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Took the Integra on a sunday drive down a rally stage road - nothing special but I thought some of ya'll might like to see what the New Zealand countryside looks like. With the road being open and it being a logging route some times of the year I had no intention of cutting any closed corners so it's not a rollercoaster ride but I had some fun with it at least. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh7GKXb-lV4
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Sep 19, 2019 22:30
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Interesting, the red motor was pretty much dead in Australia by 1986 due to the introduction of unleaded fuel. Was Holden still dumping that old axe of a motor in NZ after 1986?
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Sep 21, 2019 13:41
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I think both of these cars were EFI to Carb conversion "black top" 202s - basically the last evolution of the red motor, after blue motor that was in some performance Toranas. I think the black motor in NZ hung around longer than it was welcome for some reason, probably since we don't have emissions standards over here and Holden loves to foist outdated crap on the populace regardless. Originally they came with an EFI manifold which, being a product of the 80s, is horrendously unreliable and gets about 10 whole mpg less than a properly tuned carb, generally holding the EGR valve open all the time and running 10-9 AFM 100% of the time when the useless sensors detect the car always running lean. The donor car had been fitted with a Falcon sourced double barrel 34ADM Weber (Which I'll be installing on the project car) for performance, while the project car has a single barrel Stromberg since it was a long distance daily driver. In Australia at least, the red/blue/black motor series was later replaced by the RB30E engine made by Nissan because Holden is just really bad at making engines. Spades fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 21, 2019 |
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Sep 21, 2019 21:38
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Going from Wikipedia, for some fun stats, the engines offered for the VK were: 1.9 L 54 kW (72 hp) Starfire 4 (New Zealand market only) 3.3 L 86 kW (115 hp) 'black' engine 3.3 L 106 kW (142 hp) EFI 'black' engine 5.0 L 126 kW (169 hp)-177 kW (237 hp) Holden V8 engine 4.9 L 196 kW (263 hp) Holden V8 engine The 4 cylinder black top was generally well known to be so abysmally slow that it was considered an active road hazard to own one, taking something like 30 seconds to get to the speed limit. Another Holden 4 cylinder was found in the Holden Camira, a car so bad that history has almost forgotten it completely. Spades fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Sep 22, 2019 |
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Sep 22, 2019 03:25
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Oh god the old Backfire four, it would shake alternators from brackets
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Sep 23, 2019 01:00
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I had a 4 cyl VK. Technically I still have it, it’s just a little upside down, down a bank. What a pile of poo poo. At least it didn’t kill me, though not for lack of trying.
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Sep 23, 2019 01:06
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Spades posted:
This post triggers me. In the US, you could get the As long as I live, no one will forget the j-cars. Hateful little poo poo-boxes. They were the cheap car when I started high school. Everyone had one, and if they didn't, they were sure to get granny's car soon. It wasn't hard to end up driving a ton of variants, some of them quite new. Almost every single one suuuuucked: turbo Pontiac, 2.8 V6 four door, 4cyl. coupe, the Z24, the convertibles, the Cimarron, all equally shaky, falling apart going down the road. The station wagons were kinda alright as a poverty-spec work car. Their only saving grace was being marginally better than the small(er) cars they replaced here in the US, which isn't saying much. GM had the balls to sell them (and the replacement Cavalier) in Japan, first as an Isuzu and later a Toyota. 
madeintaipei fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 09:25
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Corvette dropped off for repair and upgrading at C&M with no issues today - Carl seems to think that going off the complete lack of audible misfire that it's probably not an actual misfire problem and likely something else - I'm expecting the busted clutch, which just happened to start making noise a week or two before CELs started appearing. In a week or two's time, Dad will be dropping the Commodore off at the girl's place so that I might see if I know half the poo poo about rebuilding an engine that I pretend to do.
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Sep 23, 2019 10:53
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Update since last time - Corvette's getting close to fixed and the busted clutch pressure plate appears to have been confirmed as the issue. Some holdup with getting the VK has cropped up, but I'm also in the midst of buying a house which will make the work on restoring the car a lot easier in the future.
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Nov 7, 2019 05:40
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Also, while Marcus was driving the Altezza recently, the $30 firestone tires on the car did the thing that they're well known for: that's a failure to chooch
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Nov 8, 2019 20:04
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Your father appears as if he might have some sort of magical powers, does he have magical powers
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Nov 8, 2019 22:02
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bird with big dick posted:Your father appears as if he might have some sort of magical powers, does he have magical powers He is a level 2 weather wizard and also once created the only first gen Datsun 240 without rust not sure which is the greater achievement
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Nov 10, 2019 06:13
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The Corvette is now getting tuned with all the new gear hooked up. Some setbacks occurred when WeaponX sent the wrong fuel rails which meant C&M has had to improvise custom shackles to fit standard Holley rails onto the system, and the main radiator was not as much of a drop in install as initially advertised. However it looks like everything is now sorted out and we will hopefully be collecting the car and paying the king's ransom in install and tune fees. Looking in the range of 1000 horsepower but we will be likely stepping up to the 4.0 pulley to reduce output - a goal of 850whp at maximum.
