JDM55

ahh i see , thats new ive never heard about that leaf set up, would you mind taking a pic for me at some stage? interested to see this, do you know if stiffing the front half of the leaf pack is legal ? also sounds interesting , thinking i just want to set it up once and leave it at that ,but sounds like you need to play around to get the right set up for your style of driving , i think i have the same coil over set up ,not currently on , but looking at doing very soon , just fishing for more info before i go hacking up the struts , there not exactly the easiest thing to get round these parts.did you end up shortening the strut tube? or leave it as it was,they seem a little bit on the longer side....

are the tramp rods like the caltrac set up or they something else?? and the panhard rod is just a long rod connected to the diff to the body in some way??? like these things :::

interesting there mate, have you looked at caltracs at all? been reading up a bit latley on them and was thinking of making my own set ,but not sure how much there going to help, take offs are mainly what there used for ,but can't find much on street driving with them in there, i would imagine they would help with holding the diff in a more solid position, that hilux diff must be fair heavy tho??? i got the r31 skyline lsd 3;9 gears and that things fair heavy too , hmm theres so much involved in the setting up of your suspention may have to investigate further, btw how much were your konis in the rear if you don't mind me asking, i payed like 500 or something just for my front inserts, crazy price for some shocks ,tho adjustable too still crazy also soften the rear up?? would have thought it be better on the slightly firmer side???

ahh yes i sort of didnt think of it like that, just the gear box and engine and everything thats gone in so far , seems to be heavy duty,even the clutch and fly wheel were dam heavy by them selves,only guessing at it being a bit on the heavy side, eventualy it will get weighed so ill find out then how much difference fromt front to rear there realy is,as for the engineer experiences ,the first year of the build was completely wasted,in time and money and labour,the engineer i was dealing with wasnt going to give me a tick at the end of the day, he made me do things 3 times and would change his mind again and again about what he wanted,in the end i told him to get F^$^%&$**$*$& complete waste of a year of work and prety much had to start over,so you can see why I'm bitter about dealing with another one,i have spoken to most of the engineers in victoria,some said i couldnt even have the engine in there,some said i wasnt allowed to use nolathane bushes , some just flat out said no not interested, don't get me started i could go on for hours about dealing with these "engineers" the guy i have coming to look at the car has already seen some of my work thru pics and seemed happy with most of it ,,tho that was a fair while ago and ive done so much since then , I'm just don't want to go thru the whole experience again , being told stuff like " you have to move your engine up 3 mm, you have to weld full chassis rails fromt one end of the car to the other ,you have to weld a rubbish bin to your bonnet and spin on your head 3 times ,etc etc , seems to me through talking with alot of these guys they all interprate the rules in a different way ,thus leading them to have there own input on what you should do and what they don't want to see, "most of them would happy to engineer a car that's built to a standard and condition of your car." thanks for that comment mate , ive definatley put the time and effort into doing the best job that i can do,after all I'm driving the thing ,i want it to be strong ,reliable and tidy, well there the main goals any way,think ive got most of that covered.but thanks for that ,even tho you can only see what you can see in the pics , its good to know ive impressed some one at least haha

nice be an iteresting one, be sure to put up heaps of pics, also what struts are those?? could try some mr2 inserts there pretty short,tho may need a small spacer at the bottom ,some thing to look into tho .

so made the call today and i have an appointment with an engineer , whos going to come out and check over my car with everything that ive done so far, I'm deffinatley nurvous about the visit, my past dealings have been less then pleasant , so has given me a sense that there all mother $^%%&$^#&$*%(#$(#*&$$&$&$*#*#* how ever its any ones guess at this stage on what hes going to say , all i know is the work that ive done has been to the best to my ability and heres hoping he dosent pick to much stuff, then theres the future mods like coil overs and larger brakes that i want to do,and a few other things to talk about, so yeah kinda a big deal for me , ive come this far ,just gone into my 3rd year of the build, and things are getting closer , so last thing i need is an "engineer"( who seem to all have there own different rules any way)telling me ive done things wrong. on the flip side of that trying to stay positive and fingers crossed the guy isnt one of those..... so the 20th of this month ,not to far away, just enough time to try squeese a few more little jobs in....

