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So. DASH head + pistons on your existing RWD G63B block = win? or is it slightly more convoluted than that...

If only all cars were this easy!

Been a bit of discussion about tyre vs. rim sizes for certs lately. Stretch is bad, etc. so in case folks haven't seen it already, here's the LVVTA info sheet

gonna be there in something post-1985. Skyline has chosen this month to shit a balljoint most likely this

Poker run checkpoint at makara would be lols. Especially if coming from the Jville side, my god I have never had to avoid head-on collisions with so many trucks and crazy cyclists in my life.

hah, AW11 looks a damn site easier to cut thru than the TX3 parts car I bought and subsequently chopped up. Had to use the plasma cutter for that one also holy crap @ crash pic, that looks like the saddle road? Fuck that for a laugh.

CL7s are growing on me, slowly. the inner Asian still <3 the CL1 though. But has to be Accord not Torneo. Mmmmm-mm.

sweet, always up for roadtrips to Welly. timeframe is far enough away that I might even be able to bring the banana, but would have to keep a pretty close eye on the sucker. prob stay out with my mates in chur-park or karori, whoever obliges first I spose

haven't had burger fuel in a while actually, was kinda wondering when the next one was. see you next Tuesday, see-you-next-Tuesdays

Loving the effort being put into the K-Pimp as always. I'm good with tidying up bodywork and interior stuff, but working under the bonnet always gives me the willies. I'll need to face this fear head-on eventually, which is why I'm thinking after squid is complete I'll try my hand at "concoursing" either the banana, or my brother's granny-spec turbo TX3. The KP shall provide me with ample motivation in the process

Agent in Japan emailed me last night with this hot little number: http://www.goo-net.com/usedcar/spread/g ... 13003.html in the meantime I'm keeping on keeping with the current one. Performed the half yearly application of "t-top leak-stop" today. Basically you apply some of this to each corner of the t-top rubber bit, with a bit of glad wrap or petroleum jelly where it meets the chassis to keep the sealant crap from making a mess everywhere. Sit in place with the t-tops unlocked for an hour, then remove the glad wrap, lock down the t-tops, and leave for a further hour. Then remove t-tops again, trim off excess sealant (which should have hardened by now), re-attach and voila, hopefully no more drips for another few months also helps immensely if you've got the eccentric guides.

messing around with your first whip is the best way to eventually learn what counts as tasteful modding and what doesn't! Even if said whip gets ruinated in the process. I remember the fun I had 'doing up' my first proper car (a 1982 Ford Laser GL) on $50 a week, if even that. Didn't go quite far as painting the whole thing black with spraycans, but came close trying to disguise bad bog jobs in a few key places

Churs all. Have PM'd requisite folks. be quite sweet if we can pass the lease on with minimal fuss. I think the landlord was starting to freak out that come May he would end up with a large empty building and no more income

lex, 'tis a clutch type TRD one. kinda wonder how tight it is actually, may find that it needs shimming. I wouldn't spend more than 4.5k here for a tidy manual SC (hardtop), unfortunately these days people ask way too much for ones that are quite honestly junk, or worse, automatic (check trademe to see what I mean). But in saying that, I'm prepared to spend a lot more than that to bring one over from japan myself. The guy I bought mine off was really honest and pleasant to deal with (did I mention he was a cop?) but during the time I spent shopping around I got a rather bad vibe from a lot of the other jokers selling these things, they all seemed too full of themselves and eager to conceal their vehicles' flaws behind a wall of "I am an enthusiast. I do not consider this patch of rust to be a concern." or worse still "I paid $1200 for these bags which my t-tops store in, and I spent $750 fixing this dent that my wife put into the side of the guard, my asking price on the car reflects this." Stuff giving them any of my money. i may have one from my ae101 gtz days, but will get turenotch/simon to talk to our mate ben, he would most likely to have one, hes abit of a horder our ben is stand by Awesome, cheers boe. also getting Dave to find out a price on the front lip assembly (because I'm curious again). Part nos. 76081A and 76083A as per this pic

Meanwhile, back at the batcave... Garrett GT3071R twinscroll special, Bosch Motorsport fuel pump, 42mm Tial gate with 0.8bar spring, and not in the photo are four Denso 840cc injectors. No prizes for guessing where all this junk will ultimately end up.