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Dec 10, 2019 04:46
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 Also, while over at Steve's garage today I noticed this impossibly good looking car in for a service. 1966 Ferrari 330, worth something like a million dollars and looking like you'd need to be a european Archduke to drive one respectably. Edit: They made a convertible and somehow it's actually even more good looking: 
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Dec 10, 2019 07:24
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Spades posted:Edit: They made a convertible and somehow it's actually even more good looking: Looks like a high-rent 80s Alfa Romeo Spyder
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Dec 10, 2019 08:28
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Looks like a high-rent 80s Alfa Romeo Spyder That isn't a bad thing but... yeah, when I was looking at the thumbnail before I expanded it, I thought "that's a sweet looking Alfa".
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Dec 10, 2019 18:04
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Looks like a high-rent 80s Alfa Romeo Spyder In person the proportions of the 330 are pretty different, so I'd assume those would carry across to the vert - but it is a close resemblance, which I suppose makes sense for the italian-ness across them all. Does this mean that my next project car after the Commodore needs to be an Alfa Spider? Spades fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Dec 10, 2019 |
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Dec 10, 2019 20:54
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Spades posted:Does this mean that my next project car after the Commodore needs to be an Alfa Spider? Thrid gen Spider with a Mitsubishi Sirius motor. Cheap car, cheap van engine.
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Dec 11, 2019 02:43
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Annoying news - while the rest of it is now done, the Holley rails didn't quite fit the supercharger so we've had to go and overnight parts from Japa.... America for some Radium fuel rails that should actually fit. Downer is that this puts the project on hold until about the 20th next year. Carl has figured he might do it in his spare time around the new year but it's a bit much to ask to get the car by Christmas at this point. I'm waiting on a few progress photos from the car and will hopefully get those sent through sooner or later. I have also moved into the new place and have a start on getting my workshop sorted out. Will post some photos once I've made more meaningful progress than current - it's monsooning outside and making it impossible to do anything.
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Dec 20, 2019 03:24
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The Corvette is getting finished up soon, and when that's done I will be taking apart some of the Integra to give it a proper servicing because it's about time it got one. Tomorrow I get power ran to the barn which will also allow me to more easily get the barn ready for its floor to get concreted. After that I will have a space for the Commodore to be worked on. Since I haven't posted any photo content in a while I'm gonna post up some somewhat un-car related shed poking stuff.
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Jan 24, 2020 07:02
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So, the new house has a halfround barn, truly a masterpiece of modern design. It's full of groverhaus level constructions which I needed to rip out.   Removing that little mezanine floor on the right was fun as it spontaneously collapsed later in the day as it was only anchored to the wall by a bunch of nail strappings. The door was being held closed by nonsensically placed sprung cane bolts so I replaced them with a slide bolt. First time welding in a while and my MIG work is still messy.    Due to the geometry of the door the latch doesn't resist force well enough to serve as a lock as well, so I added a lock ring.     Also some rotted rear end chair frames were sitting around up on the mezanine that collapsed, so I ripped the mouldy cushions off them and turned them into outdoor chairs.   Tomorrow we get 15A single phase wired to the shed, which should serve the purposes it's needed for for the time being at least.
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Jan 24, 2020 07:45
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A more car related anecdote since most of the last post wasn't really automotive: Last week we went for a trip to the town of National Park (which seems like a wierd name for a town), borrowing the girl's mom's car since it has plenty of room. Was assured it never missed a beat and would be fine. -Drove about ten feet down the road before getting a petrol warning - car was down to emergency and the nearest open gas station was 150km away. Cool. Backed the car all the way up the road and gassed up from my lawn mower jerry can. -While driving, hit a bunch of night bugs and tried to spritz them off the windscreen but the reservoir was empty. Cool. Refilled the reservoir with a thermos of hot tea. It worked. -Got to the gas station and refueled the car, thought to check the oil. No oil in the car. good. Bought overpriced gas station oil top up. -Towards the end of the drive, noticed the car was overheating. Checked the radiator - no water in the overflow. Managed to narrowly avoid head gasket explosion by pulling off the road and giving the car some time to cool down, luckily being about 10 minutes from where we were going to stop anyway. guess that's one way to get your car serviced for free
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Jan 24, 2020 08:06
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Spades posted:-While driving, hit a bunch of night bugs and tried to spritz them off the windscreen but the reservoir was empty. Cool. Refilled the reservoir with a thermos of hot tea. It worked. Fuckin' 
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Jan 24, 2020 11:56
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Spades posted:A more car related anecdote since most of the last post wasn't really automotive: Did you check the tyres for air? I bet they were empty too 
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Jan 24, 2020 12:10
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slothrop posted:Did you check the tyres for air? I bet they were empty too actually, yeah: was something like 20 front left, 25 front right, 20 rear left, 45 rear right I guess all the air from the other tires got sucked into the rear right
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Jan 24, 2020 19:42
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Spades posted:A more car related anecdote since most of the last post wasn't really automotive: Gotta love borrowed cars.
