Jeffs_Emporium

I still need to get these from Taranaki to Christchurch if anyone knows a door to door service, my usual man with van won't branch out to Taranaki from the main highway 

Some boomerang Work Ewing II were sourced in a trade which I had originally traded for something else, i think @Raizer originally os freighted them to me years ago.

They were a 15x6.5 +41. Upon test fitting the fronts didn't have enough clearance to the upper arm and balljoint. I then sourced a 6.5 +17 pair from yahoo auctions and switched the centers over after Aidan at pine engineering painted them for me. This leaves me with a spare +41 5x114.3 pair for a naughty resizing for the rear in the future.  I've been window shopping tyres and doing calculations on final drive plus trying to find something with a suitable load rating. 185/60/15 is legal for a 6.5 rim and will put me in the ballpark to use 3.73 or 3.9 diff ratios to get similar highway rpm as stock. 3.9 for 3y use and 3.73 for when the engine is upgraded I'm thinking. Man hilux lsd are cheap and plentiful compared to anything I've owned. 

Aidan was kind enough to draw up the centre caps, plates and threads for me from a sample so I can have them cnc machined when ready to complete the wheels

Fitted up last Friday on the driveway 

It's about 35-40mm higher

It took 4 litres without a filter change (its was very recent) 

Dipstick still fits without mods so I'd call it a win. 

Finally the sump! 

Its no secret this van has been through a few and seemed to be the butt of a few jokes for it. A friend of a friend Alex (thanks if you are on here) made this custom item back in January along with a shortened pickup to match . I recently gave it a coat of paint and transferred the oil from the existing full level sump to check height from block. It was the same if not slightly lower (more capacity) 

Heater issue ended up being a faulty tap. It would flow untill it hit a certain pressure then close off completely so I just bypassed it. The heater control unit actually also closes a flap when selecting cold temp which should help it not always blow hot. 

Other jobs to finish up 

local plastic company Cebelio cut up a scrap piece of black ABS to fill the floor shifter void, it snaps into place where the leather shifter boot would have been 

When I put this together I spent a large sum recoring the heater core, for some reason I could never get it to blow hot.I tried testing the tap to make sure it wasn't blocked and I tried checking the hoses were flowing nicely, I tried changing the orientation to make sure I wasn't running it backwards also. I remembered that I hadn't put foam packing around the core so today I pulled the entire dash out to resolve that 

Put the heater box back in and plumbed it back up and bled air out. Still not blowing hot. It blows warm when you first turn it on then cools off. So I tried changing direction on hoses, blows completely cold. Tried dicking around with the flaps and taps manually to check it was doing as its supposed to and the pipes on the core are definitely hot but some reason it won't blow hot 

The floor shifter model I pinched the seat base and bucket seats from had this nice strap to hold the seat base/bonnet up from the factory but it was broken in half. I remembered a local wrecker had a couple of townace utes so went and grabbed a complete strap and fixing. My B pillar didn't have the mounting point so I fitted a rivnut to get it connected.

Better than the stick I've been using for almost 3 years 

The mighty TOOLBX has now been sold to a good friend! It's another month before he takes possession to drive it from Christchurch to the far north. There are all these little jobs I never got around to that I'm now getting through to hand it over in a completed state! 

Earlier in the year I had some Bspeed cam covers made in a classic fin style in a red to coordinate with the BRX wheels 

Great opportunity to wear a locally designed and manufactured product!

Tacho has been working previously 

dizzy is putting out a signal, im going to try lift some of the pins on the plug on back of dash tomorrow, I had some temp gauge movement pulling plug out slightly so maybe they've been flattened over time. 

In some better news I managed to get both sunroof and moonroof to completely open and close. Found no rust around the opening of the bigger one surprisingly its all on the removable panel, the front one has some around the edge I'll need to drop that cartridge out. Someone's definitely been there before with nuts missing here and there 

Yeah it is the factory dash. Quote was 95+ if they couldn't repair it and 395+ if they could so I'll see where I stand since it's not operational still 

Loving the height

While I was awaiting some other parts I popped out the digital dash and took it to Get electronic down here to see why tacho wasn't working and temp seems temperamental

they didnt seem to find much other than a couple of suspicious solder joints so hopefully that sorts it

Picked up the head from Cliff Bond on  Friday morning 

 Hardness test was all good so they skimmed it for me.