zep Posted July 19, 2020 Author Share Posted July 19, 2020 I guess I spoke (typed?) too soon, and all is not well. It was always the plan to repaint over parts of the chrome on the surrounds. I was concerned about using traditional primer and paint as I knew it would be risky to key up the vacuum metalising, so I decided to use plastidip. I masked it all up nicely and it went on quite well. Unfortunately, when I went to pull the masking off it started to pull the plastidip off too. I then decided to just remove all the plastidip, and guess what came with it? Parts of the metalising. So cool. I'm not super sure on the next step. The guy who removed the chrome did say that he could try and actually chrome them for me, but the results are often mixed as getting it to stick to old plastic can be hard. I might try that anyway. Pretty annoyed though. The other option is to just paint them black. 1 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted July 26, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 26, 2020 One thing I have been working on is redesigning the tacho. I was not lucky enough to be the owner of a Gemini with a "tacho dash", mine had a clock instead. Back in the day I did the old A-pillar tacho and kept the clock. You can see them in this picture. Also now I have holes in my A-pillar that I need to fix. Later on I removed the clock and put a tachometer from (I think) a Ford Laser in its spot. It was just hot glued in there and was backlit. It actually looked okay but I always wanted it to have move of a stock look. This is what the tacho dash looks like: The goal was to make something that looked similar, but that also sat back into the dash a bit more so it could be lit in the normal old way with the light coming around the sides. So there are two parts - design the face, and design the mount. The face was easy enough to make in Illustrator, the hardest bit was getting things the right size - since I never had a stock tacho to reference off - and finding a font that was suitable. The one I found was not the same but close. It's the same one used for the tacho in the game My Summer Car. Huge thanks to Brett at Doozi for his patience with me sorting out the colours - still maybe need to print one more as the yellow needs to be slightly more orange. It also has a sheen on the black, but I'm not sure that can be avoided. You don't notice it when it's in the dash anyway. The mount was made in a similar way. I used the same outline and had it laser cut out of acrylic. I also made up some little feet so it can mount at the right level, in line with the speedometer and other gauges. I then glued the feet in place on the back of the dash. This allowed me to take the face off and apply the sticker and screw it back down. Well, actually I put the sticker on before I glued it, but it comes on and off easy enough. It's just using hot glue so I can remove it if I need to make changes. From a prototype, this is how the tacho screws in, pretty self evident. And here it is, getting there: The square at the bottom is for an OLED that will display AFR. Big thanks to Ned for helping (basically doing everything) get that together. Hopefully I can find an old speedo needle somewhere to use as well. 20 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted July 26, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 26, 2020 I've also been working on how the sump for the 4ZD1 is going to work. There are two main problems: the bowl is super low, like 50mm below the x-member which is already quite low itself, and the wing of the bowl is below the exhaust and is going to get in the way of any decently size down pipe that I need to use. You can see the tight fit here: Here's the bowl sitting low: The x-member is quite snug up under there and it hang down quite a bit. But essentially it's just an empty bowl. My plan is to cut off the wing and weld on a new bowl that is raised, moves the wing to the intake side, increases capacity, and has some baffles to ensure maximum oil pickup. I have never done any of this before, so I'm just reading as much as I can, and @EURON8 is helping me out. Today I started mocking up the new bowl with cardboard. The adept might notice that the bottom of the sumps in these two pictures are different - the pictures above are from the 4ZD1, those below that I'm using for the mock up are from the 4ZE1, which drops much lower at the front meaning I'll have to cut more out to clear the steering rack - another story. It looks like the pickup will just clear, but I might take a few mm out of the tube to bring it up just in case something nasty happens. You'll see I've added in some trapdoors to try and prevent oil starvation. I would appreciate any advice about these in my discussion thread. I think I need to still have some non-doored bypass so the oil can more easily self-level. Also I will probably make sure the baffle over the opening does go all the way up to stop oil slopping over the top. 