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Jan 24, 2020 21:08
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It took a little longer than expected after rupturing the sewer line and also blasting the paddock line, but we got the power hooked up: We also moved 175 hay bales in an afternoon so made good use of the newly cleared paddock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvzbyzGoyMw   Today, Marcus (who is still borrowing the car) found that one of the caliper bolts ... fell out of the car. Good going, Altezza. Never change. Spades fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Jan 27, 2020 |
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Jan 27, 2020 08:53
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Initial setup is now done on the Corvette and I'll be picking it up next week - however due to a bunch of massive intake restrictions for the size of airflow we need I'll need to buy some more parts before it's up to par. The supercharger should be running at 18 psi, but due to the airbox and tb being too small for the airflow it's currently maxing out at 14psi which is cutting down power a lot - we're at about 800 crank horsepower, but with the intake side taken care of and pushing 18psi it would be making 1000+ due to hitting the supercharger's efficiency band, the extra cfm itself and the CAI/TB's own benefits. Found this when running the car on the dyno without the intake hose attached - vastly different performance to the tune of about 150hp. Even on stock model Z06s you can gain up to 1psi of extra compression by running an aftermarket CAI - translating into 30-50 extra hp - due to how the entire thing seems to be deliberately designed to choke the engine. Spades fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 04:38
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Glad to see another update. How’s the shed coming along?
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Feb 29, 2020 06:52
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The shed is coming along, although a bit slow as getting builders to do anything with any urgency is a pretty tough ask - in the meantime I have the prep taken care of though. Because of being buried in mud during the winter season and otherwise immersed, the bottom half foot or so of the barn was pretty rusty so I used a string line and cut it all off with the disc grinder. I then abraded all the remaining surface, acid derusted, neutralized it with baking soda and primed it with 2K epoxy car primer:  Then took the pop riveter and ran around the entire shed, adding a new skirting of polycarbonate cladding which should be happier having filth all over it from now on:   --- I finally got around to sorting out my paint gun setup with a much nicer system than before. In the past, I've had a single screw on pressure regulator + water trap with a two directional flex elbow at the gun end. This worked ok for spraying when you weren't switching guns, but now with three guns with different purposes each it's a pain in the rear end. The elbow also meant you couldn't easily fit the gun into tight places, and having the water trap right next to the gun means that when overfilled the water trap would start dripping onto paintwork. Picked up 2 metres of high grade 10mm air hose, a pair of fuel line clamps and some incredibly cheap and lovely fittings because all of what I needed was in the same pack for like $10.  Clamped the line with new fittings and added a seperate regulator and plug to the guns, then added a standalone plug to each end of the water trap.  The water trap now sits at the base of the 2 metre hose, which, since it's at the end of a 10 meter hose, still traps all the water from the air cooling effect of those 10 meters. Also means it's now possible to get into tight places and has bought the weight of the gun down a lot.
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Feb 29, 2020 08:26
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Borrowed the neighbour's ute for picking up hay as that's now a thing one must do when they own a .... farm-ish. In return for the use of the vehicle, offered to change the oil for parts cost.  Checked the dipstick after haying and there seemed to be no oil on the stick so we added about two litres from a bunch of diesel oil bottles, but didn't see it climb the stick any. So drained the oil....  So the ute must have had something like 1.5 litres of oil. The 4m40 takes about 9 litres. wow After pouring the oil out into the waste drum some of it was stuck to the inside of the drain pan.  Filled it back up and the truck seemed to gain about 50hp after it was no longer probably dry seizing every piston for a few degrees of each crank rotation. --- Decided that while I'm waiting for the concreting to be done I might as well build the workbench I'll use when I'm actually in there. Cut some lengths, planed and trimmed them to the right size and used the router to cut (crude, this is just a workbench) some mortises and tenons from them:    Glued up with extra strong PVA:  Mounted wheels on the vice-opposite side:   Cut and fit a tabletop and mid floor then got the vice set up.  
