SR ROLLA

Awesome, Thanks.

The next thing to have a look at is the brakes. It all seems pretty straight forward but I'm having a lot of trouble getting new parts. I've managed to track down some pads, which seem quite pricey for regular road-going brakes, they are not performance parts or anything. No one seems to be able to find a compatible rotor though. Everyone I've talked to doesn't really seem interested in doing more than looking it up on their computer and it appears that they are just too old turn turn up on anyone's systems. Mitsubishi has some of the bearings and seals, but that is all, everything else is listed as 'obsolete'. I'm don't think there is enough meat to get the rotors machined. They are 12mm atm and the minimum thickness in the manual says 11.4mm Anyone have an idea where I could source something that will fit? Discuss Crappy pics:

So, headlights are all sorted now thanks to some pro advice from GTO expert dwlee — on closer inspection the cups, which look pretty much identical, have a 'type' number, a 1 and a 2 for each side. So it looks like these have been installed exactly wrong for the whole time I've owned it. Much better now: At some stage I'll get around to converting to semi-sealed. It's not driven at night much so it's not a big priority right now.

Interesting, that could easily be it. The way they are on now is the way they've been on since I've had it, but who knows what previous owners may have done. I'll try swapping them around and see if it looks any better. Cheers.

The height adjust screw for one of the headlights was bung so while I had the grille and everything off I took the opportunity to make it all nice and clean and black. Before: After: Much better. the headlights have always been a tiny bit on the piss — the lines are not quite vertical/horizontal. They can't be rotated though because there are little tabs on the back of the bulbs which correspond to slots in the headlight cups. Am I missing something? Discuss here if you have any ideas. Cheers

So this is what that is: Got it from Yahoo Japan for cheep. Seems to be in really good condition, one small crack on the back which I'll fix up, then give it a good clean and a repaint. It feels a lot more solid than the earlier grille, like I have on the car now.

Another cool thing (and reason for lack of progress, until now) is that I sold up and moved to a new house — with a nice big double garage with a workbench. yay. Also, time for an early christmas treat from the land of the rising sun. what's this?

oops, been a while. So I got the head off the spare engine, got it checked over and smartened up. Everything mated up sweet except the exhaust ports on this are the round version — the original head had the square ports. The ports all line up but the mounting bolts are in a slightly different place so the flange for the headers required some slight modification. Here's the new head in place: And everything back together and running: Been going again and used for daily driving for a while now, with no signs of issues so far, fingers crossed that's it (until the next thing).

The NZ distributor is a place called Loft HQ. Pricing and minimum amounts available depend on what kind (there are loads of different textures, finishes, colours etc) and whether they have it in stock. The kind I got was about $70 per metre I think and it's around 1.2m wide.

So now that I've given the old girl a nice treat and the insides are pretty much all mint it's about time for something to break as a way of saying thanks, of course. Started to present symptoms which suggested a blown head gasket. Took the cylinder head off with the help of a friend who knows what he's doing (I mostly don't) and took it away to an engine reconditioners to get it planed and the various bits tarted up, replaced etc as needed. Naturally it was not that simple and today it turns out the head is cracked between the valve seats. Bugger. So I'll be needing to do something about sorting a replacement sharpish. I have a 4G51 from a Colt 1850 sitting in the shed, so I need to see if that will fit, fingers crossed they are the same. Some pointless pics: Also decided to give the rocker cover a bit of a polish while it was off (and I was still feeling some love for the car, before I found out I was rooted). Not perfect by any stretch but looking better than it did before.

So what I thought was a blown head gasket is in fact a cracked cylinder head. Damn. I can get my hands on a 4G51 head from a Colt 1850. Do any experienced Mitsi guys out there know off the top of their heads if these are compatible? or do I need to wait until I can get at it, pull it off and have a look for myself? Cheers

Cool, good idea. I'll check that out before pulling everything apart again. Would be nice if it was an easy win.

So, cleaned up all the connections on the circuit board with superfine sandpaper and re-tested. The lights all come on now, yay! Except for 2, boo. I have gauges, door open light, hand brake on light but nothing from the top 2 corners. Working from the back of the gauges, so I can see when they light up, I tried swapping the bulbs around, different bulbs, turning the holders around… nothing works. They don't come on with parks, headlights, high beams, nothing. Have another look back at the front of the cluster… they're the bulbs for the indicators. Facepalm, I'm officially retarded. So good news, right? everything goes now, right? In daylight I properly refitted the whole dash, speedo cable, all the switches, cigarette lighter etc and TA DAH! None of the gauge lights work. Fuck. The indicators, door open, hand brake etc lights all still go, but nothing for the dials. I found a blown fuse (for the taillights, which apparently also covers the gauge lights), swapped it out and my gauges have life! …except not the petrol gauge or the central light between speedo and tacho. So I'll run out of petrol driving at night and I can only see low speeds and high revs. I guess I'll have to pull it out again and see what's going on.