Yeah, six whips. One of them is a track car though, which doesn't see as much use as I'd like $480 for the front bumper iron sounds about right Simon. trade was somewhere between $200 and $300 (I forget exactly). yeah Kbox and twosrus sell the genuine t-top seals nowadays, which has brought the local Toyota prices down by heaps. I have a spare facelift front lip but it's almost as rough as the current one on the car, haha. often see the snobs on the MR2OC forums lamenting about how their front lips are all banged up and how they would murder babies for new ones. always have a quiet chortle to myself and think if they bothered to do some research they would soon discover the glory of brand new ones (no offence intended to any OC members present!) Jarred your bro wouldn't happen to have a spare SC relay would he? The one on my car is a bit temperamental and sometimes doesn't engage the SC clutch in a timely manner, which results in a massive jerk almost like a gigantic misfire. As for how much I paid for this AW11. More than 2, less than 4, very reasonable. I'm still not quite used to the way the LSD behaves with the stock suspension setup... even though my mate drove it around Taupo and said it was fine. the only way to describe it around corners is incredible power understeer followed by a gradual shift towards neutral handling, resisting the urge all the while to lift off

we're actually expecting the rent to decrease rather than increase. Just the other guys want to move elsewhere, I think they got sick of living in a warehouse

Renewal rights come up in the 2nd week of may as already mentioned, lease is for two years and I do know that the rental amount will be re-negotiated at that point. Currently we're paying $650/wk split between four people (including opex). The other three currently live there in addition to storing crap/working on cars so they pay more than me. site is approx. 330 sq.m. in size and has kitchen/bath/loos, three bedrooms, and small concrete outer yard in addition to warehouse space. Can PM you more details if you like.

Sooooo.... during the time I've spent in self-imposed exile both DR30s haven't seen much activity - spent most of 2009 finishing the restoration of my BFMRF Laser TX3, and am currently getting the banana road legal. once that's out of the way I can finally start on the "terror squid" build in the meantime, the KDR30 coupe soldiers on quietly, as grandad-spec as the day it left the factory. Things haven't exactly been smooth sailing though, keeping a car in stock condition gets difficult as bits get older and crap starts failing. I'm still plagued by the same fuel pump problem from 2008 except that it's started to get progressively worse - the car is hesitating and surging whilst driving, and is incredibly hard to start when warm. Re-soldering the contacts on the pump controller module did help, but not for very long. I guess you can't really expect 25+ year old electrics to keep going forever! The first sign of other trouble was when the oil pressure gauge started reading ridiculously low. Compared it with a proper gauge reading and found the pressure at the engine was still OK, so all signs pointed to a sender fault. Eventually that failed altogether which in turn has now knocked out the factory cruise control. Who would have figured the two were interlinked??!! Finding a new sender in NZ has been a bit of a chore as nothing else suitable has twin outputs like the factory one does. Then I decided one day to flush and re-fill the cooling system. Turns out running the hose through the radiator creates enough force to break the ends off both radiator temp senders have had to re-wire the radiator fans to run all the time as a stop-gap solution, since without the sender outputs they no longer get a signal to switch on automatically. Fun times. And now, to add insult to injury, the car failed its first WOF ever this week, for excessive play in the front left balljoint. Have managed to buy a new one for a very reasonable price though, so that's been one bright spot in a sea of darkness On the flip side the incessant FJ20 chain rattle on startup has now been cured with a Mazda ratchet tensioner fix. Didn't take nearly as long and wasn't quite as fiddly as I was expecting so that was a relief. anyway, the fuel pump was behaving well enough for me to take the car for a leisurely drive recently, so with camera in hand, I set off on a journey. The SSR Meshies are also on the market now; am quite willing to strike a deal with OS boes if anyone is interested in them I'm amping to get my Watanabes fitted as soon as they're gone. yup, those are new plates, and if you look closely you can see the NISSAN PRINCE TOKYO dealer sticker (thanks to old man southern!)

yeah I priced up new seals ex Toyota, wasn't as bad as I was expecting at ~$130 per side (helps when you have a mate who works in parts). The problem usually isn't the body seals though, it's the rubber bit on the actual t-tops themselves that shrink and start causing all sorts of grief, and those are NLA from Toyota as of something like 15 years ago about the only thing you can do in that situation (apart from use sealant) is buy another complete t-top and hope it seals better than your current one! Was surprised that quite a lot of parts are still available ex Toyota though. Brand new facelift front lip? Yes. Factory decals? Yes. Genuine supercharger oil? Yes. Even that little sticker on the intercooler shroud (which says INTERCOOLER) is available overnight that LSD was a pure dumb luck score on my part. Seller never even mentioned it, and I only found out for sure one night not long after taking ownership with the car up on stands cursing yet another SC belt snappage. My mate happened to idly spin one rear wheel and noticed the other turning the same way. huzzah! Dunno what they are worth but I'd probably end up transplanting it over to my next AW11 if they are as uncommon as folks say they are. in fact with all the cool extra stuff on the car I was quite stoked that I paid what I did. Leakytop was a small sacrifice to make.

