kiwi303

Hope you get them back, problem is they've probably been sold on out of state by a fence and will be sold to some unsuspecting end buyer somewhere like Oregon or Ohio. ATVs stolen here in Northland are sometimes recovered from Southland, East Cape or West coast. It's a dumb prick who would keep a quad within a couple hundred miles of the site of the theft. I hope you got ripped by one of the aforementioned dumb pricks! Good Luck!

Yup, there's a guy in Aussie who has dropped a Leyland P76 donk in a Z31. I advise you read the stickies in the RB forum and Z31 forum, there's a reason they are stickied.

Ventilated fronts? Not on this one, maybe on the later models, but the 1971 models didn't have ventilated. I'm pretty sure of that since mine is the top specced model and it has solids, which would mean the lower specced ones wouldn't either. I've got the rear pads in the calipers and the rear calipers on and set, having a cuppa and dinner before heading out with the work light after dark and installing the fronts. I only have the one set of axle stands, so I'm going to have to be taking wheels off and putting wheels on to access the brakes to bleed all 4 since the lines were blown dry of old fluid. If I had 4 axle stands I could have pulled all 4 wheels off and had everything nice and exposed Don't need 4 axle stands often, but a second set is on the shopping list now! just in case While in town today I got 1.5 litres of DOT 4 brake fluid for the brake and clutch, 5 litres of 20W-50 muiltigrade SJ, high zinc/high detergent mineral oil and 2 oil filters. I'm going to pull the sump off after draining the old oil and physically scrub the old settled crud that presumably settled out and caked on the bottom of the sump pan over the last 13 years. then run the new oil for a while with one of the filters before changing that for the second filter. I expect there to be quite a bit of old crud in the engine after 13 years, oil film tends to turn to a varnish like coat when left to sit for a LONG period. Not a problem in over-winter storage, but certainly somethign to look out for after multi-year periods of abandonment.

Thanks for the offer Lazeum I think however the same problem as sourcing bits from stateside may crop up, namely Postage costs. Did a bit more today, The same evening as posting the rant about how lucky you US guys are on pricing for old stuff, up came an auction on Trademe for a set of rear 504 pads. After a hard look at the front pad sets, one is only half worn, and in good condition... so I got the new rears in the mail today. I was out digging holes this afternoon, my mother and sister came home from prayer meeting and turfed me out to go dig house pile holes for a lady who came to prayer meeting with a stuffed back, and for whom her builder was also off with a sore back. The council building inspector is due tomorrow, so off I was sent to get everything **** and span for the inspector. The holes had to be deep enough and wide/long enough to pass building code standards for the piles to stay there when concreted in. SO while on the way home since I passed a friends place, I stopped by and grabbed his air compressor. I've just spent 2 hours blowing out the brake lines, clutch line and fuel lines. Tomorrow I'm off to town to pick up my brother from the train station after his trip up from Christchurch, so I'll drop the compressor off on the way past his house and in town grab a couple of bottles of brake and clutch fluid, a new bottle of oil and a couple of filters for the engine. It's getting closer to being completed the Whoa part will soon be finished the Go refurbishment is still underway.

bloody expensive things... First page up on google was http://www.endevourengineering.co.nz/rb-26r34-ross-harmonic-balancer-metal-jacket-series.-xidp221256.html and they want 780NZD for the Ross one in NZ nearly 600USD, even with shipping and markup I wouldn't think you'd get them stateside for much change from $500. Find someone pulling a blown RB apart and snag an OEM in good condition would be my advice, it's obviously holding up alright even while buggered, so your engine can't be stressing it too much. I've a RD28 and a couple of RB20's here but shipping to the US would be a killer.

Splash moulds are used to make a copy of something, pretty simple, wax and prep the original so it's smooth and as near frictionless as possible and grease with a release agent (shoe polish, wax, KY Jelly (yes really, it's water based, doesn't dissolve or bond with Epoxy, and is slippery!), grease). Spray on some epoxy and let go tacky, this will keep the fibers of the matting scratching through the release agent and causing the mould to stick to the orginal be very careful not to disturb the release agent. Then lay on fibreglass matting and wet with epoxy, repeat until you have as thick a layer as you wish. The thicker the mould the longer it will last and the more copies you can get out of it before is breaks or degrades. Once the splash mould has cured and set, prise it off the original part, depending on what the release agent was you may find it comes easier if you heat it first to soften and liquefy the release agent between the original part and the new mould. Once off, clean the inside of the mould well, support it properly so it doesn't flex and bow, distorting the part to be made, remove any imperfections on the inside, apply release agent and start building up your fibreglass part in it.

Hmm, as an aside as to a method of coating them, how would those DIY home chrome plating kits work on springs? Not shiny plate chrome but the grey matte hard chrome?

well another update, I found a guy with a wrecked 504 so I got some parts off him, the brakes on mine were locked solid, even a month soaking in a CRC5.56 penetrating oil bath and the piston wouldn't move. So $100 for 4 calipers off a wrecked 1972 504, $10 for the accelerator cable to replace my sticky one and $10 for the new coil, add $20 postage and my $131 car jumps to an almighty $271. I have a pair of point sets as well, $12.50 but they haven't been needed, I grabbed them because they were available, and NOS. Who knows where I could get the right sort later if the points go. I've gotten it idling now, the motor runs, not very happily, but it's been unused for 13 years so that's to be expected. Now I need the pads to go in the brakes... at Repco semi-metallic street pads are $128 plus courier from head office, same for the rear. Or I could make do with cheap base budget pads for $57 plus courier. so that would be another $256 plus courier as I don't believe in budget brakes, It's more important to have sufficient Whoa in an emergency than to save a few bucks on cheap ****. Rockauto stateside however, for both front AND rear, want $35 or so, dependant on just which of quite a few different pad makers is chosen... A HELL of a lot cheaper... even after shipping to NZ is added, the total of $95 USD after conversion is not far off what repco wants for ONE end of the car using decent pads You guys don't realise how lucky you are when it comes to car parts! Anyhow, I've got to pay for and collect some Cleveland V8 bits for the 280ZX before I can buy the pads for the 504, so they will be a post-Xmas purchase... But with new pads, a new muffler (ripped out of a car from the junkyard methinks), the calipers returned to their places on the car with the new pads, and a new set of spark leads, It should be ready to run and set to pass a road-worthiness check

If it were only on the same continent as me! I hope someone gets it before it gets cubed.

