Introducing: The Camaro!

OK, about time i gave this ol beast a proper write up.

Found her 20 minutes after selling the Supra due to RWD withdrawl symptoms. Arranged to collect it from south of Liverpool on what turned out to be the middle of the snow disaster season. Took the Passat down in an easy and simple 3.5 hour journey. Found the car in the pre-arranged services. Did the deal and went for a burger to absorb the gravity of the situation. I now own a 5.7 V8. Sweet.

Now for the journey home. Maneuvred out of the services, steering felt horrifically light compared to the Supra and Passat. Not a concern, these old Americans are known for being over assisted. Windows getting a touch wet... bugger. Comedy slow window wiper speed. Will need to watch that one. No immediate sign of the washer buton either but that could wait anyway, minus 5 degrees outside so no chance of them working. Lets just continue on and see how it is as we go.

As we rumble down the motorway i notice the driving position is horrible. Almost like im craning my neck to the side... too high up, too far back from the pedals and the steering wheel is sat on my lap. Gads. No obvious adjustment either... another thing on the list. Then the windows steam up. No heater. Then the car becomes cold. Very cold. No heat. This could be a loooong drive home.

Fast forward 2 hours. We have made it to Carlisle on one tank of fuel. Well, almost. ITs at a quarter, but since the speeedo, tacho, water temp, voltmeter and indicators dont work, im not taking any chances on the fuel gauge being a work of fiction or not. Refill costs 50 quid, so its got a pitifully small tank. I have managed to find a seat adjustment. The switch so handily pointed out as the electric mirror adjuster by the seller is infact the electric seat controls. So this car will obviously have some electrical gremlins to iron out. On the plus side, the engine pulls like a train and the headlights still work, so at least the thing will get home.

Another hour in and we reach Abingdon. I have to stop to allow my feet to defrost. Eventually discover that since pumpng a 500ml aerosol of antifreeze into the washer bottle, disassembling the hoses and scooshing them full of antifreeze and clearing the jets that the window washer does not work. Paranoia forces a basic headlight and brakelight check. These do work. Small blessings.

Finally get her home and immediately berth her for the night. Return to flat to rest feet onto radiator.

Next day. Nothing too drastic to be done as the Silvia is still in the lock up at this point awaiting its chariot to the skies. Decide to take her a blast around town to familiarise better in the daylight. Discover heat does penetrate the cabin when left on idle. Heater is thus not blocked. Discover that heater on the only setting that does work on the blower (the slowest, naturally) cannot combat the cold air blowing in through the shifter hole for the gearbox. Another job for the list.

Then discover yet more "niggles". Car howls like a typewriter chewing tinfoil on idle. This soon becomes apparent to be a noisy release bearing on the clutch. Easy fix. Less so is the most worrying fault of all. The second gear sounds like it is a straight cut affair. Hmm. Looks like the T5 box may not be as bombproof as the seller waffled on about.

Finally the silvia gets lifted and i ponder the next car to enter her space. The MR2is now untaxed, needs the wipers fixing (popped the linkages, have purchased second hand replacements), bonnet (avalanche landed on it) and at the minimum new engine bay coolant hoses (previous owner deemed 5 quid of antifreeze as a luxury buy. Hoses now haemmmoraging coolant).

So it needs towed town to be repaired. Camaro on the other hand is road legal and drives, so i decide to put her in first so i can assess a few things:

1. How "professional" has this RHD conversion been. Everything under the bonnet looks good but the clutch pedal squeaks a lot from the opposite side of the cabin on changes. My suspicions about this will later be confirmed true.
2. How awful is it behind that dashboard? Considering nothing works and a feckin childs drawing of gauges would be more accurate than the actual gauges, i suspect very awful indeed.
3. If all goes well a basic service might help, and an oil change is frankly a must.

As such the plan of replacing the Silvia with the MR2 is put on hold for a few weeks. Enter the Camaro.

First up: Dash oot.

Those 2 iron bars running the length of the dash are exactly what i thought. Link bars for the brake and clutch. Beefy in design though, and properly welded in. Not too concerned about it as fiats and some golfs even run this system as a simple conversion for RHD. If its good enough for a factory design, its good enough for me. Bit of grease might help mind, as theres a fair squeak. Next up, the wee white dangly box in the passenger footwell. Thats the flasher relay for the indicators. 5 minutes getting warmed in my hand and it works too. Superb, easy fix for frozen indicators. Chalk that off the list.

The steering shaft looks pretty good too. Properly welded in, so no issues there.

