Boosted

It is a damn nice feeling. I had a lot of fun that day, definitely worth all the effort to get the car there in the end. Just looking forward to the next one now. Car is parked back in the carport, ready for an oil change and nut and bolt check.

Another gap between posts, but this time I've been doing things (WARNINFG: Marathon post). After getting the temp gauge issue sorted I was pretty stoked gave it a wash and parked it on the trailer ready for a windscreen replacement. Took some 'glamour' shots to show what the beast now looks like. Me being me, got a bit carried away at work and forgot to call the windscreen people, so by the time I made the call on Wednesday, they couldn't fit me in and it would have to wait till the next weekend. I used the time wisely and contemplated my navel, or close enough to. Stripped all the useful bits off the old shell so it's ready to go to scrap and messed about it in the shed. Finally the big weekend came, starter motor was still messing around, so was pretty nervous and very happy when it started up first go off the trailer. Unfortunately it then wouldn't start again in the workshop after the windscreen was fitted. A couple of taps on the starter got it going, so loaded back on the trailer and bought it home to fit the wipers and plastic trim. All that was left was the sump guard and I could go racing. Unfortunately the old throat at been a bit scratchy since Friday arvo so, yep. Came down with the man flu for the 4th time this year and only a week and a half after having the flu shot. Soldiered thru Sunday but devoted to my time to gardening (waste collection coming up) before taking Monday off work while feeling pretty sorry for myself. With the Autocross the coming weekend I wasn't sure if I could find the inspiration to finish the car and get it there. I didn't want to push on thru and then end up feeling crook at the event, kinda ruins it. Fortunately by Wednesday morning I was starting to feel better, not great, but better. Decided to go hard on Wednesday night and get this thing finished, didn't spend all this time and money to have it sitting in the carport. The sump guard hasn't fitted all that well for a while and the rollover put a few more kinks in it that I had forgotten about. I got screwed on the material and got given regular aluminium rather than the marine grade I asked for, so beating it back into shape isn't that hard. But the two bends are close to each other and without some big equipment you can't hold/support it to effectively get one bend right without upsetting the other. Thursday morning dropped in on a fabricator I used to deal with many moons ago, they looked after me pretty well and took the time to put it thru the plate roller to straighten it back out in several spots, then put the bends back in, lined up perfectly. So Thursday lunch break was spent picking the guard up from them and then driving to the other end of Perth to get a new fire extinguisher as mine had just reached the end of it's life. All in all, a 2hr lunch break, pretty thankful work are easy going as long as the hours get done. Thursday night spent bolting up the sump guard and loading the truck. Hard to get to sleep that night as I had a million thoughts running thru my head and pretty excited (and nervous) about the Autocross. Friday night, car onto the trailer and then start stressing as I haven't got a blue triangle or any tow stickers and get worried about being pinged at scrutineering. Mercy dash to Bunnings for some coloured electrical tape and then back home for a relatively early bed time. Saturday, 5am up and at them, 6am on the road and heading off to the track. Got there at 8:10, car started up off the trailer easy as. Clean the windscreen, mount the Go Pro and present to Scruitineering. Zero fugs given. Didn't see them even look at the Fire Extinguisher, they shook a few things and that was about it, signed off. Why worry ? It's in the supp regs about having mudflaps behind the driven wheels, though I saw cars there without any mudflaps. A pair of cars that rocked up didn't even have functional wipers and it was raining. Oh well. Event went really well, never had a problem with the starter, must have had a bit of rust or gummed up a bit from sitting. Car handled really well, now have rally tyres (though pretty worn and old) on the rear, but I think the bigger changes are from the softer spring rate and the lack of swaybar. I actually had to use the handbrake a bit to unsettle the rear to get it around the corners as tight as I wanted. Track was awesome, unfortunately the bottom of one of the loops was boggy as all hell and I know I lost a fair bit of time down there, even spun once. But the rest of the track had a lot of grip, it just took me all of the runs to work out how much grip there actually was. Even after the last run I felt as though I didn't commit enough to some corners and could have gone quicker. My times started off at high 2min 17s and I got down to near a 2min 9 dead, so an 8sec improvement, I'm pretty happy with that. Cars that put in the fastest laps were of course 4WD, 2min 1. Next 2wd's were at 2min 5, so I'm still 4sec off them, but anyone in front of me had been to the course before and a couple of them are known as gun autocross drivers, so I was pretty happy with my 7th outright. Car came home absolutely covered in mud, there was even mud up under the rear door handles ...how the hell ? I've got it mostly washed down (couple of hours with the hose) and today I'll back it off the trailer and park it back in the carport. Nut and bolt and an oil change and it should be ready to go for the Khanacross on the 15th of June. This hopefully marks the end of the development of this car, I've got an old Datsun 180B sitting in the garage, taking up space and it's going to get some loving, seeing as I've owned it for near 7yrs and driven it less than 100kms. It will get finished off as a tarmac car, hopefully seeing a lot of motorkhana's with the occassional track work. The Datsun needs to move out of the shed as plans are already under way for a Hyundai Excel rally car, I've already started purchasing bits like an LSD and lower final drive ratio. The Corolla will keep seeing duty as the gravel car until the Datsun/Excel's finished, but hopefully no more full on rebuilds are required in that time.

