My Notchback.... One for the haters

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937carrera
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by 937carrera » 25th January 2016 - 9:06pm

Kai wrote:

Still awaiting the arrival of my replacement rear shocks. 4 weeks I was quoted. Mental.
That seems a long time - what sort of shocks are you looking for ?
David
1974 412LS Variant
1973 412LE 4 door Fastback / Saloon

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 26th January 2016 - 7:14am

Being supplied by GAZ. Christmas back log supposedly.

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937carrera
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by 937carrera » 26th January 2016 - 11:00pm

I thought I might know of a set of dampers available off a race 996 (Gaz as it happens, being replaced with Proflex). I checked today and he's keeping them as emergency spares. On the other hand in the discussion I found out that a set of dampers have just been ordered for a 968 and they are on a two week delivery.......... give Gaz a call and a nag if you want them quicker :)

I do expect that you take the car to the Oulton Park weekend and take Lodge in the same style as Bengt Janssen viewtopic.php?f=28&t=11247
David
1974 412LS Variant
1973 412LE 4 door Fastback / Saloon

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 26th February 2016 - 4:11pm

New shocks. Took Darren two days to fit them. Lots of complaints about fitting the AVO shocks to my Notchback. These Gaz ones for nice and ride beautifully. I actual fact the new rears in actual fact highlight just how hard the front really is. Definitely need to sort the front shocks out. I will put power to the front shocks and hopefully that'll be it once they're in their soft setting. Otherwise it's either fork out for some cheap non PASM shocks or go full on with a matching set of Gaz front shocks. Decisions decisions.


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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 2nd March 2016 - 9:00pm

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The kid is now Taxed and MOT'd for the next year. Still makes me grin when taxing this thing, even better now we don't have to display a tax disc.

So I've powered up my front shocks. Just stuck +12v to them. It's softer on a bounce test but still harsh as f**k when out driving. Going to get some new coilover a for the front end and sort that out.

Engine has a judder/hesitation potential misfire below 3k rpm, looking at changing the plugs, has the new age coil on plug type coil packs which are apparently bulletproof so I'm hoping they're not the problem as they fetch £100 each. Thing still goes like stink and gladly reves beyond red bit of the Rev counter as I found out after the throttle pedal got wedged open by a rough screw floating around under my feet.

Those with an eagle eye may have spotted the birthmark has been almost touched. All
In the name of the volksworld show haha. Still got s pretty big snag list to work through but nothing massive to work on.

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 3rd March 2016 - 11:18pm

Yesterday, I pulled the plugs out, found a good clue as to my running issues.


Can you spot the odd one out??


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The clean plug is bone dry and clean as a whistle. Lead me to think either the coil isn't firing or the injector is faulty. Very quickly found by pushing in the loose injector plug the engine tone would change. Release the pressure from the injector plug and the engine tone dropped. So the injector plug is the fault as it won't go sit home all the way. To think, all these years of running the WRX engine I've never been blown away with its performance, clearly as its been running on 3 cylinders :help:

Car has been temporarily fixed using a cable tie.

Car is now mental quick. I drive for a living and have driven some fast cars before. My daily driver is 540BHP and is super quick. Driving the notch on boost was definitely comparable yet much more scary. Only went up to the shops but I'm looking forward to my next drive. Roll on Saturday :)

markymarc
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by markymarc » 4th March 2016 - 2:26pm

I'm looking forward to seeing this bad boy in the metal

mark.

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Dave G
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Dave G » 18th April 2016 - 7:45pm

Blimey, that was worth a check then!

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 26th April 2016 - 9:14pm

evening all, quick up date then.

Bought some super cheap seats from eBay a few months ago, then bought some more seats from a mk3 golf as I wanted to use these for their bases. Shame they didn't fit but I find that everything I want to do, nothing is easy and never bolts in. Modified the golf seats to fit the type 3 seat runners. Spent ages cutting the mounts out for the Subaru seats which originally somebody in Australia fitted some old BMW seats with. So i've gone full circle with the seats. I wanted something more period to the car but also a smaller seat. I've also returned to the original type 3 rear seat as I intend to fit rear seat belts for the kids and just wasn't happy with the Subaru rear bench which has always just kinda been rested in place.

Out with the old and in with the not so new.

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Pallet arrived.

Old, new front, new rear


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Old tyres are 205's and the new ones are 305's


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Also I've broken my gearbox, oil level got low and has chuffed up my opinion shaft. Ordered s replacement today so box should go back in within a couple more weeks. Couple more weeks should see the arrival of my front Gaz shocks also. Fun fun fun

markymarc
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by markymarc » 27th April 2016 - 1:50pm

F*** me......BIG boots !!!!!