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zep Posted September 30, 2020 Author Share Posted September 30, 2020 No huge update here. I have been playing around with Sketch Up and had a jam at mocking up the sump bowl: Also received more stuff. This is a booster check valve for using a braided hose. In other news. @EURON8 has been helping me get the 4ZD1 into the engine bay, making mounts, as well as mounting my new intercooler. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted October 25, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 25, 2020 Did you ask for real progress? @EURON8 and I (mostly Chris) have got the engine mounts for the D1 tacked up. Chris will weld them up and then I can get back to sorting the sump. At this point I could pretty much have put a better engine in. At least it's still Isuzu? Also, thanks to @Snoozin @Spencer and @Thousand Dollar Supercar for their help with the AE101 brake kits. They turned up this week 14 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted October 29, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 29, 2020 Chris finished welding up the mounts, just need to be cleaned up and coated now. Should be super solid. Now I can get back on to sorting the sump out. 14 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted December 1, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 1, 2020 This update has been a very long time coming - just due to life and covid etc. Ages ago I got in contact with a friend of a friend who was willing to help me make an oil catch can and a combined sprayer reservoir and radiator overflow. All the parts cut up: Reservoir/overflow bent and mocked up: He warned me that he was newish to TIG welding, but I'm happy enough with how this came up: There are still a few bits to do on it to get the washer motor and overflow inlet attached, shouldn't be long now. The catch can bent up: And welded: Both items need to be blasted and scotched up, but I'm pretty happy with how things are going. Once these are sorted I can start thinking about starting the panel work in the engine bay! Â 19 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted January 11, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 11, 2021 Both the catch can and the dual reservoirs have finally been completed! I just need to get them mounted in their spots and I'm pretty much ready to start on panel and paint. I've found an old boy who's keen to do so am pretty happy! 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted January 20, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 20, 2021 So @Abarthand I were out at Pick A Part last weekend failing to remove a Fiat crank when we stumbled across an Alfa Romeo 159 3.2 V6. Some guy on my street has two 156 GTAs and I have been eyeing up the brakes. Fortunately, the 159's brakes were still there, and yep they are 4-pot Brembos. For $49 a caliper I figured I'd see if I could make them fit on my current setup some how. Obviously some machining/engineering is necessary but it looks like they *just* might! It is super close though. The pad material uses 100% of the braking surface on the rotor. The total pad hangs over by like 1mm. Bear in mind the 159s have 330mm rotors and mine are 296mm. Here the pad is lined up with the outside of the rotor. It's hard to see but it is literally perfect. You can see how much larger they are than the VT Commodore pads. Here's the bottom of the pad: Is this acceptable? Will I run into any issues? Pretty hard to take a picture on my own holding up the caliper, but you can kinda see the clearance here. And here's what they look like on the rotor. They are not in the right position though, would move up a few mm. I measured about 8mm between the inside of the rotor and the pad. 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted March 9, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 9, 2021 Got some bits back from the platers. Thanks to Brett for vapour blasting them first! Â 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted April 20, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 20, 2021 If you read the tech forum you'll know I was trying to figure out where I could score a drive-by-wire throttle and pedal without having to pay over $500 for new Bosch motorsport units. On the weekend I went to Pick-A-Part to look for some rear calipers, but ended up finding exactly what I needed for the throttle setup. Turns out that almost every Euro from 2000 onwards has the right setup - the 68mm Bosch throttlebody. There are a few variations in them as some have water passages, etc, so I ended up removing about 4 or 5 before I found one I liked, which came from a Volvo V50 (2004-2012). It has no water lines and is pretty tidy. I wanted to get the pedal from the V50 too, but with the seat in the way and unmovable due to lack of power I couldn't get up under the dash properly to remove the bolts. Instead I found one from a an earlier (2000-2007) V70. It's made by Hella but looks suspiciously like the Bosch unit of the same era. I'm pretty sure the V50's pedal was a Hella also, so I am assuming these should work well together. Like the throttlebodies, there were quite a few pedal options from different euro cars, especially VWs, but some had weird mounting patterns etc. I