yoeddynz

I will soon be entering the OCD zone. I am preparing for an afternoon of much deliberation and careful planning. It wont be perfect and will end up getting changed over time but I have to start somewhere. 'Start what though' you say?... Organising my boot is what, for I have 'compartmentalised' my boot floor area. I have been planning this job for ages and looking forward to it. Since getting the car back on the road the various tools, jack, spares have been rattling about in the back, wedged with towels so they don't slide across side to side when taking corners at great speed (20mph..). Without a false floor in place it meant that the level of the folded down rear seat was higher than the current floor. This is just unsatisfactory and will not do! Hannah had already made a lid for the battery box so that was sorted now. No batteries will be falling out when we do barrel rolls for laughs. So to the floor. Take one sheet of hardwood ply. Mark out. Cut. Trial fit. Mark again. Cut again. Trial fit. Mark some more...cut again...... I ended up with this nice level floor... With little compartments which I can now carefully compile tools, jack and spares and then stow them neatly away into... Hannah has been painting the old floor and we'll put some sound deadening down before the plywood goes back in for good. Then last week storm hit us but I think we came off fairly lightly at our local beach 3 km down the road. There is normally a nice wee beach over to the left of this photo... Not far from crossing the main road in... With the horrid weather that morning Hannah decided to drive rather than ride her treadly. I got a phone call 5 minutes later... "the car has stopped... its just cut out. Now the battery is dead" I drove down in the van with another battery and found her in the Viva with waves lapping at the wheels. It wasn't full tide yet and the waves were coming in quick. Most of the places along the front there got waves into their yards later on. We pushed it up the road, swapped the battery and it started straight away. I suspect one of the big salty puddles Hannah drove through splashed over the dizzy and shorted it out. Then with a couple of minutes to dry off from engine heat it was fine again. Further up the road she had to drive it through a 30 meter section a foot deep of seawater. Poor little car! So when it returned home, storm now past, I spent a good deal of time giving the whole car a good rinsing off... Then wd40 into any areas I deemed they needed it. This all reminded me so much of the days spent in the UK with my Rx3 where I would carefully hose it all down after a winter drive if they had salted the roads. The car would never seem to dry out at all in winter though. I dont miss road salt. Not one bit!

Coil packs new don't cost much either. I just used a secondhand pack from a misti. Take a spare on long journeys if you're worried but really.. anything could can fail on your car if you start stressing about perceived reliability. Proper full efficient engine management for the win.

I was running a pretty safe 40 advance on V6. If it were me I'd remove your dizzy and run a coil pack. You're so close, but not quite there, to having a really efficient setup. I Dont think anyone will cry if they lift your bonnet and cant see an ugly dizzy sitting there. You can always put it all back to factory if you needed. I'm guessing you need something in the hole to drive the oil pump though? Or does the dizzy drive off the oil pump? I know nothing about these engines.

And disconnect the Vac advance line? Weights etc? Or remove the dizzy, blank the hole, run direct ignition for a cleaner setup and one less gap to jump

That's a fun job in this weather....

I took that photo thinking of you. But didn't ask about it. @nzvohc can probably ask him.

I'll have a look- I've used that stuff before but dont have any. Certainly smells a tad nicer than petrol....

Good idea. I'll give it a go. Hopefully it wont mark the flawless paint beneath.... Or at least some sort of adjustable potting mix.

