cletus

Been busy, anything that fits in the blasting cabinet has been pummeled with sand and then painted on the "eyehook 3000 painting device" When I painted the engine I mucked around for a while removing markings off all the bolts then blasting them and painting them while they were on the engine but then it looked like a tractor engine, so I ordered a whole lot of new bolts from a company called www.fasttrade.co.nz which you can order everything online, handy. fitted offset bushes in the top arms so I can have more caster , painted them , fitted them, turns out they are shorter, fucked around finding washers to pack them out, didnt like how they sat and they didnt tighten up very well, so pressed them back out and fitted some standard ones instead. Also found the thermostat housing I'd ordered has the wrong bolt pattern, dumb. 3 steps forward, 1.8 back...

Yep. C&M?

Sometimes legal, sometimes not.

It says something about high tensile bolts being not good for cyclic loading, which doesnt really make sense in most situations, once the bolt is torqued correctly it is clamping components together, you aren't relying on the bolt only in many situations so there isn't any cyclic loads I would think?

Valve bounce makes a terrible noise. I had a valiant that would do it at about 4800rpm . I was trying to impress a girl one night and I used to shift just as it made the noise, she thought I couldnt drive and was graunching gears It was auto...

It's never been an issue before, willwood and many other aftermarket calipers dont have dust boots on the pistons However if the caliper is an oem one and was designed to have dust boots or slide boots then it is likely it would fail, I've never had that come up before

Fraser cars use that setup but with a lower arm that takes a spherical bearing like that. Lvv rules require a safety washer to prevent the joint from being able to pull through if it gets worn

That's funny I cant see any of the gold plating? Or the diamond encrusted manifold nuts?

I've driven a couple of cars with them fitted and they always seem to drive like a carb with the choke stuck on I also enquired with the local holley distributor about purchasing a holley version of the same thing and his response was something along the lines of "no, I wont sell those things, they are a fuckup, why would you want to put the ecu on the hottest most vibration affected area of the car?" Makes sense haha

In nz, for cert that design would have to be approved due to its complexity, I dont know what the rules are like over the ditch but that would be very difficult to get legal here

Have you run your plan for your brake system past your engineer/whatever the australian equivalent is called?

Home again. Real pleased with the results and it cost less than I thought it was going to, as I'd asked Grant to paint the wheels and a couple of other bits, and respray the black parts that got primer overspray at the blasting place It's hard to get a good pic of the colour as it seems quite different depending on light and the camera Now i just have to not fuck it up too much as I put it back together

I'll see if I can find the torana guys number, it was a while back

Pick it up tomorrow. Maximum fizz levels

Prescott engineering in Auckland sell doubler plates ready made, otherwise any seatbelt installer should be able to get some for you Have a look at the seatbelt anchorage standard on lvvta.org.nz

I had a bad case of dickfingers over the weekend, sunday I was going to clean and paint the engine but while cleaning I found the front cover gasket looked a bit average so front cover off to fix that, so the sump gasket got messed around with again.... I fluffed around for a while deciding on what colour to paint the engine, I got some gold as I thought it would go well with the green but it was a bit light, thought about black but a lot of the accessories are black so the engine might 'disappear ' , factory colour would be red but I thought that might be too bright I guess that's why I chose this color originally.....so it got more of the same again this evening

Oil stuff dramas. The dipstick tube cracked when I fitted it 8 years ago trying to bend it to fit around something else so I got a new one . When I tried to remove the cracked one it snapped off so I had no way of grabbing it so I fucked around for an hour with various drill, modified punch, and tap methods, got it out in the end. The oil filter mount plate i ordered ages ago which was hard to find didnt fit cause it was for a later model engine , luckily WAER had one left in stock for the right year so I got that, drilled some extra holes in it and fitted it. Fitted the sump, the gaskets didnt fit right so after I'd gooed it up I had to remove it again to trim some bits off the ends, put it back on and because of the slight difference with gaskets and seals it didnt fit quite the same so one of the baffles fouled the pickup and tweaked it , so swear at it some more, remove the sump again, make some clearance, set up the pickup height again and lock it in place, clean sealer off again, and reapply, put sump back on .

Yeah I am more than capable of fucking things up all by myself for much less cost On a positive note I called in to the painters to have a proper look at the hoodlining and it looks like some stitching has let go so my mrs should be able to fix it good enough for now, it wasn't mint anyway so meh. @piazzanoob cheers for the heads up, the new pan clears the dipstick ok, I did have to put a hole in the baffle cause I'd already got that wrong once before on the engine in the vg @SOHC thanks but it's already at the painter, is that an indian guy around Cartwright road somewhere? I had a customer with a torana that had been painted quite cheap and it was surprisingly good

This got uncovered from somewhere when it got blasted

Made some baffles for the sump. Remembered to make a hole for the dipstick this time... my other one has an extra short one due to making the baffle and putting the engine in , putting oil in to start it, then realizing the mistake

Does the spigot bearing press in against a step? Looks like someone might have got a bit over enthusiastic with the hammer and punch or the press

Picked up from autoblast this morning and dropped off for engine bay paint. Looks ok apart from they painted the black parts underneath then primed the engine bay so theres primer overspray on the inner guards and in the tunnel. Which is a bummer as that was the whole reason for taking it to them because I wanted it done nicely. I mentioned it and the guy came out with a rattlecan of black paint and some rubberised underseal to throw on before the towie arrived, which I didnt want on it I didn't want to leave it there for them to fix cause I'd already had to postpone the towie and the booking at the panel shop a week, because it wasn't ready last weekend as per the booking I made 6 weeks ago. So I'll get the painter to fix it, should just need a quick blow over with some more black after hes done the green parts And the hoodlining is ripped for some reason now. Bah. Anyway, I pulled the sump off to change the oil pump and pickup back to a stock one instead of a high volume pump. Its had a couple of times in the past where it lost pressure after a prolonged period of high rpm. I was concerned it was emptying the sump faster than it could drain back, and someone i talked to about it said that on a SB mopar, a stock pickup with a high volume pump can cause cavitation issues. Someone else said a high volume pump is unnecessary anyway as once it gets to x amount of pressure the relief valve bypasses so then the oil just gets whizzed around the pump doing nothing I'll try a stock pump and see how it goes, and also add some baffles, I got a new pan cause the old one has had a few bumps and an oil drain on the wrong side now I got brave and popped a couple of bearing caps off and they looked fine

Is it a spacer? Or an adapter to fit a mazda shaft onto the hunter diff via changing the pcd? It's not something that is covered by the standard, the wording sort of suggests that you wouldn't be able to do it, as technically you are lengthening the shaft via a spacer, but the wording is intended to prevent someone cutting and joining a shaft incorrectly In my opinion if it's made out of a suitable material and is not too thick and has the right bolts with lock washers etc and it spigots into the driveshaft and pinion flange then it would be safe, it's the same as a wheel spacer or adapter You might want to check with @KKtrips