Avenga's 1980 Avenger wagon

[avenga]

New plug lead set.



Marked all of the old leads

1.photobucket.com/user/avenga76/media/1980%20Avenger%20wagon/IMG_6280_zpsv1syvd9h.jpg.html][/URL]

The new ones were all numbered and comes preinstalled in the plastic holder that goes over the middle so they are real easy to install.



Got the new tyres. It's getting harder and harder to find 15 inch wheels. Went for 225/50R15 Toyo Proxies4 at the back



Back tyres on the car with the temporary rims



Got the new temporary front rims. Need to paint that center cap black



Front tyres fitted. I went 195/50R15 Toyo T1R. They stopped making most of the sizes in T1R, my other Avenger has 205/50R15 and 225/50R15 T1R's but they don't make either anymore.



Front wheels on the car



Offsets are pretty good. Might go out a couple of millimeters front and back.



I raised the front with some new springs, it is sitting very high so I need to get more low. It was too low before so I am just going to keep dropping it until it looks and handles right.

[avenga]

Machined some wheel spacers for the back.



The rear sitting at it's final width.



Fills up the guard really well with no rubbing



Did some last minute rust repairs.



I'm not much of a panel beater but it came out pretty good. I will get the whole outside resprayed next year so it's only temporary.



Also did some rust repair around the back, under the bumper on both sides



Installed a brake bias valve. I have a bit too much front brakes with the willwoods.



Decided to restore the front grille. It was painted solid body colour by the previous owner, which I never liked. Originally it would have been black and silver so that is what I went with. I started off by painting the whole thing black



Then masking everything because I am going to hand paint it.



Finished hand painting the grille. Looks pretty sweet.



It back on the car



Added Dynamat to the front doors.



And the rear doors

[avenga]

WOOHOO!!! FRAK YEAH!! SHE IS ALL ROAD LEGAL!!!!! I'm going away to the South Island next Wednesday so it has been a mad rush to get it finished in time. Still a little list of things that I want to finish of but it drives really nice. I took it for it's first proper drive today and it is such a fun car to drive, stupidly quick and OMG does it ever sound amazing!!

Got the cert plate back today, passed with flying colours. Here is the cert plate listing all the mods



Got it's warrant of fitness.



And registration



First night back at home



Here is a before shot, I love how you can barely tell I put the V8 in it. Such a sleeper. The big back wheels are pretty much the only thing that gives it away, they look so cool.



Back in the garage with my other cars



Other little updates. Painted the centre caps of the temporary front wheels. Doesn't actually look too bad now that it is all murdered out.



Swapped over the front bumpers. The early Hillmans used a much smaller bumper than the late model Chrysler's. They don't bolt straight up, you need to drill a couple of holes then after that it bolts right up. You can see a good shot of the old bumper in the before photo above.





Finished mounting the brake bias valve.

[avenga]

Talk about cutting it close. I finished everything on my list of stuff I need to finish before my road trip tonight, and I leave in the morning!!

Not much of an exciting update, just tidying up the last few things. Did some road testing over the weekend and tweaked the ECU a little bit. I found that some of the settings like the overrun/deceleration fuel cut and idle had too much of a deadzone for my application. For example the overrun fuel cut was set to cut the fuel if the TPS was below 0.7% but the problem is that because the car is so light and the engine is so powerful, you are quite often cruising around at 0.1-0.5% throttle. My TPS is really accurate and stable so I just turn all that sort of stuff way down so for the fuel cut or idle the TPS needs to be below 0.1% now. Drives like a dream now, it has such awesome throttle response with the ITB's.

Also did some tweaking with the brakes. Reconnected the booster and then wound the brake proportioning valve to the maximum reduction, which is 57% and the brakes feel really great now. Super happy with the brakes now.

In other last minute things.

Got the spare tyre fitted. Had to make little drop downs for the front because there used to be a 155 width tyre and now it is a 205. Still fits sweet in between the fuel system and exhaust.



Put on some clear protective take where the air cleaner touches the bonnet. In real life you can't see it like you can in the photo



Made a little rubber mat for the back so everything won't slide around as much on the trip. I also go on road trips with my friends and their dogs so it will be nice and easy to clean.



Made a new bonnet stay like the one on my other Avenger



And a little holder for it.



Also went to a car show in the weekend. Got really good feedback. people were pretty impressed with how well everything fits in there.

