yoeddynz

OK then. heres a late update. Not much really as far as work on the truck goes. Its working fine as both a house and a truck. We drove it over to Nelson 3 weeks ago. Nelson is now our new home. It went drove so well and was such a buzz. I loved it. very cruisy and much better up and over the hills than I thought it would be! It cost us $50 to move our entire house from Blenheim to Nelson. Sweet! Hannah followed in the old toymota hiace. We stayed at Pelorus bridge halfway to Nelson and woke to the sound of many bellbirds etc. That was cool. The exhaust brake was bloody handy on the way down the hills. Not many photos really. In fact I only took one photo of it on the way but Hannah took some video of it as she followed. Heres a link to the a youtube clip of truck going over the Whangamoa saddle... Now we are settled in Nelson and have a most awesome campspot. Surrounded by native bush with a bird sanctuary as well. Loads of cool birds and birdsong and nothing else but the creek 4 meters from our back door. We have made a little path down to the creek with river stiones and will make a BBQ area. As the truck is all finished its been time to start looking for work. Been looking at going back to trade work as a fitter turner and there is plenty to pick from but I'm not at all into the whole 7am start thing!!!. I want to work to live not live to work. So we are starting a little workshop ourselves doing anything. Hopefully it works out. As a back up I'll have some bikeshop work to do over summer which is cool. I need to be able to get bike stuff at trade rates because man its been an expensive shock to pay retail! Since we have 14 bikes (and growing) it'll be nice to pay trade for parts again. We have no internet where we are- not even a signal. So its the library or my brothers house for us. Hence very little of me on any forum over past few weeks. But man do we have some cool biking and tramping on our back door. From the truck its a 2 minute walk to the most amazing walking track I done in ages. It takes us right up into proper ancient forest with some massive trees. And loads of wicked mountain bike tracks start right near us. So while we have not been working we have both been playing loads! I love it here We have the sun till 4pm but in summer we'll have it all day. Nelmac (the nelson council team) have supplied us loads of firewood which is sweet too. Nights have been chilly with all the clear weather we have had the last 3 weeks. Views from up our valley- truck is parked right down at the bottom. Up near top of the valley there are wicked swimming holes. This one is 1 hours walk away and so peaceful. I get some photos of the truck parked up soon. Alex

Fuck yeah! good work man. I cant wait to hear a vid of this racing by!

"but the would pour into existing ones with nolathane for 75 each plus gst. " What do you mean pour? Did they make moulds from your old ones? I need to do my bushes..one day...when I have a job...and money.

Sweet cheers man. No hurry now..I fixed up my rim yesterday- it had rusted through and a spoke pulled through. Its a hard to get rod brake rim so I welded a washer on the inside and its all good now! sweet. I love my old bike and I hope I can get work in Nelson within a close enough distance so I can just ride that bike rather than my road bike.

yeah via chevette one is a long single strand isn't it? I remember re-wiring the front loom on my 12a chevette and chasing the coil feed. It went from bulk head up one side of bay then back again to other side in order to get the voltage drop.

Cool! - I need a rod brake rim for my post bike. Will find their number and ring. Also need a sturmy 3 speed cable and no bloody shops up here stock them. supply/demand eh...

Ha wicked! Nice truck man - you lucky fucker! The guy driving it was from Auckland. Both Hannah and I had to have a sit in the drivers seat to see what it was like. Fuck man- makes our Hino feel like a toy. The KW is high up. Also bloody comfy seats. I still can't imagine what it must be like to drive a massive truck like that. The driver said he used to own a Hino like ours and that driving the KW is easier because being an auto ya just stick it in drive and go. In fact other truck drivers have said modern trucks, even though much bigger than ours, are so much 'easier' to drive than old things like ours. For me its the fear/awesomeness/responsibility of placing 40 tonnes of moving metal on the road that makes me respect proper truck drivers no matter how 'easy' they are to drive. I wanna work up to class 4/5 one day just for the experience.

Cheers man. Yeah i love old bikes. I worked as push bike mechanic in the UK for 10 years and then we brought 13 bikes back to NZ with us. That red one on the front of the truck is an old royal mail post bike I rescued from the pile junk pile at one shop i worked in. I love it- so perfect for cruising into town on or for sunny weekend cruises about the country side. Hey - do you know if the 'Cycle trading company' on Manchester street is still going. I know they were right on the edge of the mayhem but heard that the building survived? They are a great source for old bike parts here.

WOW I missed this one. You lucky bastard! I like the patina of your 240 more than the mint 260Z owned by that old lady I've been helping to get it on the road for because like you say you can just use and abuse it without a worry. ...Not that I would complain if I managed to get Eves car... Fuck I bet it must sound amazing with those webers on song. I hope you get it sorted in time for track day just so we can all see vids of it blasting about.

