azzurro

lol - i reckon id get shot! I already have a shed and a 1/2 full of rusty crap.

only thing i 'need' are those lamp protectors

will probably throw a bid in if it doesnt get silly tho

also looks like the rusty white car on the right is a 125 as well - parts car for the parts car?

cheers snapper

test will be if i can make it go i suppose, but i havnt spotted any reason why it shouldnt. Ill try it when ive swapped the single downdraft carb and stock manifold off the engine in the car now, which i know works/runs which should mean one less thing to adjust when i try to fire it up on the ground in the driveway

Which reminds me that I would have had the sideys installed by now, except i still hant got a lovin manifold gasket. Just never put in the package the first time and still not sent nearly 2 months later

stuff would have been here already 4x over with much better communication etc if id ordered them off the internet from overseas.

stupid local specialists and their extensive knowledge, experience, inventory, and bricks and mortar...

sweet meet

highlights:

the light up grill-nipple on indy's blue wolseley flavoured milkshake bringing all the girls to the yard

gold mk2 go-tina - i'm liking that shape more and more

and snoozins datsun luxo-barge

oh and dat alfa - nomnomnom

was it a members?

weathers looking like it will be ok, and i like burgers so

ill be there

dont you know baby yeah

been waiting for some new parts, especially some intake manifold gaskets so i can fit my twin sideys to the engine in the car, for aaages and they still havnt shown up

I was hoping to have had a few test drives done with them fitted by now. Maybe next weekend.

So instead ive been pottering about putting the spare engine back together.

I painted the block - i wanted battleship grey but they didnt have any, black i decided would be too dark to spot any oil leaks so third choice bright blue it is:

Colour I realised afterwards might be a bit OTT in my engine bay but meh, it makes all the nice clean parts pop:

Also picked up a couple of rusty old starter mtors and my spare gearbox/bellhousing from the lockup to bolt to the back of the spare engine to see if it will fire up one of these days - gearbag was from this car:

which had been stting in the mud at the base of this farmers bank for 15+ years when i got it, so i wasnt expecting much, other than a useful mount for the starter, but it cleaned up pretty nicely after the mud and grease were scrubbed off + a bit o' paint.

Gears etc look ok too and rotate smoothly with no rust or steel flakes or whatever in there, so i suppose thats a full spare drivetrain

also have my eye on these hayashi street copies (themselves a 'homage' to a DeTomaso wheel so i reckon they are Italian styled):

hhhmmm, given condition id have to repaint them - maybe in all over white, or plain blasted silver, i think the usual polished faces and gloss black could be a bit too JDM-yo for this car?

Hurry up already manifold gaskets!

Nothing wrong with that colour

The Cream interior goes so nice with it

Rims look choice too but spend your $ on getting it proper sorted first and get bling later.

Sux to have a project stalled due to lack of funds for parts that noone likes to see but the wof man

stink aw

rear is ok tho? i think the nose is maybe a little low anyways so do that and roll wof -

re front arms, is the low point where they bolt to the x-member? 30mm here is pretty much = to 30mm @ wheelarch so it will be sweet i reckon.

if you really wana stay low i reckon you should move the wounting points and take the opportunity to fix the handling/known weak spots/rust. your gonna cert it anyway?

these are designed to tralalaa over snow and on russian roads with 4 sheep in the back and nonna on the roofies, so all the angles are whack when lowered. have a look for how the lada drift cars are set up maybe, you can even buy full setup kits if you can speak eastern european and want to send your credit card deets to russia! lol

I reckon id rather spend the $900 on shiney new things that bolt straight on than paying someone to test repurposed OEM parts on top of a cert cost.

ha,

i will get a little breather filter i think, so only filtered fumes & oil vent to atmos/drips on the ground

took the mrs out for tea in the car to hallertau in the rain last night - so under a bit of pressure, but it went sweet, heater fan on high + lights + wipers on full + stereo, and no electrical worries/smell/fires at all. Stoked Miss also seems much less now, but still there.

