Spencer

32 minutes ago, zep said:

Good advice. I don't have a compressor, would an orbital sander do a similar thing?

You want a dual action cutting/polishing tool they are the most forgiving to use, electric ones are the way to go. I have a couple (3" & 5") of these knock off SPTA ones and they work great.

https://www.amazon.com.au/SPTA-Variable-Polishing-Detailing-Microfiber/dp/B07BK29XRG

I have polished glass with a microfibre cutting pad on a DA with glass polish, I would do that if possible. Could probably get a china spec DA and polish for under 200, bonus you can polish your paint with the DA also.

OR drill based setup.

Yeah just eyeballing them the body is much longer than that hilux shock, stock 86 shocks were too long for lowering most things (crown or waka). Just get someone with a lathe to shorten them up and keep it on the DL for a cheapish solution (I have no idea on legality).

For the buick I tried all the shocks but never got the valving right for the 2" dropped springs. I was lucky that you could get custom adjustable fox shocks for the impala off the shelf that worked, boom problem solved every bump is soaked up and caught no bounce. I would be shelling out big coin these days and getting fancy shocks for anything old I owned as cars that ride like shit make me hate them eventually. (can get fox shocks made for any combo)

For toyota shit the only off the shelf winner combo was MR2 rear shocks in the front struts, I could never make other fitment rear shocks work and stay captive (on live axle things). I ended up getting stock or fancy ae86 shocks shortened for like 3 different cars in the end, just did a dodgy with old mate vvega and chopped the shaft down and welded on a new end, just don't tell anyone.

Dude the hilux shocks always seem good on paper as they are short and have the right ends for heaps of applications. But every-single-time they ride like shit, they are valved for real high truck spring rates so behave like concrete shocks on normal cars. Think there was recently a GX60 guy on here who had hilux shocks, bounced down the road doing fuck all suspension things until he changed them, I tried them back in the day and they are toilet.

Yeah as the guys above were saying, even for a skilled electronics type person making something like that dakota box would be insane. Like hundreds of hours, hundreds in parts then it would break. Gotta pay the boss costs to have nice new trans in your old whip.

I have got 3-4 different dakota bits for fans, cruise control etc over the years and they are top notch.

Yeah the Dakota digital one I have seen in action and seems pretty good. Was like $300US last time I looked which seems pretty reasonable to just make shit work

Yup but for old shit the rockauto shocks (munroe or gab etc) are valved like factory, so very soft and basically useless unless you riding all stock IMO.

16 minutes ago, cletus said:

Maybe it was at 95% before and you never had a problem but now theres just enough stuff on it to tip it over the edge where it cant deal with it  

Yup this is where I was going with my ramble. It now has hotter intake air and more load it idle which could tip it over the edge, especially now its diagnosed as sitting on the thermostat while moving, that points to not enough air flow and/or radiator. The hose diagnosis is a good one, will narrow it down real quick.

Form that it sounds like a fan flow or rad size issue then?

How hot are you letting it get when sitting? on some horrible inefficient thing like the buick 455 with a 90 degree thermostat it would always sit on that temp while moving. Even with the monster mechanical fan and new rad it would climb to 100-115 when sitting still, just part of life with a big hot donk (the thing was rebuilt so new everything). Could sit for 30-40min on a hot day in traffic like that before I would chicken out, unnerving watching something go over 100 that but its within spec with a pressurised (old shitty) system. I put massive (spendy good ones) electric fans, made a shroud and a controller thinking I could keep it down more in traffic but they were way worse, on all the time and climbing temps way faster. Moral of that shit yarn is the rad size is bordline for the heat output of that motor and the fan air flow made a huge difference.

probably not really helpful here, but maybe you maxed out your rad/fans? seems like with just the blower though you wouldn't have pushed the cooling system over the edge that much and it seems weird it goes nuclear in a minute.

Edit: Looking again at the pics closely and IMO the rad looks pretty small and fan setup sub-optimal?

On petrol shit you can get some upper cylinder cleaner with PEA? cannot remember the chemical name but nulon/subaru and a few others make it. Anyway Its a fuel additive or you make the intake suck it for cleaning that. I have chucked a few bottles through cars and the stuff does clean some carbon off the pistons, that's checking with a camera. Made my CL9 stop using a little oil between changes. Not magic but you can clean some carbon up on some petrol things with varying results.

How have you got the MREL setup? I thought usually ISCV and other stuff is powered by the main relay which is ECU switched? Usually still starts if that is done wrong though. Sorry not much help, maybe try getting a scope to check what’s actually happening? They are pretty cheap now.

I don’t think weld through primer is any good from my experience, most rattle can paint can fuck off. 2 part epoxy works better IMO it holds out to heat just as well, pretty much invincible haha. Only catch is you want it to be cured well before welding so got to wait a day or two. You remove it from the weld area  though, use a spot weld drill to remove if spot welding some seams together. Put it on the back of all your patches etc. 

Paint something in weld through primer and leave it outside, I did and it didn’t last that long. By that test it’s garbage.

Yeah lush whip. Just a thought, if some dweeb has whipped out the thermostat then you would guess it got hot at some point (unless just total durp) if you say the water was gross then high chance the rad has some shit in it, would look into getting it cleaned at minimum. So many old radiators you assume are sweet can cock you over once you load it up.

Need a quantum muffler to have max flow and no noise, 3" size only.

Lol entropy muffler, that is all mufflers? all things apart from life maybe? They have some more surface area and some venturis hence more entropy? where the data?

If you aren't building a mike-e spec 3A then just run whatever is easy/stock unless you want loud noises.

2 part stuff will handle it pretty well, but not really the order of things to seal it up first. Just don't get any shit in there, not rocket science.

I would be wary, tape them up or something and then use mechanical means to remove rust and paint around the seams. You are using the easy/good method for at home paint removal, works great for big flat areas but usually you need to throw the grinder or sand blaster etc into the mix for some areas you cant really wash away the stripper and acid.

I have cracked open seals where phosphoric acid has been used and as you cannot really flush it out you get this white powder build up which seems to promote more rust as the acid is never neutralised.

I think the setup is blow though carb so the tune is baked in.

And oh so simple, no pump failure and melty engine. Can you run something wider? In the pic it seems so?

You would probably be surprised how much air is moving around in there at speed.

Yeah as adoom says once you are using the aclohol as a coolant you cannot help but also using it as a fuel source so you have to tune your whole setup for the "coolant" then if you have a failure you go lean. So the cooling system has to be treated as an secondary fuel system which can never fail. Seems what you may save in perceived simplicity you gain a whole new stack of risk as you are reliant on another active fuel system to be working correctly at all times. Giz passive cooling from air any day on a street car.

From running some ghetto methanol suck through turbo things there is no doubt it works amazing, the phase change of the meth draws out shit loads of heat and would make the manifolds cold to touch.

But isn't it just another form of complexity and point of failure similar to the other options? always have to have it full and pumps working, got to keep meth around which doesn't have a long shelf life?. Make the air to air work for simplest option? I'm sure you can work around the body work covering it with some simple ducting and engineer some new bonnet latch setup? /ling

Um yeah man something went horribly wrong with that original paint job. Could be anything but as said above it could have had some contamination on the steel, sat around in 1k primer/bog and absorbed moisture etc. I would want to take all that off and get some 2k epoxy primer down to seal it up for good.