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Feb 29, 2020 08:35
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After using the workbench for a few days, cable management was proving a pain in the rear end so I made a powerboard mount to make stuff simpler: Took note of the tabletop holder's location  Rebated a board to fit  Cut a guide route for the cord and added screws for holding the powerboard itself  And mounted   -- Also, while searching the property I noticed the presence of what I assume is some kind of Tiki god  On no information at all, I presumed that the best way to prevent a curse was to provide him with clothing accessories. 
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Feb 29, 2020 08:39
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That was unexpected.
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Feb 29, 2020 15:38
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Get ya boy a muffler.
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Mar 1, 2020 09:44
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Picked up the Corvette today and drove it back from Auckland. Will upload some pictures later when it's light out again. Impressions are it's a whole lot faster and a lot more louder, probably too loud because with the exhaust turned over to sport mode it's ear rendingly loud and you need to keep the windows closed so I don't think that's actually any good to be honest. The new clutch is alright though I'd be lying if I'd say it's made as big of a difference as some people would make out going from a dual mass to lightweight flywheel actually does. Really it doesn't do anything better than it used to and I don't know at this point if it was a worthwhile use of time and money or not. Overall I'm more interested in getting down to actually fixing the Commodore or something as I don't think I really derive much enthusiasm from actually driving the car anymore.
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Mar 6, 2020 08:41
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I'll need to get somebody with a camera that has a decent microphone to record the sound, but imagine "very loud race boat engine" and you're probably pretty close. In the meantime, exhaust closed vs. exhaust opened with a half rev. The sound is approximately twice as loud in both modes as stock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucFdYBVTWYU Some photos. The car mostly looks the same on the outside.    Inside, the supercharger fits mostly correctly (slightly rubbing on the hood liner which I'll need to sort out eventually as it does slightly mess with the hood fitment). New additions are the radium fuel rails, supercharger, low profile valve covers, coil pack relocation, wiring loom for the secondary fuel rail and the fuel (return?) regulator. C&M did a pretty nice job of trimming the plastic rain gutter so that all of the junk clears it. Could be neccessary to do something about the window washer hose but it hasn't shown any signs of melting from touching the supercharger lid yet. 
Spades fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Mar 7, 2020 |
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Mar 7, 2020 05:46
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Little update - was meant to be starting work on the Commodore or HQ restorations by about now, but NZ's full-country quarantine began on the 25th - a day before the 26th when I was going to have the concrete poured - so in the meantime I'll need to cool my heels for a while.
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Apr 1, 2020 08:35
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As a kiwi living in frenchieland this is such an awesome thread to peruse; your passion for shitboxes while you own a pretty sweet freedomachine is refreshing. Keep on keeping on.
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Apr 1, 2020 16:29
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We're almost back now finally - a month later and the restrictions have dropped enough for me to wave at the tradies through a glass window from a minimum of 2 metres away while they concreted the barn. With China still closed up it will be a while before I can get a hoist in, and the concrete needs a week or two before I can consider putting down a workshop floor coating. But I will look into getting everything painted and cleaned and moving the gear in soon. Also going to be looking at the usual pile of homemade cabinetry that seems to always exist in every stock photo of a garage but is conspiciously absent from every actual real life workspace, because why not really Spades fucked around with this message at 07:23 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 07:10
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 05:14 |
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So some more updates - C&M has sold me on a further upgrade to the car, an 'interchiller' system like the one on the Dodge Demon. The kit we'll be using is from an Australian company and basically adds a simple switchable system that lets you use AC gas to cool the intercooler fluid. The interchiller is so efficient at cooling intercooler fluid that the last car they installed it on was holding a 10 degree C / 50 degree fahrenheit intake temperature - e.g. literally lower than an NA IAT. On a stock LT4 Camaro the interchiller install led to a gain of 50hp so with the Z06 we're expecting similar or more. At the 800 or so hp it makes at the moment it has minor traction issues so adding more power won't help with those, but it's also 'free' power - more fixing the IAT heat causing a loss of HP than actually adding more air to the engine. It should be the last major upgrade required on the car as it's pretty much pointless to modify for greater power at this point - the car already should push a 9 with a proper launch and goes as fast as you could reasonably want it to. I may look into a throttle body and air filter set down the line but more for the sake of better response than any increase in power. This weekend I'm having a tradie mate come around to do some work on the property - retaining walls for a vegetable garden - and in return for his work I'll be doing a bunch of panelbeating and bodywork on his trade van. I'll try to get some photos given the chance. Now that the country has opened up again I've picked up my first air tools as well - a RUPES brand industrial air sander that can cut a drat 2x4 in half in 10 seconds flat (but also sands slightly less quickly if you ask it nicely too) and a Pneutrend 1/2 impact with 880ftlb of peak torque. Together they cost only about $200 as both were previous gen models from their companies. Spades fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Jun 16, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 06:57
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