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Was out for the first drive of the year after winter storage. Just happened to go past a "Cars and Coffee" and pulled in for a gander. Parked next to this very nice 1990 Miata just to remind myself of where the whole thing started. Good news is that the Molvo seems to be running well after its winter nap. Bad news is that frozen water started falling out of the sky an hour after I took this picture. Welcome to springtime in Canada.
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Doing a great job of this. Looking forward to each new post.
Pete
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Apr 17, 2023 11:52:09 GMT
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How have I missed this build!?
6 for wheels. The fact that they are gray gives them an advantage in eye-appeal.
Subscribed.
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Apr 12, 2023 13:47:00 GMT
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Just to prove that my main activity in the shop is not inspecting the function of the hinges on the beer fridge. Sometimes a mechanical contraption DOES leave the shop!
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Agreed. The lesson that I learned when all said and done is that a pair of cars for a body swap should have similar front axle to front seat distances and similar seating spacing side -to -side. I boxed myself into a corner and had to actually extend the Miata wheelbase in front of the firewall by 6 inches; not something I would recommend. The above mostly applies to a car where you want the swap to be invisible to the average observer. If just building a hat-rat-rod, then the game-plan is a lot more flexible. Do you have a plan for wipers? They were quite the challenge to sort out because the Miata dash components left no room for a wiper motor or moving mechanism. Ended up using a system similar to what MG uses with a spiral wire driving gearboxes and the motor mounted remotely in the engine bay. White is Miata Gray is Volvo, so you can see where the two ended up pretty close. The Volvo could have been an inch lower in the perfect world. Apologize if I am hijacking your thread, just wanted to point out some stuff that might be of use along the way.
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The reason that the car for sale is so low is because the builder wanted to keep the stock Miata seat and dash relationship. Raising the body would require raising the steering wheel and abandoning the dash and built in mechanisms. The stuff under the dash was a big part of what I wanted from the Miata swap.Wiring, switches, HVAC and AC, Pedals ,Dash cover ect had a lot of effort put in to them by the Japanese designers who are better at this than I am. The thing is that the windshield on the Morris would have to be lowered to the point where it sits on the Miata dash.
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Free advice for what it is worth. When I was mating the volvo body to the Miata chassis, I had the Miata fixed on to a metal frame that was level and fixed to the floor. This was the only way I was going to be able to judge if the final result was going to be square
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Was facing a similar situation when putting a Honda engine in the rear of a Morris Minor.
The plan was going to be to widen the existing wings with two strips of tin; one on the inside edge and another somewhere in the middle. Advantage I have is an English wheel and shrinker stretchers to form the curves.
I ended up dodging the bullet as the car went to live somewhere else.
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Can u use a VW bug front fender as a stating point to add volume to the morris fender? They are cheap and have a lot of bulbous volume shape to work with.
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Last Edit: Apr 1, 2023 22:48:12 GMT by bjornagn
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Nice car! eh?
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Yeah!
This is the pace of posting that I missed so much!
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Mar 23, 2023 23:15:21 GMT
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Be interesting to see where the seat ends up. Will you be driving from besides/behind the B pillar?
How does your line of sight work out the front window?
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Mar 23, 2023 12:03:38 GMT
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Looking good.
Did a similar thing using a Volvo P1800 body on a 96 Miata with a 302 V8 swap. The effort of grafting the modern chassis under the classic body is well worth the effort. Been driving mine for 4 years now.
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Having some vacuum pressure issues. I think I might have found a clue
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Mar 15, 2023 12:21:29 GMT
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I tuned in for the Molvo and found more impressive stuff with the Healey. You know you make novice garage spanner twirlers like me look bad. Glad you don’t live too near by. Otherwise my son would realise just how bad my car antics are the the scheme of things! Thanks for posting - you always inspire me to try to do that little bit better than I would have otherwise done! Thanks for the nice words. Yeah, I know this thread kinda violates the board rule by not being what the tittle says all the time, but there is just not enough Molvo content to keep posting. There is however stuff going on in the garage that I know others like to follow. I hope the Healey goes away in a month or so, Then the Hot Rod can come back for road testing and final tuning. Hopefully this years Molvo reporting will be from road trips. The stuff to do list is getting shorter every year as I use the winter to do small boring detail stuff.
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Mar 14, 2023 15:19:07 GMT
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Fired the Healey on Saturday. What an amazing cloud of smoke in the shop as she burned off all the oils and paints that accumulate on a new build. Combines with the jets being a bit rich it was quite the smelly CO laden affair!
Some highlights:
Ran for the 20-25 minutes required to break in the cam and was hitting on all cylinders with consistent temps across all exhaust header tubes
Temps never went over 200F Oil pressure steady at 60 psi No bad noises from inside the engine. Engine is quite responsive to the throttle No blow-by from tappet chest or valve cover No oil leaks once I found and plugged two missing bolts on the side of the block where a mechanical pump would go. All gears in the rebuilt box report for duty and the clutch seems to work The rebuilt rear diff does not make bad noises/howls
Stuff "To do"
Minor exhaust leak where muffler meets tailpipe I don't think the markings on the balancer are matched to TDC on this engine so timing might be an issue. Tach does not work yet. Need to work on idle speed and quality. Never adjusted SU HD8 carbs, so learning. Plenty of HD6 experience so other than idle tuning same thing. Idle quality in the end might be a bit rougher than I want due to alloy flywheel...TBD. Floor-pan was at 70F and the Foot-panel behind the pedals was at 110F. The tubular header is HOT. Not happy with how close the header pipe is to the oil pressure line. Not easy to move.
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Mar 13, 2023 13:34:48 GMT
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When I worked in industry as an assembly line mechanic, it was drilled into us that if you put a nut on a bolt you torqued that nut. Simple safety logic even when it seemed pedantic at the moment.
I would like to say the lesson followed me into retirement, but not entirely, still make a lot of judgement calls when fabing stuff up.
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When returning to a project after a few years of relative inactivity you keep finding little surprises. For example, this morning I was continuing to fit hose clamps when I discovered that the throttle body was only held on loosely by two bolts. That is now rectified but I am going to have to keep both eyes open for any more unfinished jobs. At least I had the foresight to mark nuts and bolts when they had been properly tightened. I would be having 100 paint dots on some fasteners since the hobby seems to be how many times do I fit and refit any given part?
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Been a bit of a while since I upddated on the Healey. The project was at a crawl waiting for the tubular header to come back from ceramic coating. Once that came back it was short shift to get the intake and exhaust bits bolted on. The exhaust has been a fun challenge from end to end. The header did not fit because headers never do, The header does not work with the flexy bit that joined exhaust header to muffler so that got sculpted out of solid tube. The high-flow aftermarket muffler does not mount with any of the factory hardware and the tailpipe needed a bit of fettling to fit. Non factory rear mount for muffler and tailpipe. Yeah, the non level bolt holding the tailpipe bothers my OCD also, but not enough to do anything about it. Tape on pipes is so that I could pressure test the welds
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Man...feels like the old days when I could count on a post a day for this build. Might have to get back on another project of my own cause now I feel like a slacker! Or I could just build a rec room and chill. Edit: I DID buy this nifty LS L33 with not real purpose other than to say I built an LS engine. With a bit of gearing and adaptive engineering it would make one amazing margarita mixer for the wrecked room!
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Last Edit: Mar 1, 2023 0:15:23 GMT by bjornagn
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