Hiro Protagonist

Yeah, compared to the AE8x and AE10x Toyota Australia went crazy with chassis codes - in the AE8x you had AE80 and AE82, in the 10x you had AE101 and AE102, but the 9x had 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 - safe thing to do is just call all of them AE92 (except for AE90 and AE95 which are the fundamentally different ones) and people will get the idea.

The very early SXs were AE92s as well. One of the great mysteries.

To make it legal I'd imagine you'd have to get it engineered, as it would be part of the structural integrity of the car and thus affects crash test performance etc.

4K and AE92 don't go together. If you've got an AE92 then it'll probably be a 4AFC, 4AFE or 4AGE (depends on the model spec).

AE101 FXGTs? Or just AE82/92 ones....

I know you asked for a price without fitting, but when I got the headlining done in the AE102 I just took it to an auto upholsterers that specialised in roof linings, they removed the old lining and board from the car, stripped the old glue and insulation, cleaned the board, glued and fitted a new headlining in a matching colour/pattern, and reinstalled it, all within about 45 minutes, whilst I stood there chatting to one of the installers who just happened to be an old acquaintance from primary school. Drive in, drive out in under an hour for $200, and I couldn't be more happy with the results.

I'm guessing he was referring more to the bodykit and interior...

Preliminary front bar shots - still need to get it painted (I'm not one of those douches who drives around with mis-matched body panels) and get some indicators. Despite the lack of foglights or the lip extension (which I really hoped I was getting, but they turned out to be window trims.....) it still looks better than stock, and who knows - maybe someday I'll find another FXGT being wrecked in Japan and I'll get the extras Old front bar off Old v new New on Sunlight angle wasn't conducive to front-on shots, might try for some better ones tomorrow

WGMG - buying something on Yahoo Japan based upon an Engrish translation and ok-ish photos that make you believe (with a certain amount of optimism) that it is the part you want, then wait 10 weeks for it to arrive by sea only to find out it is something completely different and utterly useless (probably couldn't even sell it, since the number of FXGTs in the country is likely to be less than the number of fingers on my left hand) Ahh well, at least the front bar was exactly what I expected.

It's all about perception - you're higher up so get better forward vision (although vision in almost every other direction is worse), the car feels bigger so that gives you a sense of security (something parents LOVE when they have kids in the car), along with that there is a sense of space (and your average family picnic needs a lot of space), the higher seating position gives you an inflated sense of power and importance (staring down at the losers in the shitboxes), and then there's the "one day we'll go away camping for the weekend in the mountains and will need a 4WD". Of course, each one of those points can be countered with a well thought-out vehicle purchase (most hatch-backs etc offer quite high seating without the overall vehicle height, plus excellent load carrying ability and interior flexibility, and that camping trip is either 5 minutes down a dirt road that a Mini could handle, or just a pipe dream).

The 4WD problem is more than just compact SUVs etc, it extends all the way up to Lancruisers and Range Rovers being used to tackle the scary heights of speed-bumps around school zones. I can understand the need for work 4x4s (construction sites, off-road etc) even in the city, but they aren't anywhere near the majority, and half the tradies etc use 2WD Falcons/Holdens/Jap-utes anyway not the Toorak Tractors or (to quote Jeremy Clarkson) gin-palaces-on-wheels. Newcastle has a massive problem with them, and we don't even have an equivalent of Toorak or Mosman - we just happen to live close enough to the country that every man and his dog thinks a 4WD for those maybe-once-a-year getaways is the perfect tool for a daily drive too. Then again, we just have a massive problem with people not realising that there is this neat little lever/stalk thing behind the steering wheel that makes little orange lights around the vehicle flash, almost as if they were designed to "indicate" or something like that what direction the car intends on moving next.

Shopping trolleys need their handles...

