carbonboy

The Chaser for the win! :greenbounce:

1063nM of torque?!?! Meesa likey!! :yes: :yes: :yes: That equals warp-speed button doesnt it?

I have been stuck at home child-minding so I can't work on my car, but I can go out to my shed & have a crack at some welding practice! Here's some shots of my first attempts, I can at least see some improvement (albeit slowly). Am free again tomorrow night to work on it, thinking of tackling the rust along one side of the car at a time. But which to do first? :hmm:

Happy Birthday dude! :party: You're also one step/year closer to lower insurance premiums :lol:

Gunmetal grey flat front.... *drools* :y:

Now thats just moronic, when I'm in the work van I always make sure I'm out of sight/hearing of the boss before disengaging the TCS on dirt roads :wink: 2.4 tonne Vito Rally Van for the win!

Cheers mate! Speaking of panels, I have to get some shots up of the front guards, passenger doors & the hatch I have sitting around in primer. These were done shortly after the interior was primered. Also have to get in touch with an old work colleague who has a sandblasting cabinet, I have a lot of bits I could use it for i.e door/bonnet/hatch hinges. The work to do seems endless, but with primer I can SEE progress! :)

I just read the entire thread from the start... holy wow you guys have put some time & work into this! You deserve the best possible results! :y: Mate, YOUR enthusiasm helps keep ME pushing through on my build, so THANKYOU! I'm doing a lot of stuff for the first time as well, but heck if a guy over a decade my junior is going hard at it...I'd better get my butt off the couch & get moving! Oh wait, I'm child minding & its hockey night :lolcry: Keep it up!

I feel your pain, my AE80 had niether of these so I bolted on some strut braces & a front swaybar I had spare from my Twin-Cam, made a world of difference! Maybe swipe one from a GTi/SX at a wreckers?

This may be a bit late but welcome to Rollaclub! :) I've heard things about your former forum, sound like the same things I hear about bootlosing...I mean boostcrusing :laff: From the parts write-up it seems you've put a lot of time & thought into mods, it shows as the car looks sweet & I'll bet goes like stink! Sorry to read about the semi-incident but happy to see that its repaired & back on the road! I'm loving the camber on those front wheels! Actually, the wheels themselves. :wub: Missing tabs for front grille = Zipties for the win!!! You drive an AE86...don't you guys keep heaps of these in your boot? :P

Sweet wheels, they look nicer cleaned up. Good to see someone differing from the "paint my brakes red" norm :yes: Pics of the rest of the car?

Rims look sweet, nice choice! :y: What width are they just out of curiosity?

I figured that I was gonna be doing a lot of staring at the engine bay in the near future so I may as well make it pretty... :lolcry: Yup yup, still practising butt welding 1mm steel with oxygen/acetylene to do the sunroof infill piece. Almost got the hang of it, its a matter of getting the fitment perfect & the technique right, have gone through lots of strips of offcuts from wrecked panels to come to this conclusion lol. Fortunately the spare wheel tub is 2.5mm steel so it is a heck of a lot easier to do without blowing holes or distorting the snot out of it all. :glare:

In my previous job we made the masts & booms for racing sailing yachts in the 30-100 foot size range. The most common one we built was for a 49 footer, the mast alone cost $180k+ & the yacht it went into cost aroud $2.3million with sails. This meant ugly sections were NOT ALLOWED! Then again if I shelled out that kinda money I'd be picky about the finish too :laff: Alas the GFC kicked in & $2m yachts became a 'want' not a 'need', work dried out so I found a new career. Wasnt picky as long as it paid the rent & funded the project. :wink: A lot of this work 99.99% of people wont see unless they're helping me service it (i.e the underbody), but I sleep better at night knowing its done. :P Show car? Well I would like to show off my handiwork once its done so HOPING to have it out & about for the next Picnic At Hanging Rock Show (with the TCCAV crew of course!). Not destined for that entirely though, its the 'weekender/trackday hack'.

Leftover pics to due to upload limts. :wink: This spot needs a little more than spray putty to make disappear methinks...lol Yes I made allowances for my strut braces to bolt on & not damage this. :wink:

Ran out of upload space in the last post, continuing on here. By the by the greeny-grey is the orginal primer I sprayed, the grey stuff is the pressure pack primer for touch ups & the pink stuff is spray putty. Oh yes can't forget, the time consuming job of running a tap through all the threads in the front end prior to primer. Using a small brush to solvent wash them out was fun too! By the by for those that have been following along, this build thread is now UP TO DATE! :yes: :y: :yes: Completed the primer works over Thursday/Friday/Saturday, today is my rest day. Next plan of attack is to do the cut n shut of the rusty spare wheel tub & the 'adjustment' of the hole for the sunroof. :wink: Oh, getting rid of the rust around the windscreen too!!!

