Firebrand

Cheers all of you guys, Joker, I'm going to Google that DIY bead roller when I get home, I've got some spare old vice grips looking for a use...

That might be a goer, I'll pop in on friday morning and see what they have. cheers!

Ideally it would be bead rolled..maybe I'm better off waiting for ali to send it to me - something like this I guess, but I'm sure there's cheaper ones: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/35mm-1-3-8-inch-Aluminum-Turbo-Intercooler-Pipe-Piping-Tube-Tubing-Straight-L-150/1444885458.html?ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_2_10152_10065_10151_10068_436_10136_10137_10157_10060_10138_10155_10062_10156_10154_10056_10055_10054_10059_10099_10103_10102_10096_10147_10052_10053_10142_10107_10050_10051_10084_10083_10080_10082_10081_10110_10175_10111_10112_10113_10114_10181_10037_10183_10182_10185_10078_10079_10077_10073_10070_10123,searchweb201603_4,ppcSwitch_2&btsid=681d8af4-8839-4d1e-837d-bb8d7ad61a31&algo_expid=9e3e3c67-de49-4093-ba0e-206bf47f028a-34&algo_pvid=9e3e3c67-de49-4093-ba0e-206bf47f028a I tried Mitre 10 & Bunnings and the biggest diameter they do was 25mm or possibly 30mm...

I'm looking to buy a small length of 35mm OD aluminium tube to join 2 radiator hoses together - I only need about 6 inches length, but I'll buy more if I need to. Where's the best place to get it from in wellington area? I can't tell if any of the metal suppliers will do such small quantities. I could probably order it from aliexpress but I need it this weekend ideally. Any ideas where to start, or should I just ring around and see? cheers

It was OK, a few nice race cars and classics downstairs. EV's everywhere. Needs more JDM... A few shots:

Anybody have an idea what the red tool on the right is in my original post? I wonder whether it's missing a part as I have no idea what to do with it...

Awesome, that makes sense, there's some old saws in the collection

So I recently acquired a pretty large lot of hand tools, mostly for woodworking, but some other things also. I've sorted through them and there are these three that I cannot work out what they are for: The left one has a graduated wheel with numbers on it in the gap near the top. Sort of like a hole punch without the punch bit. The middle one has 'teeth' on the bottom like a reamer of some sort. I assume the last one is a clamp or press, but don't know what for. Any ideas?

Update time for this guy also. A while after the bonnet incident above, I got down to fixing things. I had to remove all panels etc from the windscreen forward, and ended up with something like this on each side: I'm no panel beater, but I bashed it out as best as I could and used a bit of filler to smooth things out, first time I've done a decent panel repair like this and it took ages to get things looking nice. Here's how it came out - not perfect but not too bad: Threw on some paint from a colour matched spraycan, and polished the shit out of it until it looked half-decent. I have a replacement cowling in my stash so if I ever get the car repainted I'll probably replace this whole section with the fresh one anyway: Also had to straighten up the bonnet hinges, then put everything back together. Then I got a fresh one of these ready for summer cruising: And I also picked up a set of these factory alloys which I may or may not put on, they look pretty decent though, but need a tidy up:

So as usual, I haven't updated this for a while. There has been a little bit of progress. First job was to reinstall the front spring that was in the passenger footwell, so now all four corners are back at factory height, It's so high though: Also, seems like a bit of water has been getting in, and the carpet and rear seat base were pretty rotten and full of mould, so naturally I ripped them all out. Carpet was binned, and I tried to dry out the rear seats, but I think I will probably just replace them, as they are pretty far gone: Now I'm just cleaning out the interior, will get some replacement carpet & rear seats. here's how it looks stripped out - pretty much all of that rust is just on the surface, or staining from seatbelt mounts etc that were wet. In fact there doesn't seem to be much rust at all throughout the car, which is nice:

Man welcome to the club! I agree with Fuel Re: the radiator, the factory cooling in these is excellent - mine is the older version with a clutch fan instead of the electric fans, and the only time it looked like running hot was because my thermostat died, it's been stable around 1/3 up the gauge ever since I got it. That car is ridiculously tidy, the Widebody wheels are a nice score too. Must be time for an old school 80's meet this summer?

So yeah, I just brought this! Somehow it made it the 7kms to my house with no alternator/water pump belt, it got pretty warm, but I doubt it was hot enough to do any damage. I'll get a new belt and take it for a proper thrash on the weekend. What a wicked little car, no idea what I'm going to do with it yet, hopefully tidy up and then get it road legal again to start with. Will get more pictures up soon. Cheers to jesselc for the help, and moving all of his cars out the way to get it going for me. I'll do my best to take care of it!