Heater controls though... not so much. the entire system is shagged. Corroded everywhere theres metal, and an antiquated aircon system. I make the logical decision... out comes the aircon. I think replacing the heater with a mini's one might be a solution. Up goes the "hood":

Here she is. 5.7 (350ci) Chevy smallblock. Rochester quadrajet replacing the stock injection system, otherwise pretty run of the mil...er... mill. Mind you, half of it is surplus to requirements, so out comes the aircon compressor:

condensor and whatnot....

Still to establish if the core is separate from the radiator up front. If so it will come out too. Not shooting for weight savings here (its a big 80s yanktank) just neatness...

Ran out of time before i could attack all of the heater/aircon blower assembly (found at the top right above the drivers footwell) but it will be next in line. If i can get a heater assembly to part from the aircon and work independantly and efficiently I will persevere with it, otherwise i will be putting a non-stock blower and matrix in there to be done with it. As for the biggest potential issue of second gear whine, i bought a service manual for the T5 box to see whats involved in potentially replacing and rebuilding it to take more power, but if its gonna be costly i can see me just finding a replacement. The box came as standard in old TVRs, cossies and a few others, so they should be common on the 'bay.

Still to come: Hedman headers, custom exhaust, Holley 780CFM carb (yep, its bought), snap off aftermarket steering wheel, and some engine dress-up. Just finishing a job in Norway first!

Have a happy new year y'all!

Back from Kazakhstan...

...and not a moment too soon. Now, there are a few things i better get everyone up to speed on. The first is the affair i have been having. Kinda. You see, there was another car in my life, outside of this blog. The Supra:

Now though she has been sold. Essentially i had most of my "car funds" tied up in her, and she wasnt getting used anywhere near as much as she should have been. 3 days after i got back from Kaz, a friendly Norwegian had arrived and gave me a load of money. So now we are down to 3 cars: MR2, Silvia and Passat for the daily stuff.

Not quite. Sadly over the course of the winter the wee MR2 has not faired so well. An avalanche, lack of antifreeze and a dodgy window wiper mechanism now means the wee classic is not in the best of health. As a result i have to get her fixed up fairly smartish because my better half actually uses it and needs it. With this being the potential to be a new head gasket if the antifreeze incident is the worst case, the garage will need to be used, and as a result this meant one sad but inevitable result.

The Silvia had to be scrapped.

As sad as this is, i cant say i feel a great deal of loss at this. Granted the car was a project and has now been abandoned, but to be fair the V8 was all that had been worked on, not the car. Since the V8 can remain i see no reason not to get the car scrapped and focus on the more pressing matters at hand, then resuming a slow burner project at a later point in time. Perhaps a Caterham V8?

Anyway, for those keeping count, thats 2 cars. But for how long you ask?? About 20 minutes before i found this:

Will explain more in the next instalment!

An update from Kazakhstan

As i write this i am on my 5th week in Aktau, a remote desolate ex-soviet hellhole in west Kazakhstan, by the Caspian sea. Due home towards the end of next week, and i will have a LOT of things to be getting on with. Some of my purchases i will run through with you all right now. (These have all been made via the gift of eBay or through internet forums. Paypal is a tool that will inevitably bankrupt me.)

7 inch electric polisher/Mop: a variable speed mop and polisher. No real need for this at the moment for any car in the garage, but my Supra has been long overdue a buff down, so this will be handy. And home resprays will be made a lot easier with this

Range Rover 96- 4.6litre sump and dipstick. Not neccesarily a required thing either, but the auction came with a long reach sump pick up, so will make things a lot neater down there. Might have a crack with the 4.6 sump too if i can see any advantage with it. The seller also threw in the 4.6 timing cover which removes the distributer drive. Definitely no need for this so it will either be sold on or i may keep it for a future converion to electronic ignition via coilpack and ECU...

Twin Weber 45 carbs. Definitely not for me. Will be giving these to my bro for his scirocco as an xmas present. If i dont they stand the danger of ending up on my AW11 mr2. Not a good idea as this was meant to be the sensible car while all this monkey wrenching goes on...

A lathe. Very handy bit of kit. More of a joint buy from me and Simon, but will do a more comprehensive write up once i'm back and get the badboy running right.

DTI, micrometer, various lathe tools: See above

A TOMS airscoop for the AW11: Wat can i say, i'm a poser. And it came in the right colour so will be a bolt n toy.

15 inch alloys: 4x100 so will be going on the above. The aw11 is currently running horrific 3 spokes of unknown 90s heritage. Pics to follow.

Thats about it from me for this week. Slow progress indeed due to work, but the purchases made whilst away will ensure some fairly detailed and large jumps in progress!

Stay tuned!