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 16th August 2016 - 11:11pm

Thanks for the comments peps!!! Always welcome.

Right business. Totally chuffed off. First person to put £35K into my account gets the car. Might even throw in the dog too :D

Nothing has been going right recently.

First off though big big massive thanks to Rob from RM Perfermance. Wouldn't be here without him.... Technically twice... as it was he who built my original box. He's just moved and gone it alone.

www.rmperformance.co.uk


Gotta say..... Forget about API SUBARU. Enough said.

Almost two months later my box has been returned to me ( no thanks to API ) and is back in. Totally forgot about the Subaru thrust release bearing so had to remove the clutch and sort that out. @11:00 pm on the Tuesday last week I released this. And as much help as my neighbour was for lending me his gearbox jack that night ringing so late to rob his tools might have been asking too much. So I did it by eye. Couldn't get the fecker to go in. So I read on an American forum that when you get to the stage of lining up the two dowl pins and the input shaft its best to stop, have a brew and reattempt it. Best advise I would offer anybody as it went straight in. Gearbox check! With everything back in place felt now was the best time to fit the group N engine mounts. This shouldn't be too hard....... How wrong could I have been. My engine mount is a swine to drop out whilst fitting the engine mounts. It's taken me 2 nights so far. Bastard is in but not without a horrendous repair to the boot floor. Clearly it wants reinforcing but to do this the engine wants dropping and the firewall removing. I'd be glad just to have a bit of the summer driving the thing before I go ahead with that repair. In the mean time the hole that had been made has been welded up and some fat chick washers installed. This repair has taken another two nights. Obviously working nights on the car means noise has to be to a minimum. I can't bust out the welder and grinder at 10pm can I.


Horrid hole....

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Horrid repair...

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First night work stopped I decided to fit my brand new GAZ front shocks. I'd found a slight warranty issue with my McPherson strut conversion. The struts springs lower plate fouls the inner wing area.

http://s16.photobucket.com/user/redevol ... x.jpg.html


No problem, fit the smaller coilovers. Easier said then done. Apparently the boxster, Cayman and 996/997 all share the same front ends. Wrong.... Between the boxster and Cayman alone there are 4 variations of strut. Boxster struts will not fit a Cayman apparently. Wished I'd have known that before I was supplied my front struts. Still nobody to blame but myself. I should have known this. So I've had to return my shocks to GAZ who have kindly offered to modify them. There is a 5mm difference in strut diameter. So my boxster struts don't fit my Cayman hubs. They're going to fit a spacer to the strut so it fits my hubs. Problem solved but will no doubt take a couple of weeks as all things tend to in this day and age.

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So that's about it. New gearbox with a higher diff ratio. As if the thing wasn't scary fast enough I change from a 3.9 diff to a 4.4 diff ratio. Thing will accelerate even fast now on the 205/45/17's. my reasoning for changing the diff ratio.... I don't wanna lose how scary fast the car is when the 19's go on. Needless to say I don't give a fuck for scene tax. The large exhaust and spoiler looks outta place on a stock shaped car so the only thing left to do is fit bigger wheels and most probably adjust the ride height..... Oh and probably the width of the car. By 10cm each side. My next chore is do I either do a wide body kit properly and modify my wings or be lazy and fit a set of bubble arches. Next few weeks will tell. But I'm looking forward to testing it on the road with the 4.4 diff. Should make things interesting. I'll admit I'm not a true fan in the choice of wheels but they fitted the brief. Split rim with dish and where dirt cheap.

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Changed my front seats to some more period low back buckets seats.


[URL=http://s16.photobucket.com/user/redevol ... t.jpg.html]Image


Still need to work on that.

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And let's not get started on this either.

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Chino
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Chino » 18th August 2016 - 9:26am

Nice to see it's coming along mate, tough luck on the struts but that's all part of the fun of modifying I guess?

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 18th August 2016 - 7:18pm

Well, in actual fact the car is almost back were it was. Just need to get the oil from my neighbour for the box and the shocks I've been informed will be returned early next week. should be back on the road within two weeks. Admittedly revving is nuts off but should be quicker.

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 29th August 2016 - 10:35pm

Evening all,


Got my shocks back this week. Mark from Gazmatic was a true gent. I explained to him the misshap, he offered to take the shocks back and build me a further correct Cayman set but explained they would have to make them which would take a further 4 weeks. We agreed to modify the boxster struts with a sleeve to enlarge them to the correct larger Cayman size. Well chuffed as it only took them a week to turn them around.

