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Kiwibirdmans 1962 EJ Holden Wagon


Kiwibirdman

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  • Kiwibirdman

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The story of the gutter trim. The gutter trim on a EJ wagon is about 2.5 metres long and nice ans flexible. I had spent about 2 or 3 hours cleaning it up. knocking the dents out and polishing. It was getting late and I was hell bent on getting it done and on the car. 

I had had a couple of warnings that the trim was getting flicked off the wheel, trying to get to the edge on the bend at the front is a bit of an art. Should have stopped but ...........

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I was lucky, one bruise on my are and only the trim turned into spaghetti. I still haven't worked up the nerve to do the new one.

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Here are some photos

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The bumpers look pretty good, the front and end of the rear are new reproduction ones, the front overriders and centre of the back were re-chromed.

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Bought this flaring tool the other day for the fuel lines, works really well, $55 off trademe.

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  • 1 month later...

Despite being side tracked with work family life in general there has been some good progress.

All the side window are in. I had a problem with the left rear door, the channel that the rubber goes in was missing. This was a door I bought to replace the original. I bent up a channel and pop riveted it in. From the factory this was spot welded but since I have nice new paint the welder was staying far away.

The next job was the rubbers and channel then drop the window in the hole. the whole process felt harder than the other side I did a while ago. When I went to put the quarter window and channel in I found the gap was 5mm too small. Managed to carefully spread the door using a couple of small pry bars. Managed to scratch the paint on the inside of the door on the first go, second go worked like a charm.

Spent hours making up hard fuel lines.

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The rubber bits joining the hard lines have been done. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Being the first day of the new year I thought I better start as I mean to carry, or at least get this bloody car finished. I spent a bit of time fitting the best quality Ali express, chineseiumn gauges.

I had a fitting made up to run the temp gauge into an existing threaded plug in the bottom of the radiator. There didn't appear to be an easy place to tap into the intake manifold and I need to leave the original sender for the computer to do it's thing. I will wire the factory temp warning light to come on when the fan gets switched on. This will do 2 things, the first is to keep an eye on the temp gauge once the fan is running and also to give me warning if the thermostat stay shut, fan will come on but the radiator will stay cold. 

The set I bought had a volt meter and oil pressure gauge as well. I thought it was worth seeing how accurate the volt meter is, my reasonable quality digital multi meter said the old battery I have lying around was 12.3 volts, fair enough. The Ali Express special said 13.5 volts. In reality the absolute number is not a big issue, I'm more interested in seeing that it's charging.

I will be checking the other gauges against known good ones.

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Wiring, still doing fucking wiring. Trying to think things through so that I don't end up either cutting stuff off short or not having space, the usual crap. I am running out of stuff to connect up so another night or 2 should see it done. 

Once the wiring in the cabin is done the seats can go in and the seat belts. I hope they are OK after sitting in a box under my sons bed for 2 or 3 years.

My wife got keen the other day and booked us a trip to Vanuatu in July, followed by a trip to Sydney for my brothers birthday and then a trip to Hawaii in December to escape the family Christmas. This is all good and I have much better holidays than I would ever book myself but the Visa is maxed out until we get paid in the middle of the month.

Once the Visa is bought back to under control I can buy the battery and order the Dakota Digital speedo interface box to make the original speedo work off the electronic transmission.

I promise some photos.....soon

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  • 2 weeks later...

Wiring is close to done.

 

Lights and horn on the drivers side have relays

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Wiring round the engine bay. The red wire is for the wipers.

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This is the passenger side. Still some finishing off to do. The fuses that are hanging in the breeze will have a bracket off the hinge bolt. Relays for headlights and starter. The silver box is the ignition module. 

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This is the ECU nuder the front seat.

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And the loom over the floor. I will do something to sort this out. Probably make a cover out of panel steel and screw to the floor

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I went out on Monday and got most of the to buy list. The battery was put on order, it didn't turn up before lock down so that will hold things up. I remembered that I had used up all the heat shrink I had so got some more of that.

Also got a new bottle of Maguires Ultra Rapid Detailer. It's pretty much the only thing to use on a Satin paint job,

Time to stop watching You tube videos and get down into the garage and make a big dent in the list. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

At the start of lock down hell I wrote a list of things to get done, which is further up the page. I have been knocking them off bit by bit, or at least getting to the point that I need to buy stuff.

Old fuel pump removed from the tank and new on e fitted. Turns out the connectors inside the tank were corroded when I started checking before putting everything back together. I had anther tank off an earlier car (VR commodore from memory) and this had a better set for the wiring. New pump swapped over to the VR pickup and all checks out with a muliti meter. Thought I would check out the fuel gauge and make sure the sender would work before it all got put back in the car. Turns out that the original fuel gauge works ok but is totally incompatible with the commodore sender. All Holdens up to 1971 use 30 ohms full, 0 ohms empty. Commodores use 30  ohms full and 300 ohms empty. The first call after lock down will be to Robinsons instruments to see if they have an easy fix. If not it will be to get the original sender out of the old tank and see if its usable.

Next job was to fit the heater controls and make them work. I have found a heater, they were an option and my car never had one, and spent a fortune getting a new core installed. I had bought a HZ Holden heater tap at Kumeu a few years ago from a guy selling new Holden parts. I had also bought an Aliexpress choke cable to use as a push pull. 

Here is the heater tap in the engine bay. The tap didnt come with the clip for the cable, they are available

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And the heater controls

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Tonight's job was to finish bleeding the brakes. I had started and run out of fluid. I was talking to a mate about it and he gave me some not very old stuff he had sitting in his garage. The fronts bled up and gave a nice firm pedal. Went to do the back ones which appeared to be good. Got my son who was helping to stand on the pedal and no stopping on the back wheels. I pulled the shoes off one side and pulled the dust caps of the wheel cylinder, lots of rust. That explains the no brakes. Might be a good time to do a rear disc conversion. I understand that commodore rear discs will go on a Salisbury diff with out too much fabrication. 

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