ahhh ok cool guys this is all very intersting stuff, i guess it comes down to driving style and getting a feel for the set up,I'm just trying to sus out a good start point and then go from there, ive got a new tight as f%^$ lsd diff so not sure if it would single peg,but then again it may do in some corners ,havnt driven with a lsd before so will be interesting on its own to see how that goes, been in a few cars with lockers ,they just seem to skate across the road lol , ok well at this point I'm thinking getting the leafs reset to the height i want then maybe the vn wagon shorter stroke shocks sound like be a good investment, the munroes i have now probably need to be changed any way they been in there a while with the flipped leaf set up, and maybe just a another leaf in the front part of the pack ,leave the sway bar as is for the time being till i get to drive the thing and see what its like , my prediction is its going to be front heavy ,what with all the engine and extra stuff going on in there ,not sure but i have just spoken to my engineer today and i have an appointment for the 20th of this month ,so realy need to get my ass in to gear, ( not that i havnt been working like a machine over the past week any way) but will be nurvous times , after my last nitemare experience with the first engineer , has pretty much mad me hate the whole process of trying to get things legal , i know in my mind and in my work that its safe, if it wasnt i wouldnt drive it, any way bit off topic, but yeah cheers guys for some info, its good to get different opinions i think ,specialy if you see something only one way , abit of input from else where is always a good thing , i wish adjustable lcas were legal ,lol

yip it does, when you say reversed eyes ,do you mean the eyes on the leaf springs are on the bottom of the leaf instead of the top ??? , and with the xt struts did you find the camber problem was sorted with the camber tops??? , ive got a set of xts in there now ,but got another set i was going to turn into coil overs so i could use the adjustable tops as well sounds like a good set up tho ....

ahh nice , yeah ive only got a set of munroe gas in the rear at the moment and it will get lowered, but not rediculous low,have to past engineers, so gota be decent, vl commodore rears ,interesting and a 16mm sway bar sounds the go for sure, the thing in there is so thin ,doubt it realy does all that much ,specialy being 30 years old. definatley look into that, also i been reading about caltracs, but i think there more a traction thing on take off, I'm sure at some stage id like to get on the track and get a 1/4 time but right now I'm mostly looking at the street applications that are safe, have to get some specs on some of those shocks ....

hay guys , been thinking about the rear end suspention on my 55 and what I'm going to end up doing with it, any one got any good set ups for street driving that they like??? to be honest when i took the car off the road ,i had been driving around for over 3 years with a fliped leaf in the spring pack, and never had any problems, also had gas shocks and the stock rear sway bar which looks like its match stick thin, now since i have to go thru engineers at some point in time ,sorta have to do it properly ,and don't think flipped leafs will cut the mustard,even tho i never had a problem with them and i would put them back in like that ,but vic rules are off there head, so need to do a good job, also thinking about double sway bar on the rear ,or a single thicker sway bar,are there any rear sway bars off other cars that fit the 55 with out to much mods?? actualy i don't have a 55 diff any more but yeah same thing ,still got the 55 sway bar mounts on the new diff. ideas ??

i love lawn bowls lol dam this thing is tidy as , makes me wanta buy another one ! only got 2 already haa, nice ride mate.

awesum man ,love the front lip and fittment and camber! looks very clean , i say go rotor man! do something different with it,13b turbo or big port or something like that,alot easyier to fit ,will make a great base for a engine conversion, , hope to see a good thread when you start the transformation :) nice car,good to see a wagon in this condition ,fairly rare these things now ,good luck with it.

best to post up your own thread to ask for info ,or search the net, thats what i had to do

cheers mate,been working hard on this,glad someones getting so enjoyment of seeing the slow progress,as for ca18det ,kinda the same thing, how ever when you take on this task make sure your fully prepared to spend money and do ALOT of custom fitting and modifying, to be completely honest with you id advise against it, if you wanta drive a turbo just buy a 180sx or a silvia ,and just drive it, all the pics ive posted up have been over a 3 year span and counting, it wont happen over nite ,so definatley be prepared to be in it for the long haul, but if you have to do it and then id sugest searching the forums for info and wiring diagrams engine specs,etc do your home work, i speant 4 months researching before i even bought my engine, so keep that in mind ,its not just a slapp her in shell be right job,takes alot effort and time,good luck with it if you choose to do it

haha nice, i woundered if the grill was a bit much , but its realy growing on me now, love chrome and anything shiney haha, yeah detail is what i like to do, most of the crazy stuff ive done no one will even see, but i know whats going on be hind the curtain so to speak, last day of holidays so it will slow down abit on the progress side, but in the last week ive flown thru the jobs and can realy see the end product starting to peek out ,keep watching :)

yeah , my engineer wanted it as close to standard size as poss, it should be ok , will give quick spool up any way ,I'm pretty happy with the fitment, and you can't even see it behind the grill

thats mad, great pics there mate, i love starlets, ive owned one with a 12a rotory engine in it, was mental little thing, don't see these in australia ,your not from new zealand are you? keep up the progress it must handle like a machine with all those goodies on there

haha can't afford to get new bumpers ,I'm pretty much building the rest with what i have,plus i don't mind the long bumper ,more chrome haha,