Success !! Practiced on an old standard dash I had here, and it's not real pretty, but you can lay a bit of solder onto the track. The track actually didn't look that bad, but the pin was sitting as proud as the others and still not getting proper contact... apparently. Soldered it up and tested with a multimeter. Even wiggling the plug, best I could get was 0.7ohms resistance down to Earth. Plugged it all back together and started it up (just now, ran out of daylight last weekend) temp gauge behaves like normal. Sat there idling for a while, came up to half gauge and held there, even with a few limiter bashes to get some real heat into it. Still got the dash in enough pieces that can't drive it anywhere yet, that will be the real test I guess. Now I'll chase the fuel sender, while the dash is out, see if that's an issue. Then put everything back together, give it a wash, strap it down to the trailer and on Monday, organise to have a new screen in the front of it. There's an event on the 24th of May with another Car club, but it's only $60/yr to join and a day membership is $15. Might be able to get this thing back out on the dirt !! ... and see if I can roll it this time :D

Hey Craig, have you done that before ? I would have thought you'd need some hardpoints glassed into the skin and screw into that rather than just relying on glue ?

Only just got back to this today, took the Easter long weekend off and have been messing around cleaning up the shed in the last day and a bit. I've found an AE93 SX Cluster pinout from the net, seems as though I was looking at the wrong wires before and had picked up the illumination lights. So not sure why there's such a low resistance to ground, must be something a bit weird going on there. Pulled more of the dash to bits as I found a few damaged wires and was still walking the wrong path. Taped everything back up now and got the multimeter on the right plugs. The earth for the temp guage is fine from the plug onwards, 0 ohms so no issues. But if I go off the screw that appears to lead into the back of the temp gauge (just following the tracking along the board) I get a 270ohm resistance between that and ground. Investigating this further, if I wiggle the plug in the back of the cluster, I can get this down to about 10 ohms. Wiggle it again and it'll jump straight back up to 270 ohms. So seems there's some issues with the connection to the cluster. Looks like the copper colour is gone in one spot, bit dark out there at the moment and my Narva LED trouble lamp just packed it in. So will come back to it tomorrow, but think I'm on the right track. I might be able to repair the track with a bit of solder, or I'll run a terminal off the back of the screw and splice that directly into the wire. Will have to investigate further as the fuel gauge is permanently reading half tank (think it was doing that before the roll) so not sure if it's a connection issue there or whether the sender's got issues.

Well dash is now in pieces. Seem to have an 8-12 ohm resistane between the instrument cluster and ground. All the earths I can see look OK. At first I suspected what looked like corrosion on the bolts into the instrument cluster, but seem to have the same resistance between the plug and ground. 12ohms ain't enough to make a difference, in fact it should add to the resistance from the sender and make it read lower. So how this is losing all it's resistance and this maxxing out. My head's starting to hurt at this time of night, so might leave it and come back to it later. Really want this damn thing on the trailer !

