Firebrand

I wonder if the environmental impacts of battery manufacture are being downplayed. I'm sure Petrol/diesel vehicles have greater emissions over their lifetime, but I doubt it would be fun to be the poor sod in some third world country with a Lithium processing plant over the back fence. I'm guessing there's only so much Lithium to go around also. But of course battery tech will change and advance over the years also. 

Yeah a rebuild is definitely an option, I guess I'll check both engines once the other one arrives and see what my options are...

3 hours ago, Dell'orto said:

Ahhhh you grabbed it! I was going to go check it out last weekend too, but the rust situation put me off.

Gonna revin it under the correct plates?

Yeah, I'm planning to revin it as an '87, it's gonna take a while to get to that point though.

The rust isn't too bad, the stuff in the firewall is a bit gnarly, but otherwise it's good, the body is way straighter than my other one.

Bottom end of the engine is stuffed too, although I've got a spare engine arriving at some stage, but that's in pieces and i have no idea what state it's in...gonna be fun  

My Starion (import) just has chassis number and Engine family (G63B):

Haha, I had to hunt back through nearly nine years of photos to find that pic, it's from not long after I brought it. Check out that overspray...

I've been having some issues with overheating under load for a little while now, to the point that I couldn't really drive up any hills or drive under boost. A bit of amateur diagnosis pointed to the issue being a blocked/dead radiator. I'm not surprised, as my current one was put in from a parts car I had six years ago, and it wasn't really in great condition back then. On top of that my fan clutch is totally stuffed.

So the only options I had were a second hand radiator off trademe  (which was likely to be just as shit as the current one), importing a new radiator and fan clutch from rockauto with no guarantee of quality, or for a similar price, getting a new aluminium radiator & electric fan. So the last option is what I did. 

It also allowed me to removed the rather sorry clutch fan, saving a bit of drag on the engine, and freeing up some space:

I installed the new radiator (it is designed for Nissan S13 Silvia with SR20) , with a little assistance from @ProZac's build thread:

It needed a custom bottom bracket which I made from a piece of 90 degree aluminium bar, it's functional  and solid, but it looks like crap (I'm terrible at metalwork) so I'll probably redo it sometime. I still need to make some proper top brackets, the current one is just temporary.

The top radiator hose is from an 89-90 Pajero v6, which fits pretty well. For the bottom hose, I used a bend cut off a P11 primera hose that had lying around, which is attached to the (shortened) factory hose with a length of 35mm OD aluminium tube. I flared the ends a bit to stop the hoses coming off:

The fan is controlled by a Flex-a-lite fan controller via a relay, but the radiator actually has a bung for a screw-in temp switch (the seller said it didn't), so I'll probably swap it out at some stage as it has an ugly probe which fits in the radiator fins, so it looks pretty messy.

I got it all together and took it for a bit of a test drive tonight, all is working well so far, temperature was stable when driving or idling, and I also took it right to the top of the hill I live on, which is a pretty decent climb and no dramas at all. The fan switches on nicely and pulls quite a lot of air through. So now I just need to do those top brackets and tidy the wiring up a bit  

Ullrich came through as they are open Saturday morning,  I ran out of time on Friday and couldn't get down to Mico. 

Ended up buying 2.5 metres of tube as it was way cheaper than I though it would be, so I've got some spare for future projects  

Will update my project thread soon

OK that's awesome!

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:

I've got a bit of an (incomplete) registry of NZ Starions on my computer, I have this one listed as NZ New:

https://carjam.co.nz/car/?plate=NR7094

Was on trademe a few years back so could be still around. The carjam report is only current to 2014 and it was alive then.

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...

I've had the Torin low profile one above for a couple of years now, seems fine. The release is pretty quick on mine, but I've got the knack of twisting it nice and gently and it seems to be fine now, maybe I just got used to it. 

Mine was from george henry, looks like they have a slightly newer version now.

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:

Here's a better O if you need it, sorry it's a bit dark down in my garage at this time of night.

One of my workmates saw that widebody Starion the other day and sent me a photo, he said it was absolutely mint.

Oh, so that's what it is, I saw that same Le-Seyde on Queen Street when I was up in Auckland last weekend. I can confirm it's just as fucking hideous in real life, 

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?