ke70dave

As far as I'm.aware alot of modern cars have some level of oil usage issue. Cause they run such rediculusly light oil for fuel consumption reasons. My wife's 2011 forestor is very bad, mates audi is quite bad too.

GTI is rated by many to be the best all rounder car available in its class. Smallish, enough room for 4/5 people and very nice performance. My only experience with golf is a mate had a 2008 diesel turbo one with the first DSG. the car it self was brilliant but the DSG i didn't like that much. but apparently things have progressed significantly since and they are much better now. DSG was great at gear changes on road except, like all dual clutch transmissions, they suffer on low speed monouvers as basically the car is trying to guess what you want to do by riding the clutch. We drove it to sydney and back when it was basically brand new and it was very nice for long trips. Best test for them is to go to a busy round about and see how it reacts trying to sneak into a gap. There is deifinatly a delay between when you put your foot down and when the car goes. you get used to it relativity quickly but at first its pretty strange. I too could be just too picky cause there are plenty of them getting around and noone else seems to care. The DSG has a fancy gearbox oil that is quite expensive but i think its just a matter of getting it serviced when required and it keeps going. Probably not as expensive now as every car seems to have fancy gearbox oil. If i need a small run around car again (if work doesnt extend my contract that is up 30th june.......) I would be quite tempted on a golf or a polo. They seem to offer great value for $ and many of them have done stacks of kilometres and seem to keep going.

Just read back a few pages and saw that kaizen plug and plag adaptronic! where on earth did you get that! Does kaizen garage still exist? Good to see some project progress.

Well 6 months in the making and we have cold AC! soooo cold! Just in time for winter! haha. I ended up making my own hoses using a kit from "speed ac spares" up in north qld. dunno how many ppl will read this but these guys were extremely helpful. https://speedyairspares.com.au/ The hoses came with a set of hand crimpers that were surprisingly easy to use. All very simple. and significantly cheaper than all the quotes i got done. (like 60bucks per hose as opposed to $200) AC man came around this morning and gave it a vac test and everything was all good. 20mins later i had cold air! So its been a saga but lots of fun and good learning experience. learnt how to tig weld in the process so there will be some more tig welding projects in the future. Like most things turns out AC is not that complicated. So next step is going to be relocating the battery to the boot. the 325i and 318is came with the battery in the boot. Dunno why the 323i didnt. but i dont think the 318i did either. I have a battery box and isolator already, just need to get some cable and figure out a way to hold the battery box in. I could get the oem battery tray etc but i think a plastic box secured nicely in the corner will be neater than the oem.

Right well time marches on and waits for noone! Progress has been slow and steady on AC project. - TX valve has been replaced - painful job. found various types of 0-rings on the old tx valve. some green ones, some black ones, and even some brown ones (viton?). all repalced with new r134a compliant green ones. - bracket is finished. did have some dramas with it when i first put it on that i had forgotten about the crank angle sensor bracket. had to notch it out of the back (not in photo im afraid). but will be good. in heinsight i probably should have hung the compressor a bit lower but it will still work. fine. - I bought a TIG welder and have been learning to TIG. Since the new AC compressor has slighlty different sized pipes than the old one i had to weld on 2 fittings to the hard lines, one shown in the photo. Then i bought some rubber pipe and crimps and a crimp tool to make my own hoses from a shop up north that specialises in hot rod AC. i pressure tested my welds with house mains water pressure (~450kpa). Once i get my hoses made i will get my vaccum pump onto it to test before taking it to the shop for gas. So hopefully i am on the home stretch of AC! might get the bracket put back in on the long weekend and start on the pipes. in unrelated news i attended a lake side "euro day" a few weeks back. really good fun, never driven on lakeside before. what a cool race track. heres a photo of my brother and i with big grins on with a Ferrari Dino in hot pursuit! had a blast. e30 performed floorlessly. Didnt explode so my DIY road tune must be ok.

Well dreaming is free, but it has an emotional cost. I was going to say that $12-15k seems to buy something pretty good, but that appears to be pre covid..... Now it seems to be $18-20k.......which is far to much for a car that will lose value...fast... I'm sure there will be a basket case i can buy for $5k soon enough....

ah i was wondering when the GR86 would come up for discussion. I quite like the front of it, but the rear is a bit too much.....BMW Z4? Front end certainly looks better than the GT86 in my opinion. I think Toyota are to be commended for sticking with the GR-86 as by all accounts the GT86 was not exactly a financial success. Only just broke even. 2.4L in the gr86, as opposed to the 2L GT86. Peak torque at 3700rpm? instead of 6400rpm or whatever it was. Should make it much more friendly to drive on the street. Ive been having evil thoughts about buying an older gt86....

looks alright to me! A little lower perhaps but not too much.

What is the current RRP on a new one? can you even buy one at the moment? The idea of buying a car and selling it so soon seems absurd to me. Makes me think the seller was just "Seeing what they could get" without being committed to sell.

That thing is gross. But i see plenty of crossovers around so it will probably sell quite well if it comes out.

Ah yes a cavoodle. Id love one of them. turns out im alergic to dogs though. Even the parents poodle! damn you asthma.

ol' mate with the ladder has a bit on there. That is a very fluffy dog. What sort of dog is that?

I think i recall an automatic change from "dose" to "does". The mods playing fun games back in the day. "dose" being what the cool kids call the noises from a VL commodore with no blow off valve.

nice one. Are you enjoying your microchips? (hopefully you realise this is a joke!)

Something cool about transfer case instructions prominently shown. sort of a "this car means business" sign. 30yr old 6clr diesel non turbo. damn i bet that is slow! haha

I think it will be quite the cult classic that car. super cool. Maybe i should put my nice shirt on and turn up at a toyota dealership and take one for a spin. Hey why I havent i thought of that before. I see the auction has cracked the 10k mark with 3hrs to go....