Well this thing is starting to :rant: me off at the moment. Got the new O2 sensor installed, seems to be working alright, haven't got an error code within the first 2minutes of running. Auto Radiator fitted spot on, fan shroud bolted back in nicely, all good. Start it up, all seems to be good, no movement on the temp gauge ... then remember I forgot to plug the temp gauge back in. Stop it, plug in the temp gauge and with ignition back on, climbs to max gauge after running for ~2mins. Cracked an ECU temp sensor as it was the easiest thing to get to and furthest up the block that I could find, only fluid coming out of that one, so it's not like there was a massive airlock somewhere. Then crack the gauge temp sender, let some coolant go from there. See the slightest dip on the gauge, but as soon as I kicked it, temp max's out. Drain the coolant a fair way down, so I can remove the temp sender completely. Pull the sensor, seems fairly warm. Run it under some cold water, screw it loosely back into the now drained block, switch back on the ignition, gauge slowly climbs to max position. Pull the sender, stick my thermocouple in the hole, 42º, so something's seriously wrong on the gauge side and the engine isn't getting that hot. Do some quick research, seems they're some sort of thermistor. It's now cold again, so check resistance between tab and body, infinity restance, so that's why the gauge shows 0 when you start cold, no probs there (later on I plugged the sender back in once everything was real cold, 0 gauge so that side's working properly). Some searching around the net found this; Good enough for me, clip the multimeter onto it, Run it under the tap, comes out at 174ohms. Use a digital meat thermometer to check the tap water, 60ºC. So I don't think the sender is that far off the money. I held it there for a while as I thought maybe as it heated up it was breaking down and going open, but didn't for this tap test. So I'm thinking that the sender is fine and I'm just looking for a problem with the gauge. Just seems odd that it's reading fine at zero and when you disconnect the gauge. Will start pulling the dash apart and see if I've missed an earth, or got other issues there. If anyone's got any other idea's, I'm interested to hear them.

The gauge behaves normally when you turn the key on, just goes skyhigh a short while after that. Spoke to the guru, he seems to think it might be getting that hot due to a stuck thermostat or clogged radiator. Thermostat was fairly new, but pulled it anyway, tested up fine. Radiator was just one I got from Gumtree and the core was not that great anyway. Pulled the trigger on a new radiator. Hot tip; ask for one for an Automatic. No Automatic's were ever bought into Oz, but one of the local part stores had a radiator for one kicking around, box looked really, really, old. Yet to try it out for fit, but it was near $100 cheaper than the manual version. Hopefully that will fix the issue. I was fairly careful with all the connections, particularly earths and went back to bare metal on the chassis where they bolted on, before painting over them after the lug was screwed down. Fortunately it looks like these ECU's do have a memory and will record the last couple of faults. Bridged out the diagnostic port and ended up with a 21 error. Turns out that's related to a heater failure on the O2 sensor, or a failure of the O2 sensor itself. As it's only intermittent the guru suggested leaving it, worst it will do is run rich (not a bad thing for a car screaming it's box off) but I was concerned about fouling plugs whilst moving it around in my yard whilst prepping for another event. Fortunately he had a few kicking around, so bit of a score there. May have to make an adaptor plate to bolt it to the extractors as they stand. Another bonus here is that while the radiator is out, it's really, really easy to get to the O2 sensor, so that should be a relatively easy fix. Hope to get to it later this week, or will dedicate the weekend to finishing it off. Not going to be able to get a windscreen in it for a while now, so kinda fortunate that the next event is still a while away.

