JDM55

just out of interest is there any one from melbourne that can get leafs reset cheaper than 350 ???? been getting a few quotes and thats what i seem to be coming up with,I'm sure there must be some one else who can do the same job for cheaper??? pedders is a rip, ive had a set done for 240 a few years ago, any one ???

thanks ,yeah thats what i figured too, i left it in there hands so hopefully they can sort it out ,and not charge me a lung a left leg and a ball sack ,lol , cars getting there , this weekend i should know if the radiator is all good and ill be off again full steam ahead!!

soo not much of an update today , tho have been working on the car,friday was a bit of a f#$%, i took the radiator down to a shop to get the oulets welded up ,but the guy told me that i can't use it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! reason being that the radi desgin is a 4 pass system, the water goes in the top crosses over to the over side,then drops down and crosses back to the other side so on and so on, now if he welded the outlet on the hole that i made , water would go in and only go thru one part of the rad!!! i just thought a radi worked like ,water goes in one side water comes out the other cooled , so i was wrong :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: the guy told me there is plates inside the tanks that direct the water and for it to work those plates need to be removed,he was saying to remove the tanks and make new ones, but the whole reason i bought this rad was to keep it cheap as possible, making new tanks and basicly rebuilding the radiator would cost big dollars, and they said for a full custom one it would cost 650 to 700, stuff that!!!!!!!! so i left the place very disapointed , :sob: i was on a good roll there for abit things were working out well, any way i got back to the work shop and decided to try and save the rad, theres no way i could aford a brand new custom one,that is just out of the question, so only option is save this radiator!! and i need it very soon so i can get the engine started, as that is my priority at the moment, so to see if this guy was right i sliced the bottom off both tanks to see if there were indeed plates in there.... there was :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: ,any way a very long story short it was a nite of making crazy contraptions and extended long drill bits i managed to hack out the plates blocking the water flow, spent a long time blowing out all the alloy chips and shavings then flushed it out with water, it was a mission and a half, needless to say i think i saved it ,and only extra welding that is needed is to weld the 2 bottom tank plates back on, sat morning was a drive out to the rad shop once more,and showed them what id done, they said it will work now and just requies all the welding up, so ive left it up to them to sort that out, wont get it ack till end of next week , but at least it should be fairly straight forward to fit it up then, next adventure was on the way back from the rad guys i went to pirtech which is a hose place ,they make all sorts of hoses, went in and had to get some fuel lines made up with speed flow fittings, as the last few attemps have failed and resulted in leaks, so this time i got them to use the proper hose with the proper fittings and they fitted the hose ends, so i expect that there SHOULD be no leaks from those fittings, but apperently theres no gaurentees , so its just another case of dealing with people in the automotive industry, any way i put them on to the car and will see how they go , getting back from the shop with some fuel lines.... in this pic theres lots of cash laying on the ground lol, -6 braided lines with speedflow fittings(not cheap )stainless bolts ,washers,nuts,and s/s hose clamps rolling around on the ground and got them on... after that i worked abit on the boot .alot of wiring and fitted the amp board, and got most of the speaker wires hooked up,trying to keep it tydy but so many wires! is crazy, but looks ok i guess

errghh more money more work and as it is i don't trust the set up ,maybe if it performs to hopes ,of not leaking that is, later on i could ,

so tonite,just spent a few hours and made a fuel line that goes from the pump to a small filter, thought it be a good idea to have a filter before the pump,keep the crap out of it, then made a small bracket to secure the filter abit better,even put some rubber on the inside of the bracket.. the other cover is over the fuel pump, made that just to keep the dirt and stones off it, so now i just have to make a line from the filter to the surge tank, abit more tricky that one will have some funky bends in it,

cheers,sloooeeely coming together, brave to fitting up the radiator? haha need something in there,it may not stay there for good but to get me going it should be fine,as for the hoses ,i bought a full s13 hose kit on ebay , there alittle bit pricey ,i just didnt want a hole bunch of random hoses ,so ive done the best i could to use hose from the kit, even tho ive had to custom a few of them , its seems to be working out with them,theres a hole bunch of differnt bends to play with . the radiator hoses for me were far to big ,and ive had to mod them a fair bit, id say jump on ebay and search the silicone hoses on there , sure you can get the top and bottom hoses seperately .

haha thanks man ,glad you liking , I'm trying my best ,its just hard with out funds for parts but I'm trying to get things happening cheers for the comment :)