took this one mostly because of how similar it looked to the Bosch unit, with the plastic lattice bracing in the arm, rather than a thin metal arm. The plan is to get a Link G4X Xtreme or Fury to run these. Â 15 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zep Posted April 20, 2021 Author Share Posted April 20, 2021 So it looks like I might have been a little to quick to pull that pedal out. The thing is, e-throttle pedals have two APSs (Accelerator Position Sensors), they both read the same thing but are used for contingency so it can't get stuck on or something. Essentially, the ECU reads both sensors and if they are the same it says "go". They are both 0-5v. The Hella units are not designed in this same way. They have one APS that is 0-5v, and another PWM 12v output that is not supported by either Link or Haltech. The workaround is to split the single APS output from the pedal into two wires at the ECU, essentially sending the same signal to each. However, this eliminates the contingency. I've had a stuck accelerator pedal before and it's not fun. In light of that I think I'm going to try and find a Bosch unit that has the correct outputs. There seem to be plenty - I've already seen some on eBay that are cheaper to buy and ship to NZ than it is to get from Pick-A-Part. I hope my mistake has been enlightening for others! Otherwise, I'm just dropping this wiring info for the Bosch throttlebody here: 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted May 17, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 17, 2021 The 4 linking project begins! After a whole lot of research into building a 4 link from scratch, I ended up taking to a dude in Aussie who has built a few rally Geminis. His suggestion was to buy a kit from Group 4 Fabrications in Ireland. He's given me all the info on exactly how to go about mounting it correctly so I'm pretty stoked that this has shown up. 26 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted May 19, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 19, 2021 Hello everybody and welcome to another installment of Guess what expensive thing zep just bought! Today we're really ramping up the costs with a really fast spinny thing. No, it's a not a fidget spinner, and no, not chatter rings. What could it be? Third time's a charm and you guessed it, a Borgwarner EFR6758 T25 0.64 turbo charger! This is not a huge turbo but it's the biggest I've owned! I went with the lower A/R to get maximum low down boost. The wheels are 67mm on the compressor and 58mm on the turbine. It's rated for between 250 and 500 hp, so more than enough room to play with. I guess this is a better time than any to outline my plans for the engine. As you would have read, I've ditched the G161z and am upgrading to a 4ZD1, which is a 2.3 litre 4 cylinder - still Isuzu, it comes out of a Trooper. The 4Z engine series are essentially a new version of the G series, the main difference being that they are belt rather than chain driven, and of course come in larger capacities (2.0, 2.3 and 2.6). There has and continues to be a lot of development for both the 4Z and G series engines over in Aussie. For the 4Z, most of it is happening around the 2.6 4ZE1 but it applicable to all engines. My engine will be a 4ZD1 with a 4ZE1 head, which has much larger ports than the D1 head. The head will also have Brawler light weight high-ratio (1.8 I think) rockers, Brawler light weight valve springs and retainers, and a brand new, super hard billet cam with a Brawler grind, both of which are newly developed. The high ratio rockers are designed to work in tandem with the new cam grind. For now I will just keep the stock valve sizes, which are 38mm and 44mm, but will make sure the ports flow well. The bottom end will have custom CP pistons, also made in conjunction with Brawler, to bring the compression up to about 9.0:1 and make sure the valves have plenty of space to play with. For rods I'll use MaxSpeeding or Spool, not sure yet. No plans for the crank, is it worth mucking around with it? Obviously I will be running this turbo on the exhaust side, and the inlet is a 66mm Bosch throttle body. A crank pulley mounted CAS will provide the signal and four LS1 coils will give it spark. Everything will be controlled with a new LINK G4X Xtreme, which might just be the focus of the next installment of Guess what expensive thing zep just bought!, so keep that in mind! 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted May 30, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 30, 2021 @Abarth and I hit up Pick-a-Part and Zebra yesterday and I managed to get a Subaru e-pedal. It doesn't have the look of the plastic lattice motorsport ones, but I think it's still good, and the shape is non too dissimilar to the stock Gemini one. I am still debating as to whether or not I try to cut and shut the Gemini pedal to the Subaru arm, keeping a stock look. Either way, it looks like it should not be too difficult to mount. The biggest issue I can see is that the pedal to mounting point distance on the Subaru unit is about 30mm deeper than the Gemini one - I need to have a better look at the firewall in the car though, see where everything fits. 