kiwi303

Turbo Rover V8...

You should NOT need to hang on for dear life... I would get some GOOD supportive bucket seats, they need not be racing seats, just GOOD street sport seats that let you sit there and concentrate on JUST driving. You would be surprised at how much the pucker factor goes away when your body isn't trying to fly out the window in corners

Make that 26 million since Holden and Ford Australia were NZ's top selling car brands for a LONG time, and still have a significant presence despite the predatory inroads of the Jap makers. As to Why GM-H is standalone? well Holden was an independant australian company before being bought out by GM and has some government interferance to keep it Aussie... I can't explain Ford AU.

The Supra trans is popular down under, goes for big bucks. You may have more sucess checking the Toyota AU and NZ forums for info on that combo.

On the one topic, it's not a huge job to drop the tank, and If it were mine I'd be pulling it and giving it a clean. On the other topic... Tasmania is not part of NZ, so the sheep waxer is not a Kiwi! Besides Aussie use velcro gloves, Kiwis just drop the back legs into the top of our boots so they can't run away...

Yoda must have been a Chinese Engrish manual writer...

Given the number of D21's still going strong in NZ, it's easier to pick up an older ute. I had one I was going to put a 4.4 V8 Torana motor in, but ended up selling it when we moved farms rather than ship it all that way between islands.

RHD... LHD... Can't register chinese cars in New Zealand. any LHD car less than 20 years old has to be listed in a motoring publication that is not a club newletter (Top Gear UK 500,000 readers, not Nowheresville Camry Club, 3 members/readers) as beeing a collectable. Must have 2 doors and be a passenger vehicle. Even after all that there are only a few hundred LHD permits issued in a calendar year, and are all used and gone by the end of the first week of January. So a Viper or Corvette would make it in, but not a light utility truck. Once they are over 20 years... Anyone can bring in a LHD vehicle then so classic american muscle and old ferraris are around, but very few new LHD cars. NZ is a RHD country, same as Japan. There are some Great Wall models in NZ, but not Navara clones.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/motoring/7176485/Killer-drifting-driver-to-be-beheaded Not a good idea to be involved in negligent vehicular homicide in a place where they use swords to get rid of problem drivers... No wet bus tickets slapped around by the courts there!

It is always interesting learning all this data on fittings and joinings. Your company want an apprentice for thou Tony? It would be an education OP. Let us know how it holds up after a few dozen fuel pressurization cycles...

Never mind the Chinese address, I'm just working here, as the name says, I'm a kiwi. They aren't selling the d22 in NZ anymore, just the newer, larger model. I have a 1985 4wd hilux surf with the old first gen fiberglass roof over the rear seats back in nz on mum's farm.

The topic makes the Donar typo in the title so minor I see the grammar and spelling police still have not finished cringing at the rest of the content..

Hmm, looks like an older Hilux there 80's or 90's 2wd? Navaras are good, but I liked the old D21 over the new ones... Smaller and nimbler with the same load bed rating, even if the towball rating was lower.

Oil is a surfectant, it drips down the surface and spreads along the areas it touches... Air however has a boundary layer, where the air close to the surface moves slowly and the air further out moves much faster. I would just leave the manifold inner faces as a lightly sanded surface.

Did the Audi 900 come in the US? They are 2wd FWD with the same engine forward, longitudinal engine, transverse axle setup. no need to change the box by plugging an overlong rear...

Nah Nah Nah... You must be meaning a Steel 72 on a +10% fill! They didn't get Steel 80's until well after the Ali 80's made the size popular enough that Newbies would ask for an "80" for anything.

DD eh? Well since "Initial D" starteed the AE86 craze, like Wangan Midnight the Z's, how about reverse things and have "Terminal DD"? Or maybe "Terminal Velocity" with a still of Nastassia Kinski in freefall from the movie of the same name decaled on the door?

With the exploding SCUBA tank phenomonen, putting a bullet through a tank is not germane to discussing self failure of a tank due to metal fatigue. The big problem is with Aluminium tanks which get fatigued and crack, after time they end up with a spiderweb of cracking and when one finally lets go, the stress risers cause all the other cracks to go, separating the ali bottle into several pieces. Metal tanks are spring steel, so if not permitted to rust, have an essentially infinite life, if a rust hole develops the air punch through causes them to peel open, but nearly alweays remain in one piece. A bullet through a tank will punch a neat hole which will then open up, but is not itself a longitudal crack or part of a network of metal fatigue stress lines. Air compressor tanks are (at least that I have seen) universally steel, so they are unlikly to explode into shrapnel like an aluminium tank, but rather pop at a deep rust pit and all the air whistle out. At the lower pressure, the air blast MIGHT be enough to tiop the compressor over, but it's certainly not going to turn into a bottle rocket.

Look at the Renault 25 and see if you can find a gearbox off one of them... longitudal front engine, front wheel drive, the engine hanging out front of the axle. Also there are kits to put a 351 windsor on the Renault boxes for GT40 clone kit cars. The original 2.2L takes a turbo just fine and you should be able to mount it in place of the rear seats to power the rear axle. Or fit a 351W

Hmm... I'd love a free 390 and trans... But yeah, Not for the 280ZX, for an old falcon ute.

I wish this was cheaper... but I think it has given me an idea for making an EFI manifold from a SCUBA ali pony bottle or Spare Air bottle! Add MS and turbos... http://www.clarkosperformance.com/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=35 Intakes for the 400 would be limited, the taller deck height would mean the head faces are further apart and the valley is wider, so 351C manifolds would not work on a 400.

Nuh Uh... Just like Japan has JDM motors that didn't make it to the states, Ford Australia did things with ford motors that didn't get done by Ford USA. Same as the 4.0L straight 6 in the Falcon used as a high perfomance car engine. Stateside only had them as truck engines. You should try out a turbo 4.0 falcon if you ever visit Aussie, they are nicer performing than the V8s. The australians made Clevelands for years after the Cleveland was dropped from the lineup stateside, and with a shorter stroke crank in the same block made a 302C variant as the entry level V8 alongside the larger 351C.

The 400 will probably be better power and torque than the 302 cleveland I have in the shed back home in NZ. You should be able to get a 5 spd from a ford E van or 2wd truck with the 460 in a wreckers yard.

Free is always good. The 400 is a tall deck 351, I think the bellhousing pattern is also different for truck transmissions as well, not car transmissions. It will be heavier than a 351 cleveland.

What I want to see is where SAIC take the next generation sports cars... they bought all the rights of the MGF and MGTF and still make them, I had a Rover MGF for a while and loved it, I'm hoping the next generation in SAIC's sports convertible lineup will be something similar. The MGF was 1150Kg, 2400 pounds or so, with enough horsepower I was still accellerating at 190Km/H when I had to brake for a corner the time I decided to wring it out to see what it did, added to excellent handling and it was a nice car for a mid 90's model. But the AG86 is mentioned as being 2600 pounds, and like lotus, a GOOD sports car is not about adding power, its about adding fun... Given modern trends of bigger, heavier, whaley-er... it sounds the AG86 is going to be a refreshing car to drive if they get the handling right.