f100_dreamin

Sold this yesterday. Mixed emotions, was sad to see it go but the money will be re-invested into the bel air so that's a positive! Make sure I'm true to my word and follow the Bel Air here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/53626-bens-1961-belair/#entry1751074

Corvette rims look awesome!!

Good to see the fail list was fuck all! Nice work bro!

Thanks Azzurro I'll check them out. As much as I want supremes Al, missus wants 100 spokes and because it's technically her car it's also her say. Tom buy them for the 57 when you get it

So ordered the parts that I wasn't able to get from chucks, from rockauto they took two weeks to turn up which was agony haha, but in the end I was able to finish off the rear end And tonight made a start on the front end, kinda sucks knowing that I'll be putting standard height springs back in but want to keep things simple for compliance. Anyway got the L/H upper an lower control arms out, am gonna have to try match up some ball joint boots up as the ones on it are in shit condition so fingers crossed that I can find something to work. Also had to remove the steering shaft to get the upper arm out an in doing so found a crack in the rag joint, so that will need replacing too. Will get the other side apart an then sort out what to do next.

Awesome news dude! Well done!

I do want to run spats so that maybe a deciding factor, plus the guy who is selling them on trademe is doing the 14x6 with tyres for the same $$ as the 15x8 with out tyres

So have done a bit of work on this old girl. Have replaced all the rear suspension bushes, the rear shocks and am just working on the rear brakes replacing the wheel cylinders and fitting a brake shoe self adjusting kit, no pictures of that as its boring stuff. Don't worry though I do have some pictures. Shakotom kindly loaned me a couple of Hundy spokes so I could gauge what size I wanted as you can get them in real OG 13x7 which will be too small in my opinion. You can also get them in 14's but they are only 6" wide so I'm thinking they maybe too skinny. Or they do them in a 15x8, which is what these are. The 15's seem to be the logical choice, they still have that huge guard/small rim look, but I cam still run a reasonable width tyre, but I think the 14's may look better/more traditional, Oh and here's a rough paintshop job that I did to give me inspiration Chur

Well took this old pig out for a decent drive at the weekend, even dared to take the wife and kids. Mechanically it ran fantastically (which is great as the wife wouldn't have let me live it down if we have broken down) but we did have an electrical gremlin rear its head. Everytime you put your foot on the brake the fuel gauge would drop to empty, at the same time all four indicators would glow and if you were indicating and pressing the brake nothing would go. Had a look into it tonight, thought it may have been to do with the old trailer plug wiring causing an issue with a power/earth cross feed as if you disconnected the rear light harness the problem would go away, so removed the trailer plug wiring to eliminate it, but there was no change, next up I tested the taillight harness so see if there was an issue in that but again no issues could be found there. So I traced the loom from the boot forwards and found a large plug in the drivers A pillar, a wiggle of the plug and hey presto taillights now work correctly. So I've cleaned and re-tensioned all the terminals and made sure the plug is securely connected. All seems to be working well so hopefully this remedies the issue I've been having. I've also wired in a diagnostic plug I just need to check the pin outs to see which wire the 12v feed goes to then I should be able to use the tech1 from work and check why i have a check engine light on (suspect O2 or no speed signal from trans), and also so I can put the car into diag mode and can set the timing, guys at work think I should be able to set a base timing of around 12 degrees which should help increase the responsiveness

Most definitely!!

Haha no deal!

Your a tool Thomas haha, have you bought that 57 yet? The reason behind the v8 is that I want to make this thing auto (so it's less work to drive) don't get me wrong the 3 speed manual isn't exactly hard but it's just another thing to have to think about when driving, and with this being primarily the missuses car I want her to have as little to think about while driving a wide left hand drive car, Plus getting an 8 to sound good is super easy, and parts are so much more readily available/cheaper

Cheers everyone, Yeah like i said I thought the prices were good but I guess it all depends on the nzd/usd at the time Good to know I'm not hated for going down the standard lowrider path too haha

That's pretty much the picture that sold it to her haha

Cheers bro, Honestly as some one on the automotive trade and is used to getting trade pricing I found their prices fair and reasonable, the floor pans were 160+ ea, front urethane suspension bush kit 165+, rear urethane suspension bush kit 135+, wheel cylinders 25+ea, shocks were 110+ ea, brake hoses were 45/50+ea f/r (which is probably on the higher side) overall I thought they were fair prices considering they were their normal retail prices,

So here are the parts that have turned up from chucks, Both front floor pans: All four shocks: And front and rear suspension bush kits, brake hoses (still need to source one more front hose) brake wheel cylinders (again still need to reco/source a r/r cylinder) a drum brake self adjusting kit, I also have started converting the headlights to RHD and moving away from sealed beam to semi sealed halogens in the hope that I may actually be able to see at night So the overall plan for the car once complied is to bag it, probably on 100 spokes, spats, some Mexican blankets on the seats (even though they are in good condition already), some lace/flake on the roof, and lastly a V8/auto conversion just to make it a bit lazier to cruise. Like to discussion: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/53628-bens-61-belair-talky-talk/#entry1739480

Talk about how I'm going to ruin this car here.

