MENTL6 - VK Wagz

[DANNY8]

Long story short, started rebuilding my VH, lost interested coz I wanted a wagon, so bought one for $350.....then the project started!

Vehicle:
1984 VK SL Wagon

Engine:
1.
Blue 173 2.85L inline 6.
- Bored out 130thou to a 186 3.0L.
- Chemically cleaned block.
- Fully balanced up bottom end.
- Flat top pistons.
- JP Straight cut timing gears.
- JP Oil pump.
- New fuel pump.
- New waterpump.
- New starter motor.
- New alternator.
- Rebuilt Varajet carby.
- Motavator extractors.
- New lifters.
- Crow cam.
- Crow valve springs.
- High compression 173 head, shaved a further 10thou.
- All new ACL rings, bearings and MonoTorque gaskets.
- New harmonic balancer.
- New Top Gun gloss yellow 8.8mm Pro Racing Series leads.
- Shaved flywheel.

2.
Red 253 V8.
- Bored out 30thou.
- Flat top pistons.
- ACL Monotorque gaskets.
- ACL rings & bearings.
- JP timing gears and chain.
- Dynotec Stg 4 cam (2700-5700rpm).
- Redline Maxitork single plain manifold.
- Speed Pro LT1 valve springs.
- Nason lifters.
- Chemically cleaned block and heads.
- Heads shaved.
- New harmonic balancer.
...still more to come, haven't finished this donk yet!

Trans:
1.
Borg Warner M76 5spd.
- RPM heavy duty clutch.

2.
Aussie 4spd.
- Xtreme heavy duty clutch.

Diff:
Borg Warner 78 series out of a VK wags.
- 25 spline LSD.
- 3.23 gears...lookin for 3.9's.
- Disc brakes when I can find a set.
- In the process of getting rebuilt with all the goodies and new bearings and seals.

Suspension:
- Monroe shortened shocks all round.
- Lowered King springs all round.
- Nolathane strut brace.
- Nolathane adjustable strut mounts.
- Nolathane adjustable pan hard rod.
- Nolathane upper and lower trailing arms.
- Nolathane bushes throughout the whole car.
- New ball joints and tie rod ends.

Brakes:
- DBA cross drilled and slotted rotors with Bendix pads.

Wheels:
- 18" mags....dunno wat sort they are.

Interior:
- Sports steering wheel.
- Autometer 5" tacho.
- Speco 2 5/8" oil PSI and water temp gauges.


Other:
- Smoothed out engine bay, all unnecessary holes welded up or plated over.
- Battery relocated to the back.
- New after market fuse rail, moved to the glove box.
- 4 door central locking.
- Top of the range Mongoose alarm and immobiliser.

The VK is getting there slowly. Spent the last few weeks working on the engine bay (took 3 weeks ), got it painted last Friday. I built the motor up at a local engine builders workshop, that took ages coz the machinist took his time. The motor has been completed for a few months, brought it home the other day (it was gone for 10 months all up). Put the motor and trans in 2day.

Have bought lots of gear for it, lots of little stuff which I can't remember

Here's some pics:

The VK a few days b4 I bought it.....that's me in the pic...ticking sumfin off my list of things to check.



The motor out of my VH. I decided to use this motor mainly coz of it's sentimental value. For the 3 years I thrashed it for, it never let me down. It always got me home (except when the diffs blew). It got to the stage that I'd rev it to 3000rpm and it would start smoking like a train down the road. So I thought I'd keep this motor and rebuild it to sort of 'repay' it. And yes I know I'm a huge softy haha






Here's a pic with 17" VT SS wheels I bought for it.


The front strut assembly. The struts I pulled from a wreck, cleaned them up with the wire wheel on a drill, took them back to metal and painted them.


The steering rack I pulled from a wreck, cleaned it up with the wire wheel, took it back to metal and painted it, chucked new tie rod ends and boots on it.


The kframe and wishbones I pulled from a wreck. Cleaned them up with a wire wheel, got them acid dipped, then painted them.







The motor 95% completed.


The custom gear shifter boot I got off ebay. I got the girl to make it white with black stitching.


The engine bay getting stripped.







The trans tunnel I wire wheeled and chucked on a coat of underbody spray/sound deadener gear.


Also used the same stuff on here. Wire wheeled then sprayed.


Primed.


Time for paint! - Thx to Jamie for painting it.





And the latest pics which I took today.




