Avenga's 1980 Avenger wagon

[avenga]

The underside is all sealed and painted.

Drivers side front wheel



Back end





Underside and new chassis rails



Passengers side front wheel

[avenga]

The car is all done at the panel beaters.





Finished painting the last bit, behind the headlights and radiator.



Engine is back in



Started work on the front hubs





And started work on the Dynamat

[avenga]

Started work on the loom. Just laying it out at the moment then once I have everything finalised I will wrap it.



Made a little bracket for the cable grommet.



Mounted the ECU mounting plate



Put the old body loom back in to see how it all fits. Again, when I have everything finalised then I will wrap everything up.





Finished off the fuel tank



Added in a new fuel pickup



Ran the fuel lines. For certification you need to run the lines 150mm away from the drive shaft.



Made some quick spacers for the rotors so we could figure out what hat to buy.





Brought all of the brake gear. Wilwood 4 pot calipers and the hat for the hub. Also brought the rotor but I haven't unboxed it yet

[avenga]

Got the calipers mounted





Wilwood Rotors





Installed all the fuel pumps





Mounted the Wide Band Lambda sensors





Inside the car and the grommets





Got all the bits for the exhaust



Finished off the front brakes.







And I guess I will be racing everywhere



Put the air cleaner back on and modified the front cover a little bit



I also had a little test fit of some wheels using the wheels of my other Avenger. It looks like I will be able to run 15x8 on the rear. The front is going to be harder. I am hoping for some 15x7 but might need to go down to a 15x6.

[avenga]

Took some measurements for the wheels



I found that the fronts need to be ET+19 which rules out steel wheels so I went for Performance Wheels Challengers. 15X7 ET+19 on the front. Big thanks to Chris from Mag & Turbo Christchurch for organising and ordering the wheels.



And for the back I needed ET-25. The best they had in the cast wheel is ET-9 so I will have to run a 16mm spacer. They do a forged wheel which I could get in ET-25 but they are super expensive so I will probably wait a year or so and then get a set of forged ones made. This is the 15x8 ET-9 that I will be running on the back



I found a photo of a wagon the same wheels as I am getting but mine will look 1000 times cooler because V8 Avenger wagon



Got the bonnet back from painting



Started on the rest of the exhaust



Over the diff



The front muffler and flex joint



Started on a little shield for the brake lines and fuel lines.

[avenga]

Been working on the wiring.

Finished the body loom.

Went from this



To this



Started on the fuse box and relays



Did new connectors for the digital dash. I used nylon braided sleeving for everything



Also finished the backbone of the engine loom. The rest I will do in the car so I can work out the exact cable length I need.



Link ECU all mounted



Also got some new brighter bulbs now that I have some relays and better wiring. I went for 60/55W Halogen H4 with a P45T base. Should be quite a bit brighter than the old 45/40W incandescent bulbs

[avenga]

Finished the vacuum tank and idle control solenoid. This will run the MAP sensor and remote brake booster



Created a bracket for the throttle cable




Milled the manifold a bit to get the vacuum hoses on.



Some more wiring. Ignitors and MAP sensor



Continued building the loom

[avenga]

Re-positioned the handbrake further back. Because we move the engine back a few inches, and the longer gearbox, the handbrake wouldn't fit in it's original position.



Fitted the seat to test the position of the handbrake, feel good.



Continued with the loom. Passenger side plugs. TPS, injectors and ICS



What it will look like with the injectors in and connected.



Routing through the tunnel



Finished the drivers side plugs. Intake temp, water temp, injectors and one of the coils with a suppressor.



Final shot of the valley before putting the manifolds back on



Also found that my brake light switch wasn't working so I took it apart and found it was covered in muck.



Took the little plunger out so I could give it a good clean



Clean as a whistle now.

[avenga]

Brought my bonnet pins.



They are the same AeroCatch pins that I use in my 75 Avenger. This will pretty much be the only external mod that you will see when the bonnet is closed.



Finished the front of the engine loom. Cam sensor, Crank sensor, oil temperature, oil pressure coil and suppressor.



Alternator wiring.



Vehicle speed sensor and reverse switch.



Updated my documentation with a few of the extra plugs that I needed to figure out.



Mounted the fuse box



Throttle linkage and valley.



Front of the engine loom. You won't even see this because the radiator hose is right above it.



Then it runs down the side of the engine



Started mounting the battery. I decided to run it in the guard, behind one of the trim panels. That keeps everything out of the way and still gives me full usage of the boot, because wagon.



The engine is all fully wired up now and the engine bay is looking freaking tidy. Almost no visible wiring.



And from the other side

[avenga]

Big milestone. Fired the engine up for the first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTB5TDxLFtk

A few issues. The biggest problem is that the TPS doesn't work, The shaft on the throttle bodies spins the opposite way to the standard 1UZ TPS. Need to do some research to figure out what TPS I can run.

In other news.

Got the gearbox boot and gear knob. Tried this one but it was a little high for my liking.



Swapped it out for a smaller knob which feels much better (Ladies!! See, a bigger knob doesn't always feel better)



It also has the correct H pattern on the top which is cool because it is different to the 5 speed sierra gearbox in my 75 Avenger and the old standard Hillman 4 speeds, they both have reverse next to first instead of below 5th, so I'm sure I will forget where reverse is on this one if I didn't have the H pattern there.