A bit of an update here. I thought we would be in Nelson by now, parked up, waking up before 9am and doing that work thing. But we keep finding little jobs to do. I think we may be stalling... The most important thing to sort out was getting a electrical warrant of fitness. This is a requirement by law if we want to stay in campgrounds and use the hookups. Now I have to give big thanks to Sentra who donated us a power cable! Its a really nice solid quality cable. Cheers man. I wired all the relevant stuff in place like circuit breaker, rcd etc. Then a friendly Welshman working for a local electrickery company came round, had a look, gave some advice. We moved bits here and there and then he wrote out a nice 'leckywof' which is valid for 4 years. Sweet. Done. Other jobs done recently include the following; After putting up with wobbly, slippery steps for ages now I finally got around to building some better ones. I have made them out of steel, with adjustable legs for uneven ground as they now attach directly to the veranda. I have added mounting points both at the rear directly in line with the door and also off to the side. This is so if we park somewhere that the ground or access is bad straight out back we have another entrance option onto the veranda. One place we are looking at parking up in Nelson has a creek that would be directly behind the back door if we park there. The steps swing up and over onto the veranda when travelling. I have used up loads of odd bits of steel left over from the build. Very satisfying. The brackets to be bolted onto veranda frame. Build in progress.. I also made them even distance between the steps this time. The previous ones were spaced wrong and it meant bigger step ups. Sooooo much easier walking up them now- especially for my olds who, as old people do, complain about such things. Here they are against the old steps. Hannah finally got to make a little bathroom cabinet for shampoos etc. She's very proud of it and rightfully so as it look great. She got to use a little door knob she found ages ago that has a little fern print on it. It matches the green paint. The little things in life. I'm glad she is easy to keep happy. I boxed in the water pump, filter and associated pipework now that I'm happy the old old califont works well. I was worried about the ceiling getting too hot so I decided to make a little heat shield. But with what. Ahhhh- the left overs from the kitchen bench thats been laying outside next to the shed. Perfect! All thats needed to finish the bathroom is a step for the throne- being a composting toilet its really high up. In fact you can look out the window while reading car magazines on the 'job'. Not that we have tried the toilet out as I have yet to put in the flue plus the fan and without that it would be a very stinky place. We wont be needing the toilet yet as the spot we are moving to has toilets. But it will be there for when Nelson gets its overdue earth quakes, or we go travelling. Today I finished fitting a bike rack I have built. Its using parts from this old rack I built for my old Rx3. When I sold the Rx3 the fella didn't want a rack or tow bar (such a crime- all cars need tow bars...) I love this shot- could it be the only Rx3 coupe out there with a tow bar and rack? So I brought the rack back to NZ with us. Now it adorns the front of our house. And what good is a housetruck update from me if it hasn't got a cat in it. Heres Daisy happily enjoying the woodburner..

I always fit a switch to my ignition circuit to cut power to the coil/s. It could help against theft but it also means if I want to do some work that requires leaving the ignition circuit on I can just disable the coil to stop it getting too warm/damaged.

I finished my filter. Made a little adaptor to suit the SU carb. The filter just slides on in place via the rubber seal and a Jubilee clip holds it in place. It fits in perfect and has a nice cold air supply straight into it... For winter I may well have to block that hole...although this car has more issues in winter..like being so old it doesnt have flow through ventilation out the back to extract condenstion. and the fan is weak. It'll mist up bad! I need to get one of those oldschool after market rear window demisters. In fact some vivas had then standard as mine has a place for the switch. The engine bay pretty much complete. Only thing to go in now is a water bottle on top of bulkhead for windscreen wash. So the filter being done I made an extra heat sheild from stainless to protect the brake servo from exhaust heat... Then I pulled out the wiper motor. So easy on this car- the heater matrix removes with about 8 screws. I love old cars like this. Then two nuts and the whole wiper assembly is out. I stripped the motor to check all was right- like the brushes etc. I had removed this two speed wiper from the yellow Viva to replace my old one speed system (old cars eh?...) so I had to work out the wiring to run it using a spare headlight switch. I managed to get it working right including the self parking and was chuffed! While that lot was out I filled all the cavities behind the bulkhead and below the screen with wax- decent Bilt Hamber stuff I brought back from the UK. With that back in I adapted the heater control surround to take a push button switch for the windscreen wash. My car originally had the standard basic model Viva manual push button wash, like a water pistol, that you had to keeping prodding in and out to squirt water (it was craaaap- old cars eh?) I also fitted a little led that will light up when the cooling fans come on just so I know. I now need to make a windscreen wash bottle and fit a pump I took from my brother scrap corolla.

Cheers. sitting in it with fire going drinking tea. Its lashing it down outside. Cosy!

ah yes. Back in nam. I remember the sweet smell of dog cooking over fire.