Still something funny in the diff/gearbox/driveshaft tho and im going to get a wheel alignment and a couple of tyres swapped off the steelies. The old mismatched and misalighned tyres are a bit too hard and slippery in the wet to have on the front. Will now keep the oldies on on the back tho - woopsie!

I knocked off work early on friday so went to see murray at weber specialties as thinking i could get rod, tabs and ball ends to make my linkage, or to see if there was an aftermarket plate that could be ordered - nope - he didnt have any rod, and i forget to grab some screw on ball joints but he did give me some laser cut steel tabs to use for the arms, and some advice too. Nice one

I also picked up some allthread and some nuts on the way home. Cost me less than $10 in parts all up which is better than a $85 for a generic kit off the internet!

So got to put my plan into action today when i could finally bust out the grinder and welder. It worked ot quite well in the end, so hopefully some one will find this useful in making a much much simpler mounting for the twin Dellorto DHLA sidedrafts as fitted to many later model Alfa Romeos to almost any other engine with rod linkages. It should also work in a similar way with a cable throttle as well. Basically you want to change the throttle action to pull straight up rather then try to push down and under like the Alfa.

Standard Dellorto main throttle linkage plate (note carb is upside down so thottle plate is the same orientation in the next shot - thottle opening rotation on the ball is anti clockwise, or down towards the sump). All sorts of stuff gets in the way and the gap betwen the carbs is less than the gap between the manifold tubes:

Linkage arm from some crusty old carb ready to weld on - after a lot of checking I put the arm directly opposite the std location and at the same distance from rotational centre so the rotation required is the same, just pulled from above - note the kink in it so the adjustable linkage arm socket clip doesnt rub on the manifold and pop itself off.

And from above showing the slight bend in the adjustable linkage arm to clear the slave carbs balance screw (but no where near as drastic as the full 'L' required before). I also flipped the rod mount boss and i ended up taking the kink in the top tab out after this shot as the reversed mounting boss put it in the perfect spot to centre with the kinked lower arm.

Looking towards the front of the car/engine - The difference in lenth of the arms means the small movement (25-30mm vertically) of the factory accellerator rod linkage end (in this diagram represented by my hand...) is magnified by the long arm at the carb which requires 40-50mm of lift to rotate the butterflys the 85-90deg required. The carbs will hit the WOT stopper just before I run out of pedal travel

The arms are tacked to a nut, and after finally figuring out that the correct position of the lock nut varies depending on the force applied (it took a while ) its all done and these are ready to bolt right on to the factory engine/linkages in the car and look pretty factoryish as well

Just need an intake manifold gasket and some 5/16" fuel hose, Oh and some air filters. And maybe some 6mm ID pipe of some sort to hide the allthread So carbs should be spitting at me next weekend or so

That done, I pulled a few bits off the spare block to tidy up and check out as well as hose out the water galleries etc - its all looking pretty choice and most are bits clean and newish, with a bit of a wire whell/sandblast they will look new again can go back on with new gaskets where required. Had a bit of a look at the pistons, i think they are just flat tops, and with the conditon of everything i think its best to leave the head on for now as its not going to be a race engine, just a nice clean spare.

vroom vroom!

Also, what should I do with the crankcase breather valve outlet now?

Had a play with the carb linkage:

You can see how its got to push back underneath.

It works in concept so I reckon I can make it work for real, with some generic linkage parts to allow adjustment in the lengths of a few bits, and with a bit less tape and hose clamps obviously.

But it seems to me that the big 'L' shape required in the intermediate linkage (even in the manufactured aftermarket ones) makes the forces a bit off, and is in there even in the linkages you buy, as a work around for the dumb position of the ball and esp the interference of the bulky balance screw on the carbs.

it would be much tidier i think to reverse the movement and pull "up", by welding or purchasing a ball on the carb throttle plate on the manifold side?

