I drove 6 of these cars today! 5 legal. All 6 need some work in some respect. Mostly minor though. Only one on FreeEMS, but on brand new code. However, once some funding comes back I'll work on changing that. Once the KP is back in one piece I'll work on driving 7 in one day, too :-D Need the ute running to hit 8. More than that won't be possible for years, not months (approximate ute time frame).

Got this thing's B230K running today. Running on a splash of toluene, and a spray of ether (start ya bastard),
and it fired right up and revved out to 3k+ without much drama. Hoping the fuel pump and carby are in working
order. Planning to stick 15 or 20l of 91 RON in it sometime soon and drive it home. Need to make room for it first,
though, so that's this week's job, aside from the other ongoing things that I MUST do soon.

Cooling system seemed in good shape, which is something. Inside the engine looked clean enough, too. But
apparently it knocks. I didn't hear it knock today, but it will probably do it on overrun when there's vacuum
pulling up on the piston rather than pressure pushing down.

Tacho works, too. And wing mirrors are good. Great news for the wagon :-)

I should probably push thoughts of bearing swaps and daily driving it out of my head... but they're in there at
the moment. Time will tell what happens to this car. Maybe instead of being stripped it'll just get downgraded
to worse parts from the wagon. Could work. We'll see.

https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 5844749313

If I manage to keep this job in the city I'll have to pickup one of these old 19000 RPM MC22 CBR250RR bikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXt7fQsDsk8

That would hold the highest RPM FreeEMS powered engine record for quite some time! :-) Keen. Not keen to die, though. But also not keen on bus use, nor 30-50 bucks a day parking/petrol. Riding a bike = free parking in most companies, and traffic dodging, and fuel thriftiness, and in this particular case, a glorious sound and hopefully some code testing :-D

Went and had a look at a potential car 12 today. Fortunately it wasn't what I was hoping it was. Or I'd have 12 now. It was a smelly (water ingress) Stagea wagon in Silver with rolled guards, super low springs, subframe locking bushes, a DIY manual conversion, an RB25DET that was running on just 4 cylinders, lol, 17 inch wheels with stretched tyres, two of which had popped off, a FMIC, a 38mm ext gate, a t3/t4 turbo (lol), and a cut'n'shut manifold (not badly done!) and so forth. But the gearbox used was the RB20DET GTS4 R32 gearbox, a weak 4wd gearbox, not suitable for RB30DET use, which would be my plan and not worth much money, either. An hour and a half wasted, but I spent it with a friend, so that's OK :-)

Well, the money hasn't changed hands (not much!) and the ownership papers are not processed (not fun), but this is highly likely to be mine soon:







Sigh. Never thought I'd see the day when I owned an SR20DE! But...

So, what to do with a car with bad bearings and semi-flat cam lobes? Hmmm, the possibilities! Let's see:

0) Change oil for moreys engine honey thick gooey shit and cross fingers DONE!
1) Teach my wife to drive in it with third party insurance and NO fear
2) Develop a FreeEMS decoder for it and possibly run it for giggles
3) Do bearings and cams or whole engine and flick off to some poor bastard
4) Recycle the whole car for scrap
5) Sell the *rough* 17s from it and recycle the balance for scrap
6) Brick on gas, wait for rod-exit, stage left!
7) Accidentally shift it from drive into reverse at 40kph DONE!
8) Drop it into drive at 3k and drag race my own Lantis out of the lights DONE! (won the 60' too!)

Any other ideas welcome! :-p

The things you do for strangers out of the goodness of your heart that end up being a huge pain in the arse and costing you heaps.

Today I used my jack, something that's been a part of this garage tool set for about 10 years, maybe
more like 15. So tonight I fixed it as it has been hateful for a while. It still is in many ways:

EDIT: mid 2005, 12 years ago! :-D

1) Insta-drop even when careful
2) Play in pump pins = small movements don't lift
3) Heavy as hell to lift into a car
4) Short reach, low lift, high min height
5) Noisy to drag on rough concrete

Etc.

But on top of those, the spring broke maybe 5 years ago, and tonight I thought of a way to fix it, and did:

https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 8765956096
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 1892544517
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 9650575360
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 6236611584
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 1224605696
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 8464551936
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 7888071682

From the same PO as the Nissan, now comes a much nicer proposition: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 1331334145

Gloat: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2625&p=43644#p43644 :-D

The Nissan Avenir is gone. Crushed yesterday for the princely sum of 225 nzd minus 20 for a ride home from a friend in need of a dollar. May be a small deregistration fee, too.

Final photos: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 4467773440 https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 4939438080

Did it again today, but minus Nissan Avenir wagon and plus Volvo 360 GLT hatchback:

Volvo 940 wagon
Volvo 740 sedan
Volvo 240 wagon
Volvo 240 sedan
Volvo 360 hatch
Mazda Lantis hatch
Nissan Stagea wagon
Hyundai Stellar sedan

Plus 2 decent burnouts, and 1 car on FreeEMS :-)