Enjoying the lovely simplicity of the little 1159 for now. Perfect car for the beaches we cant be bothered to ride to or shopping etc. Still gets nice comments every time out. Hannah jokes that we have to add 10minutes onto every journey to allow for the conversations with folk about the car. In other news a few weeks ago my brother and I met up in Tapawara with our friend Andre who has a lovely Firenza Droopsnoot and a HB GT. We jumped in his car and travelled out to a place near Murchison where a fella has a few old Vauxhalls and Bedfords siitting in the bush. There's a Viva HB sitting there and luckily Andre had covered it with a tarp a couple of years back to keep it better protected. We both needed parts off it. There were also a huge amount of sandflies and they wanted us. So we covered ourselves in Deet and cracked on with parts removal.. I scored this lot. Very happy with it. All very much needed! First bits to be fitted were the vents. Hannah cleaned them up and swapped them over. Now we have working vents that can be closed. All last winter we'd have to stuff rags in the holes to stop the cold air. They are grey, not green as the originals but they'll go quite well with what will most likely end up as a red based interior colour scheme. Next job was the bumper. The one my brother managed to get off the parts car is in good condition but for a slightly dull finish. It also has two holes where spot light brackets had been mounted. Not really noticeable and anyway- I now have a front bumper. Hannah took charge of this job too. She cleaned it up, wire brushed the surface rust away from the back and treated it, followed with a coat of paint. Then she fitted it and the only photo I have is of her cleaning it after fitting... Next job to happen will be sort the door locks..which don't lock.. then swap the quarter windows over. The new ones have proper good seals in them. My current ones don't have seals at all.. Then the door cards. One of the ones we grabbed was really warped. I had an idea. Hannah soaked it with a hose until it was sopping wet and then we squashed it flat between two sturdy bits of plywood. I have been moving it about and its slowly dried out nice and flat. Happy with that outcome. We have also taken on some pretty extensive scientific road testing. When one goes out in experimental sports cars like this with a 30kg bag of potting mix parcel taped onto the bonnet you are bound to get a few odd looks. Which we did. I have also confirmed three things... One : The extra weight does indeed affect the steering somewhat, but not in a huge way. Enough though to lose the easy turning of the steering wheel with one hand and make the twistys more of an effort. Two : It was really noticeable how the extra weight mounted up high promoted extra roll at the front in corners. From this I have deduced through some clipboard scribblings and man maths that I will mount the next new engine below the bonnet line, as per original... Three : Brown parcel tape makes a sticky mess that nothing seems to touch easily. I now have vertical stripes on my front wings. (really, they should be called guards. But Blighty terminology eh) Now I have to spend some time cleaning the marks off to return the car back to its former glory!

Apparently they do almost slot in with only slight mods to the sump. But if I'm to spend monies on a cert I'd rather do a more modern engine. I just love the look of twinks. But I do like datsun engines and Bart would forever be my friend. He might even say nice things about my English car (like "shitty car..but nice motor Alex") Once the freight is added on it starts escalating quickly from my budget. Fuck God damn I wish I'd clicked 'buy now' on the auction listing for the complete setup from your anglia the fella bought off you. $500 for everything!!! Bugger.

I'm happy to just let things happen. I e been terribly busy myself... Busy 40 hour weeks of bike rides, gardening, beaches etc. Summer things. But yeah.. Whoever in the tasman region fancies organising meets feel free. Go for it. Post ideas up here. I figure the next meet point will be at the vintage car club swap meet. It gets better every year and it's always hot and sunny. After that I reckon we need to do a day's lawn bowls mentioned recently. Was very popular. I'll ask the club.

Find me one cheap Pete with single mass please.

Mean pulse bro. So whens it coming down to the better island? Go for some hoons on Takaka hill!

Pretty much what he ^ said.

I should be there. Buying old car magazines.

I have a GDI Mitsi Legnum coming in tomorrow with what the owner suspects is a coil pack issue. Hmmmmmmm. Luckily he only needs the car a while longer and will then flick it off. I'm not even going to touch the inlet. Its common place in the UK to get your car de-coked now. They use little mirrors and dentist picks etc. How the fuck would one avoid shit dropping in ? I guess a decent vacuum and some luck? That carbon stuff doesnt compress well so it would only take a little bit to be sat on a valve and get squashed against a seat so destroying the seal? Apparently the later gen BMW minis are terrible with this. Ha- my dad would laugh. He used to have to do a regular de-coke on his Morris Minor. Come full circle (except without the leaks)

And without the need to have a full valve de-coke every 100,000km. I'd been reading recently about how choked up some DI engines are getting from lack of fuel cleansing. Quite amazing how bad some get.

