Cars! 3 out of 4 of my collection of #OOPS#boxes are currently broken. The newest addition, the 3.0 V6 MR2 has cracked the chassis at the swaybar mount. Apparently a common problem with the early SW20s. I should have put it up on a hoist to have a good look at the thing when I bought it, I would have found this before it broke clean off. But it's no big deal to fix when you know a coach and body builder. This one will be fixed tomorrow - will be better than new with a bit of plating and extra bracing. I bought some 2nd hand 17" Buddy Clubs for it recently, which look far better than the 16" R32 Skyline wheels it came with:
Soarer blew a coolant hose last weekend at Lakeside, trying to improve the PB on the new 265 semis and backyard aero - spoiler and canards.
Can't see what's leaking, but it can only be the water coolant lines to the throttle body and IACV or to the factory oil cooler. I bypassed the TB & IACV lines yesterday but that didn't do the trick. I'll need to remove the inlet manifold to get to the oil cooler lines if I'm doing it at home. Might take it to a mate's workshop to see if it's accessible on the hoist instead.
And the 120Y... Gearbox is out now. Gave it a run in gear up on stands and it sounded pretty nasty, so definitely no good. The brand new oil looked awful when draining it too.
So, stumpy boxes are pretty thin on the ground these days, and it could be a long wait for one to come up. I'm keen to get this on the road and start using it again. The other options are transferring the internals from the 180B SSS 63A long box into the Stanza box, or fitting a long box - which is the way I'm leaning at the moment. It's the easy and cheap option, and I have 2 lying around. Also means tha tif the box breaks in future it's easy to replace. They're 5" longer in total length and to the shifter on the 180B SSS 63A 5spd - the 71B I have is a bit shorter to the shifter. It would mean shortening a tailshaft and cutting the shifter hole and console. I'll get a price on tailshaft shortening and decide...
I also made up some spacers for the swaybar so it clears the L16 oil pump now at full droop. That's pretty much everything else checked off the to-do list. Just need a gearbox!