Blue is Ford!   

Well I have never really paid much for head before but now times have changed:



These are the new heads I will be using for the rebuild. The old Corvette LT1 heads that were on this engine were unfortunately cracked, so I bought these brand new alloy items. They are not an especially hot head but they flow fairly well and will allow the engine to comfortably run on 91 octane fuel, which is what I wanted. With my piston combination I believe the compression ratio will be around 10.8:1. And yes they are currently stored under my bed 





Unfortunately that is the extent of my engine progress at this point. But since the car is coming off the road I keep thinking to myself that I should just do as much as I can in one go. So when a friend of mine who paints cars on the side was explaining to me that he was quite interested in a spare 13B rotary engine I had, I happened to mention that I wanted my Hilux painted and a deal was struck.







Keen eyes will spot the large amounts of the original red paint coming through as a result of the terrible paint jobs it has had before, but also the yellow front guard from the single cab parts Hilux from the previous page. The tub was a lot of work to get straight, and whoever originally did the black paint job had prepped some parts really well and not really bothered with the rest of it. On the plus side though the only rust patches were a small section in the A-pillar and a pinhole under the windscreen, and by the looks of things this has never had repair from a bad accident.



This last photo shows how much the tyres protrude past the guards. In America this doesn't seem to be an issue but out here it's the first thing the police check if they pull a modified 4wd over so once it is painted I will be fitting some rubber flares to keep it legal. I am hoping that I can have the engine rebuild completed by the time the car is painted so that I can bring it home and drop the engine in. After that I will need to sort out which gearbox I will be running, make an exhaust, and then think about trying to start it!

My vote is for brown or tan.

Thanks guys. Having done the body work on a full restoration before I am certainly not unhappy to be giving it to someone else to do! I was considering trying to do something in my driveway but it was never going to look that good and at this time of year it would have been a disaster.

Regarding the colour, I thought long and hard about this. Originally it was red and I do like that as a factory colour. But if I did a really nice red paint job I was worried that I would then not want to properly enjoy it for fear of getting scratched. Plus inside the door jambs and now the engine bay are all black. That and I have no way of storing the car undercover and in the foreseeable future this won't change. So I will be repainting it satin black, however I have had some metallic mixed in, which I am hoping will give it a fairly unique look, whilst also not showing up dents or scratches too much.

a satin clear coat? this will look pretty cool

The engine:

I finally finished assembling the engine with some help from YouTube which was a relief. The engine specs aren't especially exciting, basically it's 40 thou over, flat top pistons, LT1 valve springs, roller rockers, alloy heads, mild cam, and the entire rotating assembly is balanced.

All of that is now coupled to an R150F with an Advance Adaptors adapter to the original transfer case that came with the truck. I ended up fitting the engine and gearbox, and then bolting the transfer case on afterwards. It was quite a mission, especially on a gravel driveway, but it got done.

I hadn't decided what I was going to do about the crossmember but unbelievably the R150F with the adapted and early transfer case is exactly the same length as a G52! So at this point I am using the same drive shafts and a standard crossmember.

I want one of these dual cabs so bad. Yours have a small block makes it even more fun. Surprised that you got so lucky on cross member and driveline. That is a good money savings there.