Hiro Protagonist

Hang on, you want someone to do a dodgy suspension job on your partner's car, and then you're going to up and leave and go overseas and not be back for a month? Why do you even care what it looks like if you're not going to be around to see it/drive it? And if it only gets driven 5k a day to and from work, and "new shit" will be getting done in a (relatively) short period of time, what's the bloody point? Save yourself the time, money, hassle, and possible/probable legal problems (what happens if she gets pulled over and defected?) and just do it right the first time. I drove around in my car for 4 1/2 years before I finally saved up enough money to buy the suspension I wanted, just suck it up and wait.

You can tell it's fake just by looking at it. No need to draft a formal letter, with signature/letterhead etc just to discuss with a fellow director/manager a possible change to opening hours, and the fact that you'll be out of the office next week. Other things which stand out are the generification of the drive-through operators as "the girls" (I see a fairly even 50-50 split in gender lines at most of the Maccas I go to), the fact that the managing director seems to have come up with this scheme to shave profits by deliberately forgetting to hand out products, and knows how much this will save the company down to the nearest dollar each day, yet has to ask another person what the effect of changing opening hours would have on profits. Plus any owner/director trying to save money/increase profits wouldn't bother to PRINT OFF A MEMO ON PAPER AND SIGN AND POST IT when they can email for free. And then there is the big giveaway where the memo notes "we need to work out a way of making this a procedure without it being documented".....UMMM, YOU JUST MADE IT DOCUMENTED BY TYPING IT, PRINTING IT AND MAILING IT (and somehow allowing someone along the way to get a copy and scan it). Ergo, fake. Or at the very least, photoshopped - note how the top part is crumpled but the middle section (with the text) is perfectly even and flat.

The Toyota manual (ie what comes with the car) recommended either 15W40 or 20W50 from factory (depending on what kind of temps you were expected to experience), seeing as how your engine is over 15 years old I would definitely go to the upper/thicker range to compensate for worn rings/seals.

HPR-30 (20W60), it's the same stuff the 4AGE guys run. Did the swap because it was a bit cheaper than the Edge Sport but had a good rap. And GTX2/GTX3 is what is recommended for the car from factory, or Magnatec, in reality if you're not tracking it then there isn't much difference between oils of the same weight as long as you don't buy the $5 recycled crap.

4AGEs and C52s can be had cheap-enough these days that doing hybrids or rebuilding gearboxes is next to useless - a waste of both time and money.

Nope, no problems at all, I ran it for probably 2-3 years before I switched to the Penrite.

Saw a similar thing on a sticker at Toyotafest, car was a Daihatsu (can't remember if it was a Charade or a Mira, either way it was tiny and loud), sticker on the back said "I used to be a V8 but I shrunk in the wash"

Redwarf if you haven't already, you should talk to Wagonist/Steve on Toymods, he's in the process of prepping (last time I talked to him) an Excel rally car

RZ engines can (when worked) produce a crap-load of power. Take a look at the 3RZ turbo KE wagon on here. Good thing about "truck" engines is that they tend to have quite strong blocks :-)

Toyota almost universally uses 12x1.5 thread studs/wheel nuts, so chances are yes they will fit. The only thing that tends to vary is whether the stock wheels take cone taper or shank nuts

89x96mm, it is a truck engine after all :) Kinda equivalent to a 3RZFE of sorts, except undersquare.

At 200,000 it is quite common for 7As to start blowing oil smoke, as noted most likely valve stem seals if it is only really on startup. Can't be too much help on replacing them, as I have never bothered (my engine has never been opened, after 315,000km), but I would recommend stepping up to a 20W50 oil at least - 15w40 is too thin for an A-series engine that old that isn't built.

I don't get the lack of love for the KA, it's a nice strong torquey motor, and can be grabbed for cheap from the U13 guys ripping them out to put SR20DETs in. RWD gear can be had from the D22 Navara (much easier to find in Aus than S13 and S14 240SXs)

Just think, if it began to hail you probably wouldn't notice the difference

After seeing Candellan on Twincam.org do a _very_ tortuous, long and expensive CA20DET build (and this was into a S12 Gazelle, the car that the CA20E came out of), I wouldn't recommend it for anyone bar the most die-hard CA tragic who has a lot of time and a lot of money free. For pure gains it just isn't worth it, however you do end up with something fairly unique I'd be more interested in doing a RWD KA24DET :)

WGMG - found out this morning when getting new tyres for the ST162 that one of the wheels was buckled (which was the main reason that the tyre was leaking, mainly because the 6-year old tyre had gone rock-hard). Haven't put the new tyres back on the Celica yet, hopefully it'll hold enough pressure to get down to Toyotafest and back before it gets removed again to get the buckles rolled out.

In stock applications, smallport is better. Newer, more powerful, less thrashed etc etc. Some people swear by the bigport, but they're starting to get quite tired now, they have a significant torque hole down low (even with TVIS) and run out of breath earlier than the smallports too. If you're going to modify them though, then the story can flip - a lot of people say that the bigport head is better for forced induction, and the early (3-rib, bluetop) bigports have lighter internals which are better for high-revving worked N/A applications. Much of a muchness really.

Better rear-end too, and most likely lighter (which helps when you only have a 7AFE :P not that there is anything wrong with that)

One of the guys at uni had an AE82 (might even have been an AE80 povo-pack) with a fairly prominent original rust-proofing sticker on the back window (applied by the dealer when new), the sticker still looked brand new but the car itself was absolutely full of rust, and very visible too (car was white so the rust stood out like dogs balls)

The mirror the same as a sedan? If so then go to a big open-air wreckers (there's one down at Doyalson, as well as up at Beresfield, and Wakefield) and hunt around, a bunch of other Toyotas from the same period have the same style mirrors (XT130 Coronas, KE70s etc) so just play mix and match. A couple of times that I've been to the Doyalson one they've had KE30 and KE55 sedans (no coupes though), last time they didn't though (looked like they'd had a big clearout) so you could strike it lucky.

And yet so many idiots buy one.....

This is for an AE86 right? If you've got a 4AC in there then you'll already have a T50 (unless it's auto) Seeing as how you're US, you'll need to do a bit of work to a redtop (ie smallport) to make it RWD (intake/exhaust manifold, water pipes, thermostat etc), if you can get a RWD bigport it would simplify things a lot. Of course either way if you're going EFI then you'll need computer, loom, EFI fuel tank/pump etc no matter what.

It is possible, but I'm pretty sure it is more than just a bolt-on effort. For the cost, you might as well just get a whole 4AGE (they're not that expensive, especially bigports) and drop it in.

The sump may be similar between FE and GE, but the tube will be different (my bigport tube and dipstick are significantly different compared to my 7A ones), and thus most likely the dipstick too. Just checked the '82 then, from the base of the rubber/plastic flange to the tip of the dipstick is 275mm. I know for certain that my 7A one is _much_ longer (the seat is right near the end of the dipstick on an FE model, about half-way on a bigport)

Why would you even bother? It would only even slightly begin to make sense if a) the car was extra rare/valuable and b) you had a second car which was not registerable with it's own VIN KEs are highly unlikely to fulfull a), and they are cheap enough to negate the problem of b) In short, don't do it. Unless you like bars of soap and men named Bubba.