2118 replies to this topic

[Heath]

It's a low-down style GX71 Mark II with a Cresta front bumper, and it is gorgeous. Z20 Soarer in the background too. Also spectacular.

Chaser? Arguably close, but no cigar.

Skyline? Bloody hell mate, be more discerning lol.

 

Nice idea, so you pull it out just a little for the fascia to hinge down then you can use the phone mount? And I'm guessing pull it out further to faff with the USB cables but you can push it (mostly) back in once connected?

I've been trying to come up with a good idea for the empty space where the ashtray was in the four door (removed with custom dash and I don't want it back either) but haven't been able to come up with anything. Not sure I'm quite so dependent on a phone to put that front and center but I do like the subtle USB port idea.

Yes, you slide it forward like normal to access the USB ports, and when forward, you can then fold the fascia down out of the way.

Because of the significant recess in the dash (and the fact that the phone sits on a bit of an upwards angle, which is desirable IMO), it has to be most of the way forward to have the phone mounted, and to plug in a second USB cable, you'd need to remove the phone first to gain access.

 

If you want to wrap up the USB cable when not in use, theres's plenty of space for a short one in the front compartment, and you can close it up.

 

If your USB device is still connected to the port, then yeah you leave it open. I could make it come out the recess at the bottom (that your finger goes into to operate the ashtray) but I see no point. If the car is on display, you charge your phone in the luggage area and leave the dash looking nice. And the car still has a cigarette lighter port in the dash that you can use for shit.

[308mate]

I haven't been on for a while. Nice to see you haven't been standing still. Great read.

[Heath]

Thanks Scott. Nice to hear from ya.

 

I didn't love the plain extruded shape of the EFI fuel rails with their square ends and one-size-fits-all look.

 

I installed the four jaw in my shitty old lathe and got to work.

 

The profile really didn't fit down the guts of the chuck properly, and to handle the long cut, I set up a totally carnie-spec dead centre in the tailstock using a tapered brass bush on the outside of a drill chuck *cringe*. Sorry to anyone who actually knows how to use machine tools who may be watching this.

 

But after more hours than I care to admit... I am actually totally happy with the result. 

 

Ah, one less thing to go.

Edited by Heath, 22 September 2020 - 05:41 PM.

[Hatchback13]

Gday Heath, your work is pretty spot on, what do you do for a living? Technical skills going on there, I was looking up tail shaft hoops the other day as I’ll be running one in my hatch and I came across the one you made earlier in your build thread, bloody outstanding! I hope you don’t mind but I think I’m going to built something similar, I have a similar gear box cross member made of flat bar so should tie in with that I hope. Keep up the work. Cheers.

[Heath]

Thanks Brad.

 

Of course, everything that I painstakinly upload into this build thread is in the public domain and ripe to be stolen or re-imagined by others. The only clause to that is that if you steal my ideas, I reserve the right to tell people that your car is full of ideas that you stole from me, lol.

 

Yeah, I think the tailshaft loop is a really good way to do it. LITRE8 actually pioneered a similar one 30 years ago, so I can't take all the credit for that one.

 

I work in a technical sales position for a small company in the plastics equipment industry. Specifying and supplying manufacturing equipment for Australia. If you're looking for a state of the art injection moulding capability, get in touch.

 

Keeps my technical mind ticking, but my hands clean during the day time so I'm happy to grab the welder and the grinder every evening and every weekend.

 

I bit the bullet and paid someone to transport the car... was time to come home to papa. 

[toryman76]

Must feel nice having the car at home heath. I am still yet to understand the orange engine bay but I know there's method to your madness so I am eagerly awaiting how this will come together.

[Ricky Bobby]

Really looking forward to you pulling the trigger on this one, bring it on!!!

[Hatchback13]

Haha! I can handle you tell people that, interesting job. I’m sure there would be engineering aspects involved.
Good to get the car home, now let the fun begin!
Cheers

[Heath]

Before the car left here to get painted... I started working on some bar work in the rear end, with this simple harness bar from gusset-to-gusset.

 

In my haste, I didn't quite get where I wanted to. So on the weekend I plug welded the C pillar seatbelt plates to the inner frame of the pillar, and welded some (flush) nuts into the pillars too:

 

I made four more end-pieces with the round plates welded into them (like the first ones below, but in smaller sizes), bolted them into place

 

Then started cutting & notching some straight lengths to create a 'cross' assembly to stiffen up the big opening in a hatchback that comes from the absense of a rear firewall.

 

[rexy]

Nice!

A clever man like you should be able to build a well hidden completely bolt in cage?

[Heath]

It's a good question.

I thought about rollcages long and hard because I do froth at the mouth for them. A well hidden rollcage is a fabrication work of art (and I tip my hat to that stuff of course!), but it's not a very weight-efficient chassis stiffener without the jungle gym that triangulates big opening, and once you have that:

• It's not hidden anymore.
• You can't sleep in the car.
• You can't have passengers in the back.

My hatch is my no-compromises street car, so that just doesn't fly. This ^ thing I just made is a far cry from a rollover protection device, but it gives me a camera mount, harness mounts, some body stiffening, and it's four bolts & 2 minutes to install/remove... that's why it wins for me.

And I'd be lying if I said I didn't like how it looks.

