Adoom

So I've been fighting for clearance for the steering off the rear stud for the exhaust manifold. I first tried replacing the stud with a bolt so it was lower profile. I still had negative clearance. The universal joint has a bolt that goes right through with a nylock nut which sticks out a fair bit. I looked at my starlet, and there is no nut, one side of the hole is threaded so you just use a bolt. I decided to replicate this method. I drilled and tapped it to the next size up UNF thread(I didn't want to mix and metric and imperial in the same assembly). But now the U-groove in the end of the steering column was slightly too small for the bolt to slide through. So stripped down the column and put it in the lathe. Fuck all needed to come off, it's now just the right size to thread the bolt in by hand. I painted it and regreased the bearings too. That got me down to zero clearance... you can turn the wheel, but the corners of the bolt heads just clip. Time to get drastic...er. Move the lower mount of the steering column over. To avoid making a mess of the panel behind, I used the flap disk until it was wafer thin then peeled it off. This intact lower mount is from the rusty car. I also kept part of the panel from the other car to use as a cutting template, and later I'll make a filler piece from it. It only needed to move a little bit, less than 10mm. Using a set of drill bits to measure the gap, the closest it gets is 9.5mm. The intermediate shaft now touches the chassis rail. When the engine is out again I'll make some room there.

Sorted out the filter mounting. I later realised that the hoses were the wrong way around(when I sprayed myself with oil removing the filter to check if it was circulating). I'm going to mark it with bright paint so I don't make the same mistake again. I had initially intended to point the fittings at each other, so the hoses could be really short, but that didn't work out. When I weld the front panels back on the car, the filter is shielded by those.

@johnny.race Something to catch out new players on a tig. The ground lead goes to the POSITIVE connection, not negative! Don't have the gas flow too high, the guide that came with mine suggested 8 Litres/minute. I went through gas RIDICULOUSLY FAST. I turned mine down to 4 and it still welds fine.

These https://www.bunnings.co.nz/kincrome-400a-3m-jumper-leads_p0292103 I dunno if I got the 400 or 800Amp

Not bolted on clamps... But I got some kincrome ones from Bunnings. Surprisingly inexpensive. Even has an inline voltage thingo. The clamps are much sturdier than the flimsy SuperShit ones that are really easy to bend, they are plastic coated steel with 2-2.5mm thick copper teeth. The wire core is also a decent size. The cheap ones tend to make their wire look more heavy duty by making the insulation thicker but the core is still small.

Positive terminal on the starter motor touching the block...or maybe got a spanner or something on it?

I got some nice leather seats from an Alfa 156 for my triumph. But they have airbags. What do I need to do? EDIT: I've since worked out how the upholstery is removed and managed to wangjangle the airbag unit out of one of them. Guess I just need to snip off the "Airbag" tag thingy?

I would have made an attempt to bash the original valance into shape with a cheap set of hammers and dollies. Or even cut out the REALLY mangled bits and make little patch panels. Remaking the valance from scratch with all those curves in it is some advanced level shit. This guy who talks funny has good videos on making up patch panels. You should watch every single one of his videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6JPmJ_aicru8XPWr3EvJnw

I had some areas of bare metal where I had made repairs or modifications. They kept getting minor surface rust, so I thought I should really get around to painting them with epoxy. The prep around the firewall was awful. All the seam sealer was bituminous tar stuff. So there was many hours of heat gun and scraping and rags soaked in kerosene and manual wire brushes to remove it. Then I needed to remove the paint because there were areas with surface rust and others where rust was creeping under the paint. So that was more many hours of knotted wire brush on the grinder. And the 3M abrasive pad thing on the grinder. And chemical paint stripper on the larger flattish areas and more scraping. Then there are lots of narrow spaces and gaps and corners I can't get into with the grinder. I found some reasonably priced little wire brushes at mytools.co.nz that were rated to use in a die grinder at 20000rpm without exploding. I also used small abrasive pads in the die grinder. Then I dusted it off with the air gun and wiped it all down with a cloth soaked in prepsol. And dried it off with the heat gun. And brush painted it with protec 408 epoxy primer. The engine bay has had two coats, the repair in the boot has only had one. I have some modern seam sealer to use. Hopefully it hasn't all gone hard... I think I might have bought it a couple of years ago.

