Spencer

Yeah good work dude. When you can go get a sheet of cold rolled steel in 0.8 or 0.9 whatever that gauge is and you will be amazed that shaping panels just got 100% easier. 1.1mm zinc plated is for horse floats.

Yup makes sense, so safe to say $1600 is reasonable. Time to climb under the car and start grinding?

I Imagine any blasting would charge 100 an hour? a stripped out shell is easy, more surface area but less prep just roll it in the room and go. To do a good job you would want to mask shit off under the car and do the job on a hoist? I would think you wouldn't get much change from $1000 or more, $1600 seems in the ball park? You have to weigh how much bullshit you will put up with to save $1000, if you have free time and some determination lay under the car for 2 days and save some coin.

How much are they in NZ? we have millions of CL9's here. They often pop up on the euro FB page for $4-500, probably $800-1000 from a wreckers. CL9 is a cheap P-plater car here now so lots of them getting stacked. A early base spec whole car with highish km can be had for 2-3k. Probably hold more value in NZ as seen as brand new still compared to the fleet.

I do agree that getting it going is key for momentum. But what are the chances that motor is a turd anyway? 80% chance? I guess get it going and test oil pressure and compression and see whats up. No one ever regretted going K-series honda though

K24a3 from accord are around $500 here, cheap torquey 200hp /bias

Just the aftermarket support make the K series a win. If you are feeling rich Fit some Kinsler ITB's please

IMO 1.1mm is too thick for this, you will find that despite what people say about yank shit these things are pretty much all ~0.8 unless its a gusset/structural piece. The zinc plated is harder to work with than cold rolled but I am guessing you cannot go to the shops to get some so see how you go. Edit: Also yes, be hard work to make that in one piece without some tools/experience doing it. No problem making it out of a bunch of pieces either on the bench or on the car so you know they all fit lush.

Unfold the outer door skin (there are good youtube videos on this to do it good if needed) cut out that whole lower corner then make up some compound patches. Make it out of 3-4 bits, if you are using some nice new cold rolled steel you easily be able to bend that shit up by hand or over a pipe etc.

Also for the noob with a mig (like me) use big tacks hotter than you would normally think, look at the back of the panel if you can and make sure its penetrating all the way through. Do like 10 tacks and then grind them and hammer as needed, you put way less heat in this way. Shrinking disc helps lots for finishing, but in this case hammer bog it up. Doing runs of weld will make things extra bendy and is for the expert or TIG welder type of chap. Those OG sanding discs with the backing plate on the grinder are great for finishing welds also, a bit safer and nicer finish that the flap disc in many cases/skill level. With the tack method, beating and sanding discs you can make patches look mostly invisible. Agree with above also that the whole bottom of the door will be rusty in the seam, depends how many cans of worms you want to open etc.

Yeah just depends what turds are under the existing paint, I would say a few. This is rusted in all the same places as my wag was. How is the rear window sills? Dunno if you need tailgate rubbers and shit, I imagine they are melted. Save this guy for reference when you feel rich or the dollar is good, stop it rusting out the bottom of it again. http://einstyn.com/einstyn-tailgate-parts.htm

Weld the rust, skim it and blend into existing bog, do it again in 10-15 years

Its up to you what you can live with, bog isn't the devil. Just looks like a big skim was used on that door to hide all the sins and paint. Im a sucker for punishment so would strip it, whats your plan on paint in the end? just paint the rust repairs in patches and leave it rat spec which gets you back on the road faster, ghetto respray which take a bit longer? or full decent respray which would want a full strip down so you are not wasting the money? the finish you want to put on it will determine what you should do.

Can you confirm that your 5MGE is the 52pin version? If so I will try nab any that show up on for sale in the future, I see a 5M crown or some shit in my distant future.

Shit have you seen the MS2PNP stuff? The whole pre-built ECU's are pretty expensive but they did a run of all sorts of common nippo-denso ECU connectors which you put on a extension board and can plug and play your factory loom. Lots of the ones we would want are discontinued but I would hunt one down if I had a 80's Toyota EFI project because the normal MS connector is gay. https://www.diyautotune.com/support/tech/hardware/diypnp/available-models/ I would have bought a few of the 4age ones just because if had know about them when they were available. A couple have come up on facebook MS groups.

I can plug my data logs into virtual dyno, seems to work pretty well.

Your MAF graph looks like my variable cam fuel tables in 2D /ling

Old mate roman is on a quest for perfection (and its great). I change the intake, see I need more fuel and conclude I have won.

On a MAP only tune wouldn't you just see that as a need for more/less fuel in the table?

Glad this conversation has moved on from costs of EFI or the merits of soldering some garbage together. Tuning is the good bit.

Anyone done any fuel economy tuning with a cat converter involved? Old cars I have fucked with with EFI had no cat so you can tune lean at cruise for some pretty decent economy gains. With the cat involved you are meant to aim for 14.7 at cruise so you don't cook it. I wouldn't trade off removing a cat as cars are smelly as fuck without em, but its interesting that modern cars don't use the lean cruise thing as it fucks emissions/cats. Guess they get better economy numbers though more efficient engine design etc.

Off topicish but the hondata for K24 shit is super cool, keep all factory features but open up the ECU to full live tuning. Car even has built in wideband which makes shit so easy. Learning curve is steep to learn how Honda does the knock control and to make sure it isnt fucking with your changes. That and tuning 5 fuel tables for the variable cam timing is interesting. A great resource for all sorts of ECU tuning is this Evan guy: https://evansperformanceacademy.vhx.tv/ Sign up for a month and rip the videos you need, has full series of him live tuning all sorts of cool shit. Certainly gets you up to speed fast.

Ah yeah you shouldnt have plugged all that in and just hoped it works. The ECU's and body looms will have different ways of powering things, you could be poking 12V into things that shouldn't have it and fry them. Really should have done a full forensic check of how the existing all works and what wires do what and then match that to pin-outs for the 1gge. I figure the main relay shit will be different which is always a trap on this era of Toyotas, the ECU switches power for a bunch of things (idle control, maybe injectors etc) its not switched off the key.

Generally with modern shit the coolant lasts forever (200,000km) so usually put OEM in there because that is what is already in 90% of post say 2005 shit. Depending on brand of vehicle its pretty much same price as chain parts stores.

MIx up like 4mm of paint and see how long until its hard. I have used clear in the past that you can sand super quick, it all depends.