haha thanks man , yeah your rite its all the little touchs that make it something a bit different, how ever those little tiny things do take time to plan and do, but it seems to be worth it , i just got the lower valance and filler panel back on, but i had a majour battle to fit the bumper , NEVER EVER EVER GET TIAWANIESE PANELS!!!!!!$^%^&^$#&*#@*# there a $*%%(&$($%%(#@(@#$* in the @!$#&@^%&!!!! a few years ago i smashed the front on car, and as usual i was broke so ended up gettng cheap tiawaniese guards , and bonnet,any way long story short they don't fit or line up with any thing there just shit. also i had rooled my front guards and pumped them out slightly ,this also made fitting the long end bar a mission, but evently after grinding the f$%^ out of things got it to go on, have no idea how it was on there before ,it all came apart easy enough lol, so got the front bumper back on the lower stone tray or valance what ever you wanta call it, realy great to see some parts back on there for once rather than having half a car! also i pulled out my grill that i had modded up ages ago, i realy can't even remember how i managed to make this thing !, i vaguely remember alot of measuring and cutting pipes but the way the grill section is held in ,is hectic, haha any way managed to get the grill on as well ,thank F#$% i didnt have to grind to much to get it in there lol , what do yous think of the grill??? I'm still undecided , is it too much maybe??? front bits ::: front bumper and new front indicators new diamond cut headlights grill on :)

so i had been thinking about having gas struts to hold up the bonnet instead of the metal pole thing, but i didnt want to weld up anything in the engine bay so a bolt on solution seemed like the best way to go,there wasnt realy enough room on the inside edge of the guards to put gas struts there,so after a bit of designing and think bout it i cam up with an idea that just mite work and be completly removable if it didnt work of for what ever reason i wanted to remove them, the basic idea is to have some brackets attached to the bonnet hinges and some sort of bracket on the shock towers,theres a tiny bit of room either side the strut brace that could have held a strut,any way after designing i went ahead and cut out some brackets ::: can see the holes for the shock bolts and the small bent up piece is to take a ball head bolt that the strut holds onto the funny looking sticking out part on the left hand one is for a engine brace ::: after much stuffing around and taking them off and back on again finally worked out where they needed to be and how to make them work ,don't think there would be many 55s with gas struts on there bonnet haha :) in this one can see that the plate gets held down by the strut brace, how ever i need longer bolts in that area ,but ill be changing the strut tops to adjustable at some stage so ill sort the longer bolts then, and look mum no hands!!!! :P

i like this pic:::: so i had to put the bonnet and guards back on to see how much room under the bonnet i had to play with for an idea i had been thinking about for a while, but more on that in a second, with the bonnet back on it ment that i could adjust up the bonnet catch,so when ahead and got that sorted, then because the catch was on and all lined up i could figure out how to do the bonnet release cable, in the factory set up they go from the fire wall in to the engine bay and up and out to the catch, how ever i had loss the original holes in the fire wall where the cable used to come from, due to the strenghting braces, so i drilled a hole just to the right of where the original hole in the fire wall was ,this made the cable go out under the guard area :) drilled another hole in the front panel and took the cable and hooked it up,and it works perfectly :) trying to keep as much stuff out of the engine bay as i can cause got alot of stuff going in there. haha the under the bonnet is so glossy it reflects the whole engine bay in it :) lol when i look at my daily 55 engine bay ,i still can't believe i turned that ::: in to this ::: :) :) :)

so done a few little things today, first was earth cables from engine to the chassis, ive done a bit of reserching on this, and i found out most stock engines have very poor earth cables, in fact i still had one of them taken off the back of the engine, it was tiny little strap that looked like it was made of steel braid,any way aperantly these sorts of straps don't do a very good job of earthing at all, something about the ecu needing solid ground points to the engine to get maximum voltage ,allowing it to run alot better. Also i read that stereo power cables that are used for powering amps work better than the thicker stranded earth cables ,the finer strands of the stereo cable offer less resistance and flow the power better,along those lines any way,so i thought id go over board with the earth leads, went and got a few meters of 4 gauge power cable and a bunch of gold ring connector thingos and made up 5 earth cables , yes probably over board but thought it would help, one from the left side of the engine to the chassis like this :: then one from the starter motor bolt to the chassis another from the alternator casing to the chassis another from the inlet manifold to the chassis and one from the top rear of engine to the fire wall lol over board but in theroy it will help make the whole electrical system run well, guess we will see..... another small job was i fitted the oil pressure sender to the oil relocation plate,got that screwed in and sealed and fitted some wires to it,

:) Cheers man ,it is looking pretty good , just starting to do alot of little jobs ,try and get all the smaller things out of the was first.

