Stu

After a few coats of the finest black paint I got on with replacing the brake hard line and refitting the LPG line. I 3D printed some clamps for the lines which got dutifully fixed into position, because OCD. Then by some miracle it got a clean sheet WOF! The front of the caravan has a couch area that forms into a bed like such: But as you can see it doesn't fill all of the area and make the bed a bit small. We never use the area as a couch as its always setup as a bed, so while I had the caravan at work I made a few changes: This is an interim solution and long term will replace all the tops to one big panel that will hinge up on some struts for easy storage access. Will be picking up a queen size mattress for it and maybe building a head board/storage area as the space is longer than the mattress. Also applied some black vinyl to the corner of the front windows to elude the peeping toms Have most of a drawing done for the box on the draw bar so will try to get build that before Christmas in amongst all the other projects.

I continue to be in awe of your work!

Such excellent tales, please continue!

Many camping trips later... Its that time of year when I vaguely entertain the idea of getting this thing ready for the holidays. I haven't actually bothered with a WOF for a couple of years but I might feel generous and get it one soon. The draw bar was a bit neglected and been showing its age. Its been in the back of my mind how much of a bitch it would be if it let go somewhere remote.. So I took it to work over the weekend and the front fell off: On close inspection the steel wasn't too bad but it was probably a good thing to replace it - better for my piece of mind anyway Ghost bar Then got some 75x50 duragalv, a new braked coupling etc and after a couple of hours: That aint going no where. I had a good poke around at the rest of the chassis and its mint so that's good. Towed it home and got to work with the black paint: Picked up a roll of brake line today, and am 3D printing some clamps for it and the LPG line, then assembly time followed hopefully by a wof. Plan is to make some sort of box on the front instead of having the fibreglass fairing which does wreck the original vibe, but the extra space will trump the looks. Will be something like this but custom made because I'm a sucker for punishment: Lovely.

Quick update: I pulled the head off the old engine to re-use on the greytop bottom end. It ran fine other than the bearing fail so I'm fairly confident it will be fine - if its not I have a few other heads to chose from. I flipped it upside down and left some glycol in the cylinders overnight, nothing leaked past the valves so that's good enough for me. It was pretty filthy thou, which wasn't good enough for me, so some all brite to the rescue: It came up pretty reasonable - not perfect, but will do the job. It also got a good internal degrease and clean up. I took all the buckets out, cleaned them all up, lubed them up and refitted. Then using a TRD gasket I torqued the head on: Cams, pulleys, timing gear etc etc all underway and starting to look the part. I need to give the gearbox a birthday then its pretty well ready to lift back into the car.

Narva sell a fairly big range of tail lights and Im sure some look like those. They still stocked the lights off my caravan and they were dirt cheap and I just fitted some LED bulbs.

On other non engine related updates I managed to get a sweet Si badge And then I got mildly distracted and built a parcel tray as the car didn't have one originally. Started out measuring and drawing the tray up, then cutting a sample from ACM Drew up and printed some strengthening bars that also retain the solid bar that the tray hinges on Tested fitted this in the blue car and it fitted pretty well But being ACM it was a touch too flimsy so recut again using aluminium this time: Then changed the design of the bars to have captive nuts and re-printed from CF filament. Assembled those and got some carpet so glued that on I had some very basic 6x9's floating around so designed and printed some basic covers for them Nearly done Looks good enough for this guy And test fitted into the blue car again The parcel tray equivalent of hella flush?