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Sleeve modification.

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This evening I've got one shock fitted. Shocks are correctly sprung for the front of the car having been corner weighed.

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Out with the old


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Wheel goes back on, compared to the other side it's clearly about an inch higher, although in saying that the shock is wound down to its lowest position. Springs very very soft. But anything will be an improvement over the PASM shocks I removed which are virtually solid. Clearly though I'm gonna have to invest some time getting the front end set up correctly.

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So now only the other side to do. It's an easy job swapping out the shocks just I can't get round that side of the car at the moment as its up against the fence.


So to get the car moving, now that the gearbox is fully installed, just needed 4 litres of oil. Easier said then done, but being that I've done this a few times now I've got it nailed.

This is the 3rd evolution of my filler tube, nothing too special but makes life a lot easier. I say third evolution as the second time when the tube grow to over a meter in length I was just stuffing a 1 litre oil can in the tube and forcing the oil down, problem I found was the air inside the box wanted to burp out of the tube, so would go everywhere when it forced the oil bottle out. Queue awful oil mess over the engine. This time round I needed extra space to catch the burp. Worked perfectly this time round and didn't spill a drop.

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 30th August 2016 - 11:04pm

Grrr... Major nuisance this evening. Thought I'd have the old boy back on the deck this evening. Disaster. For some strange reason upon having my box rebuild the modified selector rod I out shaft gizmo has been replaced with a standard Subaru unit. Originally this was shortened I can reveal by about 1cm. Needless to say I can't reinstall the gear stick as I've lost the sweet spot where I can select all gears. Currently I can only get neutral 2nd, 4th and reverse. Looking st the problem I figured I'll just remove the long VW selector rod from the front of the car.... Not too sure about that though as I have all my water pipes in the tunnel and since going mcPhearson strut I'd say the new front cross member and steering rack are going to be in the way. Option two is to shorten the gearbox selector rod as per my original one. Easier said then done seeing as the box is now reinstalled. Either remove the box or shorten it in position. Not an easy task. I'd much rather remove the box but that's a major set back so I'll have to do it as is. Also if I screw this up I can easily get another Subaru selector rod if I must. Commence surgery.


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Just I got tired from the set back and called it a night. I'll attempt to cut the rod down by 1cm with the multi tool unless anybody cares to share another method.


Disappointing evening to say the least.

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 27th September 2016 - 9:08pm

Nice little update this evening.... I'm well happy.

Tried the multitool on the selector shaft, this was a rubbish idea and hardly dented the shaft.

Enter my saviour. Found this on eBay for £22, this with the mini 35mm grinding wheel. Saved my bacon this did and ended 2 weeks of sulking and not being able to work on the car.

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Cut this little fucker off.... could possibly of done with cutting more off but we are ok. Still haven't found reverse of 5th gear as of yet but think that's probably due to a pipe being in the way now.

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So as the car was out of the car port I was able to get to the remaining Porsche shock on the near side front. The last remaining shock to be replaced. Process was exactly the same as the other side and an easy task to fit the new GAZ shock. However I wasn't anticipating so much rust to be setting in within the spherical bearing on this side. Was impressed with how much had set in. I even had to remove and clean up the bearing as it had gone dry and filled with dirty grease and rusty crap. Also as per the other side the larger Porsche strut has been catching on the inner wing metal work.


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Car port is empty. Well happy as it'll give me the drive to sort all the crap out in the garage now and clear it out. Mrs will be happy as I can sweep up all the tiny falling crap from the tree next door and stop it getting dragged into the kitchen.

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So..... height adjustable shocks. My theory, set them on the lowest setting and raise them to the desired height.


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Knowing how my luck goes and along with my clear lack of time currently available to work on the car I had a different strategy this time round. Wind the front shocks up to the top and go down this time as in my experience with adjustable shocks I've always ended how them wound up at the top anyway. No exceptions to be made here today.

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This is a shot with the original Porsche into.

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I've been up the road with it. Although the shocks are on the same setting all
round the front is noticeably harder then the rear so will back that off a couple of clicks. Rears are on 8 clicks and I'll drop the fronts down to 6 or 4. Cars seems ok with the new diff ratio although I only went up the road. Kind of in two minds about going big wheels but I'm not feeling that a 255 width tyre with a 17" wheel would do lol.

Car is looking aweful at the moment with loads of dust on it. If you saw it you definetly wouldn't believe it was taxed and tested.