Seems like 90% of those GRs went to "influences". You've got to build that hype! I have seen 2 of them out in the wild though. One in Ipswich and one on the highway half way between Ipswich and Brisbane. Ill take a GR yarris with the suit of Litchfield upgrades attached please.

nice! sadly it seems photobucket has deleted all the old photos. looking forward to new ones:)

Well things have progressed slowly. Attached you can see the setup i have come up with. Its a sanden SD5h09 compressor, grand total of $350 brand new. As opposed to my only other option was an R134a rebuild oem compression from USA, for $1600... Being a standard size i was able to buy those laser cut adjustable brackets from a company down in NSW that specialises in putting AC on things that dont come with AC. I then got a bit of 10mm steel and made up the plate. managed to drill 4 holes in the right place to bolt it on. All that is left is to weld it together and then clean up the bracket. You can see where ive started drawing the outline of where i might cut it off. But anyway, will update once its cold!

Wagon cars are best cars. lookin' good loaded up. is the black around the front headlights oem? Its crazy how we have all gone mad for "SUVs" when they often have less space inside and worse handling characteristics. (I cant really comment we have a forester.....). back in the day i recall all the parents of friends had wagons. commodore and falcon of course, but camry, magna, skyline/pinyada, corona all popular in their day. Now its just weird mini 4wd things that aren't 4WD! and this was just the 90s. 70s and 80s all wagons! We are looking to swap out the forester for a 4wd to do some trips, but if we weren't i think id definitely be advocating for a wagon of sorts. all the benefits of a sedan with extra space convenience. and look at that shiny new fence!

yep round the wrong way, fixed it up. I am almost there on the AC stuff. will get some photos at some stage. I ended up buying a generic Sanden modern compressor as new OEM just wasn't available anywhere and am half way through fabricating a bracket to mount it to the engine....picking up the last bit of steel tomorrow! All going well it might be complete over the weekend. The evaporator and condenser were determined to be acceptable by a local AC guy, he reckons once I have the compressor installed, just got to swap out the TX valve and put in a new dryer and it should be good to go. Which is good as it is SOO DAMN HOT lately.

I saw a delorian the other day on the road. on the way to Victoria point up here in qld. Pretty unique car and story. Thats the end of my delorian story. As for the motivedvd xr6 turbo. I have sort of been following from the beginning, I was surprised they were able to buy one for ~3k. its basically a budget jzx100! right?:P

haha i am not that committed! Pluss that looks to be an e92 convertible. yuck! haha rust to rust is actually chemically correct to. since steel starts out as iron oxide....ah i need a coffee. I suppose i should update on the dodgy dave's panel beating day. what started as "lets just take the bonnet" off resulted in the below. I ended up removing all of the AC components. with the intention of assessing condition and determining if they need to be replaced. someone has been playing in here (which is expected) and there is a huge miss match of parts. Looks like i am basically up for a new of everything. some notes: - mixture of original black orings (R12) and new green orings (R134a compliant) - funnily enough the green ones were found in the easy to get places, the black ones in the hard to get... - a generic R134a TX valve has been put in in place of the R12 one (will get a new one of these, genuine is about $70) - original full copper evaporator under the dash (very cool, as the new ones are all aluminium. Hopefully this is salvageable. I am going to remove it and clean it up. worst case some brazing will fix any damage) - This is going to be a pain in the ass to remove. as its designed to be easily accessible to LHD cars that don't have 3 pedals and a steering column in the way. - All but one hose is trashed. these hoses are all available brand new (around $140 each). they are on the exhaust side so its no wonder they perished. I might actually look into custom hoses as i would like to re-route the hoses if i can - they sort of get in the way of...everything. -Compressor original "made in west germany" R12 compliant -R134a pressure switch and receiver dryer - looks like the newest thing in the system - everything i read suggests to buy a new dryer/reciver - they only cost 60$ - condenser- looks to be original R12 tube and fin unit. its only a single pass where as the r134a ones are dual pass (cause r134a isn't as good as the atmospheric destroying delicious r12). Probably just get a new one of these as they only cost about $140. -condenser fan is original but it looks fine to me. I also realised recently that my condensor fan acts as a secondary cooling fan for the engine, with a 2 speed temp switch in the radiator giving two speeds of fan (ie turns on slow at X deg, and then goes fast when it gets to X deg.) there is a massive resistor on the fan that i assume does the slow speed. This has never worked as long as i have had it, and i have just relied on the mechanical engine fan. So this is something to investigate further. but anyway, i ended up removing most of the front end. Attacked it with degreaser and a scrubbing brush. gave the engine a good clean at the same time. Came up quite good. Painted that strip under the head lights, touched up the paint on the front valance thing (had surface rust around most edges). Put a different kidney grill on that i bought years ago. mine was quite broken and cracked. I also managed to straighten out the chrome bumper a little bit more. Its still not perfect. but its better than it was. I actually ran out of paint but this was the weekend when QLD had their lock down due to the....thing. So I did the best i could and put it all back together. The bonnet isn't perfect but its up to the point now where a bit of fillter in the dents will get it sorted. might see how enthusiastic i get after i finish this carport i am building at home....I do have a spray gun and a compressor here. but its a tiny compressor. Maybe an upgrade is in order Anyway, couple of photos of some old shitty AC bits that you might...enjoy? Best part is when you stand back about 10m you cant see any of the imperfections i'm talking about.

The good old ae92. great cars. yours got a carby or efi? I would suggest a 20V or a 16V but holy moly the prices of 4ages have gone through the roof. Maybe a honda k24 😉

oh nicely done. How do they offsets compare to the old ones? they look a bit more sunken in on the rear?