Avenga

I'm keen

I will be there in my Avenger.

A quick final update before my big road trip down to MoPars in Gore.

It has been a busy week getting everything finished in time, but I can finally say my car is finished (well as finished as a classic car can be, I bet I will be doing more crazy mods to it when I get back). I got the tint done by Car Folie, I went for their top of the line 3M tint. I also picked up the last bit of upholstery for Grant's Auto Upholstery. Just had enough time to get some 3M stoneguard applied so I don't get any stone chips on the way down. The signwritter came over to my place to do the stoneguard and didn't finish till 7:30pm (poor guy but super stoked that he could do it before I leave).

I also got a short shift gear lever installed on my Sierra gearbox, the gears are ridiculously close together now, it feels so racecar to drive now.

Spent today washing and polishing the Avenger, got 1 day left to pack then I leave on Tuesday, can't wait.

Finished my custom badges. I have named my Avenger as an "Avenger Panther". I figured it was no longer the "Avenger Super" it started out life as, and it is not an "Avenger Tiger" Replica. I decided to keep with the Tiger theme and create the worlds only "Avenger Panther". Had the Avenger Panther badges watercut out of 3mm stainless.

Polished up the strut brace. Came out really well.

The stereo is hidden in the glovebox.

New center console and clock.

Sorry guys, won't be able to make this one. I will be driving the Avenger down in South Island

Thanks, those wiper blades work sweet. I got to try them out this morning in the drizzly auckland weather. Much better than the old ones.

I took the Avenger out to a car show yesterday morning and it is cool to finally be able to use it.

Looking forward to seeing how long the new meguiars endurance tire spray last. It must be pretty good as they were advertising it during the V8 Supertaxi race yesterday.

hiya rick...77CLute here.

Did they reeealy spend 200hrs plus on your car?

Just to repaint it?

Shit,i rebuilt an xagt coupe in the same amount of time,but id lay money on which car will still be around in another 20yrs,lol.

Looks very nice indeed,you must be stoked!

Thanks. Yup, 200hrs plus for panel and paint. It took the heaps longer than they thought because the had to do a ton of rust repair, rust proofing and panel work. that time also includes making the flares etc. Grant said he spent 40hrs on the rear flares alone.

They stuck to their quoted price so I didn't have to pay for 200hrs+ of labour (thank god)

Popped down to GT today to show them the finished car.

Wow man, its soo good to see it together! HAHAHA......now what

Thanks. Now it's time to drive it. I have just our a week before my big road trip to the south island.

Thanks. Yup, I am over the moon with how it came out. It was an awesome feeling driving it for the first time after such a long wait.

I reached a huge milestone yesterday. I brought my Avenger home, first time in over a year. I got my WoF Rego and cert yesterday so it is all road legal and back driving.

We reset the new odo so we are starting back at 0km, I have put about 50km on the clock so far.

Other news, got the stereo etc running, we mounted it in the glovebox so it is hidden. I will upload some photos of that later.

We had to lift the back a bit because it was rubbing but I will see if GT can take some more out of the guard then we will drop it back down.

She drives really well with the new rubber and suspension mods. I have only done some road town driving but I plan to fang it over the weekend to sort out any bugs.

With only just over a week to go before I go down to the South Island for MoPars in Gore. Still got a big list of things I want to do before I go. I have the tints going in on Tuesday, then I have just ordered a quick shift kit for the 5 speed sierra box so I have to install that before I go.

here are some pictures, I gave her her first wash since being painted, so shiny and pretty.

I love the way the wheels catch the light, I have some black wheel nuts for them which should look sweet.

heaps of mods listed on the cert plate.

Falcons and Valiant's ran BW35s too.

Also mk1, 2 and early 3 Cortinas, some Jags, and Volvos etc.

Yup. My Valiant Charger runs a BW35

I sold my spare BW45 to Ross. PM him on the Avenger forum and see if he is keen to sell it.

We are doing the Gore to Invercargil run on Saturday as part of the MoPars in Gore activities. I won't be leaving for the west coast till monday so I sort of need to return to Gore

I did the same trip but in reverse in 2010 after the MoPars in Nelson show. We has like 11 of us doing the round trip and 7 of them were Valiant Chargers.

On the 2010 trip we did the westport to grey road. Awesome bit of road. We also went out to Collingwood via the Takaka Hill, that was probably my favourite bit of the south island. back in 2010 we had a few more days to do it so we could take a lot more scenic routes. We came down the west coast and we went out via the scenic route through Te Anau, Manapouri and Riverton.

This year I will probably add in the greymouth to westport road because I am only travelling up the coast with one other car and they live in West port. We will leave Gore on the Monday morning this stay at franz josef. then on tuesday I will follow the others to Westport before staying in Nelson for the night.

