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We had a water leak late last year. It was inside our boundary and appeared to be coming from under the drive.
We had had a leak fixed here before but this time it seemed to be deep under the drive and not near the garage tap like last time. The pipe under the drive is copper and I think I'd be throwing good money after bad to keep this old pipe in service. I didnt want to slice up the drive to replace the pipe so I got a quote for horizontal drilling = $3.7k !!
Bugger that. My next best option was to bypass the leak.
For $300 I DIYed 25m of blue plastic pipe that goes round the back of the garage and joins up with the original feed.
There was a few unknowns but a good read of the marley catalogue showed there is a thing called a transition coupling that converts from 'other' to 25mm plastic. You'll see that fitting off to the right of the toby photo. There is a 45 degree bend available in the marley catalogue but the plumbing shop didnt have any so I had to make that bend in copper.
It was a challenge soldering the copper work for the garage tap because the toby doesn't completely shut off. Turns out that even a little water running through the pipe work cools it too much to solder and working outside cools everything too much as well. I must have fitted and removed the pipe work from the garage wall ten times <sheesh>.
I made a noob mistake of re-soldering some of the pipe work when the tap was fitted to the tap socket. That resulted in complete incineration of the tap washer and o-ring. Oops !
Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21
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Three months ago I bought a slightly damaged, written off & deregistered flat deck trailer at an asset disposal auction, with a view to repairing it and putting it back into service carting my race car to the track. I have no background in this sort of thing, but YouTube has been my friend throughout the process, and I've had some clever family members to give me advice along the way.
First I stripped the deck off the trailer, and cut away the remaining bar work which was too high for my needs. I then used a chain and hydraulic jack setup to straighten the part of the chassis rail that had been bent in the crash. I borrowed my father in law's welder and after watching dozens of 'how to weld' videos and doing a bit of practice on some scrap metal, I had a crack at welding new rails on at the height I want. I also added some extra diagonal bar work to provide more support to the deck and chassis rails - particularly important in the area that had previously been bent out of shape.
After that came the endless wire wheeling to strip the trailer of the 4-5 layers of paint on it, along with all the surface rust. I bought and installed new wheels and tyres after fitting new bearings, and had to replace the wheel studs as they were too short for the new wheels. After that I welded on the new mudguards and mounting points for the removable stabilizer jacks (to be used when loading and unloading the car). I also welded D rings for the lashing straps, and channels on the rear which the 2.1 metre aluminium loading ramps (bought cheap and second hand off FB marketplace) will slot into.
My brother in law was in town for Christmas and as he's a certified welder, he gave all my work a once over to ensure it was safe and that I hadn't bodged anything. He said while some of my welding wasn't particularly pretty, it was all done to a good enough standard for the use case.
Then came several weeks of waiting for the right weather to get the rust killing and painting done. The painting was a nightmare - the paint I chose is great, but the application was onerous and difficult due to the short pot life of the product, requiring a new pot and brush every hour or so due to it flashing off so fast. It was also thick and oil based and it got everywhere, requiring immediate clean up each time. It took weeks to get it off my hands.
I installed the lights and wired it all myself. I did have a drama getting the lights to work with my VW Touareg - that is the subject of another GZ thread a week or so ago, but my auto sparky was able to resolve it. After the lights were installed, I fitted a new coupling and got the new rego plate and a WOF.
The only part I outsourced was the sand blasting of the aluminium deck that had previously been badly painted and was peeling off. I etch primed it and applied Raptor Liner with a roller which came out way better than I expected, and it goes well with the piano black finish of the rest of the trailer. I just finished reinstalling the deck this evening which more or less puts a lid on this project.
All up, the trailer and all materials cost me a shade under $5k, not including a few specialist tools I had to buy (eg my own welding helmet, grinder, chain, bottle jack etc). If I had to guess, I'd say the trailer is probably $7-$8k now - not really sure. At least it looks new which is more than I can say for any advertised on Trademe or FB for around the same price.
Would I do it again? Probably not - it took pretty much every spare hour I had outside of work over the past three months. My wife is sick of hearing about it LOL. At the very least I'd definitely pay someone to sandblast the whole thing next time rather than wire wheeling it, but I was trying to save on that cost.
Here's what I started with:
Below I'm balls-deep in cutting, straightening etc:
I'll spare you the other 500 'in progress' photos - here's the final result:
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mdf:
Beautiful work.
You're holding back a critical detail though... What's the racecar!? (He says having spent the weekend in Mansfeild watching the Formula Toyotas and GTRs).
LOL the term 'racecar' is probably a bit generous. It's a '93 Toyota Trueno which I'll hopefully be racing in the 2K Cup South Island series soon. That has also been a bit of a project as it required a full engine rebuild after I 'broke' it at a track day. That work was well beyond my skillset so it ended up being quite an expensive exercise. Needless to say what I hoped would be a cheap entry level hobby is quickly turning into anything but!
