Works in Progress

Being overwhelmed by motivation on the weekend, and stuck inside due to the rain, I decided it'd be a good day to take apart the fuel pump on the XB, it's an A.C. with a glass bowl that I could see was gunky as. I'd also found it was leaking, pumping gas on the side of the motor, which I've heard is a bit dangerous... So I took it off to replace the gasket, and the alternator, which I'll get to, and set about dismantling it. Which I did, I'd thought it was just a gasket that needed replacing, so it was kinda exciting to find that the inside had no gasket. So I opened the manual. Which I should've done much, much sooner. It's a diaphragm, not a gasket. So after the 'oh shit' moment I pulled it all to pieces and scrubbed the shit out of everything, planning to get the parts today. So it's not that easy finding a diaphragm for a 1974 Falcon. I tried the usual places and finally managed to track one down via this place - Basis. It's going to take a day or two to arrive but the guy I dealt with was really helpful, a nice change after the muppets at Repco.

And, so, the alternator is a Bosch one, one of the three or four you might be lucky enough to find on the pre-cross flow Falcons. Having learned my lesson with the fuel pump I opened and read the manual on disassembly. I just wanted to clean off the grease and get it looking tidy. Which was straight-forward and then i got stuck into the re-assembly, all straight forward until I didn't read the reassembly guide. Genius. Managed to snap off the brushes. So new ones are also on order. And so I'll be learning to solder...

Kumeu to Hamilton

So the 2010 Kumeu Hot Rod and Classic Car show happened on the weekend. Oh yeah and the Big Day Out was on Friday, a big, draining weekend, so i didn't do much beyond attend things. Pretty much the highlight of the BDO was The Decemberists and Devendra Banhart, the rest of it was a bit on the meh side of life. Kumeu was also ok, I fell in love with a turboed XA Falcon wagon, running a pre-crossflow motor and a Garret T04 blowing thru the carb. Pretty sweet looking machine and for sale at what I reckon is a pretty damn cheap $9800. There was a nice arse-jacked Vauxhall Victor like my Grandad used to have, looking nice and eighties. And I snapped a shot of some weird, chopped, dropped thing. It was a weird arse looking thing, maybe started as some sort of agri or industrial vehicle. Looked cool whatever it is.

I shot down to Hamilton today and picked up a Fairmont front end for the ute so I can do a bit of a pseudo ESP thing on that. And met up with the guy I sold the Fairmont too, he's got a 302 and 4 speed in it now and she sounded good, and looked good hurtling along the road. I kinda miss that car.





Oh yeah, also finished painting the garage, put locks on it, put some posts in for the new chicken coop, went and saw The Fantastic Mr Fox and i think that was about it. Seems like enough to me.

auld lang signs

So, a bit of a pictorial update as I figure out where to next.

I'm considering posts relating to the TDO5HRA-15G off a Makinen Edition Mitsi Evolution 6.5 I have sitting under the table in the carport next to the boring standard TDO5, that'd be interesting, but only coz I've spent half the night trying to figure out what the fuck i need to do to get it onto the 4g63t block from an e39 VR4 Galant I have rusting at a friends (refer pics, unfortunately the personalised plate SCUNGE has gone).


A post about my XE Fairmont that I swapped my N14 Pulsar (Sentra GT Cup style) for? It was a literally mint wagon, but I have since sold her to a lovely guy named Willie from South Auckland.


I'm considering posts on the Ford Falcon XE ute that I now own and I have bought (but have yet to collect) the Fairmont front for.


The awesome short kiwi roadtrip through the central North Island back from picking it up (after a train ride on the Overlander down country), the first 'truck' load it carried for my sister. So many, many things.


Some housecraft type things, like a Cut Collective style wall in the boy's playroom.




The joy of spending NYE watching your six year old boys play checkers by candle light, or getting up the next day at 7am to hunt rabbits. How to skin a possum and cure the skin using your own special concoction to avoid it getting too crunchy? How not to grow tomatoes?




The joys of Tailgatin' NZ style?

I dunno, here's some pics, sorry about the formatting, blogger is an annoying cunt and I have a short attention span with no eye for detail.