Felix

Rang up my local Engine Reconditioners. It will cost $44 for a headskim with a couple of hour turnaround. :lolcry: Not bad considering that when I originally put this motor together about 6 years ago it cost $40 to get the head skimmed then.

If it's pretty, it's not driven hard enough. :lolcry: As my missus says "Pretty cars are for pretty boys". :lolcry:

Glad I don't own a Cressida. :lolcry:

Yea, she should be right. I left it sit for a couple of hours and went out and started it, the bottom end seems fine. Sounds exactly the same as normal on startup. No smoke or bottom end knocks or anything. Will probably pull it apart on the weekend and have a better look at it. A skim, new head and manifold gaskets, and a new thermostat and it should hopefully be all good. Might setup my 32/32DGV on it when it all goes back together for a bit more go. Was just very lucky the missus didn't take it to work today.... Not so bad happening to me.

The ke16 shat itself on the way to pick up the kids this arvy. Was driving through town and had to stop before the pedestrian crossing and it just stalled and refused to start, holding up traffic behind me. Fortunately there was an empty carpark on the side of the road so I used the starter to crank it into the carpark and walked to get the kids. I thought that maybe the fuel guage was possibly playing up so got a tin of petrol from the servo near the school to save maybe having to walk back again. Anyway got back to the car and pulled the airfilter off to check if there was fuel in the carb. There was, as well as a heap of oil and water...... Blown headgasket. The crap ended up in there from the PCV to aircleaner hose, and gunged up the inside of the airfilter strangling it. Explains why it stalled. LOL! It was then an easy fix to get running. I just left off the filter and diverted the PCV hose, and it started after sucking some of the crap through. Added a bit of water and drove the 7 kays home watching the temp guage steadily rising. Got up to around 7/8ths on the guage. :lolcry: Got home, popped the bonnet, and grabbed the hose. Was kinda weird watching water boil off the rocker cover and head. :lolcry: Cooled the radiator off a bit so I could fill it up, and restarted the car. Seems to still be running ok, and fortunately there is no smoke coming from the exhaust so hopefully the rings are still good, and the bearings to... fingers crossed. Stupid cars. Oh well, assuming the bottom end is still good, should only cost around $100 to fix with some new gaskets and a head skim. The joy of owning a simple old car.

You can change the venturis in the aisan carbs. Normally though you should change the air bleed jets to match, the change in venturi size. The rule for webers is to start with an airbleed one fiftieth the size of its venuri. Problem with the aisans is that the emulsion tubes, and airbleeds are one piece with the auxillary venturis. You might get close, but it will always be a compromise. A set of jet drills would help, but they are f@$king expensive. venturis/chokes.... same thing. :jamie:

The carbs are aisan brand. You can change the venturis over fairly easily, though personally I wouldn't waste to much energy on the stock carbs. Smaller venturis give better throttle response and torque at lower revs. Get a DCD weber from a mk1 1500gt cortina if you want performance, economy and excellent drivability. Not to mention the tunability of DCOE's with interchangable venturis, mainjets, air bleeds, emusion tubes, idle jets, and accellerator pump jets.... Nothing wrong with the points dizzys. I've found they have a more aggressive advance curve than the electronic ones, which gives better overall performance. You do need something like a Jaycar HEI kit to ensure long term points reliability though. The points in my ke15 are about 5 years old. You only need to check and correct the point gap once in a while to account for points rubbing block wear, and the timing shift that goes hand in hand.

I "think" they are all 4.22s, except for the ke16/18 wagons which had 4.44 diffs. I guess due to age you never know if it still has the original center. It is not that hard to work out the ratio while the diff is still in a car: -Raise one wheel so it can be turned (make sure the opposite one is locked in one place). -Make a reference mark on the raised wheel/brake drum and on the pinion uni/pinion flange. -Select neutral, handbrake off. -Get a helper to slowly turn over the raised wheel precisely 20 turns, while you count how many times the tailshaft turns over. You may need to repeat a couple of times to ensure accuracy incase you lose count. 45 (and a bit) turns of the tailshaft is 4.55 44 is 4.44 43 is 4.33 42 is 4.22 41 is 4.11 etc.......