More progress made, but still not finished. Finished off the exhaust mount, got the mudflaps on. Looked at mounting the Ballast's for the HID spotlights, but couldn't find an appropriate space for them, so if someone's mounted them before, I'd be keen to see pics. Gearbox plug was still leaking, so dug it out with a dremel style tip and have filled it with some 4min epoxy, seems to be holding. Stripped the paint off the windscreen so I can see to drive it around the yard and onto the trailer. Discovered that the scoop that I very carefully aligned and positioned, is a good 25mm or more away from making contact with the intercooler. Must be a fair bit of difference in the bonnet heights or engine mounting heights of the GTZ. So will need some fairly thick spong foam to take up the distance, then should be plenty of cold air pouring over the intercooler. I'm not sure if the radiator mounts I've got are right, only just saw tonight that the radiator doesn't run parallel to the support panel, thinking one of the mounts must be the wrong type. Anyone got any pics/advice ? I also got rid of the drivers side arm rest, the new door and the old door were both cracked around the mounting (the old armrest fell off at one point) and I'm pretty sure I've copped it with my elbow whilst driving, so got some neat little straps from ebay and screwed one of them into the door. Then it was pretty much done, ready to load up on the trailer and get the windscreen fitted. It was a mongrel to start, solenoid on the starter didn't want to pull in, it's done it before, seems as if battery voltage dops a touch it won't pull in. If you can get it to pull in, it cranks hard enough. Once it's in regular use, doesn't seem to be problem, but if it's been sitting a while, wants to mess around. Anyway, so finally got it to fire up, sitting there running along, I had a bit of throttle on, then all of a sudden it drops a bunch of revs, check engine light comes on and while it's still running relatively happy, it seemed like it was fueling up. Battery voltage and oil pressure were fine, but eventually it dropped a few more revs and I wasn't quick enough with the throttle. Crank it back up again, no check engine light and seems to be all happy again. Since then, sometimes when the idle drops down it'll bring on the check engine light, sometimes a rev will clear it, -other times it wants to hang on for a while, then will go out. The car has always idled quite fast since I've owned it (1700-2000rpm) but it's never been a real problem and the heavy clutch requires a bunch of revs to get away anyway, so not sure if that might have something to do with it. So drove it out onto the front lawn to give it a wash and then realised that the temp gauge was maxxed out again. Top radiator hose was fairly warm to the touch, but radiator was cold and bottom radiator hose didn't have any heat in it (been running less than 5min) and it didn't give me the impression that it was all that warm. I left it running and gave it a real quick wash, had the heaters blasting and even pulled the plug on the fan so it would run. A short while later the bottom hose was warm and the radiator was hot across the top tank and most of the core. I pulled the radiator cap and it had a little pressure behind it, but didn't squirt coolant everywhere. Everything felt quite warm, but it still idle away pretty happy (with no check engine light) and revved fine. Parked it back in the carport with much less of a wash than planned and turned it off. Got my thermocouple again and the temp in the radiator measured only 71ºC. which is probably pretty close to the truth as it hadn't bought on the fans with the temp switch (they worked last time I had it running a few weeks back). So I'm a bit confused with that one. Pull the lead off the sender and gauge reads zero, but as soon as you plug it on, goes to max. Perhaps the sender is dicked ? It hasn't spat any water or given me any indication that it's got an airlock. Apart from the guage, everything seems to be working fine, just not sure what it's issue is. So .. was hoping to park it on the trailer and have the windscreen fitted this next weekend, but need to sort out this temp gauge and try and work out what this check engine light is coming on for. The throttle has always been 'sticky' in the body, perhaps the tps is throwing up rubbish signals, will ask the guru, but open to ideas.

So progress has still been slow. Got all depressed on race weekend that I wasn’t out there. Spent that weekend and the following being lazy and got bugger all done on the car, was just sick of being sick. Had already scheduled in the windscreen replacement well before the weekend and decided to go ahead with that. They didn’t start work till 8, so soonest they could be there was 08:30 so I had to go to work late, fortunately my work’s pretty flexible like that. Sitting around at home, waiting, waiting. Finally decide to call them just after 9, receptionist seems surprised that the dude isn’t there yet, said he’d picked up the job card at 8 and they had several windscreens ‘in stock’ when I’d called before. So she calls the guy, apparently he got ‘held up’ but would be there by 09:30. :bash: I wasn’t real happy about that, because it was still going to take the guy some time to fit the windscreen and said to her that if he wasn’t here by 09:45 I’d have to go. Get a call at like 09:43, He’s stuck in traffic, can you leave the car out and he’ll do it when he get’s there. This place is a half hour drive from my place in morning traffic. Cancelled the job, hung up the phone and swore for a good 5 minutes before heading off to work. So I ended up working late to make my hours for that day and still didn’t get a windscreen fitted. Now I’ve got some time on my side, will put it on the trailer and drag it to someone on the weekend. :eatlead: Finally got the brakes bled up. Surprising the amount of air that came out of them. I’d done a crude gravity bleed beforehand and got fluid to each of the calipers, but the pedal and handbrake had no feel at all (could pull the handbrake all the way up without resistance). Think I finally got them sorted with a regular bleed, but pedal still doesn’t feel fantastic, hard to tell with the wheels off and discs rocking around though. Painted the sills, just rattle-can satin black, but looks the goods. Bolted on the wheel alignment jig last night, bearing in mind I’d just unbolted the gear from the old car and thrown it in the new car without a lot of care. Wheel alignment was spooot on for the front, these Toyota’s are built tough. Not so lucky with the rear. Subframe has a lot of movement on the bolts and there’s not much to measure it and square it up to. Got it as close as I could by wiggling the frame around. Got perfect on one side and on the other had to move the adjuster cam around a touch. I’m confident I’m within 0.5mm toe (aiming for 0) on the rear. Not 100% sure on the front as the steering wheel may have been a tiny bit off, but I’ll see how it drives on the road before I get too worried. Just couldn’t be bothered pulling the boots back on the rack and measuring centre again. I did that before and the rack and wheel went back together on the same spline, so it should be all good, or close enough to it. Have now got a pair of second hand rally tyres to bolt on the rear of it as well, get away from the ‘cut’ road tyres, It’ll be a much different beast to drive. Only a few little issues to chase thru (bolt check, mudflaps, spotty wiring) which I’m planning for this weekend, then glass the weekend after and park it up, ready and waiting for the next event.