Like this:

125 spindles may or may not be 19mm lower than 124/lada ones. I swapped my last spare set to testament/tom and he reckoed it was a myth and didnt drop his 124 at all - they are stronger tho.

that bump mount will come off with a spotweld drill, just move it up/cut and shut a bit no one will know after the first mud you drive though. isnt it inside the spring or something crazy?

thats looking really tidy.

I bought some tyres for my daily off Michael J Fox (they are sweet, cheers!) , borrowed an engine crane off Sambo (thanks man!), and bought a dash from TradeMe this week - and they all lived in Beach Haven! WTF

Dash looks a bit rough in the sellers photo but that white stuff was old polish or something, and the brown stuff was dry mud

- it shined up nice with a spray of interior cleaner stuff and a rag and only has one crack instead of heaps of them

That will go in when i eventally get new carpet/new speakers in the kick panels as its a total PITA removing the dash.

Anyway, having Sambo's hoist meant i could change these out, which went well enough:

The old one doesnt look that crooked in the photo for some reason but they were, and the engine now sits at least 10mm higher.

Fired it up after wards and the IGN light wouldnt go out - ohohh. Unfortunately hoisint the engine must have pulled a wire

and the terminal on the + alternator had pulled itself, along with its carbon brush right out of the body of the alternator That also meant parking up in the garage and removing the alternator and carb etc instead of test my nice new mounts with a drive.

The damage wasnt 'terminal' however (ha!) and I reassembled the brush spade terminal with a blob of Ados

to help hold it in the housing against the enourmous force of the little brush spring, and put some new spade terminals

on the wires, and retaped a bunch of the loom in the engine bay back up as well as some inside and its all

better and tidier now. I also had to readjust the carburettor linkage as it was now binding and vibrating

though to the pedal at idle, so thats now better than it was too.

No photos tho cause it all looks much the same as it did before

Having the hoist also allowed me to lift my spare engine onto a stand to finally have a proper look at it.

Drained the black but not gritty or metallic or milky oil, took a few ancilliaries off, gave it a bit of a

degrease and then flipped it and popped the sump off to find...

Excellent! - nice clean oil strainer, standard unmodified crank and big end (oh well),

and oooohhh whats that shiny thing?

Why its nice new pistons and pins Hopefully they are high comp ones to go with the cams

- can anyone tell from underneath?

That also means that someone has been in here before me and has had the bottom end off (to put new pistons in)

- Is it best if I leave the main bearings done up and just assume they were replaced at the same time or can i

pop them off? Will i need new bolts and a tourque wrench and all that stuff if i just take one off?

At the top on the inlet side, everything seems nice and clean and has been smoothed/ported a wee bit and i think the valve stems could be new as well:

I dont really want to touch the head gasket at all but I am curious about the pistons, so i might have to have

to settle for a poke though a spark plug hole with a small screwdriver to try to feel if they are domed or flat.

Pretty stoked anyway It also has a new fuel pump and a few other bits as well, as well as newish gaskets on

most things.

Looks to me like it has been rebuilt with the pistons and cams and run but maybe only for a short time and then

left in the shed for ages (as per the sellers story), so i think ill put this one back together as a spare/upgrade

engine.

Meanwhile it can be a dummy block

I put the sideys on to check clearances etc and make it easier to work out a linkage.

I think Im going to try to construct something much as per the factory rod linkage arrangement to keep it tidy

and clean. At least as a first go!

This is an unmodified manifold with a scallop for the dizzy, and a standard s124B dizzy fitted

- its pretty tight!:

And the modified manifold that came with the carbs - its rubbing:

The s155 dizzy i have is only a couple of mm less in diameter but i will need all of that

+ some more to run the 'straight shot' manifold.

There is a wee bit of meat able to come off the wall of the mainfold if absolutely required

as a last resort but i definitly dont want the spark bridging out on the intake manifold!

Looks really good tho!

just installed one in mine, was easy peasy.

if it is 100% mechanical you can check it works by putting the sender it in hot water. It takes a while for the tip to warm up and eventually register on the guage.