And yeah that's about it so far. I rekon the next time the motor comes out I'm gonna paint it white to match the car......would look 100x better I think. I don't mind the yellow, but I just think white would look a lot neater and cleaner.

Lots of people have helped me during the buildup of my VK. So here's a quick thx list.

- Brad (Member on here, username PEAKN6)...he's my little bro and I couldn't of got this far without him. In fact it was Brad that brought home an advert on a notice board for the VK wags when it was for sale....so if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have it.
- Mum...ya always gotta thank ya Mum.
- My boss Serge from Serge's Crash Repairs.
- Everyone from Serge's Crash Repairs. Especially Jamie for painting it, Randall for helping out and everyone else for putting up with me and my wags...except Marcus coz he gave me a fat lip .
- John and Simon from Richards Motors.
- Paul from LMG Performance.
- Paul and Rodney from P&J Wrecking.
- The guys from AutoPro and Repco.

And anyone else who I've forgotten (not coz you ain't important, I just have a bad memory )

I still have lots to do so there will be heaps of updates.

Once the car is ready to run, I'll trailer it to LMG Performance, and put it on the dyno to start it and to get a few k's on it. This is so it's in good hands if anything shall go wrong.

Then I'll bring it home again, then take it in to get the rest of the respray done.

[Jo3_Blo]

Looking pretty good mate, the motor looks good, especially with the chrome bits.
Although when it's sitting in the white engine bay it doesn't look so good anymore.

Why not paint it a diff colour that contrasts with the white, rather than all the same colour?

[DANNY8]

Cheers mate.

I originally chose yellow coz the motor was being built for my VH, and I had just sprayed the engine bay black, so I thought yellow and chrome would really look nice in it. Then I got the VK which was gonna be resprayed white, and I thought the yellow would still look nice, but yeah I don't go much on it either. The main thing is that everything is clean, that's wat I want. So even if the motor was pink (there's a torry at work with a pick 202 in it btw lol) it wouldn't really bother me that much.

But yeah next time the motor has to come out and be stripped (either better mods or repairs, hopefully mods lol) I'll paint it another colour.

[Pub247]

looking good pirie are you getting the car resprayed aswell? or is it good condition anyway?

[DANNY8]

Cheers mate. Nah getting the whole car resprayed. Will be getting done once I get it running.

[DANNY8]

Here's some more pics...

The fuse rail...


The central locking kit...


The dashboard at the moment. It will be like this until all the wiring is done, then pull it out, spray the car, and put it back in.


The engine bay...

[frosty_82]

i just put in a fuse rail kit in my vk calais much better then the GM product

[DANNY8]

The main thing which caught my eye with the new board was the LED's lol. This is the first VK I've owned, which I only had on the road for a week after I bought it b4 I started doing work do it.

The previous owners had dodged up the wiring for the aircon to run straight through a switch in the cabin coz the fuse rail was melted....but there ain't no aircon going back in now.

Here's the wiring I got off of Synoptica. As I'll be wiring it up differently, I'll also be buying other gear for it as I go.


And here's wat will be replacing the heaterbox and air con crap behind the dash. Regency said it would be ok. I'm gonna pull it to bits and run it through the stock 2 demister pipes, then hook it up through a switch on the dash somewhere.


Rough sketch of the wiring diagram. The wiring will sorta be like this.


Here's the flat lockable bonnet pins I got....these are legal as well.


The other week I pinched the manual plate thing (goes on top of the trans tunnel) from the roadster, wire wheeled it, cleaned it then painted it, and got some nice big rivits from work and chucked it in. Looks cruddy now tho coz lots of dust and crap is on it


And here's the wiring we've started.










I think I might move the circuit breaker for security reasons....altho the alarm won't be connected through it, I'd still like to hide it so it doesn't look like an easy target.

And that's about it so far....will continue on with the wiring 2morrow.

[Huitzi]

Looking good ......and nice bonnet locks bud small world

[DANNY8]

Cheers mate....and yeah the bonnet pins are similar to urs. This is the only type I could get hold of locally. These don't screw in like the ones u got, instead u put a shaped hole in the bonnet, like a circle which has 2 sides cut off, then u put them in the hole and do a nut up from the bottom.....the locking mechanism I think is pretty weak....I could be wrong but it just doesn't look very strong, so I've decided to still have the latching mechanism. Gonna have a push button somewhere on the front which is connected to a solenoid to pop the bonnet (just need to weaken the spring coz the solenoids we have aren't strong enuf). Will also have that hooked up through a switch in the cabin which has to be turned on first.

