Felix

When I put the ke20 radiator in my ke16 I just slotted the bolt holes and it fitted fine. I think the mounting plates in the side of my rad are more straight up and down, and not angled back like yours. I run plastic fans on both my ke15 and ke16. Not exactly sure what they were originally off. I like your lower mount for the thermo, very neat. Beats running bolts or clips though the fins. How are you for clearance over your gbox xmember for the exhaust? My ke16 was done the same way when I got it, it tends to rub.

Yea need to get some pics up and update things. The 15 should be getting stripped and repainted soon, just received a windscreen/door rubber kit for it last week. Hasn't been driven for a bit, had a rear wheel cylinder shit itself. The 16 is deregistered and needs a lot of work as the body is pretty rough on it. Be another year or two before I worry about it to much. I'll see if I can get some pics up shortly, but will probably be distracted for a while with my new toy coming tomorrow....

Yea I need to update my rides thread, and get some pics up.

I've got a ke15 with the following done: Removed front leaves Standard ke1x strut bodies KE3x HD strut inserts with spacers. Gives 2" less droop. Cut ke2x coils (do at your own risk) and ke2x top spring plates. Coils still captive. Car sits with lower arms just above parallel to ground. ke30 discs on ke2x hubs to retain 4x110 PCD. Whiteline front bar Tokiko heavy duty rear shocks. Shorter than std shocks for 2" less droop to match front Yokohama 185/60x13 A539's with 44psi front, 40psi rear. on mazda 626 13x5.5" rims. (on my second set of A539's now.. .these tyres rock rain or shine) Braking: Pulls up great, will stop from 100kays in under 30 meters. The tyres made a huge difference to braking ability. Only time I've experienced slight fade is down Mt Glorious. Handling: Awesome, scary fast through the corners. The car neutral steers with slight understeer if overcooking a corner, can easily be turned into oversteer with sudden throttle lift off, or controlled decompression lockup. Have only come across a handful of cars that come close to keeping up through the twisties. Used to be frustrating when I lived up Mt Nebo with all the bikes constantly slowing me down. The front swaybar and tyres made the biggest difference to how it goes around corners. Personally I'd throw a whiteline front bar on before doing anything else, and fit the best tyres you can afford. Works great with standard front suspension. Removing the front leaves without fitting a front bar makes the car handle worse than standard. Oh yea, I've also got a ke16 with a similar setup (including swaybar and tyres) and it handles sweet to. Doesn't handle as good as the ke15, as the wagons stock rear springs are too stiff and make the rear skittish through corners. Handles heaps better with a load on.

Yep, the rear bar takes away drive out of corners (unless you run an LSD or locker) and makes the rear of the car more nervous in the wet. Like coln72 said, when cornering hard the rear bar will unload the inside rear tyre. Years ago I used to have a ke30 2 door and fitted an aftermarket adjustable twinned front bar and rear bar. Think the add-on front bar was a Selbys and the rear Kmac. I took the rear bar back off as it handled MUCH better on all the rough country bitumen and dirt roads I drove on.

Maybe compression test it. Better still take it back to the mechanic and make them fix it.

Did the motor cook when the head gasket went? Maybe the rings/bores are fried. Also I guess there could be the possibility that the mechanic f@$ked up and forgot to install valve stem seals.

I like the small Ryco Z386 filters. They are recommended fitment for 4AGE's and a lot of later toyota motors. They spin straight on to a K series.

Found an engine bay pic.

Yea, there used to be one around the capalaba area about 6-7 years ago. It was a pretty wild ride according to one of my mates who had gone for a run in it. I found a pic of it.

I'd look into Chev/Holden hydraulic lifters, as a substitute for the 5k hydraulics. The anti-pump up ones would probably work well in a motor built to rev. I'd install a fresh cam with whatever new lifters you go with.

With those ACL pistons, what is the volume (cc's) of the piston dish?

Those things have a plastic outer rim. The woodgrain is fake. Well at least it was on the stock factory steering wheel that was in my old ke25 Deluxe.

It is a 3K bigport head. It will have a welschplug on the back of the head. Heads with prefix 22010 are K bigport (from earlier ke1x). These have smaller valves than all later heads. 24010 3k bigport (late ke1x-ke2x). Hopefully your motor has been built with shallow dish pistons, otherwise it will have a low compression ratio. I would CC the head and pistons to work out the true compression ratio while you have it apart.

