Rolley - It's A Boy! (NA6)

[Rolley]

Cheers Lachy!

If only Magpie...

[zero00]

Saw it last Sunday - well done Rolley and it looks great!!

[vscalais]

Fantastic job. Congratulations. New business opportunity ???

It's finished!
Possibly a bit late in the year to show off my new Bikini but hey, I'm an exhibitionist...
Came in just under $250 all said and done. Most expensive bit was getting the trimmer to double stitch the binding on for me, my mate who bound my floor and dash mats said his machine wasn't up to 5 layers of canvass.
I will have to get out and get some decent photos but here's a start.
I'm over the moon with it.

[Rolley]

vscalais - It would be interesting, problem I see is that every roll bar would give you a different measurement to work to and the curve of the bar means the rear section may need to be tucked a little to get the rear stays to pull straight.
Really need the car there to do it properly and I cant see it being too cheap once you work out realistic labour charges... Gould be fun though.

[Rolley]

I started playing around with recovering my stock wheel.
I wanted to use blue and white thread for it but realised white is just not practical for me. I cant be within 5m of a white shirt without it getting grease on it.
So I made up a test piece and decided on red/blue.



The next decision is weather I keep it completely stock so I can refit the horn pad if needed or if I taper the rubber on the spokes to make it look tidier with the pad removed.


Should look the business either way I think.

[Rolley]

A few things have been happening side by side lately.
I'm still picking away at the steering wheel, working out how I want to do the spokes is slowing me down.
I gave him a good bath and soaked the top in 303 Aerospace. Great little product. It does its job perfectly and the excess soaked into the cloths I used to apply it gave the tyres a nice matte finish as well. has lasted out very well so far!




The head unit died and unfortunate death… it had been dropping in and out for a couple of weeks and my usual fix of removing the face plate and flogging the crap out of it on the gear knob had ceased being effective.
So because I had it laying around I put the stock unit out of the Xtrail in to keep me out of trouble. The plan as of today is to remove the radio from the dash completely, remove the console and fit a shorty, mount 3 gauges high in the panel and have a cubby at the bottom. I will then mount one of the new mechless media/radio only units in the glove box.



Here is the beginning of a chapter I call "Satin black madness!".
I picked up a rear lip to match the front one. Only it didn't, it was a bit roughed up and needed some loving. But after a smooth out of the casting marks and a sand and paint it looks like new!



This caused and imbalance... So off with the front as well and after a bit of elbow grease I ended up with this.



This in turn led me to fitting the electric mirrors I painted a while ago. What was slowing me down was NA8 doors have a 26mm hole in them to allow the wiring connector to pass through and for the locating lug on the mirror to sit in. I didn't really want to take at my doors with a hole saw so I depinned the connector and fed the wiring through the existing 6mm hole.



That meant modifying the mirror mounts to remove the locator. I trimmed it off with a set of side cutters (the bases are alloy) and then ground the surface flush with my die grinder.



Gloss black was now just not going to cut it so they got roughed up again and also squirted with the satin black.



While the door panels were off so I could secure the wiring up out of the way of the window glass I found this.





Cello tape and twisted wires. Two different speakers and a pretty good explanation for my crackly audio even after ditching the old worn out Alpine unit a couple of months ago. I had a set of good 4in being used as magnets on my pallet racking so I made up some adaptors and slapped them in to get me by until I upgrade the whole system



I need to finish off the loom for the mirrors and

The black vinyl I picked up with every intention of using for some side stripes has been re purposed. I have had thoughts of blacking out the windscreen surround for awhile now and the mirrors were the tipping point. So out came the razor blades and off we went.
It's not an easy thing to work with the first time on a big scale and there are a lot of things I will do differently next time. That said besides a couple of bubbles on the drivers side there is only one nick where the aftermarket windscreen seal was glued to the body where I couldn't tuck the vinyl under the seal out of sight!
I'm pretty pleased with my efforts.