[DANNY8]

Some more pics for ya'll.

Fitting up the gauges.



New battery, also new box coz the other one was to small. Also had to remove the circuit breaker coz it kept going off when it was cranking over. Battery weighs 26kg's lol...I could turn her over all night if I needed to


Earthing points.


VL dash goin in.



Had to move the tacho coz it now don't fit behind the steering wheel with the VL dash.


Cleaned up and painted the tailshaft. Chucked some new uni's in. The centre bearing didn't need replacing coz I only replaced it not long ago.


All the VK wiring ripped out from under the dash.


Wiring it up.




The VL satellite switches...these were head **** to start with, then realised they had their own module which is why we couldn't get them working right lol. Spent hours trying to get them to work, then as soon as we wired up the module they worked straight away haha.


The last photo's b4 starting on the bodywork.





New baileys channel for all the doors.


The bodywork.


My little brother Brad.


Marshall, the panel beater.
































Nearly ready for paint!!

[Wagon_Wheel]

Awesome build mate, looks great!
Whats with the first post though, your saying theres 2 motors? the 173 and a 253?

[DANNY8]

Awesome build mate, looks great!
Whats with the first post though, your saying theres 2 motors? the 173 and a 253?

Thx mate. It's taken a while, but it's finally looking like I'll be able to register it within a few months lol.

Yeah one night at work a mate said he had a 308 4spd for sale for $200. After finding out it was actually a 253 I decided to buy it anyway. The 253 come complete with the 4spd, xtreme heavy duty clutch, manual pedal box, complete exhaust from headers to tailpipe, clutch cable, tailshaft, pretty much everything for the conversion. I've started rebuilding that as well, but at the moment it's sitting in the shed wrapped in glad wrap lol.

Here's some pics of it.

[Wagon_Wheel]

Ah ok sweet man
Great work!! Bet your keen as mustard to get it all finished and driving it

[Jo3_Blo]

Comming along nicely!

So what vheicle is the 253 going in?

[DANNY8]

Comming along nicely!

So what vheicle is the 253 going in?

The 253 is goin in the VK oneday

[smithy46]

the wagon looks great mate very nice work so far cant wait to c the finished product

[DANNY8]

Thx guys....well it's now one step closer to hitting the road. It got painted last weekend. As we did it at night (my mate said the light was better from the fluro's at night, then the daylight during the day) a few bugs made their way onto the roof, but my mate said he'll get them out this weekend and also paint the bonnet....then all there is left to do is fix up and paint the bodykit I got for it yesterday, a Grp3 kit.

The paint is just a K&H white, in acrylic. The engine bay is in 2pack (I got it done about a year ago), but my mate's only just learning to paint, and this is his 3rd car he's done. He's a panel beater, so she's all straight, and yeah the paint has turned out awesome. The only things I questioned him about was the bugs and a lot of overspray is on the shell.....but yeah he said when he rubs it back and polishes it, it will look 100x better! It's shiny now, so can't wait to see it polished up. I saw his own project car he did in acrylic and it come up magic...it had stuff all orange peel so it's pretty much a mirror finish, which he said mine would come up like it as well.











Now finally the shell.

[DANNY8]

Well here's the first pics of the wags all painted and polished up. It's hard to try and capture the shine as it's so bright........but this thing looks f**king nice! There's a few small imperfections, but for around $1000 this paintjob is killer. Ya just gotta see it in person to see how nice it really come up.

The $1000 is all labour costs, the paint and other gear takes it up a bit, but overall the entire paint job would come close to around $1500.....and it's definitely worth every cent. My mate who painted it is an apprentice panel beater at a local crash shop and he said my car come up waaay better then most of the cars which their workshop does lol.

Here's some pics.....the fenders aren't on properly yet so they aren't lined up....still gotta run a few wires under them.

[NickVR]

Looks good,the paint came up really well.

[vkwalks39]

Well done!! wagon looks sweet as!

[cozza]

sickk as man
can't wait till its all back together
great job

[Jo3_Blo]

Looks awesome mate.

Good job. Can't wait to see it all put back together.

[paknponys]

just read everything, then as i started scrolling down the pictures stopped working. looks awesome mate, you've put alot in.

[fuzzy2308]

bang up job mate ggod on ya, most pix doooont work