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted June 1, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 1, 2021 I've been waiting for this picture for a long time - we started talking about these cams during the first lockdown last year, so I'm glad that they're finally here! One of these 4 blank cams - which haven't ever been made with this much juicy lobe for a 4Z engine - is mine. I mentioned above that it is getting the "Brawler" grind. Hopefully that's not too far away. 21 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted September 7, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 7, 2021 I think this thread is due an update. Let's do it multi-part. If you look at the top of this page, you'll see where I got to with trying to have my tail light surrounds vacuum metalised. A bit of a stalemate in trying to find somewhere to restore the chrome on them. I ended up deciding to look in Aussie and found a place called A Class Metal Finishers, south of Adelaide, who said they could rechrome the ABS plastic. No one I could find in NZ told me that they could do this, or if they could, that they could guarantee it would work. A Class said no problem. I sent over 2 sets of surrounds, they chose the best ones and put them through a full rechroming process, similar to what would have been done at the factory. And I am very happy with the result. These pictures do not do them justice. I actually think these might be better than from the factory - they feel about 25% heavier than the ones I sent away! Now they just need to be repainted in the right places and I'll be ready to start cleaning up the lenses and other bits of the tail lights. 31 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted September 7, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 7, 2021 While the tail light surrounds were happening, I sent my inlet manifold over to a dude in Tasmania who modifies the stock rails with custom plenums, for a very good price. I guess I could have had this done locally but he had a bit of a production line going and it ended up cheaper this way. Plus, I think it's good to support people in the Gemini community. I don't have a before picture, but essentially I sent him this (excuse the stolen image): and received this in return: It's nicer than I expected. The plenum to runner transition is fully smoothed out on the inside and looks great. While I'm here, I want to run boost by gear and was trying to figure out the best way to get a speed signal into the ECU. I could have built some kind of trigger system at the rear hubs, but that seemed like a bit of a pain. Taking it from the gearbox seemed to be a way better option, especially as I'm already running some wiring for the reverse sensor anyway. The problem was that I also need to keep the cable for my speedo. This was one of those moments when you know what you need but just can't find it, even though it MUST be out there somewhere. I'd seen adapters for converting speedo cables to a signal for an electronic speedo, but needed one that still enabled the cable to be used. Fortunately, after some searching I came across the Brantz gearbox sensor, which fits between the box and the cable, and sends off a pulse. Pretty cool! Anyway, here's Wonderwall some pics : 27 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted September 19, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 19, 2021 A few more additions to my reckless spending that may or may not be necessary. A post popped up on the Gemini Owners Facebook Group with a guy selling new, billet lightened flywheels for G200Z engines. Luckily the 4ZD1 uses the same 6 bolt flywheel (the E1 flywheel is slightly larger and uses an 8 bolt pattern). I jumped on this immediately and had one sent over. It's about 2.5kg lighter than stock and looks great: Next Next, another dude who runs a shop called FabHouse posted up that he was now selling tubular upper arms. The benefit of these is that they have a much larger platform to enable an adjustable ball joint to slide to its maximum camber. They are also adjustable where they mount to the cross member, meaning that I could pull them in for even more camber if necessary. I am not that clued up on wheel alignment stuff, so I'm not sure how this will also affect the toe in/out. I guess I just have to make sure they are both adjusted to exactly the same point? Bit of a potato-y photo. There are a few things I'm not sure about: the ball joint platform is not knurled and is powdercoated. The joints themselves have knurling on them, so I hope that is enough to stop them moving around. Also, the holes in the platform - the bolt holes and centre - appear to be hand drilled, and not exactly perfectly. They are not terrible but not perfectly round. I hope that none of these things are going to be a problem once it's all bolted up. I certainly hope that this is not going to affect the ability to cert them. Especially because the same shop will be making similar lower arms to enable the use of a coilover spring on a threaded insert, allowing height