another small job was filling the gear box with oil, fresh oil after so long ,was great to get that in there and then from there,ive replaced the small cover that covers the gearbox hole and fitted a new gearknob and then replace the gear stick ,also using the 55 original rubber boot to seal things off , the next one was a hell of alot harder, i got a oil relocation kit along time ago,after alot of research on the subject,the idea behind it is good,any one with an sr will know that the filter on the block would be a pain in the ass to say the least to change so the idea of having it easy to get to is pretty good how ever....... just wanta say a few quick words on the kit i got ,now after reading alot of not so nice things about oil relocation kits and cheap ebay ones and problems etc, i decided to try get at least a half decent one,so the kit i got was a circuit sports one for s13 ,this cost me around 200 or so after shipping from america,so a few wack of cash for just a little part, any way a quick look at what you get is the oil block the filter block and 2 meaty hoses ,plus a few adaptors,any one thinking of gettng some thing like this , so far a can recommend this one,but its yet to be tested with oil running thru it ,and thats a bit of a concern ,but ill get to that in a sec, just want to explain a bit about the thing, first of all its machined alloy , very high quaility indeed , the fitting that go in to the block are allso alloy and have crush washers , there is 2 small ports on the side of the filter block for gauge senders ,which ill be using one for my oil pressure sender, the bracket that the filter block mounts to is very good , probably steel with a chrome like coating but whats cool about it is the filter block is designed to be mounted in multipul positions ,using the same bracket and 2 cap screws. the filter that fits on this one has to be a s14 filter , not sure why but thats how it is, the s14 filter is bloody small, not sure if thats a bad thing ,tho it looks nice in the engine bay not being all bulky,but it is very small, next the hoses, top quaility braided hoses with massive chunky swivel type fittings on the ends, there like a 26 mm spanner size or somethings very large, the next is the block that goes onto the engine , again realy high quaility machining and the same alloy fittings , now the not so good side , this thing was f$%#$#%#$$%$$## hard to fitt, not so much the product it self but the fact that where it sitts in my car its rediculously tight to every thing!! now trying to get a 26mm plus spanner in to a tiny gap is not an easy task, luckily i fitted the oil block on to the engine first then put the engine in, you would think that that would make life easyier wouldnt you........ well what i should have done ,now that i just went thru a very long process to tighten up the hoses, was attach the hoses to the block and then attach the block to the engine, yes i see that now , was very hard trust me, once the hose was tightened the more i tryed to tighten it , the pressure would turn the oil block and it would want to undo of the engine , dosent sould like a big deal ,but i thought i had it on there pretty dam tight , how ever fitting the hoses and getting them tight and trying to not let the oil block turn at the same time ,turned into a 3 spanner exercise ,with a mate trying to hold one down while i blindly tryed to tighting things up, any way lesson learned , again ..... so got there in the end , but I'm not convinced at this stage that the block it self is on the engine tight enuff,due to it wanted to undo ,just felt like it wanted to be a bit tighter , problem was ,to get a spanner onto the block it was a 32mm size , and thats a big ass spanner, so there was no room to turn the spanner let alone get it onto the block properly :( guess time will tell, but certainly have strong doutbs on it being sealed properly any way its on there now and i mounted the filter block in a easy to get to spot with the hoses not touching any thing or having any great stress from the bends. So all in all i would recommend this kit ,due to its quality parts and finish , but would 100 percent recommend fiting the hoses to the block then the block to the engine , any way bla bla bla just wanted to share my experience with that now heres some pics

so work has finished for the year pretty much ,and while every one else is out getting blind and doing what ever with there holiday break ,I'm taking full advantage of the short time away from working my full time job and pumping in some decent hours on the car ,been a very long time since ive been able to get a decent run at it so the next few days will be interesting to see what i can manage to get done :) so first of all today ive gone balls to the ball as usual and jumped straight in to do a few small jobs , first of all ive connected the coil pack loom back in place and fitted my custom hand made coil pack cover! can't remember if i talked about this before ,probably some where back threw the mulitipul pages ,and way a small recap if i didnt , got some 3mm alloy plate and designed like a flame pattern , don't ask why a flame pattern,i realy have no idea ,it just came to mind and so thats what i went ahead and done, cutting this out was alittle tricky due to the sharp curves and thin tips , but after it was cut was exstensivley sanded and smoothed up,then followed that with the usual sanding to polish steps ,and it come up very nice ,and for something totaly unique and no other engine will have, i think it was a good idea and i done a half decent job of it ,this pic below is from the design stage and choping the basic shape out i had to work out the mounting side of things as well, ended up just usint the 3 left hand side holes in the cover to mount to,using s/s cap screws, i love s/s!!! so nice to have decent clean shiney tuff bolts to work with,mind you ive tryed my best to replace every bolt with s/s but the price of the stuff soon adds up , you wouldnt believe how much a bunch of s/s bolts cost,even so its made the engine and the car for that matter look so much neater , plus the colour against the s/s bolts looks magic :) so got the cover on and it looks great ! plus since its not sealed in like the factory one it should help let the heat out of the coil packs ....