Bling

Dicksmith one is probably the same as ones from aliexpress? Which was the same ones resold on trademe, which could be cheaper, worth a look. I got one from Ali like this: https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/car-parts-accessories/tools-repair-kits/other/listing-2613493571.htm?rsqid=954ab67877364b37be4e457500fcd1d6-001 (requires air compressor) Haven't used it on brakes yet but it worked really well for draining my power steering! I very rarely find someone willing to pump the pedal so just run some pipe into a bottle and open the bleed screw a little bit. Seems to work, once there is some fluid in the bottle, air can't get back up the hose if it's submerged.

If you like the car and can do the work, then go nuts. Pricing is always a hard one as they don't come up often so price ranges aren't too specific.

And find one that is manual if you want a manual car. Less headaches and likely cheaper in the end, unless you can get all the parts cheap and do everything yourself.

Yeah probably a year. Will keep on looking into it while lockdown is a thing as they have a store in town, so may go visit when things open up. Currently radiator doesn't leak too much, a lot more than it should for one I paid to be fixed a while ago though. Thanks for all the replies, gives me something to ponder.

Yeah a recore is an option for sure. But it will likely cost twice what a brand new aluminium radiator will. Which i'd be open to if I had oodles of money (I don't) and didn't need to buy a new heater core too. Just doing research to see what is my best bang for buck really. Haven't seen an aftermarket one yet in anything other than full aluminium. No one sells the heater core either, so i'll have to modify one to suit. Recore on that won't work as the end is fucked lol. Just old car life, just wanting something that will do the trick.

Oh for sure, but if the bottom basically falls off, the design of that particular one can't be great. I think all my modern junk has the plastic stuff.

The Fenix option i'm looking at is a completely alloy unit. That sounds like a fabrication fail for sure with the plastic one though.

Yeah lets blame the coolant for the oil leaks eh. I'll looking in to that thanks.

Yeah a lot of talk on the web about coolants. Green and red both seem to state they are compatible with everything. Just not each other, in any volume lol. You're right though, red does contain more "stuff" to protect aluminium. If I go aluminium rad i'll go red. It seems they come from the factory (AE70) with only three of four holes lining up (two of which are rubber mounted). Thought one may have had a prang so didn't line up. Checked other car and sure enough, mounting hole seems to be in the wrong spot from the factory. It does sit in a rubber padded craddle too though, so not going far. I wonder if the one random bolt that actually contacts the radiator itself is an earth?

A search on here did bring up rumours of quality change @ Fenix at some point in the past. They all look to be much of a muchness. Will check them out, will do more homework on Fenix / copper ones. Cheers team. edit - Redline do one for my car, that should require slightly less modification. Promising.

Radiator question time. If I want to spend $500+ I can get mine rebuilt with copper / brass core. I don't really want to spend that much though. Just so many things left to buy to finish the car. So what is the deal with using aluminium radiators? I keep seeing things about electrolysis this and that. I can get an uprated Fenix aluminum radiator for much less. Cooling level isn't going to be a problem, i'm only making 14HP. Is it a case of flush the system 99 times, then fill with demineralised water / coolant mix and good to go? Or are there reasons I shouldn't be looking at aluminium? Engine in question is typical 80's toyota lump. Has a bunch of cast aluminium parts already attached. When replacing waterpump / thermostat housing I didn't notice any corrosion on them.

I sourced garnet for mine back in the day, just got it from one of the local sandblasting places. Just wanted to avoid using glass and the nasty dust that creates. Not that you should breathe any of them. Long time since i've done any though, but from memory garnet was better. It also can be reused more than some other products. Alistair isn't active on here nowadays, but he knows all about the blasting media game.

SCA have options too, as do other shops here, toolshed etc. Some priced in the same ballpark, but at least if it breaks you get easy returns. I haven't used either, so do own research etc. https://www.supercheapauto.co.nz/p/toolpro-toolpro-dual-action-polisher-240v-720w-150mm/581559.html?cgid=SCN01011101#start=8 https://www.thetoolshed.co.nz/product/7083-toolshed-sander-polisher-random-orbital-150mm?categoryId=1278

Location might be handy, unless you haven't picked one yet anyway.

I'd wire wheel the floor for you for $1400, bargain. Unless you want to eat off it I reckon it could be done in 1-2 days of slog. Most of it looks light so would take minimal effort. Might need a second grinder and run them in shifts. Those twisted cup brushes work fast. Seem to last ok too.