Edited by Heath, 05 October 2020 - 03:13 PM.

[Mitchyboy]

Too good!!
Clever engineering

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

[Heath]

I had an old bits'er 'S' model instrument cluster spare. No breakages and nice lenses, seemed like a good starting point.

 
Stripped it all down (not sure why the hammer is features in the photo; it wasn't my tool of choice)

 
Started designing a new back plate:

 
Despite my obvious love for holesaws, I didn't have one in the right size for this... and had to manually die grind those big holes, lol. Also cut the back of the housing off totally (33mm depth now including the lip at the front if you want to steal my idea)


 
Went on the Speedhut website and put an order in for some 4" gauges after coming up with a gauge configuration as close as I could get it, followed by some 4am calls to the company in the States and saw how much I could modify the shit out of it to mimic my own orange coloured version of the original 'SS' cluster in Photoshop.
What the website allowed me to do:

Just a couple of edits, haha:

 
And a while later, the goodies finally arrived!


 
Wired them up to a Deutsch DT connector:

Dodgied up to a car battery on the bench:

 
 
SpeedHut gauges are popular as hell with Toranas, but I've seldom seen anyone do anything nicer than putting the round gauges in the cool squared off frOcken holes of an LH/LX dash, so they look really lazily cobbled together when you can see the edges of the bezel in the corners. I wanted high performing, modern, backlit GPS gauges that looked properly integrated deeeeeeep into the Torana dash (you know, how muscle car dashes are). To me that's an iconic feature that I wanted to preserve. But... it takes a bit more work.
 
Got drawing in CAD, and started churning out some SHITHOUSE attempts. Bloody hard to work with all the draft angles and organic shapes. Wasted a fair bit of time & money getting this trash printed, and wasn't having fun with SolidWorks either.


Then I simplified the idea massively and knocked out some perfect pieces that sit behind the black front housing.

 
That's more like it.



 

 
Drilled some holes into the original lenses for the push-buttons, and gave them a polish. Followed by the TINIEST bit of glue on the outside to secure them (don't go liberal with the glue or you'll see it bleed across the lense and it'll look crap)

[Heath]

Then went into rivet counter purist mode and started restoring shit.

 

Had an LX 'S' model black grain dash with a single DIN slot roughly cut out. Cut some textured ABS to fit the hole perfectly and glued that in.

 

Stripped back a full dash assembly, sanded out all of the parting lines, and painted it satin black. This was peak Melbourne lockdown which we're creeping out of.

 

Got one of those awesome Molotow liquid chrome pens off eBay while I couldn't leave my house.

 

Choice.

 

The SpeedHut gauges came with a really ugly stand for the shift light... so that had to go. Drew up another design in CAD.

3D Printed, sanded, cutting some fascia to fit the front.

 

Restored the rest of the bits:

 

New headunit is a RetroSound bluetooth unit that lights up with full RGB colour range so it can be orange to match the cluster. It had a chrome body, so I bought some satin black vinyl wrap and cut it to fit the front, only leaving a tiny bit of chrome exposed at the front... very well matched to the rest of the LH/LX style dash I think.

 

Complete with a pair of original type knobs:

 

 

 

The shift light is pretty awesome. Adjustable brightness with auto-dim when the cluster lights come on, plus an orange (of course) colour LCD digital tacho on the side that I can read from standing outside the driver's door, auto has RPM recall, as does the tacho itself. All the bells and whistles.

Edited by Heath, 10 October 2020 - 05:56 PM.

[Cook]

Great work as always.  Cheers Ron

[SHEEL]

oh - so - sexy

[lx308]

frOcking awsome

[Bigfella237]

Nice! (How much do you hate sanding 3D prints smooth?)

 

I know I must be missing the obvious, but what does the reset button on the combo meter actually reset?

[UCgazman]

Looks like you got the hang of photoshop - those gauges are awesome!

[Heath]

Nice! (How much do you hate sanding 3D prints smooth?)

I know I must be missing the obvious, but what does the reset button on the combo meter actually reset?

Good question. I enjoy the process exceedingly little, but I've not yet decided to spend more money getting more professional 3D printed jobs done... If everything is a one-off, then you don't want to spend more money than necessary on an iteration that may not fit etc.

The button on the quad gauge is used to set the ranges and the point at which the warning lights come on for each gauge. (eg. low oil pressure, high temp, etc.). I think you don't really need to use it after doing the initial setup.

On the speedo, it's to do shit like a 0-100km/hr accelleration time or a 1/4 Mile run, resetting the trip meter, etc.

The tach has an external button for recall. The shift light has its own buttons too.

Fair bit garn on in that respect.

[arrimar]

I like it. So much nicer than a sheet of alloy.
I'd have been torn between keeping the original gauge layout and having the tacho in centre, think it works well how you have kept it as GMH as possible.

[rodomo]

[76lxhatch]

Excellent work, I especially like the extra effort on the gauge surrounds. I'm not sure if some people like the look with exposed bezels or its just the difficulty of hiding them but it would definitely annoy me!

 

Have also toyed with the idea of the Retrosound unit, very interested to see how the finished product looks.

[308 Sunbird]

Awesome Heath

[Shiney005]

How large is the CAD file for the bezels Heath? Too big to share anywhere?