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 16th October 2016 - 10:59pm

I found some iffy looking wheels spacers on eBay. So I thought I would have a look at the big boots on the car. I kinda like them, I think I prefer the front size on the rear. The 305's are huge and come very close to the rear suspension. I can get a wider spacer but it's pushing things further out more so then they already are.

305's

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 16th October 2016 - 11:05pm

235's

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Porsche valve caps for extra 6BHP

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 6th February 2017 - 11:16pm

Update.... it's been a while. I've been giving my camper van all the love recently. I've been finding that my notch has simply been working against me for some time. But seeing as my campervan is extremely well behaved and has zero issues it's time to get the notch back up and running.

Today's tasks have seen me shorten that bloody shifter rod at the gearbox end again. Then it was too short which we all knew was going to happen. It was like that bit in the last lord of the rings film as the king returns with the army....... I was about to admit defeat, told myself I should have just pulled the box out in the first place. Then I thought sod it, I'll weld the end of the rod back together. I should say I cut the rod through the hole I made for the bolt for the linkage. After shortening whilst drilling the new hole I basically just split the rod open so the bolt would have hardly any metal left to hold it to the shifter coupling. I hope that explains it. It was at this point I started cursing at the car, got the welder out, lying on my back with hardly enough room to fit the mask underneath the car I went at it. Less then a minute of welding, obviously I had weld bubbles burning into my arms but I very pleased with the end result. Cleaned it all up and bolted it up back together. I was very chuffed.... till I went to the gearstick. Found it was all loose and sloppy so I called my mate to get me another gear stick and tried that and the shifter is all nice and tight like a tiger. Very happy it's all back together and feels super good. An interesting observation is that my old empi shifter is obviously worn compared to the new. Has the build quality changed that much is has this shifter done intergalactic mileage..... not under my ownership lol.

For ages I've been searching for a fan speed controller for my mini heater. It's great at out putting heat but only had one speed which was annoying as it was all or nothing. A mate of mine fitted one of these to his T25.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121780025070

At £10.33 I was happy to give it a try. Again I'm very happy with the results, I even made a video for you all.

https://youtu.be/73-Vzl96SkU


I was on a roll and wired up my vss speedometer also so that'll be working once calibrated. But..... I need to (I believe) take the power supply for the speedo from the coil power source as it cycles the needle with the ignition on and then again after cranking.
https://youtu.be/ACy1OQjk7mI

Fixed my headlights so they work now.

Fitted the missing tail light, needs a new bulb in the tail light.


Over all a very productive day.

Next big things on my list is to change the clutch master cylinder and give it a bleed.

Attempt to give the steering UJ's and stop them from binding. I have a cunning plan for that.

Need to get the tape measure and measure up what sizes arches I'm going to need before I fit the big boots.

Will add pictures later, I was too busy today to stop and get anything more then the videos

Chino
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Chino » 7th February 2017 - 11:33am

Glad to hear you're getting somewhere mate :)

Your Empi shifter got me thinking. I think a lot of the innards are plastic which no doubt wear with use(I intend to switch my Hurst style one out in the near future for this reason). What did you swap out for in the end?

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 7th February 2017 - 11:47am

me too :)

I swapped it for another Empi one, cost me £44 for the shifter and a speedo cable for he T25 so was a no brainer when it came to the cost.

The difference was astounding, no more slop in neutral now and has a defined shift pattern.

The empi shifter has a metal ball inside a plastic cup essentially and the plastic had maybe 1-2mm of play which was amplified at the ball end. My entire shifter set up is basically brand new now.

Chino
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Chino » 7th February 2017 - 11:54am

Yeah, at that price we can't really complain. My wife has a CSP 60% reduced throw butterfly in her 1303S, and everytime I drive it I want one lol

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 7th February 2017 - 12:41pm

Holy crap that's an expensive shifter. Just looked them up. It does look nice and I can imagine at that price the quality is very good. Although for me I need the racked back version like the Empi one as I'm so far back in cab.

Chino
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Chino » 7th February 2017 - 12:52pm

Yeah I got a good deal on the shifter for her for Valentines or birthday a few years ago, hers is the angled one which I like. I really like it with a ball:

http://www.machine7.com/section.php?xSec=2559

Oh well, I'll keep dreaming for this thing called 'spare' cash haha

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Kai
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Re: My Notchback.... One for the haters

Post by Kai » 7th February 2017 - 1:52pm

Ah didn't spot the angle one, looks good.

I don't need the reverse lock out with my car. my last gearstick I took the ring off the gear stick, might do it again with this one, see how I feel.

best of luck with your dreams :)

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