Idle speed's a bit high, probably want to wind that back a bit ;)

Well, the schedule has taken a bit of a hit. for the 3rd time in about 2 months, the manflu has struck me down again. Sitting here wrapped in a blanket shivering like hell, while sweating and the temp's in the mid 20's still. Really needed this weekend to push it across the line, but I'm not going to enjoy the event if I'm sick as a dog, so using this weekend to catch up on some sleep (been missing some of that working on the car) and aim towards the next one. Entries close on Wednesday, but I can't see massive improvement between now and then. Windscreen is scheduled to be changed on Tuesday morning. Have got all the door cards in and all the other windows clean. This weekend was meant to be painting the sills, fixing the exhaust mount. Wheel Alignment, brake bleed, wire some lights and do a nut and bolt check. I'm going to try and keep the momentum up (once I get over this cold) as I'm keen to have it finished off and sitting there waiting for an event, rather than rushing to finish it for the event,

Got some more done. Got some genuine Sparco bonnet pins from a local supplier, twice the price as the ebay ones, but these work, so that's money well spent in my opinion. Last week ordered up a couple of 7" HID lights from ebay, Wasn't expecting much for ~$90 the pair, delivered and my expectations weren't exceeded. Ballast is just stuck to the back of the housing via double sided tape, so not sure how long that will last. Reflectors are also pretty imperfect, but I only want them as spreads anyway. Also ordered a H3 conversion kit, so the current spots will have HID globes as well. Means I can run 4 lights on the front of the car for similar power draw to the original spots. Once the bonnets pins were in I could put the rest of the front clip in. Bumper seems to sit forward a bit more than I thought, just doesn't look right where it meets the mudguard, but I have pulled the mudguard a bit out of shape with my over generous rolling. Brackets are all in the right place, so running with it for now. Still need to finish one mount on the exhaust, wheel alignment, nut and bolt it, then I'm down to waiting for stickers and a windscreen. Fortunately it's a long weekend in WA, so get a bit more done and I should be looking good for a permit test next week.

I should have been finished a lot sooner, I've only got a dog, so no excuses really. Just hard to find motivation at times. Work all week then come home and work harder (physically) all weekend on a car that if I only went to Khanacrosses this year, would be used 5 times this year. You don't want to see the state of my back yard. It's a good thing there's currently 7 cars here, wherever there's a car, you won't get lost in the weeds ;)

I know of a guy who had to wear a burn suit for a few years because he thought there was no chance that working on the legs a couple of metres from the actual tank would cause it to blow up. Continuous CO2 purge is about the only way I'd cut into one. But it's done now. Mercel Foam, common in circuit cars. A black (usually) foam that takes up 10% volume for it's size, but acts to control the fuel sloshing around. They use it in bag tanks and that sort of thing. You can use it in normal fuel tanks just by cutting it up into small chunks and pushing it down the filler, but probably doesn't work quite as well. I guess part of the reason that no one usually bothers for a rally car.