So a word of warning, remember to close your bonnet when you leave the house! Otherwise this happens: Scary as shit when it flies up, had to steer off onto the shoulder of the motorway blind. Felt like a right muppet. I was working on it the night before and just left the bonnet resting closed without latching it on, then got up for work, backed out half asleep without noticing it wasn't properly latched. Surprisingly little damage, the bonnet is fine, and it couldn't get anywhere near the windscreen. The cowling is pretty fucked, you can see in the top photo where the bonnet struts have sheared through the metal. Bonnet has moved back a few cm, I can only just get it latched closed now. This weekend, I'll be pulling the front of the car apart again to see what I can do to fix it. Another couple of dents for the collection.

I should be heading up for this too, it was pretty cool last year.

This is cool, welcome to the weird mitsubishi owners club

This is great/terrible, I counted about 7 different shades of brown/beige. That digital dash is nice.

I drove the Starion for a few weeks once the WOF was done, then headed to Europe for 5 weeks on holiday, and now I'm back again. The new shocks completely transform the car (the original shocks were totally fucked). It's now sitting slightly higher in the back and slightly lower in the front (which looks pretty spot on). The front tyres seem to just be catching the guard lip at full lock so I'll take a look at that when I get a moment. Other wise it's running beautifully. Hopefully I'll be able to get to a couple of meets this summer.

Very keen for this, I've liked the page. I agree with Bwarp that it needs to be well organised, definitely something wellington needs though.

Finally some progress! The starion has a WOF & Rego. I'm picking it up from the garage tomorrow afternoon, and will be able to drive it legally for the first time in 2 years, it's so sad that it has taken me this long. In October last year, I took it in for a WOF inspection, hoping to get it fixed up in time for summer. The list of failed items is in my previous post. The garage replaced the worn steering bits, while I went on a bit of a shopping spree: New rear shocks from Mookeeh in the US Tokico front inserts from Amazon.com New rear brake disks, pads and wheel bearings from Ebay Sway bar bushings (SuperPro) I wasn't 100% sure that the struts would fit, but the rear ones matched up perfectly, slightly shorter to match my springs also: The front ones however caused all kinds of drama. I pulled out one of the old oil shocks, and test fitted a new insert. It fitted the strut, but the gland nut was the wrong size. The factory gland nuts were far too thick for the new inserts. I checked with autolign and they confirmed that the shocks were the right kind, but I tested with another pair of struts (thanks to oldschool member 'dave' from Whangarei), and finally saw the error - one of the Tokicos had the correct nut, and the other (which I had been test fitting with) was too small. After some trial and error autolign came through with a KYB gland nut that would fit the strut, it just needed a spacer to fit the top of the insert. So I got out my grinder & hand files and 'machined' a spacer from the not-fitting nut, which slotted in perfectly for a nice tight fit (here's a shot halfway through - once it was the right diameter I sliced off the plate at the top and ground down to fit, measuring as I went to keep it all flat and smooth): And then installed the inserts: By now I had moved house and given up on the original garage. I rebooked with another place nearer my current house for a new inspection. They said the rear bearings and brake discs didn't need replacing after all, so now I have a spare set of each for the future. All that was needed now was: New clutch master & slave cylinder New drivers side seatbelt Power steering hose remanufactured and reinstalled as it was leaking, and my spare one leaked even worse. Those are now all sorted, and we are ready to go, can't wait for tomorrow

Cheers for taking the time to explain that Im all for rules if there is sound science backing them up.

It seems ridiculous to me that you can't put a 225 wide tyre on a 15 x 9 Rim (considering the tread is almost 9 inches wide so the tyre barely even needs to stretch to fit the rim). But you can legally put it on a 15 x 6 rim, which means it has to tuck in by well more than an inch on each side. It's like they just made up some numbers and then no one can be bothered changing them.

shit so keen to get the starion up to this, was great last year even without a car. just waiting on some rear brake rotors to arrive from oz, then WOF time (again)

No sadly, just the low ones on the car...

Mine has some kind of aftermarket lowering springs, no idea where from. I can't off the top of my head think of any others that would fit, They are such weird bloody cars.../useless post Shout out if you need any other bits, I have quite a bit of Starion crap in my garage, was hoping to have mine on the road again by now but keep hitting roadblocks...

Apologies for dragging up an old thread, but does anyone know what these guys are like to deal with? eg. would they put up with me browsing around looking for bits and pieces? I'm thinking I could use a few bits off the Starion and some of the other old mitsis before they rot into the ground...