Ahh- you might be right about it being set at 4 cylinder because when I gave it a little rev it didn't go as high as i thought it should. It does take the signal from the negative but doesn't matter which coil if the engine has all the emissions shit removed, as both my coils are functioning all the time. I'll try it switched to 4 cylinders next time. If so then it means its still idling too fast dammit.

Finished fitting my old style Bogantastic rev counter, boost gauge and wideband gauge. Calibrated wideband and then started engine. Hey- it all works Now with a readout from the wideband I worked out why the engine was bogging down- I had set the mixture too lean. I have thought all along that I had it set too rich but that was only because the choke was out. I had the choke out for the fast idle. I had it at a fast idle because once engine was warmed up it would bog if I gave it some throttle and I thought this was due to the carb having a too light a weight oil in the damper. But actually the mixture was still too lean. I gave the mixture screw a full turn with my ultra sophisticated shortened stubbie screwdriver (nothing else would fit between carb and radiator) and it ran loads better. Still bogs ever so slightly but I have yet to properly set timing, due to a lack of a timing light. In fact given I had just marked the dizzy before removing it ages ago and just plonked it back in place I'm pretty happy. I'll play some more with the mixture when the timing is set properly and once I have the filter in place as that may make it a touch richer? So now at Idle, slightly fast at about 1000 ish, the wideband reads around 14. Before I made it richer it was sitting around 15 and would lean out to 16- 20 with a slight rev. Now If I give it a little rev it reads richer at say about 12/13. Quite interesting- its gonna be fun using this. Just earlier I finished my custom (bodge) stubby filter. I had chopped the cheap Trade me filter down ages ago. Tonight I made a little back plate in a smaller diameter to suit the space I have. I used some thin alloy sheet, made a form from some hardwood ply and hammered out a new shaped back plate. I then cut a section out of the rubber shoulder and super glued it to a diameter that will suit my SU carb. I have used Araldite to glue the filter element in place on the back plate. Tomorrow all I need to do is weld a lip onto the plate I made ages ago that will bolt to the carb. It should work well. And it cost bugger all which makes me happy

Keep a look out for some victor steels. Thats what mine were before they were widened. Or ask Vivaspeed (geoff) on here as he still has some nice oldschool 13" alloys kicking about I think. My Viva is looking seriously sky high now compared to yours.

wayne patrick the auto trimmer in chch races his cresta with a 350bhp 3.3. He loves the engine.

Second that- photos please. Hannah had a mint Victor FD wagon in england. Lovely cars but always imagined what it would be like with the big 6. Huge engine bays! Most in the UK end up with 8's.

Finally spent a little bit of time on the Viva while waiting for some parts to arrive for the housetruck. I have been very slack at working on this car. Just silly little jobs to do but I keep putting them off. I must just crack on with it! After taking the car cover off I checked the fluid levels and both were spot on- which is really good as it means the engine water seals are all good. I started it up with the help of a jump start as the battery is really old and pretty much had it. Sounded good but is running rich. Must finish making my air filter. And once I have fitted the wideband gauge I get the mixtures better. I started on fitting the rev counter, boost gauge and wideband gauge. When I pulled the wideband gauge out of its box and saw the massive plug on one end I panicked. curse word I thought, i'm going to have to make another big hole in the bulkhead.... But luckily I remembered the big factory hole for the original loom was there to be used. Phew. But what to seal the cable up with? I checked my supplies and had no grommets large enough to use. But wait, whats this? Hey, its the original grommet stashed away in a bin full of odds and ends. Cool. I sliced the grommet so it would fit over the cable and squeezed it in place. Ahhhhhh. Bliss. After all these rather exciting events I set to work making some little holders for the two gauges. I used the vinyl I had got in Chch and some 4mm ply. I'll fit them in place tomorrow. They will be tucked out of the way on each side of the steering column. I really don't want to have lots of extra stuff going on. I want it to stay simple. Not even sure if i'll refit my parcel shelf as it doesn't really hold that much, makes it hard to get to wiring under the dash in the future and makes the footwells seem that much smaller. I decide later once car is all sorted. But I do want to have an centre armrest after having one in my Rx3. So good on long trips. I'll have to keep a look out for something that might work in the future.

yeah i got one of the supercheap flaring kits and it works really well. New brake lines just look so sweet and it'll show you care come cert/wof time.

curses our slow broadband- it keeps hanging. Oh well. I'll keep trying.

Heres a picture of the handbrake mechanism that should be on your 1800 axle. I thought I still had photos of mine after I had reconditioned it all but I have deleted them I'm afraid. Hope this helps though...

Fuck yeah! Fuck yeah!!!! Awesome link. Gonna make a cup of tea and sit down for a watch. I love programs like this. Oh - and I want sideburns like his ( and also to be able to ride a bike that fast without leaving dirty things in my pants) Cheers man!

Yep. Just enjoy the fucker eh!