Still a long time between posts and still not a lot getting done. Went on holiday for a week, got a cold ... twice, so that killed a weekend or two. Got talked into buying a couple of old 4WD's to wreck, so that's cost some time, but it's worth it for future projects I guess. However, the push is back on, first event on the 15th of March, so only a couple of weekends to go to make it there. View of the lighting I now have in the carport, no more excuses for night time work. Gotta love LED's I straightened out the flattened bit of pipe ... sort of, there's clearance issues with the floor, but if the bends were arranged in the right way, I reckon you can get a full pipe thru there. They've kinked some bends on the inside to try make the outside miss, where if they had slightly mitred the start of the bend, it would have fit thru. At the moment it's tight on the floor in places where it's loose as hell on the crossmember. A pretty pi$$ poor job really. Goes along with most of the work that was done on the car in the past. The exhaust hangs down too low as it makes the turn around the fuel tank too. I made the front end sit nice and high, but the rear part of it is still sitting low and begging to be collected by something. Still, it's no worse than it was before and it seemed to survive. I did think about buying some more pipe and donut bends and fabricating my own exhaust from scratch, but it's not a lot of fun on your back on a creeper, especially when I can afford to pass it on to a proper exhaust shop down the track and they can sort it out on their hoist. The other thing that held me up was the right hand guard, found a crease in this one as well (must be something about Corolla RHF guards), so did a bit of panel beating on that, bogged it. Bog didn't go off (hardener was too old), ripped all that uncured bog out, re-bogged it. Spent ages filing it down and getting rid of most of the bog. Still had some shallow spots, so out came the putty. Finally got it to the point where I was fairly happy. Painted it, paint reacted. Rubbed it back again. Paint reacted again. Rubbed it back to bare in those couple of spots. Paint when on pretty well, but I ended up with some bugs landing in the paint (oh for a spraybooth !) Rubbed it back, got distracted, didn't get round till painting it to fairly late, got some bugs in it again and a slightly milky hue (think it was too humid, even though it was still pretty warm). Rubbed it back, painted it again, still got crap in it. Rubbed it back and put it in the opening of the shed, still got crap blowing into. Cleaned up the shed to the point I could get further into it. Planned on painting it Saturday evening until I realised I'd run out of thinners (didn't quite have enough to complete the job). So bought some thinners this morning and painted it. Even though I was well inside the shed away from the wind, I still got alot of dust and crap on the paint. Never had this problem before, maybe just the time of year ... and the shed isn't exactly a clean room. Some of it I think might be from this latest batch of paint I'm using, perhaps I need to filter the paint before tipping it into the gun, never bothered before. Anyway, so guard is now on ... scratched the damn thing within 5 minutes of putting it on the car too ... made me pretty happy. So bonnet on and now lined up that I've got both guards on, this is what I was waiting for. Time to install the bonnet pins. Got these spikes knocked up to make it easier to mark the holes for the pins. Had chosen the place for the pins ages ago, based pretty much on what I did with the other car and I think there used to be a couple of bumpers screwed into the same spot. All reinforced with plate so they're not going to pull out of the support panel. But then comes the trick of lining that hole up with the bonnet. These spikes make it easy as pie. So on to fitting the bonnet pins that I bought a year or more ago ...and they don't work. Cheap ebay junk ! Come in a Sparco packet, but I didn't believe it then, believe it even less now. The spring loop on the pin is attached at a different heights on the pin, so it springs and holds closed. Pretty normal, so as a result, the slots have to be at different heights on the slider. These aren't, hence everytime you try to work the pin, the spring jumps out of it hole and the whole thing jams up. Fortunately I realised before I'd drilled holes into the bonnet. Have already contacted a local seller and will pick up a proper (hopefully) set tomorrow. I bought the last pair of ebay and they worked fine. Tried an aussie seller this time and while they were cheap, they don't work, so I guess they'll get thrown in the bin. Pic of the bonnet before I got the 2nd guard painted. The astute amongst you will notice the oil leak on the floor. Tightened up the gearbox plug after filling it up and heard a crack, thought I'd split the washer. Nope, turns out I actually cracked the gearbox housing. FML. It's only a bit of a dribble at the moment and to fix it properly requires pulling the box out and to pieces and welding it up ... not going to happen for this old girl. If I get excited I might try to convince my brother to run a sealing weld on the outside. Bit dicey though as I'd have to drain the box and clean the crack, then we'd have to be pretty careful with the earth to make sure it didn't arc across any gears or bearings. I've put some goop over the top of the crack, might slow it down ... I hope. So after the debacle with the bonnet pins, decided to kick it. 24L of 100 RON fuel into the tank ($40 ..ouch !), titanium castrol edge oil and a new filter. Hit the starter. Wasn't real promising at first as I couldn't hear the fuel pump running. Wiggled some plugs and hit the key again, fuel pump definitely running, cycle it a couple of times and she roared into life. Work the power steering back and forth, seems to have bled up alright. Add some more coolant (Toyota Long Life this time round, meant to be better for pump life) and call it job done. Had a small issue with the temp sensor grounding to the block, so had to use a digital thermocouple to check water temps whilst I was setting the system up. Had an issue with the flasher relay just buzzing and no rear park lights (front ones not connected yet). Turns out there's no globes in the lights. Pulled them off the donor car and simply plugged them back in, never checked the globes. With some globes in there, I now have rear park lights and indicators. Things are looking good. And that's where I'm leaving it for tonight. I've got windows to clean a full nut and bolt check to run thru and a whole bunch of little issues, but I think I'm on track ... I think.