adjustment. My talks with @cletus have tentatively approved this type of suspension mod, but I guess in the end it will be determined on how well the parts are made. I guess the upside of being in NZ is that the x-member modification to allow the new spring seat to be inserted will need to be welded locally (as I'm not going to send a cross member to Aussie), so can be better watched over. The shop also said that the spring locator is also laser cut, so no hand drilling! Here's hoping. I've also managed to find some factory Isuzu fender mirrors out of Malaysia. Funnily enough, my car actually came with fender mirrors but they weren't cool when I was 18 so I pulled them off. I don't want to think that I got rid of them, but I have a haunting memory of throwing them in the bin. What an idiot. Anyway, I've got these replacement ones that are more proper than the ebay specials I had on there before. They definitely are not perfect so will need some cleaning up and I think I am going to have to 3d print a new mounting plastic part as one is chipped and finding a new one is basically impossible. . For now, last, but most definitely not least - ya'll remember my SSR MkIIIs that I bought off of @mikuni (ex his Piazza - trying finding this stuff in 4x100!) years ago and have had on the car for ever, well, here's them: Anyway, these were going to look way too Aussie drag-spec for my liking when trying to get 225s on them (they are 15x7 ET26). Me and old mate @EURON8 spent many evenings mucking around trying to figure out where I could find some rims that were going to be wide enough to suit the tires. I finally settled on some Minilites after looking around. However there were some issues. The first is that the they only come in 15x8 or 15x9. The cert rules said that 9" wide was out of bounds for a 225 tire. The other thing was that despite it being quite obvious that I was going to have a shorten my diff, the highest offset on the 15x9s, and even the 15x8s, was too low. I would have ended up having to really push my fenders out or run some flares in order to keep the brake calipers inside the wheel wells and from hitting the floor on full compression. It was a similar issue on the front, waaay too low of an offset, even despite the fact that I had decided that I was going to have to run a staggered setup to avoid similar issues on the front. Anyway, after much much mucking around, many nights with measuring tapes, and difficult emotions in leaving the SSRs behind, I decided to change tack. I spoke with my panel beater and he was certain that if the fenders needed to be pulled out, that he could do this without too much disturbance to the stock lines of the car. The one thing I was super anal about was ensuring that the the vertical section on the outside of the wheel arch (does this have a name? I've noticed on modern cars this has got really massive!) needed to stay intact. I am NOT a fan of those rolled up wheel arches which push the vertical section out and into a point, if that makes sense. Pretty common on "stance" and drift cars when they're trying to fit wider rims. Anyway, I digress, with this information from the panel beater I decided that I could go wider on both the front and back (still with a diff shortening) without an issue - I hope! So I boxed up the wheels and went to the post office. Then I waited, and waited and waited. Then these showed up!\ A huge thank you to Aidan at Pine Engineering for adding 0.5" to the fronts and 1.5" to the rears. So now I'm running 15x7.5 ET17 on the front and 15x8.5 ET4 on the rear. I'll be running 205/50 on the front and 225/45s on the rear, which are within a few mm of each other in terms of side wall. I'm so stoked with how these turned out! Annoyingly, perhaps, the tire to wheel width cert rule changed while they were down at Pine! The next step is to mount up the tires - Nankang semis - and see how they fit. Once I've done that I can determine how much diff I need to shorten on the rear, and whether or not I want to muck around with the brake setup on the front to reduce the track which is currently +10mm on each side due to the current brake upgrade. There are options to go back to stock track if I make some changes, but I also want to make sure that the fender pull is relatively even front and rear, so we'll see. The car is still at @EURON8's place and I can't go over because of lockdown. Covid's really wrecking progress here! Anyway, that's the gem update for today. As per usual, click on discuss coupe in my signature to let me know what you think. I'm keen to chat! Extra pics:   24 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post zep Posted November 2, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 2, 2021 Not a huge amount to update. The Gem is back in my (work in progress) garage for the time being, which is nice. I got the tires fitted to the wheels: 225/45 semi is so much bigger than a regular 195/50! And I because I have the car back, I was able to have a go at fitting the intake manifold. Looks good to me! 32 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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