Dredge time: Was expecting some sparkly oil and while it wasn't a full glitter bomb, there was some flakey goodness going on Whoever put this engine together originally used aaaaall the gasket goo On inspection and as predicted, #3 bearing had started to leave the chat, damage wasn't too bad but was enough that the engine needed to come out As per standard I decided to make it all way harder than it needed to be so picked out a couple of other engines from the stash, then proceeded to spread 20v internal parts all through @kpr 's shed. Don't listen to his comments, he really does love 20v's! Anyway beer and KFC for lunch persuaded him to help measure everything and by some miracle everything measured up really good, and even weighed up pretty much perfectly. We ended up setting up some blacktop pistons onto silvertop rods which I now dub as the grey top. I smoothed some oil passages and fitted some new oil pump gears to the oil pump and assembled the bottom end with all the usual new bits, and now have the block ready to go in when I get time Ive got a trd head gasket sitting waiting and I have pulled the original engine out, but haven't gone any further yet.

Yeah it did, bit of a mystery that. There's a mountain of work to do so I doubt I will make OS drags but there's a glimmer of hope. The downpipe and exhaust need to be built, build and swap in a new gearbox as this one weeps when its hot, new injectors to go in, wire in some extra stuff, then retune etc etc I think the limiting factor for OS drags will be funding it as the recent vet bills have drained all the piggy banks. Plus I'm really good at taking aaaaages to do stuff because I have waaaay to many projects on the go. We will see!

4agte EP71 update: Every month or so I pull the starlet out of the garage for a bit of a drive (read: thrash...) around the private test circuit (read: definitely not the public roads...) then put it away again. This time the roads private test circuit was dry so the high boost setting was used because reducing life expectancy is fun, but sadly high boost wasn't all that high for some reason. Upon investigation one of the hose clamps was loose so I dutifully got the tools out to make the appropriate repairs. However for some odd reason the turbo fell off, lucky it was outside the environment It was a bit of a mystery how that happened, but while it was off, it seemed a good time to finally fit the new one. The old one is a GT2876r and it ran the starlet to a 11.81@121mph quarter mile at 17psi which isn't too shabby and there was definitely better times with better driving. The 60ft times were terrible, all well over 2.1seconds although towards the end I figured out how to get those down to 1.9sec but didn't quite get the gear changes right so didn't better the overall time. It also got tuned to 23psi but the stars didn't align to get a run down the strip at that boost. This setup never saw the dyno but I'm assuming its was pushing a bit over 200kw. The new turbo has sat on my shelf for a few years now and is a Series 2 GTX2867. @kpr tested this on his Hilux a while back and it went pretty good - from memory there is a dyno plot in his build thread somewhere. It should make more power overall and earlier which will be bonerific. Its physically smaller too which is handy as shits tight in the engine bay of a starlet when a 4age is present. #dumbfwdlyf V-band exhaust housings are rad, so fitting the new turbo was easy The hot side intercooler pipe was made in a hurry at the time so always a bit ugly, so it seemed like a good opportunity to redo that too. It would have been miles easier to buy a tight radius aluminium donut but because Im awfully good at making easy problems really difficult, and I had some stainless tube under the bench, I decided to make a bend. I cheated a little by drawing it up and then printing a pie cut template, but a few cutting discs later a bend was tacked together. The 90's called, they want their fabrication skills back... Its definitely not pretty but it will work. I also took the opportunity to redo the downpipe. I took a sliver out and to move the bend closer to the turbo, then chopped the rest off and started again. I shifted the piping over closer to the dip of the sump and away from the bellhousing which will gain a bit of clearance around the CV's, and up closer to the sump to keep the oil nice and warm - oh and to increase ground clearance because low = good. So everything is tacked up and sitting in place for now. Im waiting on a 3 inch flexi to turn up along with some other exhaust bits because for some reason the 2.5inch exhaust also fell off, so its probably a good idea to replace this with a more sturdy 3 inch version. Anyway, that's all for now.

Weldon16 or Acryfix. PSP and Mulford Plastics sell it. We use gallons of the stuff.

Damn this is looking good! I bet the total of build hours is getting up around 11 billionty. Excellent work!

236hp. But all that really matters is that it makes all the noise and rpm. Ear bleeds all around = success

Sweet as! Sign me up!

Man this build is excellent, keep it up