Hey all,

With 2015 came a few updates on Minty. This began by going to the Pick-a-Parts (I think I'm addicted to these places) and picking up some parts out of a Saab 9000 Aero (that interestingly also has a 2.3 litre engine - but turbocharged, and 16 valve) what's curious is that this engine is also coined the B234 by Saab, and makes north of 200hp in stock form. Unfortunately there is not too much compatibility with this engine and our redblock counterparts despite them sharing a displacement and country of origin as the Saab engines have different bore sizes, timing chains and so on. Anyway I took the injectors and Turbocharger off this car, and with a little sandblasting;

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It was about this time that a 1985 244 manual came up on gumtree about 45 minutes drive away from me in Albury. About 2 hours drive later in my friends GQ Patrol (with a 5 litre commodore v8 conversion and a 5 inch lift) towing a car trailer we made it to the property in woop woop. It was dark by this time and you know what they say about buying cars at night. So we winched it out of the barn and bought it.

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The story was that they were planning on restoring it but never got around to it, and a branch hit the roof.

Interestingly I also got RBT'd by a policeman on the way out there, but it goes to show you how much nicer country police people tend to be - as on my license I probably shouldn't have been driving a V8, much less towing a car on a trailer - but because I wasn't drinking or speeding he understood what I was doing and just had a chat to us about whether to run 33" or 35" tyres on his Cruiser.Top Bloke.

But I digress. So from the 244 I swapped a bunch of interior bits as well as chrome headlight trim and non - rusted buckets. I also plan on running from the 244;
- the A cam that came factory on this kjet B230e in my +t conversion in the wagon.
- the manual gearbox, flywheel, clutch, tailshaft and pedal assembly from the 244.
- the exhaust that looks to be aftermarket.
- the carpet because mine is munted.
- anything else that is better in the 244 than it is in the wagon.

Long story short, should be worth the $300 I payed for the car.

One issue i faced is that the 1985 kjet system did not use the 60 tooth flywheel that my 240 would have had had it been born a manual and as a result I bought the well known Yoshifab DSM CAS adaptor and hi-res trigger disc. This is how I will take my crank position, cam position and rpm for Megasquirt.
Because I was using the dizzy hole in my block for the CAS sensor, I bought a set of LS1 coils to use for ignition.

yoshifab.com/store/billet-redblock-dsm-cas-adapter.html

All this talk about engine management brings me to Megasquirt. Basically I bought the MS3x V3.57 as it seemed like the most versatile and having worked with Motec ems abit at uni I appreciated the functions possible on the MS3x, as well as the fact that overall there was less mucking around with expansions and so on especially if I wanted to run a boosted 1UZ fully sequentially at some stage in future. For this to work on the B230 I needed to gather a few sensors and do abit of wiring and that should be happening in the next few weeks.

diyautotune.com/catalog/megasquirtiii-ems-system-with-ms3x-expansion-v357-assembled-p-435.html

In the interior a friend and I wired up an Alpine head unit as I was tired of going everywhere with a makita 18v worksite radio strapped in the passenger seat. It was a little pricey but It was the simplest looking quality head unit I could find. There is absolutely nothing I hate more on this earth than the 6 colour changing chrome ricey fusion/clarion head units in old cars - or any cars for that matter.

Whilst mucking around in the interior I had read about people swapping in Alfa seats into 240s. So i pulled a set of Alfa Romeo seats out of a 159 at the pick-a-parts. Perhaps a mistake in hindsight as they are electric and not lightweight but they are comfy and made by Momo;

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Whilst at a pick-a-parts recently looking for a 940 interior to swap into my friends 1jz 760 I happened to look at the 940s engine and noticed "531" cast into the head. So we drove over to Supercheap and bought the longest 1/2" breaker bar there and a socket. So off came the head. There weren't any cracks in it and tbh i felt a little guilty leaving the squirter block all open like that but you cant save them all, I bought the head and left the cam inside (which happened to be a VX3 cam) and so the bloke only charged me for the head ~$90.

The plan is at this stage to use the 531 Head with the "A" cam from the 244 parts car. But I have been looking into using slightly larger valves in it, but nothing set in stone (or should we say seated in alumunium) yet in that regard.

In other news, 10 internet points if you can tell me what Volvo this is that I saw the other day without googleing it! They even look to have swapped in a Defender interior;

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Also unrelated, A few engineering kids and I went parts and bought this Lada Niva to hoon in on an engineering camp that we had recently:

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They were all from eastern block countries so it was a good laugh deciphering the cyrillic instructions and freaking out the seller with Russian phrases about the Lada. But unfortunately the clutch had no love for us, but it will get fixed soon. For now the "Salada" sits next to the "Beastle" back home in Albury.

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But enough distractions! My friend and I installed the King Springs lowering springs in the wagon, and i was really lucky to find the 245 roof rack on Ebay with the help of some members here.
Also incidentally the spring change got rid of the noise in the front LHS strut tower which was really nice.

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You may notice that some of the black window vinyl is missing on Minty now, that is in part thanks to a 'Caramel Wheel' that you can buy - takes it off really well, unless it's paint, which in my case for the rear window, it was.

In other news we also installed a snorkel on the aforementioned 5 litre v8 GQ Patrol...

Before;

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After;

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and then did some work on the 1J 760;

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This brings us to the end of the second post and up to about March in real time. Had some major wheelspiration at the GRM open day;

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As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next post on Holset turbos, flathood parts and MS sensors. Hopefully the next one stays a bit more on topic!

Cheers,
Sam.