MAX170

Ready for the 4 and Rotary Nationals.

 

Tight fit

The whole engine bay has been super hard to work with from the first time we started modifying parts…

Nick has been working away at the rust work, mainly around the headlight area. The van has been put on hold breifly while we get Max, the 180sx and also Battle cars ready for the 4 and Rotary Nationals this weekend, will be full steam ahead after that, aiming to have the van road legal by mid Febuary.

Van powersteering part 1

Have spent a bit of time sorting out the steering setup on the Van. The first step was getting the steering box mounted, which Nick made up a bracket for and welded it on.

Next I ran the lines from the rack up into the passengers side next to where the pump mounted up, which was a super tight fit, I ended up using a much smaller belt so I could tension it without hitting the waterneck. Then the resoviour was mounted inside the engine bay under the passengers seat and lines run down to the pump.

 

The start of a tidy Max

We havent had the time to start ripping into Max like we hoped, any spare time we have had has been spent on getting the van sorted. However while Me and Nick have been working on the van Theresa has started tidying up the inside of Max170. The door cards were cut out around the rollcage when we built it but we never got round to finishing them properly. About a month ago she sorted the rips in the seats by patching them, which turned out really well! She used the left over material to trim the door cards. Heres a pic of the door card beforehand.

And the finished product!

Subframe Strenghtening cont.

Today Nick continued with the strenghtening of the chassis rails, now 90% of the rear chassis work is done.  Next step is to prep it all up and paint it, then he will move onto mounting the front steering box.

Then we dummy fitted everything up just to double check that it was all going to work

This is the hill billy setup we have to work with to combat the New Zealand summer!

Van rear subframe strenghtening

We have re-visted the van over the new year holiday period. When Nick had last worked on it he had just finished making the mounts for the subframe.

Next he added some braces to strengthen the pickup points for the subframe and also the chassis rail.

Once all the braces are done then I can start hooking up the brakes etc while he is fabricating the mounts for the front powersteering setup!

The collection(but not all of them)

A few weeks back I had all of our cars at home the night before a demo. I thought it was a good time to take some pictures of all of them together as it doesnt happen all that often now that Nick has moved to a different house.

Unfortunately we started running out of light but still managed to get a few snaps.

Missing from the pictures is the RB26 Stagea, SR20DET Van, Holden Caprice, Cefiro and Skyline. I am slowly getting around to sorting them all out, more updates to follow!

MAX maintenance

Its that time of the year for Max, Nick had been driving it to Warkworth and back for work recently and it develloped a small oil leak. The other week I got under and checked it out, was the oil feed line so I swapped the copper washers and hoped that that was the end. However it slowly started leaking again during the week and today after pulling the line off and inspecting, It has threaded the thread inside the block. I have some Braided line to replace the factory steel line so will get Nick to Helicoil it during the week and then put it back together next weekend. I have a corporate day in December so that is the only timeline to aim for. Over new years the time has come to pull the engine out and fix up all the small things and basically rebuild the whole car as if we were doing so for the first time, It has now been put through its paces and we know what needs to be touched up!

 

R1 Update

The big bike has been put to the side for far too long now. With Summer on the horizon Nick started attacking the wiring which was the last major hill to overcome. As it used to be a race bike the previous owner cut out everything to do with Headlights/Indicators/Brake lights so Nick has spent the last week tracing all the neccesary wires and wiring them back up. It now has all the needed lights working and is basically just a matter of putting it all back together and then getting road tyres sorted, after that I will take it for a warrant, and we should be set for summer!

Before we took ownership, Frenchy Freestyle:

Paint

Went round to Owen’s place to pick up a car which he’d done a few touch ups on to find that hed painted a few other bits too!

Got the End caps/Valance installed on the 180sx

And got the roof wing installed on Max