bantambunny

Bless him, my mum looks after birds like that and usually the first thing she does is put it in a dark box to reduce the stress because they do tend to die of shock but it does sound like the poor little chap hadn't got much left in him :( It was good of you to give him a nice end to his life though buddy, well done and RIP little birdie

Good on you matey, look after the little fella :D

Hahaha, well she didn't get with me for my looks buddy :rofl: I won't get a good bhp figure till the engine's freed up a little bit but even if we go early it'd be interesting to see the power gain over time when i go the next time :D

That looks superb buddy, well done! :D Looking like you'll beat me to it at this rate!

That's awful news Vinz, sorry to hear that buddy. My thoughts go with you and the family, Nick

Looking good buddy, i didn't know you were respraying the old girl! :) Been ages since i've caught up with you lot so once i'm back on the road with a zed shortly i'll organise a bit of a get together and see if we can't get some of the old faces out :D

Well an update for you, Thursday night brought the range rover back from work (kindly lent to me by my mate at work) then picked the trailer up in the evening which was in a real state, nothing worked, light was hanging off the side and half the bulbs had blown. So spent 2 hours making brackets and drilling/pop riveting and bolting things in place! Stripped the door cards off the zed to put the linkage in on the passenger side only to find the lock barrel didn't match the key so had to take the driver's side door apart to get the lock barrel, switched the mechanism over over to find as soon as i turned the key, the plastic linkage snapped and that put an end to that :( So they're going to have to store the car at exhausts uk indoors while it's up there. Finally finished making number plates up and get the car ready to go at 1.30am. 4.30am i got back up and started work getting the car loaded up (i bet the neighbours love me!) and found although we could JUST get the car on with the alloys on it was so tight we ended up fitting 2 stock wheels and two spares to give us plenty of room. Finally got it loaded up on the trailer and ready to go by 7am and set off to sheffield. Arrived at 9am with no dramas and had a chat and catch up with Pete who had a look round the car to work out what they could do with the parts of the exhaust i already had. What it looks like is going to happen is they're going to replace the back boxes with something similar to below with turned out lips and quad (in keeping with the stock zed exhausts) and use the centre section and silensors then make a complete new manifold for the driver's side to fit over the steering column rather than try and squeeze it past the starter motor and power steering pipes. So all in all it should be complete by next friday for us to go and collect the car. Can't wait to get it back now and i'll be itching to get the last couple of pipes connected up and get the car fired up for the first time :D More to come as I get there folks :)

Haha, not long now buddy! :D I'll have a BBQ to celebrate once it's all together and worth getting you over to look at. A week till it comes back then just the last few jobs to do (including having an alarm fitted so i can unlock the doors from outside!) then i'll be inviting you all round :hyper: I have matey, just to check that the pipe is the right diameter then i have to get the valve to spin round a bit more to make it fit and look tidy. Spark plugs are in and just water pipes to do when it gets back. Is an odd combination of the both, the secondaries are controlled by the throttle but also have a vacuum system that smooths it out so should be quite useful to get it running economically (hahahahah) for cruising with bags of power when i boot it :D To quote real steel:

As good as I remember it being, lovely looking from the back :D And the car as well :rofl:

If it wasn't for ther hideous collection of front bumpers she had bolted on to it and subsequently smashed, Saz's zed was a beauty - 99 spec lights, nice paintwork, great interior and good choice of wheels!

Well i did write a long update yesterday but annoyingly i hit the wrong key and page refreshed and lost everything :headvswal Basic jist is the engine is complete, headbolts are now sealed and rockers lashed. Rocker covers are on, carb is on and all vacuum ports sealed and ready to use, Belts and pulleys are all reconnected and torqued up. Spark plugs are in, headers are in place with the spare gaskets until i know for sure if i'll be using them or if exhausts uk can make me up the full system in 3" stainless. It's off tomorrow morning first thing to sheffield on the trailer then I won't see it for a week :cry: But when it does come back i've just got to cut and join the silicon pipes and we're ready to start it! :hyper: The money shot :D

Yep all in all including the remote oil filter and oil cooler the system takes a total of 12 litres of oil! If i wasn't using the custom sub frame i would have tried to adapt a stock sump but it rides so low it'd just take the sump plug out on the first bump in the road :rofl: I can't wait to see what happens when I put that foot down for the first time! :hyper: Well update for tonight isn't a huge amount really. I ordered the pipes tonight at a grand total of £108 for all silicone bends and ally joiners (!) and they should arrive tomorrow before lunch :D Put the gearbox selector back in place and bolted the gearbox mounts up tight again and prop back on. I've faced the fact i'm not going to get the car started before it leaves on Friday morning so just focussing on getting all the other jobs finished off like bolting the engine in tight, gearbox and prop in 100% so i don't have to get under the car again when i get it back or remove the exhaust to reach anything. I need to fix the locking mechanism so i can at least lock it on the key when it gets up there. I'll get all the water pipes in place and engine filled with coolant, belts tensioned and radiator mounted up 100%. I'll seal the head bolts and mount the rocker covers up and connect all fuel and vacuum pipes up too. So all that needs doing when it comes back is the fuel tank adaptions i need to do and i'll be ready to start :hyper: I started work on tidying the garage