There were both coarse pitch and fine pitch tierods on the ke1x series. Earlier ke10/15/16s have coarse pitch threads, the later ke11/17/18s fine pitch.

The lifters in my 5k are stock hydraulics "converted" to solids. Basically the lifters had the circlip removed and the guts emptied out. The pushrod cup was dropped down to the base of the lifter. Coupled with 3k pushrods and 4k rocker gear, this has worked perfectly since it was installed 2 1/2 years ago. With holden double valvesprings the valvetrain is good for over 8grand. The valvetrain is quieter then the 4k in my wagon and its' previous 4k. The only trouble I ever had is that the rocker adjuster screws initially just tapped on the underside of the rocker cover. This was remedied with a dremel. No point wasting money on a lifter conversion when you can use your old junk to do it for free. ;)

who cares that its not pretty. in a ke30, that thing ran in the 14's with an old 3k on 20+ psi. :D he just added a copper head gasket. cost him about a grand all up including car. the guy (jmac) is very cluey on blowthru systems. i've got the fuel system from that car. :)

deposit received, car gets picked up saturday. SOLD.

i have decided to move on this project. if anyone is interested in a good ke25 rolling chassis with very little rust PM me....

i put 230 thousand hard kays on top of what an import 4k had from japan. it started to lose a bit of power and burn oil. stripped it was found to be quite good, apart from bad ring groove wear.

coil +ve. have a look at some of the earlier carbs. they have a plug (bolt type thing) in place of the solenoid, which is easily changed over.

i would comply myself. i would look at what you got as a friendly warning. :y: all the copper needs is to find 2 defects and he could put you over the pits at the DOT. then you have to pay fines for defects, points loss on your licence, and need to pay for your DOT inspection. DOT will go through your car with a fine tooth comb (harsher than a safety cert), and you have to fix any problems within a certain time period or it gets taken off the road. been there, done that.... it wasn't fun. :lolcry:

they are pretty much all interchangable. a 5k electronic dizzy will bolt in an 1100cc K motor....

could be from a ke50 liftback, they have tacho dashes. just don't get Demuire to attempt to straighten the tacho needle if it is bent. :P

i'm not going to worry to much about flares for a bit. i have a really nice set of wheels organised for the car, which i'll be picking up shortly. :hammer: the superlite style rim whilst very nice, seem to be a very common swap on the ke25/te27 these days. lol! most likely a k series of some sort with sc14 will find it's way in there. as for the interior, well with some new carpets and a new roof lining it would be near overrated. for some reason the hood lining has been ripped at the front and back sections. :lolcry:

sorry, doesn't really do it for me. still think the car isn't really old enough to pull of the moonie/whitewall look properly. each to their own though. :hammer: this is more like it....

sorry. :hammer: the inner inlet runner bolt holes are normally shared with those of the middle part of the exhaust/extractors. probably not really described well, but i have attached a pic of the manifold flange from my SU manifold for you to compare..... hoping maybe the manifold hasn't been quite finished off, and you can grind it to fit?

i think he gave a hint here. :hammer: obviously from the 4A family. 4age?

yea, also the timing chain setup was expensive with the balance shaft. you could get balance shaft removal kits, but the engines ran alot rougher. generally sigmas were considered shitboxes. much like holdens camira. magna efi setups could be adapted, but magnas were also expensive shitboxes (the earlier tn-tp ones anyway). probably why you hardly see any on the road these days.

it used to be quite a common swap into early 70's lancers and galants, often with a turbo. they are similar sized to a ke30 i guess.

yep, most of the ke20/25's had discs with no boosters. however if you are doing an engine upgrade (even to a 5k), you may need to add a booster to satisfy your engineering requirements.... depends on who is doing it.