Could just be a dud if it never worked, or maybe needs a bit of 12V to work?

Photo of the back?

Haha,

some GC should set up a sweet man-shed with heaps of tools and helpful friendly people where you can take your car and do shit to it/get help/extra hands/borrow tools and hang out/drink beers/make cool shit at the same time.

Like a mechanics but less pay by the hour, and more members/invite only (so cool stuff/tools parts dont get nicked), but not gangpad or Area 52 either.

One day, Oh yes one day....

Sambo, you has PM

My green alloy holder thing turned out to leak like a sieve - right out of the hole i drilled/filed which i was hoping it wouldnt but kinda expecting it would- the brass adaptor thing had a wierd taper fit (found in a gasfitters bin?) and my drilling and filing was not very precision and i had nearly stripped the threads on the brass expexting it to cut into the ally. Feck - what to do? Ive still got a great big hole in the top radiator hose that i cut on purpose and now cant fill, and ive wrecked both the sender fitting and a $20 generic internet part.

The answer is of course welder! Take one old skinny peashooter exhaust pipe. After some basic maths* figured out to make a 38mm OD pipe to 36mm OD (so the rad pipes fit) gotta remove about 6 or 7 mm of circumference:

Also turns out the temp sender has the same thread as FIAT radius arm nuts, which i have a couple in my 'big bolts and washers' bin so the sender can still be fitted - i think this might end up being a permanent solution

Had to 'machine' the stupid tapered adaptor down on my 'lathe' (lol) to fit inside the new nut, instead of 'be' the nut:

needed the bevelled seat to seal up the sender, and i was pretty stoked with the nice relief on the bottom to fit the pipe radius given it was my first wizz and by flap disc :

Whaddup! - my grandad was right, never throw anything away - it might come handy one day. Today was that day

Also fixed my oil feed line, and now all the guages are go

* by basic, i mean its so simple but buggered if could remember how to work it out, lucky google remembered tho: (Circumference = D*pi, so (36-38)*pi = -6.28mm section to remove).

got some packages of electrical stuff to relay the ignition switch during the week - got it all from capitalinstruments.co.nz - reccomended!

Started off tidy

and ended up with this

which goes in here,

meaning the guages are staying where they are. Id did all this to take the load off the flaky ignition switch contacts, through which the full current for the starter solenoid, all the lights and coil all run, unfused. WTF!

So now the wires that went to the back of the ign switch to supply various things from the 'brown wire' still do, they just plug into the out pin on the relays, which are idividually fused by and powered from the distribution box, supplied by a big fat new red wire (replacing the brown wire), and so now only a small trigger current to fire the relays goes though the ign switch via new colour coded wires.

Blew a few fuses and renewed a few OEM spade terminals (radiator fan was a bit dicky but new terminals on the thermo sitch is all better) but now all the wiring is better then factory, all power is fused and relayed and as ive left most of the original wring in place can easly be returned to original or removed into another car. I still need a new ign switch tho

This set up also makes it really easy to relocate the battery into the boot which ill do eventually/when i pull the engine out to tidy the bay/put my other engine in.

I also got a package of distributor bits, but unfortunately only the points fitted and they couldnt supply a dizzy cap . Nevertheless running seems to be better and I cant blame it on electrics - eg coil now has a solid 13-14V supply instead of a wobbly 12-0V and everything seems to be brighter and faster.

I need to borrow a hoist/crane to:

1. lift my spare engine off the floor onto the engine stand ive got to inspect and rebuild it; and

2: lift the engine currently in the car up a bit to change the knackered engine mounts.

Will hire one when i eventually swap the engines over; but hefting these things about is beyond the power/reach of my small collection of dodgy scissor jacks and precariously balanced blocks of wood, and should only take a couple hours or so.

So, anyone got one I could borrow/hire for an afternoon or so? Happy to provide liquid compensation.

