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Very nice work and once again close attention to detail. Outstanding work SB!

Cheers

Bennie

Steering knuckle is sorted I pulled it out of a Liberty sedan, perfect length and perfect fit.

Nice one mate.

I think you'll have to paint it

Cheers

Bennie

A little more progress today - I took the rad out for the mods to the top mounting holes so while it was out I decided to fit up the A/C condenser. My car didn't have the 2 little angled brackets on the bottom support for the locating pins on the bottom of the condenser. The Brumby has these brackets, I find it strange that the wagon didn't have them (never had A/C from factory) when every other hole and bracket for the A/C system is present throughout the body. Anyway I made up 2 little brackets and attached them with rivnuts (no welding on the painted body!) I'll remove the whole lot again to paint the brackets and get the condenser tested for leaks, once it's all back together those brackets will never be removed again

I'll be taking the rad to work to use the AC tig welder there, since the first shipment of new machines (one of which I had my name down for) were sold out before they even landed Now have to wait till August for the next lot.

Yes the condenser is touching the center light assembly, will have to space the bottom of the light bracket out a few mm to get some clearance.

Belts!

All my drive belts arrived this week (bought 2 of each for spares) so I put them on today, looks like spaghetti junction in there now! Also welded the ignition trigger ring on the crank pulley properly and painted it. Removed all the rest of my custom brackets for painting too, now they are done and I know they don't need any more work. Still need to get a plug made for the dizzy hole and think of a way to hold it in there.

Also now thinking about how to make one good (twin carb) air cleaner box out of 2. The original twin carb air cleaner box is all beat up and has big holes in it, and I have 2 regular air boxes in perfect condition. Will cut the center part out of the beat up one and weld it into the center of a good one while still using the twin carb air box lid. I'll need a special cutting tool to cut these out neatly.

Finished off the heater/coolant hoses this afternoon - found my heater tap in the single cardboard box I hadn't looked in (thought it was full of garden stuff ) in typical fashion found it the same week I bought a commodore one off ebay...

Also bought a silicone 90 degree elbow with 16mm internal diameter for the hose that goes from the water pump to the heater pipe. Couldn't bend a normal straight piece since it would just kink. The silicone hose did an awesome job And lastly the little bendy 6mm bleeder hose that goes from the heater pipe to the bottom of the carbie(s). Found a piece of hose online that was Z shaped, cut it in half and used one of the elbows to get to the heater pipe hose barb, and bent the straight part around to the carbies - works a treat.

Start off with this


Measure, test fit, cut, measure again, cut again, end up with this


Almost as good as a factory part Note the little 6mm hose in there as well
And my rust coloured water pump pulley

Quietly watching your build up and envious of you being able to do this.
Wish I had the time and money to do the same.
I am wondering about the alternator.
From one of the previous posts it is a 90A from Nissan VG30E Maxima.
Did it end up bolting straight in ?
Were there any mechanical mods needed to make it fit ?
Did the original pulley fit or did it need to be modified ?
By the looks of things the wiring was the only this that did not fit straight in.
If there are no major mods I may go the same way with my car.
Otherwise I will look for a like for like original alternator or maybe just one out of an L series which I think are the same.
Looking forward for more of your updates.

Cliff, re the Maxima alternator; Yes it did just bolt straight in, the pivot bolt and mounting ear line up perfectly. The two wires that go to the stock Hitachi alternator are the same for the Maxima Alt, just with a different plug. You could remove the female spades from the stock plug and just plug them into the Maxima alt - one is constant 12v + and the other is for the charging light, gets 12v+ with ignition (from the instrument cluster) I would be more in favor of crimping on new insulated spades, if you don't want to spend the $20 on the Nissan plug like I did. This alt is internally regulated, if your wagon has an external voltage regulator (like mine did) the wiring could be more complicated. I couldn't help as I threw my old wiring in the bin.

As for the pulley, the stock alternator has a spacer ring behind the pulley which you will need to grind down and re-use (using it as is will put the belt alignment out, go without it and the pulley will hit the Alt body) and the stock pulley (more like 2 x pressed steel discs) will go on the Maxima alt shaft but with a little slop. I got the pulley discs aligned pretty good with Mk. 1 eyeball and did the nut up as tight as I could.

If you're going to use the stock charging cable, be careful on how many accessories you run. Since the new alt will be able to pump out more amps than the stock wiring to the battery can handle. Only really a problem if you are thinking of having a bajillion spot lights etc.

Awesome, thanks for the info.

