1968 Viva HB + Mazda quadcam V6 - now sold to a good home!

Welcome back to Vivadom. I have much to tell you so please sit down with a cup of tea and read on.

The new balljoint has so far been behaving well. Along with the balljoints I had shipped over from the motherland were some new front upper arm bushes. The ones on the car were most likely the originals and they were buggered. So two weekends ago Hannah and I spent the day at work and doted on the little Viva.

While I set up the new plenum chamber lid in the mill Hannah removed the upper arms from the car. Because these bushes can often be quite tricky to remove Hannah machined up some pressing cups that locate properly inside the edge of the bushes and another that locates neatly against the arms. With these the bushes pushed out square and the new ones pressed in easily. You can see how stuffed the old bushes were- two of them were not even bonded into the outer sleeve anymore and free to wobble about.

Hannah and her new favourite toy...



Big vice makes it easy.. (sadly no press at work but luckily they were not as tight as we feared)



The old knackered bushes..



I also continued on with machining my new idle air control valve that I had started making the night before. Its to replace the existing iac which was very noisy because I attached it to the underside of the plenum chamber. The iac i have been using is the original Mazda item stripped out from its home which was cast into the throttle body. Because its a pulse width modulated type it vibrates as the solenoid bit switches on and off really quickly. Not a problem in a solid casting but noisy when mounted to a boom box of a manifold.







Old one near its location bolted under the plenum chamber..



new pipe for hose to remote iac..



So my new one is remotely mounted down near the fuel line. It still makes its sound but is no where near as noisy. Luckily its only active during warmup. Now I could have just bought a Bosch iac or similar but I like making these sorts of little items. More fun. Plus I have loads of throttle bodies with these iacs as spares.

Another thing that I should have done ages ago was fit my new Mazda thermostat! The engine never ever got up to proper working temp. I had fitted a brand new Tridon brand thermostat but once pulled out and tested against the new Mazda item it showed me why I was so cool running. The Tridon one would open quicker and stay open till 77 degrees against the Mazda one that would shut bang on 82. I have heard bad things since fitting the tridon one about them. The Mazda one is so much more nicely made.



Results? yeah! The engine runs much hotter, gets to temp quicker and does not yo yo up and down. I have also discovered since replacing it that I had set in the wrong resistance value for the the temp sensor and hence the tuning adout.

I have not found a definite answer yet but I think these engines run around 95 degrees.

Onto the new plenum chamber lid. I have been meaning to build this for ages after having discovered that the old 4mm thick lid flexes in and out loads from the engine suck. It also created a strong reverberation at certain revs that boomed through the car.

Dave (avengertiger) sourced me a piece of 6mm alloy and I finally set to work. I wanted raised ribs this time so milled the outside edges down with the old 6 toothed milling head that is missing 5 teeth.... thwack thwack thwack....

Last friday night I stayed in and carefully and slowly (no feed or coolant on our old mill) milled out the ribs while listening to Jim Mora.



On Monday it got coated with some wrinkle paint, which took ages to go off due to the cold. When the paint was cured I scrapped it off the raised ribs...



Then fitted it on Tuesday when back at work. Its so much quieter and I think looks much better :-)

Holy cow, I am lost for w-

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

I'm loving how clutter free the engine bay looks!

You certainly could.

Steve- there is still too much clutter. I want to tidy up the heater hose area at the back. Maybe tig together some neat hard lines. But for now I'm happy.

I put up some photos of the car from this weekends trip south to the oldschool meet. Was awesome and on way back we managed 40 mpg! That with having some very fast fun driving over the hills too.

Oh- some photos from the weekend trip south to Hanmer Springs for an oldschool.co.nz meet. The Viva drove so well and I'm sure it now running at a proper temp helped with economy too. In fact on the way home I mainly cruised except for some very fast driving through the buller and and over Golden downs range. Even with that we managed to return 40mpg (7L/100km). So stoked with that especially as fuel just keeps going up. Its still running a bit rich on cruise and the overrun fuel cut needs to be back on so there is more to come. Economy aside it was such a blast and the roads south were great. I forgot how beautiful a drive it is down through the centre of the South island.

Hannah having fun driving on the way down...



At Lake Rotoiti where we met the crew from wellington..



Me trying my best to dress to the Viva period..







Near Hanmer..

I think the theory is bust looking at that beautiful scenery just made me wish I could visit NZ. But going for a road trip definitely does lift ones spirit.

All simply wonderful as always.

Dat scenery! :-D

Just want to thank you for posting those photos mate the scenery brought back a lot of memories Glad the Viva went well, is the box behaving its self now?