Brave man cutting into a petrol tank. You going to shove it full of mercel while you're at it ?

From what I've seen, Autotecnica are nearly twice the price of SAAS. Made me reconsider a purchase.

And careful where you put the earth lead, arcing across bearings is not going to help your cause.

Or you could get a can of spray on canola cooking oil, does much the same. I have a WIA 150A Mig. Turns down fine, 6mm and above is a struggle for it, but can be done when you've got the dials wound right round. As mentioned by others, burn holes in 3mm no probs. Father recently bought a 'chinese' inverter 250A MIG (weldsmart brand or some such). Seems to work a treat, the new inverter technology makes for a much smaller body than the old lumps. Even the crappy welders now come with Toshiba chips, so some of the other circuitry and mechanicals could be suspect, but my brother's cheap Jasic Inverter TIG has worked fine for quite a while. I'm not a fantastic welder, but I managed to run a good bead on the head of a 205L drum which was measured at 0.9mm thick. Brother was welding heavier stuff with it and rated it in the same league as the 275A WIA welder he's got (that from someone with 15yrs in the industry boiler making/coded pipe welding). Remote wire feeder head (takes 15kg spools) for under $1K, I'm tempted to sell mine and buy one. As far as I'm aware BOC/Air Lquide don't sell bottles, only hire them out. Hire is somewhere around $140/yr/bottle for an e-size at the moment. I use CO2 instead of argoshield (cheaper and not a lot worse to weld with than argoshield) costs somewhere around $40-50 for an exchange bottle. Unlikely to go thru a bottle in a year. My Brother's used Gasless on panel repairs and reckons it's fine. Mate has gasless as well (for automotive work, just as a hobby) and says the spatter is a PITA, but then you're not paying for the gas, so it's all swings and roundabouts. Have heard others complain bitterly about gasless MIGs. Regardless of Gas/Gasless if there's a stiff breeze blowing, you'll get porosity in your welds. Gasless uses a flux core wire, the flux burns as you weld and creates a gas shield around the weld pool, a stiff breeze will still blow it away and expose the weld pool to oxygen. Most people have the regs on Gas MIGs wound right down for bugger all gas in a workshop environment. Take it outside and you will need to crank on more gas to cope with the breeze, but if the breeze is strong enough you need to put up shields or give up welding on that day.

Still progressing, now have seat and harness back in. Fire extinguisher is mounted as well, only thing left to do on the interior is the battery box and the door cards. Pulled the welder out of retirement and hacked into the exhaust system. Original system was from a Road car and I know for a fact they were trying all sorts of tricks to try and make it quiet. But two resonators and a muffler seemed a bit OTT to me, especially as it's now a race car. The muffler had also had a few hits as it stuck below the floor a bit, though think most of them happened before I owned the car. Fortunately my mechanic mate does a few exhaust swaps on Subaru WRX's and the owners usually don't want their old systems. Apart from having a lovely ball/socket connection on one of the flanges (great for misalignment in a system) they've also got a lovely slimline 'hotdog' style muffler. Just a shade under 2.5" for the system, means it fits in perfect for what I want to do. Welds are a bit rough (thin material and lack of skill/patience) but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Yet to fit it up though, know the length is right (jigged it up before cutting into it) but forgot to take measurements of the hangers, so might have to mod thos further yet. Also made sure the top of the new muffler lined up with the top of the old muffler and since it's smaller, gained a bit more clerance in the process. Still need to tackle the tailpipe of the system. They were more rugged with the bends on this piece and seem to have been trying to squash the pipe into radii that it wasn't meant to go. In doing so they've squashed the back of the pipe and severly restricted the size of the pipe. Can't really see any reason for it either as I'm sure there's plenty of room. The ol' boy suggested drilling a hole on the inside of the radius and using a piece of rod to belt the outside back into shape. Will fill the oxy bottle for the Torch and add some heat to make the job a bit easier. Sparky was also here today and finished off the lighting and powerpoints in the car port. Also added another 15A plug to the shed, so now can use the Plasma cutter to it's full potential. Bit late for this project, but should work well for the next.