And YAY!! Road trip tomorrow. It's been an epic build and I am so stoked I got it all finished the night before I leave. Such a relief. Still more to do when I get back, like the proper wheels, but now it is time to enjoy the car!!

[MAD-GRUYERE]

I was wondering if "hood struts" will be a good replacement for the spring system. That is a nice workaround mine sometimes hitme in the head XD

[avenga]

Made it back from my road trip down to MoPars in Richmond down in the South Island.

Here are some pictures from the trip.

Loaded up the boot. Tons of space for everything.



Installed a little ghetto audio setup. Just my UE Megablast cable tied in to the dash.



Went down and gave the car a good wash because it hasn't had on since I started the project



Had a little break down in Huntly



First night stay was in Taupo



The next day it was down to Wellington, then caught the ferry the next day



Went down to visit one of my Avenger friends.



Picked up a new tail light



First day of the carshow. Bonnets up, V8 Avenger vs stock 1300 Avenger



Went for a cruise out to Nelson lakes





Day 2 of the carshow. The Avengers all lined up and ready to go



I won the Furthest Travelled award for the 4th time!!



The next day I caught the ferry back to Wellington. This is leaving the South Island



The next day I spent some time in Wellington, did the Weta workshop tour then drove up to Taihape.

The day after that it was time to do the Gentle Annie Highway between Taihape and Napier. It was an awesome road. Had one little breakdown. The fuel line came off the fuel filter. Just jacked up the car and reconnected it.



At least it was a picturesque place to breakdown



Got to Napier and drove up to the top of Te Mata peak. Great views



Then drove out to Waimarama beach which was another great road



Then on the final day I drove from Napier to Auckland, which was uneventful.

Did a total of 2316 km over the 8 day trip. A total of just under 30 hours driving!! Not bad going considering I had only done less than 400 km before I left for my trip.



Going to do a track day at Pukekohe on Sunday. Hope the weather forecast improves. At the moment it says it's raining but I don't really want to track the wagon in the rain because it is a bit of a handful in the wet. I'll just take it easy if it is raining.

[MAD-GRUYERE]

post some VIDEOS TOO!!!

awesome trip, the wagon RIPS!!!

beautiful pictures!

[avenga]

A few videos from my trackday at Pukekohe.

The car went really well. I didn't push it very hard because I only just got it all up and running so I'm not used to the car yet, but it was really fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSPfeDgX8D8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Yil2R16oo

[MAD-GRUYERE]

WOOOW!!! that Rumble!!!! sounds amazing, seems to drive very nice as well that is the stock steering rack? congratulations! loved the vids! many thanks!

[MAD-GRUYERE]

hi, a question poped into my mind...since it rained heavily few days ago, how do you do in case of rain? because you are using the cabin air inlet and that has a hole  to the firewall to drain but since that is covered...seems that any rain will get into the cabin...or I missed something...

[avenga]

For the rain, there is a factory shroud that covers where the aircleaner is through the vent, this is normally where the heater is, so it is designed to protect the heater fan from water.



That then drains out the bottom here



And then the aircleaner box seals to both the body and the bonnet



So after 3 and a half months of waiting I finally got my wheels from Performance Wheels in Australia!!

What do you guys think?







So back to the start of the week. Finally got the call that my wheels had arrived so I went picked them up in the wagon



All shiny and new. The fronts are closest to the camera



The fronts are 15x7 ET+6



And the rear are 15x8 ET-9. I could go deeper, like an ET-25 but I would have to get it in a forged wheel which are really expensive, not sure if it's worth it.



Test fitting the rims, everything clears and the offsets are spot on.



Testing the fronts with some rubber on



And the rears with rubber on



Also had a bit of bad luck and a bit of good luck a couple of weeks ago. Bad luck in that the rag joint in the steering column catastrophically failed and I lost all steering, the column completely separated from the rack. And good luck that it happened while I was parking the car, and not driving down the road.





I am thinking it was just caused by an inferior part. I brought it new from my local rootes group parts guy but it has no reinforcements, just plain cheap rubber. So I waterjet cut on out of much better rubber, so even if it does fail then it won't fail catastrophically because the reinforcements should keep it held together long enough for me to pull over. The long term fix is going to be to build a new column with 2 universals and no rag joints but that is going to take a little while to engineer.



Also found that under some high torque situations, mostly parking or slow speed corners that the rag joint was flexing and bolt on the rag joint in the middle of the above photo was riding up and over the bolt on the column, making a clunky feeling so I replaced it with a button head.