No thinner because I was intending to brush this bit. I also don't have a gun that I trust not to be total shit. I would hope it's not lost its mojo, I only just bought it from panelstore.co.nz about 3 months ago.

It eventually did go hard after about 4 days. Even the leftover in the pot has turned into a solid block. It hasn't been particularly cold. I don't think it dropped below 9 in the shed over night. It's 25 in there now. I didn't wait after mixing. I'll try that next time. It still needs at least one more coat.

Got some Epotec 408 primer. Mixed it real good with a wooden stirring wand because it had separated. Didn't stir the hardener. Used the cup and mixed it 4:1 like the sheet said. Stirred it good in the mixing cup. Brushed it on. Just one coat, not real thick. Definitely needs another coat for full coverage. It still doesn't feel hard dry. I made too much so there was about 15mm left in the cup and that has gone real thick and goopy. Sheet says 16 hours to hard dry. But it's been at least 48. Did I do it wrong?

I bought a ToolShed linisher/belt grinder/sander thingo a while back. It had mediocre performance and it was easy to stall the belt. It came with a 1HP 1400rpm motor. Boooo! There! I've fixed it! YAAAAAY! Three times the power and double the speed should do it. The belt guard is off here. It's a bit shit and rattles and vibrates. It's almost as if they forgot to add fasteners to that lower bracket. I'm gonna sort that out. Should be able to flatten my exhaust manifold flange now.

It will be WAY easier to get at from the back.

I'm having difficulty imagining this thing you describe.

I'd aggressively scrape at it with a screwdriver you don't like much or some other sharp pointy thing so you can see how bad it is. If it's just light surface rust you could clean it up real good and paint over it. Epoxy if you have it, but something like hammerite is probably good enough. If there is any pitting, and definitely if there are pin holes, I'd want to cut that out and weld a patch in. But I've had a bunch of practice welding panel steel.....

Trying to fix rust in that area is a pain in the arse. Take out the dash or just the glove box and access it from the back. Mine looks a bit different because it has the heater inlet holes blocked off because racecar and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Leak test identified that the rear v-band on the drivers side was not sealing. I tried cutting and realigning with no luck. I changed the design to use only one v-band. Hopefully it's all good now.

Done. I suppose I should do some kind of leak test since there are eleventy billion welds on this thing. I also learnt that if you use the cordless drill on the nut for the v-band clamps, and there is no lube, and they are stainless, the thread eventually galls and welds itself on. Fortunately, my original design was going to use more clamps, so I had a spare. But still, they aren't cheap. I put a drop of oil on the threads now.

Sprayed myself with sharp metal filings whittling the hole out with the die grinder. I also welded it on the back side of the head flange. But it was shit and bubbly... probably should have cleaned it. I'll have to grind it out and do it again.

Managed to fit it all in. I had to put the v-band flanges in the lathe to make it shorter. Need to scribe around it, then cut those spot welds and whittle out a hole

A some more. This shit takes fucking ages. It took me literally four hours of going from engine to bandsaw to sander to wire wheel to grinder to welder to sand blaster to wire wheel to engine to bandsaw to sander to welder over and over and over just to make this small bit.

Did a bit more.

If the Atom has enough spare inputs/outputs, you can us that to control the water injection and you don't need a separate controller. Since the Atom already knows the inlet temp and the boost pressure from the map sensor, you probably just need one Digital Out to turn the water injection sprayer on.

Yep, it needed a kink put in it. Even like this it just misses the corner of the chassis rail by 5mm. Not sure if I will need to relieve the chassis rail by taking the corner off it. I'll see if I can get the engine to rock enough to hit next time it's in. Hopefully it doesn't, the urethane engine mounts are pretty stiff. I've still got to fill in the blanks on this side.