Maxteds 1969 mazda B1500

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the sump and pick up fit on nicely, hopefully gives me enough clearance I may have to take a small chunk out of it to clear. also have stripped the engine down and painted the block and given it a good clean.

got the rocker cover from the b6t engine dipped and bead blasted and then gave it a lick of paint. plan to pull everything off the intake manifold to clean it up and paint it either silver/Aluminium. 

next job is to pull out the ma engine and box, then sort out the mx5 bellhousing onto the 626 box to get it ready to drop it in so can make it some mounts

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motors starting to look the part, new water pump and timing belt kit, ditched the belt covers. need to finish cleaning and painting the rest of the brackets/pulleys/inlet and alternator ect, also need to work out how to mount the coils on new rocker cover. hopefully pull out the old motor this weekend

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well its been awhile, this has taken another 180 degree in direction with new plan to stick with the original donk to avoid certification and keep costs down, so pulled down the original 1600 NA to find the reason it smoked so bad, found all the 2nd and oil control rings gummed up and stuck in the grooves , but the rest of the motor looks really good so its getting a freshen up and going back in. so pulled the MA that was in there out ready for the 1600, managed to track down some new rings and a timing chain kit, hopefully get it back together this week and get it going sometime next week 

 

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engine progress

new rings

had the block honed

new timing kit 

heads back on hopefully drop it back in over the weekend if i can find a exhaust manifold for it

 

 

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yesterday we managed to get the motor back in the ute, ran it up to temp and took it on a few test runs, it goes well and ticks over nicely and most importantly no smoke!

it started up really easy, wound it over until the oil light went out, then it fired up, adjusted up the timing and it idles nice and drives well. the ute has so many rattles from having no door rubbers on and need to sort out the tailgate latches to go tight, but pretty stoked its finally good to use

need to take it for a good drive then re-torque head and check valve lash, then its on to doing the little jobs to tidy it up

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fitted the new door rubbers today, so much nicer without the doors rattling around!  

also reshaped the shifter to miss the bench seat and stay far away enough from dash and handbrake lever to avoid mashed knuckles

got a new horn and wired up to a push button.

got a wof today, so good to be on the road legit! also got a wheel alignment today so its driving a lot nicer on the road too

now just chipping away at the little jobs to make it better. install the new carpet is next on the list 

 

 

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fitted the carpet and under lay, looks pretty sweet it wasn't the best fit and had to trim some pieces but I'm happy for the $

gave it a wash for the first time good to get all the dust and crap from sitting around for so long, took a few snaps while the sun was out

was having an issue where it ran out of fuel couple of times and had me scratching my head for awhile, but discover the fuel tank isn't breathing and creating a vacuum, when i crack the fuel cap it lets the fuel flow again so I'm not sure if the original cap had some way of venting or if it was meant to have a breather somewhere in the tank lines.

one of the next jobs is to have a crack at recovering the door cards in a similar red to the seat and make some new kick panels.

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Cleaned up and painted the air cleaner and banged a new filter in it last night

so handy finally being able to use it, chucked a tow bar on it also has come in handy lately with jobs on the house 

made a list of the little jobs to do to finish it/ make it better

-cd player 

-redo door cards 

-replace steering column bush (rattles like a bitch)

-pull apart door latches to see if i can get them to latch better 

-install temp/oil gauges 

 

also going to raise it an inch to make it ride a little bit better and so the tyres don't catch the guards 

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been trying to do a few little jobs on this after driving it for a few weeks, these bloody door latches are shit and slogged out with lots of play up and down and side to side so you have to dam near slam them to get it to latch, so i have dragged out my spare doors and pulled the units out of them and i was pretty stoked to find the passenger side is tight as and the drivers has minimal so might chuck them in and hopefully can adjust them up nicely now the rubbers are starting to find their shape. 

also I made a cradle for the stereo and mounted it under the glove box, just need to run the wiring for the speakers and finish making the new door cards to mount the speakers and get them recovered hopefully in a similar red to the seat and then get the new kick panels cover in black.

have mounted twin gauges under the dash for extra piece of mind on oil pressure and water temp, i wanted to keep the dash oil light and water temp so dragged out spare thermostat housing and oil filter housing and have had them drilled to fit the new gauge fittings leaving the original sensors in place, when i dump the water to put some antifreeze in and dump the oil now the engines done a few kilometres ill swap the housings over.

 

really need to get the new steering column bush in, I'm getting sick of the rattle!

 

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no more rattle! was such a bitch to get the alloy bush someone had made out, that i had to remove the steering column out and slide a pipe inside to bash it out. now i can get the hole for the column change filled in on the steering surround and install it.

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this happened!! pretty gutting as i can't find the same tyre anywhere so i am waiting on a pair of tyres with (hopefully) a similar thickness whitewall. o well at least the spare will now be a near new tread tyre.

the tapped thermostat housing was a fail the temp sender just fouled the thermostat so brought a junction to go in radiator hose instead.

has been pretty good being daily driven goes really well for what it is, the speedo cable has decided to play up unsure whats going on with it might just try another if i can find one 

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Well its been awhile since parked this up. going home for Christmas, looking forward to dragging this out and finishing off some of the odd jobs left to do on it. also managed to find a full set of NOS mazda chrome hubcaps have been keeping an eye out for a set of these for such a long time pretty stoked to have found some. hoping to tidy up the interior when get back, re-cover the door cards and dash and maybe clean or paint the hood lining or replace it. also want to weld up the hole someone cut to put a head unit in the dash and then put the original stereo blank back in.

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dragged it out of storage got a wof and some rego, and a well needed clean 

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Finally found a front disc brake set up and a few handy spares, hopefully strip it this week, fingers crossed the 5 speed is in good condition.

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finally stripped out this courier, had a lot of things I needed on it so was pretty stoked.

going to get some little welding jobs done on the floors to sort out some pin holes and patch where someone has butchered the radio hole in the dash and holes someone cut in the inner guards, then hopefully swap out the gearbox and driveshaft and try get rid of an annoying vibration it seems to get at approx 50-60kph.

 

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Over the Christmas break I dropped this old girl out to Alex @yoeddynz, really stoked with his work, he rectified the holes that had been cut in my inner guards, blanked the stereo hole that had been butchered and added the floor shift tunnel I had cut from the courier. It was a long drive out to the Abel Tasman ringing its guts out trying to do 100kph so next on the list is putting the courier diff nugget in, fingers crossed it should be a 3.3 or 3.5 so should make a huge difference from 4.8 hopefully. Also the gearbox is really noisey so will swap that out at the same time.

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bummer turned out the diff is a 4.3, ideally a 4.1 or 3.7 would hopefully make it more pleasant at a 100. Gearbox is off getting inspected and new bearings.

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managed to track down a round port exhaust manifold, will be so nice to have no exhaust leaks from using a square port manifold!

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Lick of paint for the gearbox before it goes back together with new bearings. hopefully be a lot quieter than the one in there. cleaned up and painted the 4.3 ratio nugget from the courier I stripped, fingers crossed it drops the revs a little bit I think it has something like a 4.8 from the factory in it.

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Also cleaned up the round port manifold, trying out some por15 manifold paint this time the VHT flameproof is flaking off the last manifold I painted (maybe I didn't prep it well enough I can't remember), after looking in the engine bay I think the pipes coming out the side are going to foul the engine mount so might need to cut them short and plug weld them