sheepers

i used pacer products from RA Johnstone. easily the best cutting/polishing compounds I've used. the cutting compounds worked well and were easy to buff off after running the DA. stage one - Pacer super cut. stage two - pacer ultra cut. stage three - presta ultra 2 step polish. stage four - meguires hybrid wax/ceramic coat. this combo worked out really well and ill deff use this going forward. for a lightly scratched/oxidised car id start with the ultra cut and work down the list.

Let's polish this car, that will be fun. It wasn't fun. Lexus paint is hard, like fucking flint hard, so polishing scratches out is quite difficult. And this car was scratched to fuck, I doubt its ever been polished in 24 years. I had to go right from the heaviest cutting compound I could get through 4 different stages to get the paint looking reasonable. There are still scratches in it but nothing like it was. All up this took me 22 hours. Looks fucking ace now though.

i like the blk.

Someone on here posted a picture of their bead roller with a steering wheel on it and I thought that was a good idea so I put one on mine. Amazing.

Steering wheel stereo controls. The module that is in the 400 steering wheel is set up to work with the external telephone module and does not have any thing that the stereo can recognise. So, remove all the chips etc and make my own set of differing resistances for the stereo to sense. Connected via the factory loom which goes all the way to the boot and back and it works. Fucking stoked. Also, the kenwood head unit won't allow access to a whole bunch of functions (like steering wheel control setup) unless it thinks the park brake is on, so I have to ground that wire to access the extra functionality.

as above, most guns available wont give you an accurate reading on a shiny surface so stick a bit of black tape on it or something. also heat radiation/hot air flow coming up between you and the thing your measuring will effect the reading so be mindful of taking readings above exhaust mannys etc.

Roman Dave, who is a fucking super good cunt by the way, made me revision 3 test fit piston. I stuck it in and measured the clearance and its super ace at 2mm between valve and piston. So I'm calling that good and now is time to actually do something, so I've pulled the motor apart. Now is time to get the block machined, crank polished, bigger valves cut in and start actually assembling this bastard thing.

Reversing camera. And also side view camera. The new head unit has twin camera inputs. The reverse camera works as per normal I.e when the cars in reverse but the other one is selectable with just a button on the bottom of the head unit so you can turn it on whenever you want. I thought it would be a good idea to put a camera in the left side wing mirror so I can see the kurb when parking. Because I can't drive that would be a good thing to stop me driving my rim into the kurb.. So anyway mounting the cameras was easy. Running the wires was not. Got there in the end and it all works sure super awesomeo.

New stereo. Factory system was OK but no Bluetooth no hands free etc. So I replaced everything. Had to re route some of the factory loom and patch in a couple of wires but it was pretty easy. Running the power feeds under the car was the hardest bit, fuck I can't wait until I get a shed with a hoist. So anyway head unit is a kenwood one. It's got buttons and shit. There's a 100x4 amp under the drivers seat and a 600w amp running the sub. Front doors for a pair of boston 6.5LF pros that I've had for a while. Had to cut the hole or a bit to get them in but the rest was easy. Rear doors got some 5" alpine things that work great. Sub is a zero flex 10" which absolutely cranks. I'm still fucking with the steering wheel controls to see if I can get some basic functions working off the steering wheel, time will tell in that one.

it is indeed a conspiracy Dave, look in to it. do your own research.

Tbh my man the amount of time you'll run this exhaust before you change it will be pretty short in the grand scheme of things. I would suggest that the hangers are Perry irrelevant to a greater extent. Make it look OK without trying to re invent the wheel and you'll be golden

I had to go up to whangarei today. 6 hours there and back. I gotta hand it to the jokers at yellow speed, the spring rates are 20kg front and 8kg rear and I thought the 20 kg springs were a bit much but it's actually perfect. The coilovers came with recommended settings for the shock rebound which was also right on the money. The car drives so nicely, it's not stiff or bouncy it actually feels like slightly firmer stock suspension. Anyone who's after coilovers for a 400, get the yellow speed ones. Also this thing is pretty good on gas for a two ton V8.

I dunno that it will solve your problems tbh. Blue car has a fairly good size remote oil cooler with fans on it and it really doesn't affect coolant temps too much. It still gets hot on the dyno, did two back to back dyno sessions, one with oil cooler out front blocking the radiator and one with the oil cooler mounted remotely with fans and it made pretty much no difference. Your situation may be different but that's my experience.

fucking 10 years latter.... we were trying to sell our house and that fucked up many things including any progress on this engine. anywho, here we are. ive been doing many measuring and many modeling of things and i am 99% sure i have a piston shape that clears the bigger valves and the increased lift but yields 11.5 to 1. i figure if the CR is too high i can remove material but if its too low that's a bit harder to fix... so yea now i need to do a final check of piston clearance and then find someone to make a set of them to my drawing. ill start the ball rolling with getting the head work done too. with the head sorted and the pistons under control the rest of the project seems like its achievable. however we shall see. still got a whole ITB system to craft for this as well as many other things.

Also the factory struts fit in the yellow speed box so now I have created the box of unliftability.

With the ride height sorted it was time to get the bump stops in the front exactly right so the upper control arm won't hit the body. @cletus told me what the requirements are for minimum wheel travel before contacting the bump stop (40mm) so I set about making this all happen. I had to make some spaces to limit shock travel, then I made some more bump stops they have a conical end so they're progressive. I wasn't able to make it all work and still have 40mm before the Bump stop but it does have 35mm so fucking deal with it. Also @cletusdon't read that last bit. I was a dick and didn't take a photo of the actual spacers and bumps I made but they look a bunch like this,

I dunno what the fuck goes on at scarles and I'm sure they don't either but for wherever reason my coilovers turned up. So I put them in. I made new bump stops because @cletus told me the yellow speed ones would be garbage, and they were, so I made some new ones. I am ecstatic with the result. The ride is still comfortable and smooth and the lowness is perfect. Tomorrow I've got to fine tune the Bump stops in the front to get everything happy and that's it. Super premo.

fiat 124 BC.

So is all installed and is fucking perfect. Nice v8 burble at idle, makes awesome V8 noises when you give it the jandles but silent when just cruzing. Stoked.

Get ready for a surprise, Scarles are a useless pack of cunts. My coilovers which were supposed to be here last Wednesday didn't actually get ordered by the great folks at scarles so I've got to wait another 4 weeks. I'm fucking stoked as you could Imagine. So I moved on to doing something else. I made a new zorst for it. Stock zorst is pretty restrictive and super quiet, and we can't have that. So is now 63mm from the cats back where if goes into a single 75mm hotdog, then splits back into twin 63mm pipes all the way to the back with two 63mm offset straight through glass pack SS mufflers. I started it with just the 75mm hotdog and nothing behind it and it wasn't actually that loud. Should sound good. I'll let the print dry tonight then I'll chuck it back in the car tomorrow.

I got a hundred bucks on broken ring land.

Have you checked your timing?

yea that has nothing to do with the place we were trying to buy. all gone now and things are very, very different to 6 months ago so we're going to sit tight for a while and rejig things here to better suit the market.

these guys used to specialise in older types of core rebuilding but i dunno if they still do it. https://autoradiators.co.nz/contact-us/

Richie is a good cunt. Not only did he find me a good set of wheels on marketplace, he went to Wellington and checked them out for me, then he bought them for me. Then he bought them to auckland for me. I take back some of the things I said about him. SSR MS1s. 19x 8.5 +25 front 19x 9.5 +22 rear. Fucking stoked. Now it really really needs to come down.