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I used epotec 408 on some panel repairs to the Defender cos its all I had a the time and its still sticking. Think @nzstato had some fancy aluminium primer for his?

That was my first thought too. Thieving roguing bastards.

I did a thing. First I went to visit @yoeddynz who kindly welded the crack up. I also got a preview of exciting Imp developments.... When I got home I had a look to see what that plug thread was. Interestingly it appeared to be an M22x1.5 parallel thread, which meant a tapered plug made very little sense. And it just so happened that I had an M22x1.5 tap and some threaded rod. So I messed around for a while to get this; I put some pretty mega threadlocker on the insert, so it shouldn't go anywhere. Now the fucked shaft. It was pretty obvious that the broken bit wasnt a new development, and that the box had basically been working ok like that, so I did the obvious thing and just put it back together with the broken bit back in place, retained by the gear and the retaining nut. It feels fine. I figure that worst case I lose 5th at some point, by which time I will have a new box to go in. I will lift an optimistic pint to that notion tonight....

Chop time

Triggers for the ecu. I couldn't use the stock 5M dizzy because it sits exactly where number 1 throttle needs to be. So after a bit of indecision and fucking around I decided to run a crank angle sensor off the front pulley. I machined the inside of the pulley to an accurate size then I made a boss to press into the pulley. The pulley is cast so I can't weld anything to it. She's a fucking tight fit in the pulley so it ain't going no place. By pressing this hub into the inside is not affected by the rubber isolation layer which can cause erratic triggering. I'll laser cut a trigger wheel and use it to accurately drill 4 mounting holes. Then all I have to do is mount the sensor off the front of the motor somehow.

Not really - but the bean counters love them as you sell more parts.

I'll have a spot in a hangar at the airfield (Whangarei) after next week. Under cover and pretty secure but you'll need to give notice to get it in or out

Hope its not too bad but yea should be cool to see what its like, when it got real bad it sounded like 1 rotor was going and lots of backfiring and water pushing out of the radiator, did a compression test but nothing really stood out there, if its cracked there does that mean buy a new one or is there a way to save it?

One of the multitude of reasons this car never gets any closer to be finished is my never ending flow of side projects and half arsed ideas filling up the carshed and not leaving enough room for the car! Rainy boring day so perfect for a shed tidying session. Got sidetracked making one of my kids a wand first up (see never ending projects comment above), but got a solid effort in this afternoon so far. Have been putting up with this behemoth being in the way everwhere for years now, never wanted the box anyway so today it got cut up for the burn pile. So much more space efficient now. Lots of things along those lines and now i can see a car sized open floored area again! Will cut open another burning drum tomorrow and get rid of all the scrap timber that has accumulated in the back shed. Then continue the relocation from hoardingsshed 1 to hoardings shed 2..... of 4. Then to tow/push/shunt the car out of its lawn divots!

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed a steadily increasing stiffer steering and during last night's burger cruise it felt particularly bad. Figured I'd do a bit of fault finding today. First step was to remove the intermediate steering shaft to determine whether the issue was on the steering rack end or the column end. With the intermediate shaft out I fired up the engine and waited the few seconds for the Astra pump to come online. What a relief it was to find out that the issue is not on the rack/pump side of things. So turned my attention to the angled steering gearbox and the steering shaft itself. Pulled out the angled gearbox for a closer look. Popped the cover off to check the lubricant level. Turns out it uses grease - or at least mine is filled with grease. I'm hoping that is factory and not some previous owner's bodge job. Anyone know ? Anyway, I neglected to take a photo, but it looked like some of the grease had shifted leaving the top half of one of the gears dry. The grease looked to be clean and still in good condition, so I just topped up the level and fitted the cover plate back on. At the same time I spent a bit of time fine tuning the little adjusting thingy till I got the mechanism turning smoothly: While I had the angle box out, I pulled off the steering wheel and dropped the shaft so that I could grease the upper and lower bushes. They were pretty dry. With the steering wheel off I figured I'd tackle another annoying little issue. For a good while the indicator self cancelling feature on left turns hasn't been working. Works perfect on right turns though. Really aggravating as I keep forgetting to manually cancel the flashers and also pretty unsafe. Anyhoo, I took a closer look at the mechanism and it was visibly okay. There are two little "ears" on a spring steel collar that press fits over the inner steering shaft. Looks like so: Each little "ear" engages with a double ended lever attached to the indicator mechanism. One of the "ears" isn't visible due to the angle of my photo, but I've marked up where it is supposed to be. With a visible inspection not showing anything untoward I enlisted Mr's Flash's help to watch what was going on while I turned the steering shaft from below. Turns out the little "ear" on left turns was not triggering the self-cancelling lever. Pulled it out the collar for a closer look. Both "ears" are showing signs of wear with noticeably more wear on the left one. Thought I'd try and give it a tweak, so clamped the offending "ear" in my vice: Chucked an appropriately sized punch down the centre of the collar to maintain its shape: Then gave it a little bit of loving with a hammer. Popped it back on the column for another test and ... success! With the self-cancelling issue sorted I reassembled the steering and dropped the van back on its front wheels for a quick steering test. Nice and light once again. Loaded up my ratchet with the appropriately sized socket and headed out for a road test and also to re-centralise the steering wheel. It took a few goes until I got the steering wheel perfect, but I'm happy that things are now back to normal. Thanks for looking.

The original bonnet is getting trimmed and finished off

Dipstick. I didn't have one with the engine parts and I had to move the location. The 7M Dipstick location is right where the 4M engine mount goes so I had to drill another hole in the block. No drama the boss is cast into the block, just had to drill it. Then I set about modifying a jz Dipstick tube to work. I drilled the hole to big for the jz tube so I had to weld it to build it up then machine it to size. I fluked the size and got it perfect, its a good tap in fit. I cut the stick to length and used the 4m in the crown to get the oil level marks right. Then I put the sump on, probably not for the final time but it's on.

Are you getting a bespoke bonnet skin made up on the ute frame to suit the 3 nosecone?

My irons were all mint with no corrosion so I got lucky it seems. Welcome to rebuild time

Probably the front Iron has cracked by the water jacket. It’s a common weak point from casting. That was the cause of my first rebuild.

supposedly more predictable clamping force, probably pretty important on the bleeding edge of automotive performance, probably less so in an 80s mitsi donk

Is there any engineering benefit to the use of TTY bolts?

And more bad news Might be time to find another box

ah, I think I probably do... I just saw "sohc 4g63" and figured it was the old model but of course they probably kept building them forever. Oh well now i have a set of new TTY bolts on the way, I suppose I'll use them - the engine was rebuilt not that long ago, can't be sure that the head bolts that went in at that time weren't TTY too

Mine says head 95nm Rods 52nm As @fuel said, you may have a late model manual

depends on the age I guess - the older 6 bolt 4G63s had reusable hardware but the modern stuff (ie Evo 4 style onwards) tends to be TTY

stuff it, a whole replacement set is like 80 bucks lol. cheap insurance edit: $40 bucks through Segedins

hmm I've found a manual too and it doesn't say replace, but the torque figure is 20NM plus 180 degrees, isn't that a hallmark of torque to yield bolts?

There are some B&S Facebook pages witch are good

Quick look through my workshop manual doesn't say to replace them