Cheers buddy, the oil pan is a one off hand made jobby with a baffled wing on one side and i used a tremek tko500 with standard chevy bellhousing and a hydraulic slave ring inside. I've only driven a 4.2 V8 XK8 so not entirely sure what to expect out of this in terms of pull, it's all solid mechincal so it should be pretty free revving :D Ordering the water pipes tonight so fingers crossed should be all sorted by wednesday and ready to go. Onto the gearbox tonight getting the shifter finished, gearbox bolted up and start making the new shifter mechanism :D

For that sort of price i thought it'd be rude not to buy it :D

Yeah yeah, whatever Peter I'll have mine MOT'd way before yours :rofl: I've seen them before, the more i watch the more i want to own one :D Update for today, I went to pay a visit the infinitely talented Mr Keith Harlow or Keith5700 as he's known to you and me. He quickly managed to alter the brass coupling to fit the 16mm fuel pipe for me and even drilled and tapped the other end to take a -8 connector which made life even easier. He did however force me into buying most of his shed again :rofl: I also had a family lunch and a christening to go to plus an old mate dropped by tonight so all in all i only got an hour on the car so back to work properly Monday night. BUT I did manage to finish all the fuel piping on the tank to the pump and under the car. Just the tank and sender to wire up and we're done on the fuel side of things. The pipework needs tidying up and hoseclips need fitting and a bracket fabbing up but that's the last bit done for the time being. Both electric fans and the controller ready to fit And a little purchase to make my life making brackets easier for £20 :D

Cheers guys, always good to have some encouragement. Had a break from the V8 today then i'll be on the case tomorrow night :) Always fancied converting an MR2 to camry V6 - my mr2 mk2 was my most favourite little car i owned and definately wish i'd never sold it :D

Didn't get a huge amount done last night unfortunately, in fact felt more inclined to set the car on fire and walk off :( Spent an hour at the hydraulics store trying to find a pipe that would bend enough to get around the power steering pump at 45mm thick but failed miserably and so i should have just ordered the silicon elbows which is what i was going to do in the first place but i've been waiting all week to catch the guy in to have a chat with him. Also took the 16mm olive for the fuel tank take off so i could get the matching 16mm compression fit corner and cap and guess what - no 16mm in stock and only a 15mm available for 2-3 weeks so took the 15mm anyway. Managed to buy the wrong brass christmas tree connector for the intake manifold and the wrong diameter connector for the heater hoses so all in all a total failure that's cost me £25 for a bag of useless junk and the car won't be started this weekend. SO decided to try and turn a negative into a positive, discussed some options with Slick Pete and worked out the easiest way to fix the problem would be to get an engineer to open up the brass fitting and cap on the fuel tank by 1mm to make it fit so gave Keith5700 a call and hopefully all being well will be visiting him on Sunday to machine out the pipe and finally get the fuel line connected up and some petrol in the tank. He's also hopefully got the right rocker cover bolts in his workshop so i can get the rocker covers on. The panic i had about the pushrods not filling with oil was sorted out by pressurising the engine for another 5 mins until eventually the last 5 rockers started spouting oil - phew! So rocker covers can now go on without any worries knowing the oil passageways are doing their job when i get the bolts on saturday and i'm going to bite the bullet and order the hoses and corner pieces tomorrow so should be here on Tuesday morning. Still need some door lock linkage bars to make the keys work but i'll get there eventually. Oh an forgot to put thread sealant on the head bolts so now got to extract them one by one and seal them up which'll be fun now they're covered in oil! :headvswal Ah well off down south for the day to see the other half who's been in hospital this week folks so see you sunday for another instalment of the V8 project saga! :D

I was a bit worried about my experience in priming the engine as although the oil pressure was going up it was only getting to 45psi then no further so decided i'd investigate and found that stock pressure should be about 60psi and the oil should be coming out the rocker arms where the pushrod meets the arm. I had a sneaking suspicion that it lay with the fact that pump attachment didn't have a grooved ring to locate in the hole at the back so dismantled the EFI distributor toget at the casing and then hook it up to the drill and came up with this: And tada! 61psi! :hyper: Only problem being that although i had oil coming out of 5 of the rockers, the last 3 won't release oil so have a feeling i need to take the intake off and see that the pushrods are located properly in the lifters and there's no blockages. More to do tonight along with hook up the fuel line, vacuum hoses etc but still missing those bolts for the rocker cover and might do away with the fancy chrome intake bolts and get some more good sturdy black hex bolts to clamp down the intake. Timing marker fitted ready for timing up the engine when it starts More to come soon folks :D

Great work there buddy! Amazing finish for a rattlecan job! :hyper:

Yep simple as that. You should be able to reach and get at all the screws (although two are a bugger) unless you're thinking of taking the route of larger speakers. I've got a pair of JBL direct replacements i could bring tomorrow if you like buddy?

I'd rather read about Steve having a moan about life in general rather than him blogging his masturbation habits with pictures :rofl:

It's a bit marmite for my liking sorry to say buddy, it's exactly what i was going to do with my scarab but i think i'm glad i've seen it now to settle my mind. I'll stick with the vents as is. Not necessarily bad and i can see where you were thinking but i'm not sure it works

A thing of beauty that old cossie engine :D

Good news, just spoken to Pete at Exhausts UK and he's happy to sort the whole exhaust system out for me so have to leave it with him for a week which is good for me because a) i need a rest and b) i have my dad's car to sort out and the silver zed. So borrowing a mate's rangerover and a trailer and taking the car up to sheffield next week all being well so i have ALOT to do to get it driveable on and off the trailer/ramps! Back on it tonight so more updates then :)

Here here :)