Bugger. If I'm give up on my duratec then the loom was one but I wanted to keep as I like having a stash if colour coded wire to use. It's not that insulation I've heard about that mice love to eat is it?

Its become very popular as a swap not only in the UK but also the US where many (2.3) Duratecs have been sold. Plus all the Mazda engines available which are even better. Main reasons are that the engine has a very well designed head which flows well without any mods needed plus the bottom end is very rigid and all in a very lightweight compact package. So many of them about over there that they are a cheap way of decent modern power. A stock engine is 145bhp and throw a set of itbs on with an aftermarket ecu and you have 200plus straight away. Add some decent cams, better rods and pistons and you can have a very reliable 250-300. The Zetec is quite different. Iron block for starters, head doesnt flow as well, timing belt, earlier engines dont have the solid lifters that the Duratecs have. Viva stuff!!! Yeah I am after some bits! I'm looking for a dash top in good condition- after all the work Hannah did in fixing this one up its cracked again in the sun Luckily there isn't really anything else I need except possibly a chevette/Viva HC 1256cc engine but I'm better off sourcing one down here eh - getting stuff down from Auckland and all that.... Yeah I'd love one of those boxes and had one lined up in the UK when I was there in November..$260 but couldnt sort out decent freight in time (hence I had started that freight thread a while back) Problem is the boxes are so bloody expensive here (well in Alex terms they are..) @ around a grand or more. So this is why I was going to do an adaptor plate again.

Yeah it's getting quite a lot of "wow I've not seen a viva wagon like that for years!" here too. Parked it up in the kaiteriteri campground the other night when seeing family and some old bloke came up and asked me if I'd sell it to him. He'd always liked them, wanted one but hadn't seen one in years. Then the security guard at the gates stopped me and said he just had to check it out. He had a Victor fd and had never seen a viva HB wagon.

We stripped the engine down and although there was no sign on the head gasket of blowby the head had a .010" warp. Banana shape, low in the middle. OK I thought.. Not too bad. Valves came up fine with a clean. Hannah put the camshafts back in place without valves to make sure the warping was not causing any binding and they came up sweet.. My mill is too short in travel to skim it in one hit and I thought I'd better get a second opinion anyway. Better check the bores we thought. Hannah cleaned them out and discovered this... Not sure but I think it's just corrosion from where the piston sat a while with water in the bore. Took it along to machine shop and yeah they think so too. But costs are now adding up. Having a re- think because the car is just so damn sweet even as it is. Hmm. Could avoid certification and added costs by just fitting a Chevette engine and playing with that instead. Or maybe a v6 again. Got all excited about the prospect because I have all the parts I need so I decided to weigh one again. All up, starter, alternator, manifolds, injection etc the v6 comes in at around 145kg. Really light for a complete v6 but still 40kg heavier than the stock standard viva 1159cc as it sits in the bay. (plus the mazda gearbox is 10kg heavier) So how can I save weight over the front to offset this?... Fibreglass bonnet could be a start. Hmmmm. No rush anyway. Cars projects are playing second fiddle right now. We've been given enough heaps of decking so itching to start on our cabin build up here...

It was near the end of the season when we went last time eh? I reckon plan something for late feb- after the holiday madness has settled down a little.

We shall make it a date. Maybe there can be proper teams this time. That means potential practicing....

Id love to build a lightweight sports car based around a mazda V6 I still love this cars sound so much... i've posted it many times but I dont care.

Lets try to get some numbers along then And then there is the big swap meet run by the vcc. @sidewaysickness @Slacker_Sam. @ynot (I need to chat to you about little rusty Italian cars....) @Willdat? @ThePog @Paulluap @anglia4 @AttySlungGatty @Impish1 @JasonO @2sik25 Plus anyone else you can add to this thread. Me forgot names..... Also- the Lawn bowls we did a year or so back went down well so who is keen on a repeat. Could arrange something after the mad holiday rush is over.