Also got the dash up and going. It still has the protective screen protector on it so it looks a bit fuzzy. I will take that off once it is all mounted in the car.

[avenga]

Configured the turn signals and headlights on the dash

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OJ6PPVmwC0

Made a small sub loom that connects up to the old instrument cluster wiring.



The old dash only had one turn signal indicator so that made the wiring for that easy, the high beams were also easy. I had to do a little logic in the dash to get the low beam working the way I wanted it to, for the low beam I had to use the panel illumination which meant the little low beam light would stay on when I went to high beams. The dash lets you use If.. Then.. Else statments so I set it to use "If Low Beam = 12V and High Beam = 0V then turn on the light If else turn off the light" and for the high beam I just said "If High Beam = 12V then on Else off" so that way when there is 12V to the low beams then the low beam indicator will come on, but if there is 12V to both high and low beam then it will turn off the low beam light and turn on the high beam light. The dash really powerful like that. You can use conditional statements for any of the alarms or warning lights.

Got some temporary wheels so I can get it on the trailer to get it dyno'd etc. I am still waiting on the proper wheels to arrive from Aussie. Hopefully they arrive soon. These are on the front with a 30mm spacer



And the back, again with a 30mm spacer



And it sitting down on the ground. I am still waiting on another set of spacers for the front wheels so I still have the front sitting on the dollies we made.



Finished off the radiator, popped the trumpets back on, and added the sealing strip around the top of the air cleaner. It's starting to look real cool now.



Just enough room for the radiator hoses.



Installed the bonnet pins.



They are a little higher up than I would have liked but I didn't want to cut in to the supports anymore than I already have in the middle of the bonnet. My other Avenger had a fibreglass bonnet so it's a bit easier to place the pins where you want them. I have to mould for the bonnet so I might make a fibreglass one further down the track, or maybe paint the bonnet pins body colour.

[avenga]

She drives!! First drive around the yard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3j_bEJcEO8

Got the engine running really nice for the basic tune. Found I had to reverse the polarity of the wires for the cam trigger and crank trigger. With both of them wired the "Correct" way according to the documentation put me about 40 degrees retarded, I checked the trigger scope and they were clearly around the wrong way, flipping the cam got me to about 15 degrees advanced, then flipping both of them got the timing bang on. Did some other stuff like set up the idle control solenoid.

Here is a little rev

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9cOvCzM564

I have it booked in at the dyno on Thursday!!!

Got the checklist back from the certifier. Not a very long list. Most of it is just little things like lock nuts, and things we haven't got like the wheels and we can't test the brakes yet.





Got the reverse lights going. Which is pretty awesome because it is my first Avenger with working reverse lights. Here in NZ the reverse lights were only hooked up on the top of the line models. As all of my Avengers have been base models then they haven't had reverse lights, they have all the wiring in the loom for them but they just don't put in the switch or bulb holders.



Got it down on it's temporary wheels, we had to put some smaller rubber on the front so it is even lower at the front and jacked up at the rear so it has that drag car rake, it will look more normal with the final wheels on when they get here.



Also finished the battery brackets.

[avenga]

Made a little custom startup screen for my dashboard. Looks pretty sweet.

Here is a little video, along with some of the screens I have set up, I still need to name some of the things better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9guvP3v2bbk

Here is a shot of the startup screen



After running the engine for a while I noticed that the vacuum line was collapsing so I have replaced that.





And while I had the vacuum manifold out I figured I would take a photo of it.

[avenga]

Big day today!! Dyno day!!!

Popped the doors back on yesterday.



Loaded up the trailer last night.



Early morning start and off to the dyno!!



Engine is all looking really sweet for the dyno runs.



Getting the car all ready for the dyno.



Even with all the dyno wires hooked up the engine bay looks tidy as.



Here is a video of a power run. My god it is loud, and not from the exhaust, it is all induction noise, sound so sweet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzmonWF-7k

Also did a run with the bonnet down to make sure the air cleaner setup with the bonnet closed doesn't suffocate the engine, pretty much no difference with the bonnet closed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQV-2IIDDzI

Here are some power graphs. 209 KW engine power and 277 lbft engine torque. Look at how smooth that power curve is



And the axle torque and power



After I got back from the dyno, I finished off the rest of the dynamat.



And installed the back carpets. They still fit but the front won't because of the bigger transmission tunnel.

[avenga]

Configured the shift lights on my dash. I have them set to low RPM just so I can test if I like the pattern and colour. Pretty happy with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8YWhGu43L0

So a little bit of a set back. Performance wheels over in Aussie have been giving me the run around so it doesn't look like I am going to get my proper wheels for probably another month or so, which will be well after my South Island trip and track day I have planned for October.

So I had to go for plan C, which is by some other wheels that are the same size and offset, just to get me though certing and the South Island trip etc. They might not look as good but at least they will get me to the South Island and to the track day.

I got some 15x8 steel rims for the back. They are the same offset as the Challengers that I will get eventually so I can just swap them over when I get the new rims. The front won't looks as good because I had to go for some ugly alloys to get the offset I needed.



It doesn't look too bad with the steelies but because my other Avenger has steelies then I want something different for the wagon.



The 15x8 with 225/50R15 fit really nicely under the guards. It is quite amazing that they fit under there. They are the same size as the ones on my other Avenger but I have huge flares on my other Avenger.



Built a new adjustable panhard rod so we can tweak the back end a little bit.