April fooling

Before the New Zealand winter clamped down, I flew back to Christchurch. The official reasons were to visit my father for his birthday, to see friends and see the autumn landscape - Queensland doesn't have an autumn, the trees stay a dull grey-green all year round. I went up to North Canterbury with a friend, and to the Botanic Gardens (cliched but beautiful nevertheless).

The unofficial reasons for the visit were to send my V8 Herald to the body shop (Brands Hatch) and bring back a pile of restored but never used parts for the GT6 in Australia. Having two restoration projects on the go simultaneously in two countries makes life interesting. Because it's in my garage in Moranbah I can do 90% of the work on the GT6 myself, whereas I have to farm out 90% of the work on the Herald coupe because I'm away 50 weeks of the year.

Andrew Stanton completed the chassis modifications with this backbone connecting the front and rear suspension. The idea is that this will provide additional rigidity to counter the torque of the V8. He also built a 'wide-track' front end and fitted a Holden diff. No way this baby will blow up!

Seeing if the carpets still fit. The front floorwells are the only unaltered parts of the floorpan!

Once again Ashley's Tow Taxi swung into action

The Herald at Brands Hatch

Megajolt assembled

The latest version of Megajolt Light Jr (version 4) is a tricky little bugger to assemble if, like me, your soldering skills are infrequently tested. Most of the components are surface-mounted, which makes assembly far less of a D-I-Y proposition than previous incarnations. I tried, realised it's harder than it looks and gave up before damaging anything. Luckily, my brother Tim is an electronics genius (I knew this before I ordered the kit, of course) so I gave it to him. Here's what he emailed me today:

"Hi Nick,
"Almost had it complete on Thursday evening, and had it all done yesterday afternoon, done the basic tests, voltages all correct and on correct points. Reworked your solder joints, you really need a very fine tipped iron for SMD stuff, needle tipped less than 1mm diameter at point, and I use 0.6mm diameter solder, to ensure I get an appropriate amount, and even then I often still suck and reflow the joint. I've secured the Map sensor with two M3 stainless bolts cut to appropriate length, and I used a compound to prevent the nut from coming undone, rather than use a plastic cable tie, as the diagrams seemed to suggest, which may give way or not prevent vibration, and failure of the 6 brass legs or solder joints.

'I have also replaced the leaded filter cap (electrolytic) with an SMD tantalum, like the one on the output of the 5V regulator, I did this because the electrolytic caps, especially 85 deg rated devices do dry out, or leak, and thus are more prone to failure down the track, especially in a vehicle, where the temperature can become very high during summer, and in winter drop very low. Where possible, and we have them in stock, when replacing caps in radios, we fit the SMD tantalum types for improved reliability in the longer term. Standard electrolytic caps would be rated for say a 5 year life at 50 deg C, this will decrease with increasing temperature."

I'd say I owe the lad a curry and lager for that one!


Oh, my chassis is back from the sandblaster and half painted. When it's finished I'll post a few pictures. And start trying to remove POR-15 from my hands ;-)