Ok, the market here is a bit different from the US, and I'll use NZD not USD, but I'd probably get an MGF (had one before, fun car, light, agile and good power/weight ratio and front/rear weight), or a mid 80's porsche 911 or a porsche 928. Failing that a Jag XJ12 5.4 V12 is JUST in that price range for a decent example. Or maybe a Skyline GT350.

Well, from my perspective, if the only info you have found is for a built engine, why not go with that setup, then later if you do get bit by the bug and build your engine up, then you won't have to redo the fans to manage the extra heat from the extra power generation.

The one I've had quoted as a demonstration of the importance of commas is: Lets eat out Grandma vs Lets eat out, Grandma.

Grapple? F**K THAT! grappling some street scum is a recipe for a knife in the gut if he thinks you are winning. Put em down Hard, Fast and Any way you can. Knee to the balls, elbow to the temple, thumb in the eye, maltese kiss, hit the solar plexis as hard as you can, stamp on the instep... don't grapple, Fight. It's not a school sports team wrestling match, it's a fight. Fighting is something a mature adult doesn't want to do and avoids by any means practical, walk away and ignore *******, but if you MUST fight, do it to win. Forget "Fair" just remember "Survival".

Hey Tony, ever been to ChongQing? I'm looking at TESOL there.

I've seen a couple of Toyota Hilux YN60's (mid 80's 4-runners) with L's, one an L28 and the other an LD28, a nice bump in power from the stock 3-Y 2.0L petrol...

No, thats not what I pick up from reading the driveline forum... the U joints or CV joints in the driveshaft need a certain amount of working back and forth to ensure the grease packing keeps moving and coating the contact surfaces of the joints. Read the stickies, I think somewhere it mentions 3 to 5 degrees at the joins. A pair of laser beams from the diff flange and from the driveshaft yoke should be parallel to each other and 3 to 4 inches vertical separation so the joints have equal deflection at each end of the driveshaft. Reading is your friend if you have it plumb in line from the diff to the driveshaft, the U joints will gall as the faces get no movement to cause migration of the grease over the contact faces, yet transmitted vibration from the motor causes them faces to shift against each other. I do know Torque tube setups where the driveshaft is bang in line and enclosed in a fixed tube which maintains the relationships between the diff and tranny use a straight splined shaft with no joins. My 1971 Peugeot 504 is like this.

I'm Rhys, 30, still at home with my mom... Well it's not THAT bad, I'm just part of the labour unit on the family farm, 740 acres of a combination of near vertical hillsides and billiard table flat riverside terraces. There's a '79 slicktop ZX 2+2 in the hayshed with a V8 crosspiped twin exhaust system installed and an aussie built Cleveland 302 block and crank in the farm workshop that, one day, will go in it, and a '71 froggie sedan in the implenent shed. I'm addicted to rusty machinery and dream of going fast in it one day... Meanwhile I aim to leave the farm next year now my Bro has graduated university with a B.Ag.Sci, so he can come play with the cows while I piss off to China for a year with a Dip.TESOL to teach English for a year. Being stuck on the same farm miles from anywhere can be a drag when your favoured location for an animal is next to the mashed potatoes.

You mean the leather jacket, handlebar mustache, singing "YMCA" crowd?

I'd never use a scale that can't manage tiny fractions of a gram for my reloading it can be only 0.1gm difference between a bullet blowing forward through a deer and a fractured bolt blowing back through your face 0.01gm is better 0.01gr is best

Apple IIe was my first... dad brought his home when the govt dept he worked for upgraded to Macintoshes. I used to play choplifter, some years later I had a 20Mhz 286 of my very own... later yet I got a 33Mhz 486 and scrounged a 66mhz chip to double the speed... I like computer hardware

Full auto? Been there, done that... as a 14 year old with Royal New Zealand Army Steyr AUG's on a navy base. I was in the Cadet Forces here, much like the JROTC in the states... if you think full auto with an assault rifle is fun at 14, try crewing a 105mm towed gun at age 15.

So if you're a naughty boy and the mods hammer you, you'll be reminded every time you see it. And when it gets full, Bye Bye! I suppose the forum software doesn't support making it invisible if empty, so it's always there even when nothing is on it.

I had the D21 Navara LWB ute with the longer bed, single cab. with the SD23 diesel engine and column shift it would haul plenty and had good towing once I got rid of the stock 14" rims with skinny hard 175LT tyres and fitted some Isuzu Bighorn (Trooper II stateside) 15" rims with 205/65R15 semi-performance passenger car tyres. Isuzu and Nissan use the same 6 lug pattern and nut threading if you have a 6 lug nissan pickup and want some different rims. the older late 80's Isuzu trooper rims here look nicer

define country living? I'm 40 minutes to the west to a pop 800 town and 20 minutes east to a pop 120 village, an hour and a half trip north to a decent parts store and supermarket... I hope your new place is a bit more civilised