HAHA I'm going hard out now!!! realy wanta get it started asap :) yeah thought about the bead thing probably should have done that ,ill try some clamps for start up and see how it goes,pumped now stuff starting to happen,and massive relief after dealing with the engineer so full steam ahead!! :y:

this is where the bottom tube was before and this is where it will sitt this is the bottom hose from the s13 kit, it was waayy to long, so i choped it down a bit and started to play around with it,this took a while but started to get it a bit closer to fitting and it was away from the alternator , the bottom hose was a good bend it took it away from the alternator,the top one was good to but to long,just needed to close up the gap and get the right angle cuts... after more stuffing around ,got it pretty close much better looks like its spose to be there some more custom haha found a vacumm cleaner tube that was the right dia to fit into the 2 hoses,used silicone sealer on the insides and the outsides of the tube ,joined it all together and let it set, mite need to put some clamps on there later,dunno i sealed the F#$@ out of it, pretty proud of my custom radiator hose haha now just have to get the rad parts welded up and i can then fit all back in and get some water happening!

went for a rumage again and whata ya know came across 2 alloy tubes both 36mm dia,one was a bit short and the other had a heater hose coming off it , after a bit of thought i figured i could use the heater hose tube on the top left and the shorter one on the bottom right,both tubes elimate the need for step downs, which is great plus they will both be in a much better position to make them work, so i tackled the top left one first, i cut off the heater hose line to start with so i was left with more of a tube ,then i rememebed i needed to fit the thermo fan sensor into the line some how,so this turned out to be good also, i widened the heater hose hole a bit bigger and got a alloy fitting to sit snugg into the hole... then taped the tube into a ruff spot and turned to what hoses i had,these hoses are from a s13 kit i got ages ago, so had a good look at these to see what i could make work or at least get a good start with.... as you can see, nothing lines up nice, some more thinking and came up with a rather crude and savage way to get around the problem,needless to say,i didnt want to do this!! but for the greater good of the build and to move forward ,i ended up doing some chopping..... this is a 50 dollar hose and here i am chopping it with a razor blade,i didnt even knw if this was going to work,,, also the outlet needed chopped, specialy didnt want to do this, since i spent a good amount of time to hand sand and polish it up! :( and the test fit ,bolted the end back on ,now to see if i can make this work! i must be crazy..... my idea was to fitt the tube to the left side on the top, then use the choped hose,to go to the choped outlet. more on that later. not only did i butcher the hoses and the outlet but time to attack the radiator too, first part was to chop of the top outlet completley and make up a plate to block that off,and semi chop the bottom tube,i found the 36mm tube i had fits inside the 38mm tube and cut out a hole in the other side... hole cut tube chopped and hole smoothed bottom tube chopped out made up a alloy plate for the top hole this is the 36mm tube sitting inside the 38mm chopped off tube, its not snugg but wont mater,I'm going to try find some one to alloy weld them for me and this is where the top tube with adaptor will go

and fitted to the radi .... chunky.... wired up a relay for the fan ,so the wires are there when its time to connect up... this shows how close the mount of the radi got to the intercooler piping, real close but no touchy :) so heres the first challenge on this thing, the bottom tube is a bit long to start with and is aiming right at the alternator, also the tube is 38mm and i need a smaller 36mm sizing, so thats the first mission.... next mission is, the top tube is on the other side, and it to is a 38mm tube ,again i need a 36mm tube, i looked at this one for a while and figured if i had to i could just do an extention to get to where its spose to be, but that ended up with needing 90 degree bends,extra tubing ,a step down from 38 to 36 etc so in the long run it could turn into 100 dollars, just to extend that tube plus it wouldnt be that tidy, going to have to modd some more stuff,suprise suprise...