Well the eBay cheap alloy radiator is in...kinda Not really happy with it so I think it will be replaced eventually, I'll see if I can get my hands on a decent quality original replacement radiator so it will just drop in as it should. This eBay alloy one did not fit from the start, it is just too tall from the mounting holes at the bottom to the holes at the top. They must have one sized core that they use to make all different radiators, and this core is about 10mm too tall to work properly with this car.

As it came out of the box, when the bottom pins were in their locating holes, the top threaded holes in the rad were about half their diameter out of position for the holes in the body - no way were the top bolts going through. So I ended up cutting the section out of the rad that had the riv-nuts in it and welding in a new piece of angle with the idea of putting my own riv nuts in the right location. It didn't really go to plan since the "right location" was so far down I couldn't get one of the riv nuts in the hole. Long story short I'm not keeping this rad But it will suffice for now so I can put some coolant in it and get the engine running properly to test things and iron some bugs out.

I tried TIG welding on this rad, it did not go too well. Not only is this material some kind of alloy concoction hitherto unknown to man that is full of crap that bubbles up soon as you put an arc to it, also because it is such a heat-sink it was impossible to get a decent puddle going. I ended up blasting it with the pulse-MIG machine at work which ended up working quite well, these things must be all MIG welded at their factory. Still didn't ending up looking too pretty



It's in the car...for now

I have been watching the after market rads on ebay and peoples experiences with these such as yours.
I think I will get a hold of another 2nd hand rad and have it refurbished.
Don't know the cost of this but at least all will fit.

aaaand we're back thanks to the forum mods or whoever for sorting out whatever that problem was from last week - somebody attacking the site or so I read?

So I can post this pic of the absolute gem I scored at U-pull it this weekend. I've been hanging out for one of these for ages, never could find one with just the right shape/dimensions. This one is a proper TJM alloy job off of a pajero, got it for $29 Walked back down to the MY's to hold it up and see how it would fit, it's just right between the headlights etc etc.

It's only hanging there with fencing wire in this pic, I just had to see how it looked Now to build the rest of the bumper around it. I'm thinking full alloy job all round with the faces of the bumper scalloped/fitted up to the bar and welded all round. I removed the original bumper stand offs from the old bent chrome bar and welded a piece of thick wall RHS to them as a starting point. The rest of the bar will be 4mm ally plate all round bolted to this steel bar.

Awesome score there!

The good ol' pajeros come in handy for these older subi's! That's the vehicle my snorkel was meant to be on

Will you build outer hoops as well to make it a full bar or just stick with the centre hoop?

Cheers

Bennie

Excellent, we are back !!!

The bar look great, I'm going to look at the early Pajero's for a bonnet protector.
Similar bonnet line to the MY's

Don't forget the Nissan Navaras of the early nineties too

Cheers

Bennie

It looks meant to be!

El_Freddo wrote:Don't forget the Nissan Navaras of the early nineties too

Cheers

Bennie

Yes, and early 80's to 85 model Nissan Bluebirds, and 80's Mazda 929 (sorry to hijack the topic)

Huh, I never even thought about different models having the same bonnet lines - this bar I just saw from a distance and thought "yeah that looks about right" and it was

Bennie, there will be no side hoops, just the center piece. I've got the full bull bar style thing on the ute and have to say I prefer this nudge bar style for looks. I haven't seen many MY's with this style of bar but I knew they look the best I think littlewhiteute on this forum has one on the ute in his signature pic, I've seen another one on failbook and I think there was one other from a former member on here - a fully restoed and modded metallic green Brumby in QLD?

Gotta buy some ally plate now, so excited to get this together

Woohoo! Got the engine going again today, I put some coolant in it this time so I could run it a bit longer and do some tests properly. Still haven't hooked up the fuel tank yet so it can only run on the fuel I put in the bowls manually. I've found out I definitely need some sort of choke setup to keep the engine running when it is stone cold. Sadly there is no way I can convert these carbs to electric choke, and I haven't allowed for the wiring under the dash to wire up the manual choke (d'oh) Will probably have to tap into IGN power somewhere so I can wire up the manual choke box - it has 4 wires, 3 of which I assume would be 12v, ground and a wire out to the temp sensor on the intake manifold.

I also had the Megajolt ECU hooked up for the first time and had the laptop plugged in as well to see my first ever ignition map working And it works! It was good to see the RPM, timing and manifold pressure all changing as it should, means everything is working properly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5IMo1W ... e=youtu.be

Awesome work - It'll run better with proper exhaust too ...

Re front bumper - would just go with an all aluminium one + there's plenty of old ones you can cut down and re fashion as well ...

Cheers, Bantum ...