Could be interest in a purchase if the price is right too.

GTFO!

there were heaps of rad cars there

viewtopic.php?p=880758#p880758

those idle jets work ok/betterer?

I have a steep driveway and because i angled the exhaust down when i fitted the towbar it scraped pretty bad and has now been bent back up and rattles like a bitch on the tow bar esp at idle, so I decided on cutting a relief as i couldnt really move any other bits and my spare/other towbar is much weaker looking and was possibly home made back in the day.

remove the two bar and have a nice clean rear end, no towbar, no overriders no nuthin

chop (yep its haggard but i couldnt get the grinder in there to cut, had to slice it and then bend the tabs off with pliers)

buzz

grind

slop

super fugly rear end with towbar, tennis ball and overriders with bonus plastic bits.

yay! no rattles, car sounds much much tighter now. I guess its probably a no-no modifying a tow bar but as i wont actually be towing anything, and i reused the steel and welded the shit out of it im sure it'll be ok. I also took the roofrack off as it whines and drags in the wind, but its good to have for just in case/missions etc.

also finally drilled a big hole in my cheap t-me water temp guage fitting to fit the adaptor for the guage sender

guage even works (left)

just need an olive joiner thing for where i cut the oil feed line to the oil pressure guage (the middle one) with the grinder aages ago and all three would work (volts on right). Pondering putting them up where the stereo blanking plate is in line with the clock etc like a 124 coupe.

Also need to relay the ignition switch esp the starter and main power feed next i think - driving in the dark to BF meet was ok, but having everything dim in time with the rattling of the keys in the switch really is not so good - dodgy voltage to everything is probalby also partly to blame for the annoying miss which I also have reduced a bit by putting in a bit more advance and cleaning up the dizzy again.

anyone tried these guys for 12V electrical bits and pieces?

http://www.capitalinstruments.co.nz/afa ... ducts.html

yes sparkle i believe you did

proof - some blue has also infected SPandLEs mini

edit: ul9601 - yours will look like that again - get cracking!

cheers sam good to meet you to. door card is installed already

sweet whip man! stop playing with your skyline and get on to this already and install the bumper and boot you got!

also, more build threads please.

azzurro, mrs, mini and dog had a great time. mrs A even said she would go again (if i buy dinner again)

good to finally get there and meet some more of you all for reals!

have been playing with my van a bit lately, rust fixing and other general tidy ups and it will also need a new clutch slave soon

may start a thread on that one

the mrs daily needed a new water pump as well (lucky she spotted coolant!) and that has sucked the car fund down.

So only little jobs. My camera is also dying so fuzzy grainy phone shots it is.

Tried the overriders on - they were the fist thing i removed when i got the car, as i hate the plastic protector bit on them, shame theres so many holes in the crome im gonna have to put the plazzy bit back on. I might just run them on the rear to hide the tow bar a bit, or may even try my other less beefy tow bar .

finally got onto changing the jets AGAIN!

went as close as i could to the 1600 GLS settings, which are much leaner than the others, incl smaller main jets different emulsion tubes and larger airs and it seems to be running much smoother, no hesitation on throttle (in the driveway) but biggest difference was after doing that, changing the slow running jet from a 50 to a 45 as a last resort.

I also got new sparkplugs and leads on too,but have yet to obtain other dizzy parts to tick all these things off the list as well, but the recently cleaned plugs were very black and sooty, so hopefully got the jetting right and thatll do it untill i get a linkage sorted out for the twins.

I also got an gine stand - in prep for this ive dug my spare engine out of deep storage (ie took all the crap off it), to fit it on and check it over and dummy up the linkage on. Just need a crane to lift it up onto the stand and ill change the 40yo engine mounts on the engine in the car as well while ive got the crane.

Also got a package of shiney wheel centre caps from Aussie

not really a fan of them on the meshies,

but they also fit in my slots, so thats where theyll live.

Its amazing how fast the shine has come off these rims from just sitting in the shed!