current lease on the warehouse in Frankton expires at the start of May, and typically everyone else wants out of the contract, so it looks like I'm gonna need to find somewhere else in Hamilton to move all my car-related crap into. So if anyone has something suitable down that way please let me know... as long as it's reasonably secure I'm flexible on access and time, i.e. short-term, long-term whatever. apart from the two vehicles currently in storage I also have a complete interior, two engines (one with gearbox attached), 8 rims with tyres, and some assorted engine bits that need to move. Figure about 16-20 sq.m. worth of junk all up, if that. of course it would be heaps easier if I could store the cars too, but I realize this may not be possible so I'm looking to move them back to secure garaging in Auckland. unfortunately most if not all of the places up here are strictly vehicles only/not enough room for extra storage. chur.

so after selling my third AW11 (a two-tone green and gold one) to Camel back at the end of 2008 I vowed never to buy another one again... unless it was manual, supercharged and hardtop. Well two out of three ain't bad! This is AW11 number four, '87 5spd supercharged t-top in Super White II. Bought it on valentine's day last year off a pleasant fellow in Pukekohe who also happened to be a cop, and part of the Manukau-Counties Serious Crash unit. His parting words to me as I drove off (in that super deadpan serious cop voice that all of them seem to have) were: "I hope never to come across you nor this car upside down in a ditch one rainy night..." and fair enough too! yes I realize it's not wearing the ROGLDR plates anymore. I got bored one day and stuck the banana's plates on instead. the Good: - 10psi pulley kit - Extractors - TRD LSD! - super lightweight bronze rims. Can pick up with pinky finger - engine rebuilt at 160,000km - most of the rust was repaired and treated by a previous owner the Not So Good: - notice how I said "most" of the rust? - front lip, bonnet and bumper really need a respray - exhaust manifold had a leak when I got it, but a genuine toyota 4A-GZE gasket (for $13!) soon cured that - it's a t-top and yes, the damn things leak - the paint isn't thaaaat flash, but hey it's a daily - only dynoed @ 92kW at perfect power with the ECU throttling power above 5500rpm. Ah well When I got the AW11 it pretty much had a piece of straight pipe off the extractors and out the back, and as you can imagine it sounded like a very very angry wookiee holding a belt sander against a wall. So to appease the warrant man (and to keep my sanity intact) that got binned in favour of something MUCH quieter. the car was also rolling on Firestone 960s (with a mismatched Enduro GR2000 on the left rear 4lols) and pretty much did a skid everywhere it went. Replaced those straightaway with some brand new Bridgestone Potenza G-IIIs for max grip action. for a while it kept blowing SC belts, but I changed to a slightly larger diameter one (no more A/C) and adjusted the pulley and that seemed to fix it. then bought some mint t-top covers off YAJ via Ewan from ha-ya-ton-ka, because the car didn't have any and I was getting tired of frying in the sun. Nearly had a heart attack when I found out how much they cost brand new from Toyota ($925 per side), not to mention how much one of the greedy gouging bastards from the MR2 club wanted for his tatty ones ($300). The ones from Japan only cost me $120 incl shipping! Also discovered that Permatex black rubber sealant ($9.50 from BNT) works wonders for t-top leaks, AND it still allows you to take them off and drive around like a shameless '80s throwback. Fucking stoked az. other than that, I haven't actually done much else to the AW11. Always gives me a big grin when I drive it, does 600km a week without missing a beat, and has the mean acceleration around town. Best part is the fuel economy, I can thrash the nuts off it and still get 12km/litre (8.33l/100km)! Oh, and the supercharger whine is epic the plan is to just keep it for a while longer, possibly get the rest of the rust fixed and tidy up the paint, but I'm holding off for now because I'm still hoping maybe one day I'll import a mint hardtop one from Japan and swap over all the good bits. moar photagonals:

i'll try have a meeting with the folks I lease space from, see what they're gonna do with regards to the rent. but if I end up moving my shit out of there, will have two cars + one complete engine and gearbox + another engine in bits sans gearbox + four wheels + and a bunch of interior parts as well

Sweet boe, have flicked you a text. many thanks

on most Jap cars (which an escort isn't) the tail lights are on the same circuit as the park lights and dashboard/console backlighting, so if the fuse blows, they all stop working. could be a good place to start?