ke70dave

Hah! Ill be happy with more than 24hrs this time. Hooked up a few sensors last night. My gemp gauge was playing up last time but i think i found the loose connection.

Its alive! Started first click. Just gotta fill it up with coolant and attach a few small coolant hoses.

OK progress! Yesterday only got a few hrs in to work on car, but i managed to change the brake discs and pads front and rear. Just went with DBA oem replacement discs and QFM HPX pads. Have had the HPX pads on most of my cars including the ke70. always been happy with them. Nice brake setup on the e30, easy enough to replace. Today i got about 4hrs in. spent aaages sorting out the vacuum lines. sifting through my parts replacing hoses and figuring out the best hoses to use. Ill be back to an almost stock setup now. still running the coolant operating idle up widget for now. But by the end of today i have the engine ready to go in, ready to bolt the gearbox to it and drop it in. You can see in the photo i have installed the late model crank sensor on the front. 60teeth wheel with 2 teeth missing. This will allow me to hook up my haltech computer in due time.

For testing purposes get a spare wire and hook it up to the solenoid wire on tbe starter. Carefully put it on the positive terminal of battery, this should run the starter motor. If this works then the relay is the way forward as this is all the relay does.

22r wouldn't be my choice to swap in. They are a truck engine really. don't rev much. Good for a ute, not great for a small car. If you are going to go to the effort of an oddball engine conversion you might as well put a 4age in. Well documented for the ke30, sporty engine that likes to rev. Relativley small amd light that suits the ke30.

Almost there!

Thanks parrot! Yep shes getting the full once over. I have also purchaed new dba brake discs and qfm hpx pads all round. Havent got a chance to put them on yet. Brakes are pretty bad from sitting so long, should be a nice improvement. 4ages have the advantage of not being an interference engine. We broke a timing belt on a smallport 4age yrs ago at full noise way up in the mountains. Zero damage except for the damage to the wallet for the tow home!

ok dokie. A good day was had! progress included a good clean, scraped the top of block and pistons to remove all gunk ready for head, replaced front main and the seal around the cam gear dizzy shaft thingo, i also degreased the engine bay in preparation for engine. Found some small rust spots, nothing major and hard to see, so i just sanded them back and gave them a coat of rustkill paint. fitted up the flywheel and clutch also. Engine looked like this at the end of day. also do you like my trolley? Dad made it when rebuilding his boat engine (huge 5L diesel thing), works quite well! Eneded up having to make my very own special service tool to get the front crank nut off. Had a spare harmoni balancer and bought some cheap steel. welded it on and it worked a treat. obviously only useful with engine out of car, i might cut it down so it works in the car also. Issue is i now have to do that nut up and its 402nm!!! my torque wrench only goes to about 170nm.....work might have one i can use, will check on monday. Tomorrow i should be able to get the head on and the manifolds cleaned up too ready to drop in this week sometime.

Ok so its been a rather slow few weeks. I properly destroyed the original engine with the timing belt failure. holes in 3 pistons, about 5 valves clean snapped off, the rest bent. Wouldn't surprise me if i bent a conrod. Given the condition of the belt it wouldn't surprise me if it had never been replaced. A bit of a shame but the more i pulled apart the original engine the more it was evident it had not been well looked after, probably good to get this other engine in. Compression tested the second engine, it came up super good, 190 +/-10 across all 6. looks to have had some work done, it has a shiny new wate rpump and alot of the gaskets are new. Can still see swirly marks on the inside of the cylinder, so i reckon it may have been rebuilt at one stage. I did however notice that two exhaust studs were broken below the surface of the head, and the front cam seal was leaking. Given it has been sitting for about 1yr i took the plunge and decided to remove the head, even with the good compression results and get it overhauled. Figured i might as well do it while its out of the car. In the end head was generally in great shape, but i needed 6 new exhaust guides installed to be perfect. Went ahead with basically a full head overhaul and now i essentially have a band new head. New genuine headgasket, timing belt kit, new head bolts and i got them to replace the exhaust studs at the same time. Total of just over $1000. kinda expensive, but not so bad. I have found a small bit of rust in the firewall hiding behind the sound deadening, so i have grinded that back and given it some paint to stop it going any further. removed a bunch of sound deadening to stop it happening again. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way of fitting the head the last few weekends, but i have devoted tomorrow and sunday to getting it done and possibly get the engine back in the car!

yeah i wouldnt be too concerned woth rcas with a small drop. The beauty is if you use lowering springs they are generally stiffer, this reduces your travel and thus reduces any bump steer effects that may be exadurated. Oem cars have a degree of bump steer built in anyway, probably to promote understeer on the limit for safety. The other thing is is that what alot of people describe as bump steer is often issues with scrub radius increase from using wheels that are too wide.

I hope you bought a celebratory icecream.

I emailed penrite years ago enquiring aboit oil temps, i'll see if i can dig up the numbers they suggested. Nah can't find the email. Must have used work email at the time. If i recall it was something like 120deg+ was cause for concern.

Man that looks fun.

Mmmm progress. You still have my quote in your signature! Geez that cruise is going back a few years.

:(

My oppinion is just go to exhaust shop and get one made to suit your car. A little more expensive than a second handy. But at least you will know its brand new and wont need "fixing" in the future like a lot of 2nd hands do.

Yup rust repair and in general body work are a true art. Ive had a few quites done from body shops and just about fainted. I did some fairly successful welding with a cheap mig welder. Good ebough to stop the rust for as long as i had the car. But wouldnt surprise me if the rust is back now;)

You wouldnt have a link for them on ebay by any chance? Leather beema wheel is quite sad. But i don't wanma pay big bucks just yet to an upholsterer.

Hey whats the go with the ebay steering wheel revover things? Turn out alright?

That thing the two hoses commect to is the valve that lets hot coolant into the cabin for your heater to work. If it's leaking out the top it means the internal seal is stuffed. For a quick fix block both lines and remove, do not join them together. Your heater wont work if you block them though. Youll have to try and track downna new valve or retro fit one from another car.

If you have both heads there you could measure the bolt length required for both heads and compare.

Potentially. But for similar costs you could make a 7age (oem 4age head on top) or just drop in a complete 4age.

The thing with itbs on a 4afe ia that those engines are really torquy down low and this is most likely due to the head and more specifically intake manifold design. Long runners give good torque. If you remove the intake manifold in favour of itbs and keep everything else stock, i reckon it will sound heaps better and go heaps slower except for maybe very high rpm.

Thanks for the drive yesterday matt! This things rocks.

Ah man if I could borrow that crane it would be much appreciated. I still like the m20. It was soo smooth to drive.