And finally, because no post from me would be complete without me messing round with the cooling system...
I took it for a run to set up the mirrors manually while I'm finishing the loom. got back and had a check over the levels and inspect the progression of my rear main oil leak to find the bottom hose from the chassis to the back of the water pump has doubled in size. Best price I could find locally for this 250mm length of hose was $55.
So I bit the bullet and bought the mania kit. Everything now, besides the short section up behind the dash has been replaced. Fingers crossed I can leave it all alone for at least a couple of months now
After fighting with access to the small hose under the inlet manifold the Charcoal canister took a trip to the parts shelf. Strange result is the car idles a lot smoother since its departure.
I put it down to either the solenoid being stuck open or one of the rock solid vacuum lines not sealing properly.
Either way I'm guessing at 25 years old it would be well over its effective life span.




Luke.

[Gladiator]

Luke, the only problem I can see, is that your recycling bin lid is no longer yellow. You're going to mess with the garbo's head.

[Rolley]

Gladiator, I hit it with the wire brush on a regular basis. He's not got it wrong yet though.

As expected I'm still farting round with the cooling system...
The steel pipe on the passengers chassis rail was a bit pitted but it cleaned up ok. I thought and the old hose, though swollen was not leaking so I wacked the new hose on thinking everything would seal up fine.
It appears it has not... So tonight I get to drain it again and I'll give it all a better check over, a better sand and buff, some wider clamps and a lot of profanity.
By just looking at it, it could also be a pin hole on the inside lining of the hose as from the top it looks like the coolant is coming out of the raw edge of the hose not the join between hose and metal.

In other news, I have actually found something that is exactly as advertised.

Happy Laps are Happy!

[Rolley]

Bugger...
One of the new hoses had a manufacturing fault. The one from the hard pipe on the chassis to the waterpump outlet.
The inner layer of silicone didn't completely cover the nylon webbing that reinforces the hose. At first I thought I may not have cleaned the connections properly but after checking it twice and upgrading to 1 inch wide clamps I was still getting a leak from both ends of the hose.
So I pulled it all apart again and shoved my torch down the pipe and noticed the webbing showing through. It was about 2 inches down inside the pipe so it couldn't of been damaged by the fitting as it was slipped on.
The coolant was soaking into the webbing and then leaking out the ends of the hose where the fibres were exposed...


So I gave Mania a call and they shot me up a new hose. The faulty one went in a post bag and back to them so they could have a good look at the problem.
Fingers crossed I can forget about it now...

[corners]

Haven't been on the forum in a while and just read this front to back!! Great buy and seems a great car.
Have met you a couple of times at Rogers coffee meets. Will hopefully catch up again soon or at the Dodgy Day.

[StanTheMan]

Hope ypu don't mind me saying so.....But that red cam cover.....should maybe be Black?

[Rolley]

Thanks Corners,
he's a little gem of a car and keeps me occupied. I don't think I'd be as attached if I had of bought a showroom condition NA. there is always something to play with, clean, stop leaking or just pull apart to figure out how it works. I like having this post more so I can see just how much I have done too. The to-do list is long but I have already shaved a lot off it.
There will be a very interesting little update on here in a couple of weeks. Time to play with some industrial adhesives!

Everyone's entitled to their opinion Stan! But it's staying red, black is just boring and the turbo bolted to the exhaust is a better indicator of a turbo motor than what colour the cam cover is
I have really enjoyed reading the rise/fall/rise of Patchy, I'm looking forward to keeping Rolley for as long! My girls are a long way off licenses but to teach them to drive in The little blue bastard would be sensational.

[StanTheMan]

ohhhh missed the part about the turbo.

[joshuam]

ohhhh missed the part about the turbo.

I thought I missed something huge when I read that..... I think he was saying that painting the top red isn't pretending to be a SE, because having a turbo bolted to the side is decidedly more SE than a red lid

Nice updates - still can't wait to see it in the flesh

[StanTheMan]

Don't mind me.....wasn't even thinking about an SE. Just colours. Blue would probably look awkward too on the cam cover but each to their own. And he's not changing it anyway.

with the Turbo thing I just thought that was in progress but I missed it....my sarcasm meter may need checking LOL