After the hit of rust converter & the wash off, it was a quick rub over everywhere with finer grit paper just to scuff up the surface nice & fresh for primer. Ooh...shiny! Blurry, but shiny. :) Had to get a shot of me in the engine bay, have been inside this thing for what seems like forever & am glad to soon be out of it! Front end passenger side. Front end drivers side. So here comes the good bits, I now have primer on the front end!!! :dance: :dance: Upon closer inspection with a bright light the next day I had discovered that I had missed a few bits that were near impossible to get to with the spray gun I was using. :( So I spent the whole day scuffing up all these areas plus a few other areas I wasnt happy with, dusted it all off, washed it down & set about doing touch ups with both pressure pack primer & spray putty for the bits I felt needed a bit more meat. Apologies for the strange appearance of these shots, the light I was using was flickering like a mofo!

The strut towers hadnt come up as smooth as I'd like, so yet another hit of bog. Yet more rust that had formed & needed treating...grr!!! :abuse: After sanding. Still not happy with this one, so more bog! A close up of the pain in the rear section of the firewall I mentioned a little earlier. Some shots taken prior to rust converter treatment. Front passenger wheelarch. Front drivers wheelarch. Drivers strut tower. Passenger strut tower. Firewall. AFTER rust treatment. Pain in arse area. Drivers side equivalent. Drivers side chassis rail area.

Whoa, I think this will be the first Ecotec powered vehicle that will actually be fast! :wink: What brakes are you thinking of upgrading to? This will be a weapon, keeping an eye on this build! :y:

WGMG is having spent all my money on bits I need for working on the car & not having enough left over to buy a 6 pack of beer to enjoy while sitting back to enjoy the hard work done. :( A glass of Milo just doesnt have the same effect...

The only thing that would please me more would be a dead feral cat tree :yes:

I've been using ACL gaskets with a 4KC, 2AC & 4AGE engines & have not had a problem with them. Reasonably priced, readily available & havent had a failure yet... I used VHT Extreme High Temp Silver on my 4AGE extractors, drove the car about 10,000kms with them on & the paints still looking good. don't buy the cheap stuff! The car's looking awesome dude! :y: Love the colour, the styling & those rims!

Ahh yes, that'd do it! Pity, it'd be fun driving it around with them otherwise. :yes: I had enough trouble explaining where my interior was & why it was registered as a 2 seater to some officers. Just wondering, are you using the standard airbox? Also, on the engine do you have a metal pipe that runs from the exhaust manifold through some diaphragms to the intake manifold? I believe this is part of the EGR system which thankfully I don't have. There's a blank spot on the intake manifold where it should bolt up but no system, just wondering if you've got it or not.

The Tincan's looking awesome Matt! :y: What did the cops have to say about the stickers? Or just avoiding attention? I told a few mates who were headed to the GP to keep an eye out for someone flying the flag for the AE82's. :rocknroll:

Time for another update methinks. Rust is a pain in the proverbial, no sooner than I finish working on one particular area than the one I was working on previously has decided to lose its shiny grey metal loveliness & go a nasty rust brown. :( This cars turning into the Sydney Harbour Bridge, no sooner than you finish at one end... So I decided to concentrate my efforts on the front end of the car, from the firewall forward leaving the A pillars to be done after rust treatment. Speaking of which it was a hit of rust converter on all rust affected areas on the front of the car then back into sanding. The only thing I don't like about rust converter (aside from the smell) is the 3 stage wash process afterwards, with water rag, metho rag then dry rag. Its okay for small areas but when doing large areas its a time consuming affair! Applying more bog as needed. Sure the brake booster will hide this area but while I'm here..... This area of the firewall near the main chassis rail was an absolute *insert nasty word here* to deal with, it bulges out like this to accomodate the heater/air-con unit. It was difficult to get to to grind, messy to bog & PAINFUL to sand (my fingers are too big). I was not going to have it as the only ugly spot in the engine bay. I picked up on a seam in the interior I had missed shortly before I was going to spray primer, thought about not doing it & realised I would probably see that seam every time I looked in the rear view mirror, it would annoy me, so it was bogged & sanded. :) The black crosses were my reminder of where to do little spot fills , whether I'd under-bogged, over-sanded, missed a spot or had an air bubble. There were lots & lots of these & after staring at grey metal for hours on end, they can be very easily missed & yet ANOTHER mix of bog has to be made! :laff: Found more bits I didnt like, little ripples formed in the metal underneath where my ignition coil is mounted have a habit of collecting dirt there, so out with the bog & time to smooth it out.