around at the moment, thinking along the lines that if I have to put some new turrets in they may as well be strong enough to support coilovers if I decided to use them at a later date.

at the end of the day it is just a street car, but installing a more predictable rear end cant be a bad thing. its just a case of how far do I go?

woah been a while! anyway, I've finished the sump complete with haggard looking pickup, fortunately I didnt get a piccy before it all got bolted up, ended out welding another section into the sump to add a bit more volume, or at least to keep the oil level down lower away from the crank. Lets hope it turns out ok eh, dont want any of that oil surge crap.

might see something in this pic, even painted it.

some of you may have noticed my penchant for re-engineering my engine mounts every few weeks. no excuses. good spotting.

I've also made a start on the much feared and put-off headers I've inevitably had to make. I wont lie. It was a cunt of a job, and they are nowhere near being any kind of equal length mega power fostering design, but I had fuck all room, and as long as the hot stuff eventually makes its way out a hole under my rear bumper I dont really give a shit what they look like.

I've also put fresh waterpump, cambelt, plugs, rotors etc on the engine, and bought an a1 turbos bellhousing, as my rangi 'made by a 2nd year apprentice' adaptor plate was sitting the gearbox on the piss. Either way, whatever fucked me up had the same effect on A1 because their bellhousing is just as bad. which means it was a complete waste of money. Yay.

next step will be the rear end. unfortunately I've discovered the P10 brakes are going to foul on my rear shocks due to me narrowing the diff too much and fords retarted idea of mounting one shock on the front of the diff and one on the rear. Due to this, I have to move a shock tower. this concerns me most due to the fellows who have said things like "If you move one tower, you may as well turret it,.... and if your adding tramp bars you may as well 4 link it, and all that shit. fuck peer pressure. you know what I mean. see how we go eh?

Hell yeah. thats some impressive stuff, very clever.

Yo, I had the same problem with my capri, due to the v8 being far to wide to fit a brake booster. Making a racing pedalbox with aftermarket wilwood or similar master cylinders is probably the easiest and most commonly taken route. However, I didnt want to have such hugely different feeling pedals between the daily and the capri, so I dicked around for a while and put a liteace van pedalbox in. info here http://www.oldschool.co.nz/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=9542

another possible solution is what we did on my mates 4age starlet and welded a box into the firewall to effectively recess where the clutch slave mounts by about 2 inches enabling the plenum to fit.

hey, I managed to find a 3.58:1 out of a 2007 hilux sr5 for my capri, might pay to ring around a few later model wreckers, got mine through trademe. wasnt cheap. I've also heard that the higher ratio 3.7's etc are considerably weaker than the lower 4.3's etc due to the core thickness of the individual teeth being reduced. she'll be right eh?

I agree with the skyline's gtx familia tx3 lasers, hell even the standard front tugs lasers, everyone seems to have learnt to drive in one, and the fwd starlets, I'm betting that in 10 years the main novelty of an older car will be the manual transmission rather than rear wheel drive. you'd have to add evo's vr-4's and any kind of silvia laurel cefiro to the list, as bad a rep as they have now, they aint bad cars, and are good fun to drive. I'd hate to say it but primeras will become sought after in the same way as cortinas. I'd be keen to stash away a u12 attessa turbo bluebird atm too. any kind of supra would be worth holding onto as well. fuck its gonna be funny in 20 years, helping our kids put a 1uz into their oldschool rz supra after replacing the sills and half the firewall. "dam rustbuckets these bloody things"

i'd be fully keen this time I like the idea of the bbq/park idea i'd suggest the Groynes over spencer tho more room. Maybe meet up sumner cruise out to Pines beach for a ice cream & then back to the groynes or spencer for BBQ . Shit i might even finish my Morry bbq trailer by then

sounds good bro, i like this idea, be good to see a bit different scenery and definetly keen for some red meat....hmmmmmm steak

might be fucked tho cos i dont got a towbar on the pontiac.

my 'tina's got one.

yeh I'll be keen to finally come along to a meet, I'll drag the cortina out of the shed and get one of the boys to drive it for me. It'll be farkin rad.

yo, I dont have any experience with the standard ecu's on these engines, but have a squizz at www.lextreme.com if you havent already, theres alot of info to help with what you've just done there.

nope plates are on hold.....

interesting... guess it'd all depend on the amount of rust. could be a cool car again. but only if the paintjob is restored back to its former 90's glory.

Yep Willie Henderson is the guy.

It has so changed, they made new public toilets and changed the Intersection slightly!

I was a Heriot Primary kid. Tapanui was all about the learning, we were all about chasing sheep and kicking stuff

Do not know a Darron Short.. Know a big Darren, athough younger than me.

3k is steep if its dead reg'd.

hmm cant say I noticed those slight changes, should have stuck out like dogs balls though, ah well, yeh you heriot kids were weird, had a really warm swimming pool though, we all thought you just pissed in it to save power.

with a price like that one that cortina its no wonder its still sitting where it is, guy must be hoping for someone to give him an offer he cant refuse type thing. fair enough i guess.