Rob :y: Bigger ain't necessarily better when it comes to getting performance out of a motor. This applies to exhaust selection, cam, carbs, portwork, etc.. A properly matched package suited to the intended application is what it is all about to get the best allround performance. Peak HP means shit all. Area under the powercurve is where it's at. Hogging out the ports on a 5k is going to kill all it's low-mid torque. It won't really affect the top end as the valve size is the governing factor for flow. As stated there isn't much meat between the valve seats to fit in larger seats and valves. Offset valve guides is the go to fit in larger valves if you have a few bucks. Check out the attached image showing flow in various sections of a mini engine intake port.

Some people have made them fit. It obviously requires work, but it would be nice to be able to wind in more castor. From memory Gavclassic had a ke10 with a ke2x xmember and castor rods grafted in. Huh? I don't think the caliper will mount at the rear, look at the following pic... The caliper will most likely foul on the steering arm if they are run at the rear.

You can put ke2x ball joints into ke1x arms. This enables the lower ke2x 2 bolt strut mount to bolt up with the complete ke2x strut. Think you would need to substitute the ke1x strut top. I don't see much advantage though, you can use the same strut inserts and brakes on ke1x struts. If you were keen, I think a better way would be to graft in a ke2x xmember. At least then you could get some caster adjustment out of the front of the car. As for putting the calipers to the rear to avoid contact with the whiteline bar, from memory it wont work as the tie rod end is in the road of where you would want the caliper to go. I have a ke15 and ke16, both with whiteline front bars, the ke15 having ke30 discs (square pads), and the a ke16 with ke20 discs (long thin pads). I've found that the ke20 discs are a lot worse for rubbing on the swaybar end at full lock and pushing the caliper piston back in, causing a momentary loss of brakes until you pump the pedal a few times. Changing brake pads more often reduces the rubbing effect. Also winding your steering lock stops out helps, at the cost of less steering lock. I wouldn't run the rear bar unless I had an LSD.

Why the hell would you shim under the rocker pedestals? Mybowlcut do a search here and on google for "lifter preload".....

Just use Permatex No.3 non-hardening Aviation gasket goop. Would take 5 minutes to rip off the rocker cover, goop the gasket and reseal... Never leak again. I use No.3 for everything, rocker covers, spark plug tubes, selected areas of head gaskets, carb gaskets, manifold gaskets, diff gaskets, water pumps, thermostat housings etc... Its' fuel safe, never leaks, doesn't dry out, and old/excess simply wipes off with paint thinners. As a bonus most gaskets become reusable.

I'd say it is probably the timing chain. To check if it is the timing chain, put a timing light on the motor while it is at idle. If the timing chain is good the timing marks will be steady. If the chain is badly stretched, the timing marks will be inconsistent, and wander back and forth.

On my ke15, I run 185/60r13 Yokohama A539's on 5.5" wide rims. With 44psi front and 40 psi rear there is bugger all sidewall flex. The ride is very harsh with upgraded suspension. With more normal pressures the tyres had to much sidewall flex for my liking. Upping the pressures improved traction as well as the consistency of grip across rough surfaces during hard cornering. It also evened wear across the tyre reducing chewing of the outer edges.

If your 205's are good, just run them at the highest recommended pressure. That'll get rid of the majority of the sidewall flex. So long as the tyres don't scrub, you've got nothing to lose. I found the opposite.. More expensive handling tyres last me twice as long as cheapies. The tyres don't chew up if you drive it hard through the twisties, not to mention the additional safety factor.

I had a look at that site and was amazed at some of the results they are getting, especially this Corvair... More here of the $50 paintjob, though I would imagine they would have used way more than that in sand paper.

The ke30 rear axles won't work in the ke1x housing. The offset from the wheel bearing to the hubface (where the wheel bolts up) is all wrong, as the ke1x have narrower rear drums. The backing plates for the drum brakes also have a different mounting pattern, so can't be easily swapped over.. plus then you would have to modify the handbrake cable setup. You could always swap in a later diff, though you would need to move the leaf spring mountings inwards. The later diffs are wider, which could cause problems depending on the wheel offset and tyre size you choose to run. Handbrake cables and mounting need to be addressed. If you need the later stud pattern, a possibility may be to get the rear axles/drums redrilled. A decent machine shop might be able to weld and redrill them. I've looked into this in the past, even to the point of sliding ke30 axles into my ke15 diff housing myself. I gave up on the idea and just settled for the stock PCD with stock rear drums, but with ke20 front hubs and ke30 discs. It stops great with sticky 185/60's on 13x5.5 mazda 626 RWD rims allround which fit the car perfectly and don't scrub even with a load on.

That is one nice ke25 you have there. It needs a set of Dragway Pros or Cragars like these....