so this one is a pretty big part,and probably going to be a big costly in the end , but being broke i have to try to use just the parts i have and spend as little as possible. THE RADIATOR theres a big gap rite there... so radiator.... well probably going to a pain in the ass this one,i rung around a few places and found a full custom one would cost me between 650 to 700 plus, then need fans ,and custom hoses etc, could be upward of 800 dollars by the time its all sorted,no good for me don't have 800 dollars for a radiator, so have to take a cheaper option. now a couple of things before i get right into this, first of all my radiator support panel has been choped and changed, so reusing the stock radiator could be done but my old one is pretty toasted, so not realy a good option,i know a few people have used the factory radiator , and I'm sure it would work ok,but I'm having to buy a radiator any way since i havnt goto a usable one. i hunted and hunted on line for a while before doing this, it was a mission to find someting that,could be used or modded in a very small way to get to work,finiding the core size first of all has been the hardest, spoken to several people about what they have used, and i nearly went with a holden torana unit, it was a big radiator, probably would have worked realy well but ,again after a close look into spec sizes and fittment ,i deiced not to go that path, out of shear luck,i came across a MAZDA RX2 alloy radiator on ebay , the specs were actulay very good and matched my rad suport very closely. still a few things on it that would need to be changed,out lets were in wrong places, but so far ,its the closest thing that ive been able to find ,specialy the core size hight and widith were very close, so with that in mind i further went on the hunt to get the cheapest one i could get, 180 dollars i payed for this one ... it had large mounting flaps on each side,they had to be removed in order to squeese inbetween the 2 intercooler pipes. no big deal just a measure up and out with the jigsaw, couple of cuts and that was done, a test fit to see how tight it was and found it was perfect size!, the left over mounting flaps sitt perfectly onto the rad support rails, the eadgesof the flaps come close but don't touch the intercooler piping,so bonus!!! another good thing about this radi is its a triple core,very thick indeed,so I'm hoping the thickness will make up for having a larger core size overall. its 72 thick ,thingk the average alloy radi is about 52, keeping in mind tho,that this one is for a rotary, and they run fairly warm, i hope that it will be enuff to keep my engine warm and do the job at least to get me up and running, sure beats 700 dollars for a custom one :) so now that ive got the radi and drilled up mounting holes, that were again very tight but fits ,i needed to get a fan for it and start looking at that side of things, lucky for me i have a fan in my cupboard just sitting there,no idea why i had bought that size,it was a 14 inch fan and was the perfect size for this rx2 radi, fluke or luck ,what ever , at least i don't have to go fork out for a new fan as well. instead of mounting the fan direct to the radi,with those thin push thru clip things, i thought id make a plate up and bolt the fan to the plate and the plate to the radi, which already had mounting points for some sort of fan set up. here i just get some card board and get my basic shape the fan cut out and the mounting hole positions.... hunted around the hosue and work,but couldnt find any plate alloy sheet that was big enuff for the job,so i ended having to use this alloy checker plate that i had left over from a old project, it was the right thickness and had a polished finish on the checker plate, and so very light being alloy. traced ot and marked out the mounting holes and shapes etc... after i got the thing cut out was a whip around the edges to remove any sharp bits an dstraighten up my terrible cutting, after being all sanded and smoothed i check it against the radi ,just to get an idea what it would look like .... and looks like it will do the job,so i gave the front a polish ,to bring back the shine as it had dulled a bit sitting around in the weather,,, after the polish it was fit the fan....

i had these parts in a box sitting there waiting to get a colour change so thought id squesse them in this weekend, theres are parts off the factory seats and the steering coloum cover,had to get them matching with the rest of the stuff, this is the turny knob thing that adjusts the seat forwad and back,quick story, about a year ago was going thru some of the boxes here at work and theres just random car badges and stickers and crap off all sorts of cars,being a smash repair place we get alot of differnt cars here, any way was going thru a box and come across these 2 round disks,they were brushed metal disks with toyota in the middle in black,brand new, i have no idea what they were used on,but i thought id keep them and try use them on the car some where , well when i was prepping the turn knobs i remembered about them and they fit perfectly in the gap in the front,haha random as ,i forgot to take a shot of them ,but will get one later on , Uploaded with ImageShack.us some painted parts!! haha been a while since i painted any parts ,so was good to do something differnt, even the head rests got a colour change lol,got some plans for the seats as well, but nore on that idea a bit later....

well quite a good weekend,got a few things done that i wanted to get out of the way ,so here we go so the boot, i wanted to try finish this off soon so can move on to other things, i built a cover for the tanks and lines,just to tidy up that part a bit, then i got my amp and set that up on the board,along with s set of xovers and the million lenghts of speaker wire, its not that flash and the amp is only a cheapy i had laying about at home, so hopefully it stil works ,lol but its tidy enough and orginises the zillion cables running every where still have to do a few things to the board to get it to fit in there, so put that a side for the moment, i made a bracket and wired up a switch for the boot lid lights,and got them working ,they look pretty cool :) it was hot as today in the work shop was slowing me down abit,(not realy a fan of the over 30 degree days) but the spiders seem to like it they were coming out every where! had this huge one nearly walk over my foot, scared the shit out of me!! needless to say he was soaked in crc and set on fire lolol he went up big time

this is what petrol does to paint so as described before the crack in the sleave was letting out a fair bit of fuel, :bash: but on the upside,the surge tank didnt leak,the surge tank hoses didint leak,the return hard line and fittings all didnt leak ,the fuel pump in the tank was working,so even tho there was a leak it wasnt a bad effort, to fix the leak i removed the line, and set it in the vice and carefuly cut off the flared part off, tryed not to loose tomuch lenght, i think it was 2 or 3 mm that was lost so stuff all, so fingers crossed it will still line up with the fittings, flared the end again and fitted it up refilled with petrol and fired up the pump and no leaks :wink:

cleaned up and ready to go on, how ever small problem ,this is 2.00 in the morning so wasnt exactly wide awake,and over tightened it ,didnt realy notice at the time tho till later... and this is how the 2 lines come together to meet the bulk head fittings.... i didnt notice at the time but in the pic you can see a tiny slot in the bottom sleave, this is from me cranking down on it way to heavy, it actualy split the sleave in half,this later causes dramas.... and welcome to ryans petrol station!!!!!!!!!!!!! unleaded with a slice of jdm please :P i had no way of actualy putting petrol in to the tank! so came up with a random petrol pump set up, made a nosel with a bit of bundy tube, put a flare and fitting on the same as described before, screwed in a filter,than fitted a random hose and hooked that to a carter fuel pump, then from there a hose to my dodgy petrol tank set up! and it works like a charm, i think maybe i should have used this carter pump instead of the vl turbo intank pump,as the lift pump, this thing is off its head, even tho the fuel is flowing from a drum thru 10 mm lines ,the pump carryed 20 litres in only a few minutes , its got balls . any way ,filled the tank with some petrol, and got the intank pump running, basicly it was taking petrol out the top of the tank down the hard line into a surge tank, filling that up them pushing the excess back up the return hard line and into the tank. well thats what it was spose to do....

placed the tube in the vice to hold it tight ,then put the 2 fittings on first the fitted the flare tool, this one clamps the pipe by winding in a screw on one end,a few mms is left above the flare to , then the flaring part goes on next and it locks onto the base on an angle, the plunger drives down onto the pipe end, and spreads the end open to an angle of 37 degrees, only used this a few times and it makes very good flares,easily the best tool for flairing ive used, this is the sleave that sitts at the end of the pipe and then the other part goes over the top and screws into the fitting,in theroy this should seal ....... and after preping the other end of the pipe and then doing the same procedure i ended up with one custom bent fuel hose with -6 end fittings ..

yes its rediculous what some of them think is right,it realy shouldnt be that way ,they all should have a general guide to go by, but most seem to have there own little things they don't like ,don't get me started on them haha not exactly my fav subject, i got the line from bursons actualy, the main under car lines will be braided with speed flow fittings , but thats another story all together ,another subject that hasnet impressed me yet, any way its the road i choose to go so stuck with it now

so heated up and into the bender, line up the zero mark and start bending! this first bend is a 90 degree, smaller pipe is fairly easy to bend with this tool, but this stuff takes a fair bit of effort to get it started, once its started its not to bad just keep steady pressure on the tools arms . tube bent to 90 and thats a bingo!!! the next bend was bairly 5 degrees in the middle of the pipe and then another 90 degree using the same mark and transfer mark method,this keeps the lenghts very close to the wires size, that way when its finished it only needs a slight tweek to line up the ends of the pipe with the fitting openings. these 2 pieces are the fittings for one end of the pipe, the smaller sleave holds the threaded nut onto the tube by means of a flare that I'm going to make on the tube ..... you can get flare tools on ebay for fairly cheap but most of the cheap ones are rubbish and don't do a good job, but they have a 45 degree angle on the flare they create, there mostly for brakes ,clutch lines etc, the flare i need to make is a 37 degree flare,this size is for speed flow fittings , now very easy to get the brake flare tools,not so easy finding the 37 degree ones, i had quotes for up ward of 240 aus dollars, which i wasnt prepared to pay just to do a few lines here and there, so after the hunt online,i came across one from the states, was 60 us dollars and looked to be be fairly good quaility, so thats what i ended up with ;;;

next onto the bending and shaping, as the shape only has 3 bends in it its not to bad, still have to pay attention to what your doing ,or can mess it up , so heres the tube with one end preped next to the shape I'm going to try copy, [/url) before i start bending i add 5 mm to make sure theres ample room for the flare that will be make on the end of the tube later on, next step is to find where to start the bend,because the wire was bent with the bender we assume the pipe will start in the same place, so need to find the start point, to do this i just press the wire shape into the bender and close down the arm,untill it wont push any more,then mark off the zero position like thisss then take that mark and transfer it to the pipe, this becomes the start point for the bend..... next i heat the pipe up with a heat gun, this isnt realy needed but i found with this larger pipe it tends to crush in a bit when its bent, so want to try give it a good chance to stay reasonably round...

