The Shed - Cars

Getting floored

22 August 2024

After Christchurch’s 2011 earthquake many of the city’s brick structures were damaged beyond repair and were pulled down and almost every chimney in our part of town was demolished. Before the earthquake, clean red bricks were more than a dollar each; after, there were so many of them, they had no value. Many property owners left piles of bricks on the kerb in the hope that they would be taken away.
The carport of my shed was meant to have a concrete floor but because of the many free bricks and the unavailability of pre-mixed concrete for weeks, I decided to make the floor out of recycled “earthquake” bricks.
The original scheme to incorporate the numbers “2011” for the year in yellow glazed bricks was too complicated in the time available. But a paved floor can be relatively easily re-worked so the number may yet appear.

On the road

16 May 2024

When Des and Kath Thomson decided to take to the road in their retirement, they wanted a campervan that was comfortable. They didn’t want to be clambering up ladders, tangoing at tea-time in too-narrow aisles, or struggling to turn tables into beds at night. But nor did they want to trundle around the countryside in a cumbersome mobile mansion.
They wanted a small, manoeuvrable vehicle that had masses of space inside. Space for everything, including the kitchen sink plus another in the bathroom, a separate shower, toilet, cooker, microwave, barbecue, table and chairs, wardrobe, drawers, hot and cold water on tap, plenty of storage…oh, and a queen-size bed.

Mr Fix it

21 March 2024

Ian Chamberlain’s shed is upstairs in the second storey of his double garage in Whanganui. Ian certainly needs all the room on the ground floor to park just a few of the vintage and classic cars he has restored over the past 30-odd years. And while the styles of car evoke a walk down memory lane, the vehicles look brand-spanking new.
There’s a fire-engine red Mark 1 Zephyr convertible, a more staid looking green and black 1917 Buick, the red and brassy 1906 Reo, and its miniature look-alike.

Going glamping

23 November 2023

What do you do if you want a caravan but drive a Mini? You make one to fit. That’s just what Michael Wolfe of New Plymouth did – turning out a real dinky little teardrop-shaped caravan that matches his 2004 Cooper S and has all the mod cons for a decent holiday.
Michael saw pictures of little campers on the net and decided that was what he wanted – a cross between a caravan and a tent.
“I got some ideas from little caravans online and decided to go a bit more high-tech,” he says.
He built it to have the same lines, wheels and colour as his car and it looks just the part.
“I never really planned it in detail. I sketched it out originally and a lot of the construction I worked out as I went along.”

His worship – the shed and vintage cars

25 October 2023

The morning we visited this particular sheddie, the bloke was under fire. In The Press, he was being slagged off on the front page. Inside the paper, a swag of writers was pinging him this way and that in letters to the editor. Christchurch is a hotbed of political discontent these days and the buckshot stops with the mayor Garry Moore.
So he’d be in no mood to spend a lovely spring Saturday morning talking to a complete stranger about something as mundane as his not-quite-finished shed? Wrong.

A king-sized country shed for an ex city boy

11 July 2023

When Phil Kindberg decided to escape the Auckland rat race and retire to rural Taranaki with his precious collection of old Studebaker cars, he didn’t dream of the massive shed that was waiting for him.
Two years ago he made the shift south and purchased the 100-year-old Riverdale dairy factory, not far west of Hawera.
The big factory, which in its heyday specialised in cheese production, already had a bit of a past with motor vehicles, having been a panel beating shop for a while and also once housing a huge collection of old Citroen cars.
Now on display in the factory are Phil’s seven Studebakers from 1947 to 1962, a 1958 Packard, a mate’s collection of 40 motorbikes, including some classics and home-made bikes, and other weird and wonderful machines.

Warning: boiling point!

25 May 2023

I own an American classic car and it comes with the usual 1960s instrumentation—speedo, fuel gauge but only warning lights for oil, alternator, and water temperature. The alternator light comes on when you turn on the ignition, but the water temperature light is designed to come on only when the water temperature reaches 120-125 °C which is usually too late.
To fix that, I have devised this program powered by an Arduino micro-controller that will operate the temperature light when the engine powers up and light it up again to warn the driver as the temperature approaches 100 °C. It uses a readily available sender that will fit most vehicles.

Arduino software for wipers and temp gauge projects

25 May 2023

Controller
I chose to use a shield (add-on board) to house all the parts for this project that allows the use of any standard Arduino and settled on a Seeeduino V3.0 and a Freetronics prototype shield as an inexpensive solution.
I used the controller and shield to for the previous variable wiper speed project for the car (“Wipe that classic windscreen,” Shed, Apr/May 2012). This second part uses the same controller and shield to do both tasks. The reader can either make one or both. The shield construction includes the extra parts (two resistors, one transistor, and one diode) and uses the “Start” button to do the “Normal” calibration.
Here are the two sketches (software) in these The Shed website’s two posts.

one combining water temperature light and variable wiper functions into one controller; and
one that just does the water temperature light.

Wipe, wipe that classic windscreen

19 May 2023

I own an American classic car and there are a few mod cons that are missing. I’ve added central locking because crawling over seats was a pain, but I thought the Arduino could add a few features that aren’t available in the shops. This is the first of two parts which uses the same piece of Arduino hardware to do two different tasks—run variable-speed wipers and a temperature gauge. Each can be used on their own as it makes no difference to the software

This offroader project is a beaut

23 February 2023

Over the last couple of years, my son Kurt and I have built a few basic go-karts which not only gave him a taste of very basic engineering, but also allowed us to pile up valuable hours of quality time working together in the shed. This new project had a bit of a twist to it as, this time, my son was the chief designer and engineer and I was relegated to labourer. Like all the previous projects, he let me fund it.

Videos of metal shaping and motorbike guru, Steve Roberts

17 November 2022

In the November/December issue 105 of The Shed, our cover story is on a Kiwi legend of metal shaping and motorbikes, Steve Roberts.
If you enjoyed that article here is a link to a website that has even more of Steve’s story as well as videos of the cars and bikes he has constructed and inside info from chats with Steve.

Assorted nuts

2 June 2022

For our purposes, a nut is an internally threaded part which is rotated or screwed onto an externally threaded part such as a screw, bolt or stud. If you can pick it up in your hand and put it onto an externally threaded item and tighten it, it is a nut. There will be some exceptions to this which will become apparent.

Making your own campervan

7 April 2022

Converting an ordinary van into a campervan is a project I have been talking about for some time.
As a retired technical teacher, I felt I had the necessary skills, and when a 2005 Kia Pregio van in excellent condition became available I decided to take the plunge.
The van is a 2.7 litre diesel, manual, with 26,000 km on the clock and a cargo space of 2.8 metres x 1.65 metres. My plan was to fit the space with two beds, one on each side. They can be expanded to a full-width bed using the foam backs of the seats supported on shortboards between the sides of the seats.

Unpublished photos from The Shed Issue 93 – Tempero Motor Body Builders

29 September 2021

In The Shed Issue 93, we visited Tempero motor body builders in Timaru where we left in awe of the workmanship and skills we witnessed. Here are scores more photos from our visit that we couldn’t squeeze onto our pages that are just too good to be left unseen by readers.
Photography by Brian High.

A night at the speedway

9 December 2020

The allusion to knights and jousting is apt. Like knights in armour, the drivers especially of the sprint cars have very restricted vision. They can peer through the grille in front and can see a bit to the left but their right-hand vision is blocked by a wing and within the confines of the cockpit—with helmet and neck brace in place—they have very little opportunity to turn their heads. To make things worse, other cars are flinging up dust and mud that also helps to clog their vision.

Cars