So, seeing how my VL project was pretty much done (for now) the wife and I decided it was time to buy a nice big cruiser. Actually that's a lie, I found this on trade me, it tickled my fancy and I sent the link to the missus, now she has wanted a 63/64 Impala lowrider for pretty much as long as I've known her so I figured I was pushing the proverbial uphill, so to help my case I followed the link with a selection of 61's in lowrider style. And what do you know she was keen So with the car being in Wellington and myself being in Auckland I asked a couple of awesome OSers if one of them would be able to look at the car for me. Turns out Seedy Al was just down the road from the car an he kindly agreed to look at it for me. Gave me a good run down of the car. Money was transferred and the car was transported to Auckland!! Here's some pics: So it's a 1961 Belair, 235 cube blue flame 6 cylinder, 3 speed manual column shift, it had an average respray in the states, and has just had the roof painted by the previous owner, It needs both front floor pans replacing, all suspension bushes replaced, get the wipers working, replace all the suspension bushes, replace all four shocks, get the brakes up to spec, replace the headlights (which I've started today with a semi sealed upgrade) Have ordered most of the parts from chucks restoration, and they should be here tomorrow so will update thread then. More pics for Fred, And the best thing it is...... It fits in my garage, Discussion Thread

Sweet cheers man, Shakotom has a similar thing on his VK and was recommending them too.

Replaced the coil, turns out my ignition module is dead too which is a bugger. So I'll send that off to be repaired this week. I bought a radiator fan and shroud from Fenix and installed that, very happy with how it looks. Here it is mocked up in the engine bay have wired it up to run straight off the ignition while I decide how I'm going to run a controller for it. I need to decide between getting a boss welded into the radiator tank so I can run a thermo fan switch, or whether to get and adjustable external fan controller Here's a video to prove it works (yeah ok I'm sure you have all seen a fan going) So the car is now finally in a position to be used for some cruising Still have a few jobs I need to do but only to improve the car/prepare it for cert -heater hoses -thermofan control -driveshaft loops -make it a bit more vocal (just a more open rear muffler) -would like to put a set of gillys on it too.

So no major updates to announce, still need to sort a cooling fan. Have been driving it on small drives here an there. Much enjoyment has been obtained! First off to tidy up the interior, when I got my manual surround the rubber boot was split. Instead of spending $60 for a factory type boot I spent $18 at Supercheap andb bought a universal leather boot. Modified it to fit and ended up with this In the car In an effort to make the car more enjoyable I decided to get the electric windows sorted since buying the car I've only had two windows working, however there was no way I was paying $350 for a remanufactured VL switch. So I found the wiring diagram for a VY switch, managed to get a plug and loom from one of our suppliers for free and made an adapter loom scored a free window switch from the workshop foreman, and hey presto all four Windows work! As it happened I had a spare centre console that was from a manual window car so I cut a hole fitted the switch, I ended up having to space the centre console up to give a bit of extra clearance for the switch, here's it in the centre console: And in the car: As you can see having the centre console spaced up also allows the gear boot to sit nicer too One of the other things that hadn't worked since I bought the car was the boot release button in the glovebox, did some digging around in the boot and hey what do you know, found a loose wire tangled in with the trailer plug wiring. Plugged it in, pressed the button an hey presto again it also works!! Tidied the wiring up and routed it back in the factory position, Only little wins, but wins none the less. Central locking is the next task but I may end up putting an aftermarket system in as the factory one isn't the greatest It has however broken down on my recently, have had an issue with the King lead from the coil to the dizzy coming off the coil. Unfortunately this has caused the coil to die. So need to replace that and get a cooling fan sorted so I can drive it more haha

Ha I hadn't even thought of that This is from my misuses phone via snapchat so the quality is fairly average, This is from my iPhone leant against the dash, again poor quality.

This is true, another thing to factor in I suppose

Be quiet thomas haha, All research points to 225/30/20 being the go, (not sure about the 235 though) having a higher spring perch would mean having to change springs too, perfect world i would just chuck coilovers in, but im not, am still waiting to see what the boss wants for the wheels anyway, he may want more than im actually willing to spend and if that the case, ill stick with the 18s haha, oh and for some reason i cant get the video to upload to photobucket, so will try another video which is fromt he missuses snapchat and is basically 1990s spec quality,

Ok so have been finishing up a few of the little jobs while I waiting to get the last big pieces. Bought a flywheel cover off J.E.D (via trademe) probably paid too much but they don't seem to come up that often. Had to make a small modification to make it fit but it's on now, As I mentioned earlier I got the p/s pump fitted, here's proof Modified the shifter, it's pretty ugly but it works, got all the trim back on looks good and the shifter pretty much came out in the factory position. As mentioned the exhaust is a bit quiet. Chucked a 20" rim on to see how it looked, I like it but the tyre is way too big/it's hard against the spring perch on the strut Took the car outside and gave it a wash as it hadn't been washed since January, And lastly I let my impatience get the better of me, as of late it's been misfiring and coughing a bit, likely from the plugs fouling because of all the short running times the engine has operated in due to the lack of cooling system (just running up in the garage for testing a few things etc) I looped the heater hoses, put the radiator hoses on, filled an bled the cooling system and took the car for a hoon around my local area. Cough cough "To erm clean the plugs" Such a blast to be able to drive it after all the work I've put in so far. Makes a great noise, louder than expected, pulls cleanly, backfires a bit of you get get on an off the gas while cruising, It did however breakdown within about 200m of home, luckily it just turned out to be the coil to dizzy HT lead had fallen off the coil, slapped it back on and back in business Will post a video shortly when photobucket stops sucking dick