[MAD-GRUYERE]

First: I did not notice the position of the inlet was upper to the water drain! now I can understand, many thanks Avenga!

second: it looks gorgeus! those new wheels fit like glove to the look of the state!

about the steering. Is no too hard to handle at parking?, ive seen electric assisted steering for hot rods in some webpage...there is any in NZ maybe that will help with  that...

[avenga]

Thanks. The wheels do look great, and we took ages measuring them so we knew they should fit perfectly. It was such a relief when we finally got them and everything fit so well. No rubbing at all which is pretty amazing for the size of the wheel and tyres on there. They are the same size wheels and tyres as my green Avenger, without having to use bolt on wheel arches or cutting the guards, and the green Avenger still rubs some times.

The steering isn't too bad when parking, I am very used to not having power steering because all 3 of my cars are non-power steering. The green Avenger is actually the heaviest steering because it has the same big tyres but also a smaller steering wheel and more caster. Next is the wagon which is okay when parking, and too light when driving due to having no caster and a big wheel, I actually want to add some more caster to make the steering heavier in the wagon. And lastly is the charger which steers like a boat due to a stupidly big steering wheel and 20:1 steering box, it is almost comical to drive, it almost feels like the steering isn't connected to anything, it is so vague, and then you need to turn it about twice as much as a normal car because it is 4.5 turns lock to lock.

Originally I was thinking of electronic power steering, maybe out of an MR2 but now that I have driven the wagon and found that the steering is already too light then I scrapped that idea.

[MAD-GRUYERE]

when you said

I am very used to not having power steering because all 3 of my cars are non-power steering

I imagined something like...


XD

I was looking at some salvaged EPAS that work in failsafe mode without the need of the CANBUS, and for some of them there are controller boxes that can be set the amount of assistance with a knob or a button for parking.
(i think i'll make a separated thread later )
link
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Corsa-B-C-Kit-Electric-power-steering-controller-box-With-ECU-plug-EPAS/142463712424?hash=item212b7fbca8:g:SywAAOSwbopZgX~V:rk:3:pf:0&vxp=mtr

well... I was thinking about that because I have a small steering wheel (non stock) and might be an issue if I change my 13" for 15"

[avenga]

Oh boy! I have been super busy, going everywhere in my wagon so sorry for the lack of updates but here we go.

So this last weekend I entered my car in the 4 and Rotary Nationals. I wasn't sure how well it would do because it is just my little Avenger wagon, up against all these wicked show cars. Going in to the event I thought maybe I had a shot at best V8, but that was all I was hoping for. At the prize giving they called out the best V8, which went to a V8 Silvia. So I figured I wasn't going to get any awards. Then they called out Best 1970-1989 in the Piston Class and it was my little wagon!!! Being super stoked with that I went up and got my trophy. Then they called out Best Piston Conversion and it was me again!! At this point my mind was well and truly blown because there was some seriously nice competition at the show. It was the first time I have entered any of my cars as a show car, and to win two awards was absolutely amazing.



Here's a shot of the wagon at the show. I also went to Caffeine and Classics, and the Orewa beach show. So quite a busy weekend.



Now jumping back in time a bit. Back in December I went to the Oldschool.co.nz drag day and had a total blast.

I was doing 13.2 runs at 103.66MPH here is a onboard video

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

Here is one of my time slips



We had a nice little Avenger get together. My two Avengers and Billy was also drag his stock Avenger, sadly his diff did not like drag racing much and his spider gears broke



Later in the day Hamish turned up in his Avenger



Then we went and did some group photos



For the dial your own racing I dialed in 13.2 but I missed a shift on the first run and didn't get through.



Lots of rubber on the old back guard



A few photos from Facebook at the drags. https://www.facebook.com/DCGPhotographyNZ/



And https://www.facebook.com/rotationals/



In other news, finally got round to Dynamatting the boot.





And I'm going to Wagnats in a week so I will be camping in the back of the wagon so I tried out the "Bed Mode" it works really well.



Tons of room for a twin airbed



Went to the Kumeu hotrod show a couple of weeks ago and brought a sweet roof rack for when I go camping. I found it at the swap meet there, I went specifically looking for a roof rack and only found one and it was the perfect size!!





So busy couple of weeks, off to leadfoot festival this weekend, then Wagnats camping in the wagon!!