Decent wire wheel on the grinder will get rid of all that. Then 2k epoxy primer / underseal I imagine. Mine looks similar to that, but i'm not that motivated to actually sort it due to nowhere to make that much mess.

Two updates in one month, lockdown eh... Have been epoxy priming lots of things, under wiper area, gave it a good scrub out, clean, and epoxy. Some areas that I couldn't reach to remove every tiny bit of surface rust I sprayed 3-4 times with Brunox, then epoxied over the top. It wasn't that bad to begin with, but figured i'd stop it now. Any water that gets into that area now has a clean run along the epoxy (to be top coated I guess) and out the side of the car. Have some seam sealer so will do along the front edge to stop any water ever getting to the firewall metal panel sandwich. Also finished painting the radiator area, so the brackets on the underside got another coat of paint. The radiator support area got two coats of epoxy after a lot of wire wheeling and surface rust treatment. Then a couple of coats of red. Now I just have to be careful to not scratch it. The brackets on the underside are currently not bolted up as I want the paint all 1000% dry before bolting the surfaces together. So with all that paint work done (photos aren't 100% current as I don't always remember to take them), I installed the radiator. I had a slow leak on it fixed before lock down. So was expecting a nice and simple job. I should have known... turns out there was a relatively large (to the pipe size) crack on the overflow pipe on the radiator. So after a lot of pissing around trying to fix it in place, I removed the whole neck. I then removed the existing pipe as solder would not stick, even with flux and a super good clean. Got some 3/8" copper out of the van and dremeled it down in diameter to fit in the hole. Braised it up and called it good. At some point i'd like to throw a Fenix radiator at it, as this one is past it's used by. But it will do for now as the whole system will still have a bit of shit in it. So once that is nice and clean i'll look at new rad. Some before and after pics of the overflow / washer bottles, as they were rather grot. Lots of scrubbing later after splitting them apart, they came up much nicer. Also removed the brake master cylinder and will replace / rebuild that at some point. So yeah, some pics. Battery tray which was super rust pitted, spent a long time on the wire wheel. Epoxy, epoxy, paint, paint. Front on, have since fit the loom back in place and painted black the areas seen through the grill. Epoxy finished in this area now. Red top coat to go on, and whatever top coat colour I have lying around for in the gutter. Washer / radiator bottles before And after, enough time spent on these that I had priced up universal ones. Wouldn't look right though, so I soldiered on. All fixed back in place with new bolts from "Car Clips" based in Dunedin I think. Didn't take much heat to pop this off. My gas torch is not suited to this job at all, so you'll notice solder here and there. Even on low it's enough to send the solder running. Such a small crack, such a massive pain to fix. Copper pipe installed, took longer to sand it down to size than braise it in place. And job done, find out tomorrow how porous the cooling system is. This part at least should be sound.

Forgot to answer this bit. I don't recall what they were off now, I got the whole lot as a kit from MRP, they are redrilled and came with shims to suit my application.

Oh yeah cheers, will wait for this lockdown thing to sort itself and give them a call, see what they got / what they can do with mine potentially. Not in a hurry to get it sorted, so may as well try all local options.

Flicked you pics

Sweet that's all good then, not worried about a slightly firmer pedal at all. Thanks.

Brake master cylinders, I want a new one. Current one looks a bit passed it, 2-300k on the clock. I have changed the front brakes to something bigger, but the calipers are spec'd to work fine on stock master. The question. How much different will a 19.05mm bore (current. marked as 3/4) be to a 20.6mm bore (Rockauto available, marked as 13/16)? Doesn't seem like too much difference to me on the face of it, but keen to know what the go is. I could get mine rebuilt (potentially, I don't know this for sure, but figure by the time I pay for that, I could have a new one and just slap it in. If the bore diameter difference isn't going to upset things. TIA Reason i'm looking at Rockauto first is it doesn't seem like the sort of thing people will stock here.

Good point. Some of that damage is pretty bad! I'm going to repair much lesser damage on my car because it looks bad if nothing else.

Someone was asking about bumpers not too far back, could have same answer. I'd go look, but I just got assigned trench digging duty.

Depends what it's going in surely? A highly strung car that needs 98, noooope. A normal car probably won't care. My projects all run on old fuel due to low mileage, I do splash out and put 95 in them when filling though as it will be a long time between drinks.