Spac’s adventures in Magna

And then…

The latest arrival is on the left. I am calling it “Candi” because that’s the cheesiest name I could think of based on Candelo.

It’s pretty good, but three of the doors are dented. ~160,000km. 3.0 auto.

Some work on Candi today.

Made a cover for the tow bar hole in the rear bumper

The rear shocks were pogo sticks, so I replaced them with the less rooted ones I kept from the wreck. Note all of the oil on the outside.

This would be a super easy job, if you didn’t have to remove the rear seat to get at the top.

Tomorrow will be… wait for it… changing the cam cover gaskets! ?

This IS my life now…

3.0 without cruise control is the easiest one to replace the cam cover gaskets.

Also pushed out the dents in the front doors a bit. Hardly pretty, but an improvement. Photo is very unflattering, after taking about a dozen very flattering photos…

New wheels turned up. They were supposed to be $60 each, but ebay didn’t apply the discount code, so I paid $65 each for 8 of them.

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Also changed the oil, but that’s boring so no photos.

The nice, white TJ2 has gone to its new home. They registered it, then drove it the three hours to their central NSW home.

Obviously, I did something stupid and impulsive with (some of) the money…

The main thing recommended it, is that it is a GTV … basically it’s the Magna Sports with the Verada luxury crap.

This means a few cosmetic additions, but more importantly, it has the 163kW engine (up from 150kW in the normal 3.5 litre cars), bigger front swaybar and a rear swaybar.

It also has the 5-speed automatic, rather than the more common 4-speed, but that’s like poking yourself in the eye with a spoon rather than a fork…

It has a misfire under load that feels like ignition breakdown. I have had a look at the front three spark plugs, and they are all conspicuously white.

Regapping them and cleaning out the dizzy cap has slightly reduced the misfire, so hopefully replacing the rear plugs will fix it. I am also very suspicious of the condition of the plug leads, so I will dig out the parts from the Yosemite Sam wreck, and swap them.

I bought it with the intention of wrecking it when the rego runs out, but I am now feeling a bit guilty about doing so. Will see how I feel when the time comes.

After two weeks of almost no motivation, I managed to dig some up…

On Wednesday, I took out the non-functional old DVD/TV head unit and slapped in a used Bluetooth one that I had hanging around (probably ex-Wino).

I did this ahead of a 2.5 hour drive to collect a replacement engine for the BMW rally car.

With tunes, the Verada was a good choice.

Interestingly, the average fuel consumption is still dropping - even with the motorbike trailer behind it.

I was hoping it would drop below 9.0, but am now hoping it will go under 8.5.

A few people have been saying that they are getting 7.5 on a trip, so that would be nice.

Had a weird conversation with The Boy about the upcoming khanacross at Wagga. Basically, he was surprisingly indifferent, so I decided that I would go myself and take a Magna.

When I told him this, he instantly said that he wanted to have a drive because he was interested in driving something different.

So we “prepped” Narry this morning. We took the short Bilsteins out and fitted the standard struts from Candi, along with some old rally tyres, and a fire extinguisher.

So yeah, now it’s a fully prepared motorsport car! ?

Last time we went to the Wagga venue, the courses were very open and flowing, so hopefully the Magna won’t be too cumbersome. Maybe.

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@Spac can you tell me more about the khanacross? Is it the sort of thing you can drive your shitbox to, have a bit of fun, and drive it home?

(Rather than having a dedicated car that you take on a trailer)

Yes, absolutely.

About half the cars at the Canberra ones are road registered - a mix of dailys, registered fun cars, registered bangers, and a few dedicated khana cars that belong to people who don’t have trailers/tow cars.

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Might need to look into it more I think, sounds like a good value to fun ratio

They’re low stress, and good fun.

The Light Car Club of Canberra run them at the old greyhound track, roughly once every six weeks.

They even have a few econoboxes (Excels and Jazzes etc) the newcomers can hire for a token price, on the condition that you treat them with respect (ie: you’re there to drive it as fast as you realistically can, not to flog the poop out of someone else’s car).

I think their calendar is on their website.

When we were at the Wagga khanacross, one of the blokes mentioned that he knew of a Magna sitting around nearby.

A few phonecalls and texts later, and I was on my way to Wagga again… The initial discussion was that it might be a freebie or a carton’s worth, but I was entirely happy to pay the scrap value for it.

It’s a 1999 model TH Executive. It’s got a ton of kays on it, the battery is dead, and the paint is standard metallic Magna spec, but it seems to be a decent thing overall. AC works, it goes, stops and steers just fine.

The main issue is that it has copped the P-plater “let’s paint parts of the interior” treatment, and they have done a worse than terrible job! Note the overspray and they they appear to have deliberately painted the rubber gearknob…

The worst part of all this is that the main source of overspray literally pops out with no tools and minimal effort…

Anyway, the tyres were rooted, so I used an otherwise lazy, rainy afternoon to fit the tyres I saved from the Mazda 3 wreck.

Oh, great, more silver paint.

I am wondering if this should be flipped for a modest profit, or just stripped for parts. The bit where it has travelled to the moon is always going to limit its value (along with the terrible paint), so I am thinking that I should strip it.

It’s also a clearly better car than Narry, in every way except for being a poxy metallic colour with predictably exploding clear coat… (uh… I don’t mind the colour. It’s the clear coat that makes it poxy).

Messed around with shocks today, until my brain hurt.

Interesting discovery is that E36 & 46 front strut tops have the same bolt pattern as Magna rear. This makes rear shock tops very easy.

The Chinesium Climax 4WD shocks I bought cheaply look like they will work in the rear of a Magna.

I managed to take too-few photos (again!), but the shocks seem to be decent quality. They’re crazy overkill for the back of a Magna - 50mm bore, externally adjustable etc, but they’ll be a decent match for the Hotbits front struts.

The Climax shocks needed the eyelet removed from the shaft end, which required some heat to to soften the loctite.

I need to work out how to turn the 16x1.5 thread on the end of the shaft into something more like 12x1.5, without losing too much length. The shocks have HEAPS of travel, but the overall length is a bit short.

Current thinking is to machine down the end of the shaft, cut the thread in, and then use a machined down wheel nut to make up the extra length at the top of the shaft.

170mm OD would be OK, but I 175mm is ideal.

Modified some old spring seats to slide over the Climax bodies.

And modified some old wheel nuts to engage with the thread on the end of the shaft.

These look like generic, old style mag wheel nuts, but they are 18mm at the smaller diameter, rather than the 5/8” of a mag nut.

First pair is for the Bilsteins for Narry

Second (and spare third) pair are for the Climax shocks that will probably go into Magnate.