next i took file and knocked out the saw cuts ,this gets it level also , next took a block with 180 grit and flatened off the end,this removes the file marks and makes the end fairly smooth, also runn the 180 around the edge to take off the sharp burrs, now that the outside and the edge is faily smooth, turn attention to the inner edge and probably the most important part, first took a dremel tool and lighly ran around the inner edge to take off the burrs, then next got a sealer tube end and wraped some 180 around it,then sanded the inner edge and got it smooth,,, then took the block again and used 320# and flatten the end and the outer edges then used the sealer tube with 320# and done the inner edges again, and then finally took some grey scotch brite and went over the whole end. and thats the prep for just one end of the tube,

as with every single thing on my car its tight everywhere, and since these fittings need spanners to tighten them i needed a bit of extra room, so created a service hole right above the fittings , can see in the pic the top fitting which is a 90 degree -6 fitting ,this one is the outlet from the pump, and the bottom one i went with just using the hard line straight into the return outlet, and fitted and tightented to the tank looking at pics it seems like this all happens in a few mintues,but this process took me a whole nite to do one hard line, the designng part is probabbly the hardest to decide what you want to do ,tyring to create a line with the bare minimum of bends, and acurate connections, now ill do the other line ,this shows how involved a simple fuel line can get, lucky for this one it worked out to be a simplier design, just 3 bends and 2 fittings , still it can be tricky getting it right. so thats my shape,again cut 2 pieces of wire sat each one on the lip of the fitting and taped them together to give me a final model to work from. so first i wanted to prepare the end of the 3/8S bundy tube, this is most important to get leak free working fittings, the idea is to get the end dead straight and very smooth, this will allow the fitting to sit flush and leave no room for fuel to seap thru, and the smoothness also helps the flare tool to do its job easy. some people swear by using a tube cutter to cut the tube dead straight, if you had a tube cutter then by almeans try it, i didnt have one,but you don't realy need one to get this right, first i put the tube in the vice ,firmly holding the tube but not sqwausing it, next i used a standard hack saw but the blade is a much finer toothed blade,it cuts very easy and leaves the bare minimum of gouges and ruff edges.

now these probably alot of ways that this could have been done ,and probably better ways, but engineer wants hard lines inside the car,not just rubber hoses every where, so i climbed into the boot and studyed the set up and decieded on how i wanted to go about this, ill show you guys the basics then ill go abit more in depth with how to actualy make hard fuel lines and dealing with fittings and various tools , this info may be of use to some one ..... first thing needed to work out the bends of the hard line and how they line up with the outlets, its not like rubber hose where it can bend any way and dosent realy mater ,its always going to line up, the hard line on the other hand is fixed position so it has to line up exactly with the fitting. to get the basic bends and lining up of each fitting i first used wire ,bend into shape using a tube bender like this:: the tape is to join 2 pieces of wire so i could line up the fittings exactly, this gives me a centre line to work with, then i bend the hard line to match the wire also using the tube bender... then its a mater of fitting the end fittings and there you have one finished line..

so after the engineers , definaltey gave me a motivation boost ,and decided to continue on with my general plan ,that is to get the motor started in the quickest way possible,have alot of things that i need check over with the engine, particaly the wiring for the computer as i butchered it and re assembled it, and a few concerns with a few oil leaks from the front cover,and the oil relocation set up so i want to get it started before i move on incase it needs pulled out for repairs, my basic plan is just to hook up some dodgy fuel lines to a drum and connect the turbo to the inlet and do the most basic of set ups to get it running,just like my previous test starts. then from there can go on to properly fitting each thing, this is how i like to do things , specialy with soo many mods going on,i like to finish something and not move on to the next thing until its right,other wise can end up with 3 4 5 etc things that need sorted out and thats just more work . any how i been putting this small job off for a while now, just cause, dealing with hard lines and fuel connections i havnt had much luck, but thought id tackle this one . i need to make 2 hard fuel lines, there made out of 3/8 bundy steel tube the 2 lines go from the top fittings on the oulet of the fuel tank down to 2 bulk head fittings,and from there lead off to the surge tank. first i blocked off the 2 outlets on the surge tank with a hose,so it would fill up but not go any where else bar the return line to the tank. by doing this I'm testing the surge tank for leaks, the 2 surge tank fuel lines that were made before,the bulk head fittings them selves,the new hard lines that I'm about to make, the fuel pump inside the tank, so all these things will be covered by doing this test...... heres my tank installed in the boot as factory, all ready has the outlet fittings and pump set up etc done,i just need top make hard lines that go down the side of the tank and turn into the bulkhead fittings. easyer said than done , and youll see in a momnet why,

Damm a aftermarket ecu allowed? thats pretty awesum , theres to many rules lol , haha your welcom to check it out once i get it up and running :)