Sweet, good tip. I'll try cleaning them up this weekend, re fit and see how we go.

Slowly been getting the interior back together — new carpet is all in, seats are back in, looking great. I have finished restoring the dash and centre console and started to put them back in. I managed to source some 3M Di-Noc from an Architectural finishes place to replace all the faded old 'woodgrain'. It came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I prefer the straight grain texture to the swirly walnut style that was in there before and the colour match with the steering wheel is spot on, which is nice. Old: New:

While I have my dash out I have replaced the extremely dim old bulbs with new LEDs. It appears that part of the dimness issue was also that quite a few of the bulbs weren't working at all. When I test fitted it to check the new lights it's much brighter but some of them still don't work. The LEDs are polarised, so I have tried them both ways in their bulb holders. Also the twist in bulb holder can be inserted 2 ways as well but no combination of positions seems to work. LEDs which work in one of the working sockets don't work when I swap them into one of the non working sockets and vice versa. The circuit board appears in good condition, so I'm stumped as to why they don't work. Would it have to be a fault somewhere in the wiring of the big, multi-pin plug which brings power to all of these lights? Or is there something else I'm missing? This is not my area of expertise at all, so any suggestions would be a big help. Cheers Crappy pics for reference:

Ha ha, yeah, about half the size and half the toughness of a Charger, unfortunately for me. Just got the fabric from ebay, searched for Hokusai fabric. There were a few different types and sizes, these ones are wall hangings i think

Lots of little bits and pieces lately, been collecting parts: some spare chrome trims, a couple of interior pieces and some badges – a rechromed boot badge and a NOS rear quarter badge. Also got some nice new black carpet. The carpets aren't moulded, they're all just shaped flat panels, like lots of mats, so it was easy to cut new pieces and get them all edged. I'll get some pics when the new carpet is in. More excitingly, I decided on a fairly extreme fix for the little tears that were starting on the base panel of my driver's seat. The metallic green colour was going to be pretty impossible to match, so I got a set of slightly tatty seats from a Colt GSR, sporting several shades of green and got them recovered by Greg (64valiant) at Midnight Upholstery. Super recommended, they came out great, can't wait to get them into the car. Before: And after: Decided to try something a little different with the back panels, I think they came out pretty cool. Greg was super easy to work with, real nice guy and the quality of the job done is excellent, definitely check him out for any upholstery stuff you need.

Thanks guys, good stuff. I think veneer is probably a bit much ball ache, although dwlee's does look super lush. As kyteler points out, what is on there now is fake wood vinyl, so fake wood = legit original finish. Looks like 3M Di-Noc is the thing to try, will order some online and see how I get on and post results. Cheers.

Does anyone know where to get decent self-adhesive woodgrain vinyl from? I want to replace the fake woodgrain areas on the dash, centre console etc in my GTO. I want to get nice, thick, wood textured stuff that will last in the sun and heat, not just the thin cover-seal type stuff which will shrink/warp/fade in no time. Like the type you would use on the sides/tailgate of a woodpanel wagon. Any recommendations? Cheers

Hi Steve, Glad to see another GTO around here, not many left nowadays. I don't have a spare distributor, sorry. Keen to see some pics, you should get a project thread up. Cheers

I got a spare set of GS badges for the guards and had a go at tidying them up. Polished up the faces, gave the flaky paint on the sides a gentle wet n dry sand and then resprayed the black. Came up pretty good, the plating is still lightly pitted but they look a lot better than they did and better than the ones currently on the car. I'll swap these on once the new paint job is done. Before and after: Doesn't look like that much has changed here but the difference is a lot more apparent in real life.

Had a couple of little bubbles coming up under the paint on both doors so I decided to get them taken care of properly along with some small patches in the corners of the boot. We found some old, braised repairs in the doors which weren't real hot, so ended up replacing the whole bottom edge of both doors. I got them to roll up the front guards at the same time too. I had the repairs left in primer because I'll be repainting the whole car soon, sprayed a quick coat of rattle can matt black to weather seal the affected areas for now. So I currently have this sweet custom paint job: mmm.. bogan.

Cheers guys, I'll give Moonlight Racing a go and see if they can turn anything up. Haven't tried Thailand yet, would be very keen to know how you get on, DriveBy. There seem to be a lot of Colt parts available from The Philippines but they didn't get GTOs, it's a bit tricky figuring which stuff is compatible..

I have been searching the internets for ages to try and find obscure rubber seals and bits and pieces I need with no luck. The other day I came across this site here: http://www.impex-jp.com/index.html which seems (google translate is not always great) to be a russian site for ordering Japanese parts. I haven't had any luck trying to get bits direct from Japan but it shows as having some of the things I need. Has anyone used them before? or even heard of them? Cheers.