Did you happen to see what the VIN plate on the FX16 said? In general, a FWD Corolla gearbox from that era that isn't a C52 will be a C50, which would be what the stock manual gearbox would be for a 4AC anyway. Somewhere like (AE82 Owners Club would be a better place to ask, Rollaclub is fairly heavily biased towards the older RWD Corollas (not saying that you're not welcome, just that the majority of the knowledgebase is for the older variants)

Not true. 4EFTE puts out 101kw and 157Nm, stock-standard smallport 4AGE puts out 100kw and 149Nm, with a blacktop 20V putting out (according to Toyota, figures are often disputed) 121kw and 162Nm Not saying that a 4EFTE would be a bad conversion, just putting it in perspective. And a 4EFTE would be easier to do too.

Or get an Odyssey, they're barely taller than your average tall-boy hatch these days, and with stacks of room inside. Make a lot more sense than a Patrol or the like where you have to lift the kids UP to the seat...

In a restricted volume the expansion of the oil due to heat will cause a pressure increase, not decrease. Besides, the density variations of liquids in relation to temperature is negligible compared to gases (for instance, the density of water only decreases about 5% between 0 and 100 degrees C), so all you need to do is have a pressure switch which opens at a significantly lower pressure than what your hot oil pressure will be, and the density argument ceases to be a factor

Toyota themselves replaced the twin-turbo system in the 1JZ with a single at the second update, so they obviously saw that there was a reason to change. Combined with VVTi they had more torque in the low-range (max power was unchanged but remember the 206kw "agreement" so there's a good chance it went up too). Single VVTi 1JZs are noticeably faster than the twins too.

I've always assumed that they were pressure-operated, pretty sure my Gregorys manual for the 102 mentions it being pressure-opened and even has an exploded view of the sandwich plate and the spring/banjo bolt

My project car is always working because it's my daily :wink: Currently waiting for the FXGT front bar to arrive in the mail (should be here within the next day or two), after that I'll have to get it painted and track down some indicators to suit. Next on the cars after that is probably a new front swaybar, 17s if I can find some that I like that fit, and painting the window frames black to match the seals (white just makes it look weird). Then later on in the year I'll consider changing the exhaust to twin pipes from the rear axle back (similar to the 101 Levins) to match the GT sedan style, plus a bit of fiddling around with the rear bar to get the cutout right.

Oh, and I also play badminton on Monday and Thursday nights.

In most of my spare time, I do overtime. In the times that I'm not doing overtime, I'm either working on the cars, watching DVDs, playing the Wii or 360 or on the computer. And on the odd occasion, I'll eat and sleep.

Chrysler engine? The Saturn is a Bitsamissing engine, in the 70s some Mitsubishis were re-badged as Chryslers (like the Galant and Lancer, but they were still fully Mitsubishis) due to Chrysler owning 15% of the company and trying to use it as a springboard for re-launching the brand in Oz. Unless I'm missing the point and you're referring to it just having a Saturn from a Chrysler-badged Lancer (which as stated above is still a Mitsubishi engine)

That's because the front of the R31 is a box rather than the VL's slightly angled box. Once again, Holden going for "style" over actual common sense, a practice confirmed with just about every HSV bodykit ever since.

Which is why it is good practice when bleeding the cooling system to jack the front of the car up and tape a coke bottle or the like upside down over the radiator cap (with the bottom cut off and partly full of coolant) to raise the hydraulic head of the system so that it resides in the bottle and not in the piping or heater core Cars with parts of the cooling system higher than the radiator cap are notorious for cooling problems - VL Commodore anyone?

"O2 Advantage" was a reference to the improved breathing capabilities of Toyota engines as they adopted an almost universal twin-cam multivalve design in the early 90s. Nothing to do with an O2 sensor. Same sort of thing with the "Super Responsive" and LASRE engines in the 80s (Super Responsive was basically the adoption of overhead cams, LASRE was Lightweight Advanced Super Responsive Engine, again referring to overhead cams and EFI improving engine response and revs)