Yeah ... don't use abrasive discs to cut the roof vent hole on paint, rust spots are a PITA. I cut the hole before I painted this time round.

Looks like a nice little project. Personally I'd keep the filter away from the bumper area. Even with the stock airbox, it is possible to hit a big puddle of water and push it into the engine. I plugged the hole where the standard airbox comes thru the sheetmetal there and just let the filter feed on air coming from around the headlight, but then I also relocated the battery (at reasonable expense) to give myself more room in that corner. The standard paper elements don't really do a bad job of filtering the air and don't have a lot of pressure drop. On an Aus Safari Pajero, we ran the standard paper element, in a cut up airbox to allow more in. Cheap as chips, so simply replace them every night. I went the finer filter on my car, more pressure drop than a paper element, but a fair bit more filtering capacity as well. Pre filter 'sock' around it, means I clean the 'sock' rather than the filter each time. Those KN wire mesh filters are hopeless for Gravel motorsport and not really a great idea for tarmac cars either.

Everyone loves pictures; GTZ Bonnet the template came from. Cut a hole. Stick a scoop in the hole. Took a little more massaging after those couple of pics to get it sitting perfect, but it's now in primer waiting for the bonnet. Intercooler, now with straight fins (some are ugly, but they're all straight) Interior mostly finished Was hoping to have the bonnet and guard in colour and bolted to the car by now, but as always, there's complications. Guard ended up having a crease in it, never looked at it that closely until I started sanding it. Panel beated it a bit, got straighter, but still had a ripple. Small bit of bog, ballsed up the bog (not enough hardener) so had to re-bog it, then sand it all flat (put on too much bog that the cheese grater wouldn't take off) still had a couple of bits that required putty. All looking good, so shoot some primer over it, should have known. Couple of patches were 'milky' as I sanded them, thought it was just me, but must be something in the paint, those areas reacted with the primer and now I've got to sand it back to bare. Paint when on fine on the guard (which I did first) started on the bonnet and got the mother of all runs, really didn't think I was heaping it on all that heavy either, so now I've got to sand the bonnet back as well. FML. Other than that, got a fair bit of the interior done. Araldyte worked well on the torn out screwholes, has a lot more screws holding it in there than before. Steering column in, brake adjusting cable sits OK. New Wilwood adjuster, works a treat, much better than the Rally Design adjuster I was using before. Didn't matter how tight you got it, it always wanted to turn rather than turning the cable. Wilwood one was cheap as chips off ebay too. Was going to swap the fire extinguisher in out of the other car and throw the seat in, but after the painting debacle I lost enthusiasm. Now have to pack up tools and get ready for the Christmas madness. Hoping to get a bit more done between Chrissy and New Years still. Sparky is coming back on the 2nd to install the power points and light in the carport, so that should make life a bit easier as well. Should definitely have it running by the end of January ...surely ?. Anyway peeps, have yourself a wonderful Christmas, stay safe and we'll catch you in the new year.

Jeez ... long time between posts and I don't seem to have achieved much either :bash: Intercooler was bolted on. The seller I bought it from, despite a request to send all the bolts, missed out most of the mounting bolts. So have had to cut up some tube and use that as spacers inside the rubber isolators. Finally got that sorted, but then decided to pull it off again and straighten out the fins. Been sitting on my kitchen table for the last couple of days as I spend 1/2hr here and there straightening it all out. Also had to mod one of the mounting brackets, not sure whether it got bent in the crash or was never right. Spent the other weekend sorting out the cutout in the bonnet for the scoop. Now have a cardboard template for fitting a GTZ scoop, stupid damn assymetric bolt patterns. Have the bonnet, scoop and RHF Guard rubbed down ready for paint, but this weekend's looking like being stupidly hot, so doubtful as to whether I'll get it painted. On the interior, got the gear shifter bolted in and laced up some of the battery cables. Drilled the holes for the floor tray, but haven't bolted it down yet. Gutter rail trims from the old wreck were in reasonable nick, though they wouldn't clip on themselves, so some Sikaflex helped out with, don't think they'll be coming off anytime soon. Will get some pics loaded up after this weekends efforts (which probably won't be fantastic given the heat and work christmas party induced hangover)