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The reversing mirror isn't a smart unit. Doesnt do anything except for screen and recording. The head unit is a full carplay device though, and works really well. Finally got back onto the MX5 too, almost a year to the day it made its way into the garage. Decided to pull my finger out and get...

On the house side of things: A few weeks ago I did some quick IKEA hacking to make a new entertainment unit to go with a new TV which we had on order. Replacing this old repurposed server rack. Wanted to store vinyl along with the AV gear, and so designed it around the cheap Eket cabinets...

Haven't really been doing much in the garage recently, busy getting other things done around the house. But here are a few of the bits done on the Hilux over the last few months. First up I needed to sort out some form of rear vision, as the canopy blocks so much and the door mirrors aren't...

Thanks. Still more to come on it. Plus, now that the Hilux is almost finished, it is time to start thinking about the other projects again. First cab off the rank was going camping this year, where we took the previous camper trailer. Nopics and the kids got the bug for it, so we bit the...

Bit more of an update. Had some time to cut down some tray sides i bought off Gumtree: Then added a bunch of Raptor to them. Really highlights how short the tray is, but its workable enough. I then bolted on a bunch of accessories so it looks cool while crawling down the mall, and been...

Not a huge amount of progress over the summer, mainly because of being away and it being too damn hot to do much. But got the wiring finished, although it needs a slight tidy: Plus finally got around to redoing the latches on the rear drawer. From factory the central latch didnt fit properly...

Havent had as much time to work on the HIlux as before, as a lot of time has been taken up by end of year things and also taking the family down to Philip Island for a good weekend holiday. Of course that holiday coincided with Island Magic, so i took the older kids to the circuit to watch some...

The process of screwing all of this back together has been really slow. Although part of that is because i keep getting distracted by other things. First up was getting the drawers in, which i mounted up using a ton of M8 stainless hardware and sandwiched 3mm rubber sheet in between, got it all...

Thanks. Hopefully i can get back in to doing stuff in the garage soon. Still in the back yard for now... After the body cured well enough there was a day where the humidity was low enough that I could get some paint on other things. So down went 4L of black Raptor on the canopy and tray, plus...

Yeah, all of our tube steel comes pre primed. It is an extra step, but one that saves on cleaning up surface rust anyway so its six one half dozen the other.

So at some point last week the treadplate sheet arrived and i was able to figure out how much i needed: After that I was able to put some left over KBS onto the "closed" faces of the tray: With that done I jumped at the opportunity of a couple of dry days and got stuck into prepping the...

Not a huge amount of progress this week, as it has spent most of the week lashing down with rain. In between the downpours i managed to fully weld up the basic tray, and it is still within a degree of warp. Good enough. Then I set about figuring out how the under tray drawer was going to...

Another week, another update. Didnt get much of a chance to do much until the weekend as it basically lashed down all week here, but got back into it after it dried out. Well after the weather did anyway. Fitted up the radiator and the rest of the pipe work, and filled the radiator, only to...

Another week and certainly invoking the 80:20 rule here. But the box of heater hoses finally arrived and so it became a process of mix and match to figure out where everything went: Not terrible, but a pain as a bunch of them were too long and needed to be trimmed shorter, or joined in two for...

On Saturday i pulled my finger out, took a teaspoon of concrete, and figured i could work in the rain if need be. So managed to get the engine out of the garage with a bit of pendulum trickery and no small amount of good luck: That meant i could get access to the back of the engine to put the...

A bit of a side thing from the garage itself. Built the kids a LEGO table over the weekend. Using these Trofast cabinets from Ikea, as they already have all their LEGO stored in the cabinets. Build four of them, and arrange in a square Prime and paint some MDF: Add to cabinets with castor...

Definitely in the 80:20 phase of the engine side of this build, lots of little things this weekend. First up was managing to get all of the shims i needed, all 11 of them... Not cheap, but its what it costs in a pandemic and good to get things dialled in properly. Lots of pretty new shims...

If i had access to my old surface grinder this would be trivial. But as it is I have managed to source shims locally, just have to figure out how to get them with lockdown.

Not a huge amount of work on the Hilux this weekend, mainly due to long sleepins *yay*. I did get out the feeler gauges though and start doing the valve shims, which was slightly infuriating. I didn't think about doing it beforehand, and presumed that it would be close to correct given that it...

Big weekend on the Hilux, first up was discovering that the bolt on engine mounts.... dont, you know, bolt on: That was a simple fix with the drill, no biggy. What took more time was starting to build the bottom end, which required me to get the scales out for the fresh pistons that came in...