Here is a shot of us at Bluff and Manapouri. Mine is the yellow Charger.

I am doing the same sort of road trip next month for MoPars in Gore.

Here is my plans.

16th October Tuesday: Auckland to Hawkes Bay.

17th October Wednesday: Hawkes Bay to Blenheim

18th October Thursday: Blenheim to CHCH

19th October Friday: CHCH to Gore

20th October Saturday: Mopars in Gore day 1

21st October Sunday: Mopars in Gore day 2

22nd October Monday: Gore to franz josef

23rd October Tuesday: franz josef to Nelson

24th October Wednesday: Nelson to Picton

25th October Thursday: Picton to Taupo

26th October Friday: Taupo to Auckland

Another update.

The race is on to get my Avenger ready for my big trip down to the South Island for MoPars in Gore. So much stuff still to do and only 3 weeks left before I leave.

Finished off some of the last bits in the engine bay.

Custom made strut brace, modified from a BMW 318i.

A little bonnet support for when I have my fibreglass bonnet open.

Windows are back in.

Rear window with new parcel tray and C pillar cards.

haha. it is at atleast 10 degree negative, if not more at the moment, I am going to drop it down to just a few degrees, looks funny with that much camber. Will help fill out the front flares more.

It is all adjustable so I can play with the ride height and camber until it looks and handles right.

Thanks. It is coming together well.

The front wheels are one again, it has a stupid amount of negative camber because we put in some longer track control arms. Once we raise the front a little and push the tops out so it is a more useable camber it should look sweet.

Strut brace still needs to go in.

Another quick update.

Engine is pretty much all ready to go now. Also the rear parcel tray etc is finished and installed.

Hi guys, another update.

New Dashboard and cluster is installed

Still need to make up a center panel under the heater

Custom catch cans are finished

moved the vent on the rocker, I will probably be chrome plating the rocker cover.

Hidden radiator fan controller

Sweet, Grant did a great job on my seats. He is pretty good at matching materials. He did one of my friends Avenger Alpine seats. It had this weird thatched vinyl pattern which I thought he would never be able to match, but it found something which was a perfect match and now they look just like they did when they left the factory.

Here is a photo. Drivers seat was heavily damaged but repaired by Grant, and the passenger is stock.

Grants auto upholsters on the North Shore. Does most of the show rods in NZ so he knows his shit. Has done work for me in the past and is an GC of the highest order.

+1, he does all the work on my Avenger.

He repair my seats and recovered my dash for me. He is currently doing me a parcel tray and rear pillar cards. (see my build thread for photos of the stuff he has done on my Avenger)

I keep one in the tool kit in the back of my Charger which you can borrow.

I will be there. Hopefully this will be the last time in my Charger for a while.

Hi Guys.

Another update. Went down to Bygone today to continue work on getting Avenger ready. Today I polished all the rubber hoses and got the front and rear windows cleaned up and ready to go back in, removed the old rubbers, removed the old purple tint and scrapped off all the old silicon etc.

Other progress Bygone has made are the wiring is almost finished, they have also put in an oil return feed for the Alternator in the sump. They have also finished off the custom alternator bracket. They also welded up my broken seat.

Engine bay is starting to come together nicely.

Alternator bracket all finished.

Oil return feed for the Alternator

My seat repaired waiting to have the old skin put back on.

It looks like someone modified my seats from a set of standard Avenger seats. You can see they just welded a hoop on the top of a standard Avenger seat. They looks factory with the skin on, so I wonder if they were done by the dealer.

this is looking badass!

EFI TURBO methinks

Thanks. Maybe in a few years I might repower it. I am pretty happy with the power of the 1500 Avenger engine.

I hate you...

The pic with the vengie on the trailer behind the charger has me so jealous

haha. The Charger does look good towing the Avenger. The charger is a great tow car, been towing heaps of stuff lately so it has came in handy. My next project will be getting GT to repaint my charger.

Mate, all looking super sweet. I never thought of running harness in the guard, but makes sense now I see it. Tempted to do the same...

Thanks. There is tons of room up under the fenders so why not. We just drilled holes next to or under anything that needs wires running to it. The battery is in the boot so it should look pretty clean inside the engine bay when we are done.

Another quick update.

Brand new Diesel Alternator and custom made bracket, this will provide vacuum for my brakes, I found since I switched to the side draft dellortos I had weak breaking because it only ran off one runner. This should give me better vacuum and augment my 4 pot volvo/BMW brake setup

Brakes are all plumbed up now with new hoses

Engine and gearbox are back in, still heaps more to do.

Yeah they shined up pretty good. I will do the same to the engine once that is all in.