Wheelbarrow01:
i'm just admiring the extremely tidy gen1 surf.
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tweake:
i'm just admiring the extremely tidy gen1 surf.
I feel like I am totally hijacking this whole DIY thread now - I apologise profusely 😅
Haha yes that's my other love and (mostly) DIY project. I've owned it 23 years and when I first bought it, I'm ashamed to say I abused it a bit, modifying and 4WDing it around the Wellington area with the Cross Country Vehicle Club. Then in 2006 I moved to Australia and it was parked up in my parents back yard in Christchurch. When I moved back to NZ in 2008, it continued to languish around in my own back yard until 2021, rego on hold, and only used sporadically.
By 2021 I was thinking I either needed to sell it (which I really couldn't bear) or pull it out of the weeds that had grown around (and through it!) and start work to restore. I chose the latter of course. I've now done a tonne of work to it with many new and second hand OEM parts sourced from around the world, but a lot of the bolt on parts such as new grille and window rubbers won't be installed until after panel and paint is done (including chassis blasting and coating). There was significant rust under the dash and in the cowl under the windscreen - that has all been cut out, new metal welded in, sealed, painted and fish oiled. That was an expensive exercise as it was a full dashboard out job. She's now garaged full time so should not ever rust out again.
I had buggered around with the suspension years ago so that was all fully rebuilt with new hangars, leaf springs and shocks. She's now road legal for the first time in a decade and I'm enjoying the occasional Sunday drive, but she won't be going hard out off-roading ever again, especially after paint. Tame gravel tracks around Canterbury are probably the most offroad action she can expect to see from now on.
I think my favourite work so far are the restored machined OEM alloys shod with those wonderful BF Goodrich all terrains. And the mud flaps - I painstakingly masked them up and hand painted the stencilling that had long since faded/worn off. And my stroke of luck in meeting a guy randomly who happened to have a pristine OEM rear bumper which he sold me for a very reasonable price, and I managed to find my original bumper surround plastics in a box of crap. Parts like that are almost impossible to find, as is the factory original rollbar which I sourced from Australia (not common at all on JDM Surfs) that allowed me to change from the old widow-maker lap belts in the rear to full 3 point seat belts. I also meticulously disassembled the electric antenna assembly and sourced a 'new old stock' mast for it - again very hard to come by these days. It has a button on the dash to put it up or down to any height you like, at will. It's a joy that despite it being 37 years old, and having had river water through the cab a couple of times, ALL the electrics still work flawlessly.
What makes it a bit special is that it only had around 70,000kms on it when I bought it, but it was never a daily driver for me. Couple that with the fact I hardly drove it between 2006 and 2021, this means the odo currently only reads 95,700kms. I hazard a guess it's the lowest mileage of any first generation Hilux Surf in the country.
I'm also still rocking the Sony MiniDisc headunit that I installed when I bought it, and I have no intention of changing it - retro rocks. It has a speaker/sub box behind the rear seats so none of the panels have ever been cut into to install aftermarket speakers - which I love.
There is still plenty of work to go - I have a very long to-do list, but good things take time... I am looking forward to taking it down to Kingston on the first weekend in March for the world record attempt.
I am well past the point of selling it - it now owes me far more than it's worth (in dollar terms anyway), but to me it's priceless with all the memories I have of giving it the jandal out on the trails or taking leisurely road trips around the country. And now she finally gets to be pampered for the rest of my life. My wife and family have strict instructions that she is to be my hearse when the time comes - roof off, rear seats folded, tailgate down, my casket ratchet strapped and sticking out the back, with the spare number plate screwed to it (because hey, you gotta be legal - even on your final joyride). The conundrum is, I really want to be there to see that!
Here's a better shot for you:
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A few weeks ago I was asking here for advice or comments on T-track. I bought a 1.2m track from Machineryhouse in East Tamaki and some clamps from Amazon. Have just installed this on my workbench.
Have started with the simplest of setups - I can add to it later if necessary but I doubt that will be needed. Pleased with the result - should have done it years ago. (The piece of kwila in the second photo is what I bought from Bunnings when I was looking for kwila here a couple of weeks ago).
I know I could have got it all a lot cheaper on Aliexpress but I wanted to be sure about the quality I was getting.
Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.
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Wheelbarrow01:
mdf:
Beautiful work.
You're holding back a critical detail though... What's the racecar!? (He says having spent the weekend in Mansfeild watching the Formula Toyotas and GTRs).
LOL the term 'racecar' is probably a bit generous. It's a '93 Toyota Trueno which I'll hopefully be racing in the 2K Cup South Island series soon. That has also been a bit of a project as it required a full engine rebuild after I 'broke' it at a track day. That work was well beyond my skillset so it ended up being quite an expensive exercise. Needless to say what I hoped would be a cheap entry level hobby is quickly turning into anything but!
Did the name on the back windscreen come from the aforementioned breaking of the car or are you a Tom Cruise fan?
Jon
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