Hey guys, my name's Alec, i've been around here for a while wheeling and dealing but i thought i'd make a thread for my beloved KE70 "Kaye"
Long story short: It was early 2008 and i was residing in North Queensland as a uni student and had no car to get around in. I spotted on the side of the road one day a baby blue KE70, I'd always been a huge AE86 fan and the keto caught my eye. So I called up the number and the guy came out to show me the car. The asking price was $2600. It was a 4 speed CS KE70 with some fairly decent rust but it ran. I ended up haggling the guy down to $1000, cash in hand and drove her home. Unfortunately i didn't take too many pictures in the early stages, but this is pretty much how she looked.
minus the tacho and some other stuff. Aaaand she was pretty rooted. When bought this car i knew nothing of engines, it was like learning on the job. Alot of stuff was wrong when i went to get it roadied and it ended up costing me $700 in repairs (pretty good as i was quoted 900).
Another shot from the early days. This is pretty much how i got her.
First things first i did some minor interior mods. Just an alright stereo, some 6 inches, some 6x9s, seat cover for driver (others were immaculate), steering wheel etc. Oh yeah almost forgot, straight up with a dash mat, i love them so.
this was the first pic taken on my mates brand new iphone haha. External tacho due to dash tacho not working, i just liked the green clock.
Also was rocking this touch screen sony dvd player for a while whilst my mates 180 was off the road. Pretty cool, but chicks always wanted to touch it, there's no radio aerial for a reason, i like MY music.
Then from here little things were done, distributor changes, carby changes (all stock), pretty much anything that could be changed i did. I also got bored and decided to put a pod filter directly onto the carby. Now before i get yelled at by the powers that are, i knew exactly what i was doing. I was making alot of noise for an almost placebo like amount of extra response. Damn it was fun tho, and real real real loud when you'd fly by someone at full pelt. Made people look at the ol girl when i'd go on boosts with the turbo boys.
She used to put along pretty good for a while there. So we decided to move onto body fixing. it was pretty nasty. Rear end was rust. All wheel arches were rust, under the fuel cap was rust, and a corner of the rear window was rust. So i did some little things around the car.
some lowered springs front and back.
a 32/36 (no pic required we know what they look like) ditto with the extractors. And i fixed up the struts new springs and all.
But the rust kept bugging me. The worst was the back, so my mate Bob and I set out to it.
and she crusied around like this for a while
So the car drove around for a bit, then i wanted to pay attention to the rest of the rust. However i got a crazy idea. Why not buy more corollas? And convert mine to flat front. So me and my mate Macca drove to Cairns and picked up two cars off a lovely young man. Both 4 spd 4kc, One blue slant front ex speedway car and one flat front white one that was completely rooted, smashed bonnet, windscreen but perfect guards and fronts and lights.
white one after i pilfered um.. a few parts.
The blue one that i drove back from Cairns on some random hotwires with NO tread banging out the ol 4k in 4th gear as my mate tows the white on with his hilux haha. But that's another whole different story.
So i took the front end off the white one to convert mine to flat front and took the diff and engine out of the blue one because it was ok. So we took the front off mine.
and put this one on off of the white car. For those playing at home, who can spot my fatal flaw?
So at this point the car got stripped back to metal completely. And resprayed in high fill primer. I did the door jams in some killrust to stop some rust i'd converted but am planning to do them in 2pac primer and top coat.
As i was stripping the car i took out every interior plastic and reinforced and sprayed them with plastic paint, i can't find any of the pictures tho. The seats were also wet/dry vacuumed and the carpet replaced with an ebay molded jobbie. New horn button (TOYOTA) and gearbox surround were added.
Once all this was done and the car was back in road drivable state (sort of) i drove it back to Bobs house for the rest of the welding. We had a convoy going, my mates s14 in front and Bob in his magna behind. The rolla had no door trims, no interior plastics, no back seats, no parcel shelf, no indicators or headlights (but had brakelights :happy: ), let alone it was half high fill, half blue spray bog and a little matte black luckily he only lives around the corner.
but baack to the rust, this section was especially bad. but i had to cut it out at my house and drive to bobs with it only bolted in haha (no 15amp power point at my house for the welder >| )
We found ALOT more rust in the back and it had to be sorted.
These sections were quite bad. Along that lower seam was destroyed and everything else just crumbled :sob:
as was this whole plate, looks better welded in :blush:
the whole back
and voila, never would've known.
Then we went about the wheel arches and a few panels with holes, no pics were taken, pretty boring stuff.
and here she is! boosting down the road, doing one of my patented fly bys. My pod used to scream. Haha. Useless thing it was.
I was so excited. My baby was back on the road, it had been about 14 months to complete the rust work and get to this point, all that time off the road. I was ecstatic. Over the moon. We'd taken the metal for the welds out of the blue and white car and it all fitted together awesomely and look straight as. The light brackets we'd made for the flat front lights to fit the slanty front radiator support panel worked a treat and you couldn't notice the repairs on the back.
However for those listening carefully my fatal flaw was the bonnet, i hadn't thought that out exactly. The bonnet i had, had been danced on. Was proper rooted, so i had to spray it black. No point wasting good paint. But a good man by the name of 7shades hooked me up with a flat front bonnet and boot! Good stuff. Even organised with another mate of mine to have a fella from some 4x4 forums drive it down (i will be forever grateful guys, seriously). So it was all honky dory, i got rid of the black bonnet and boot lid and drove the car with a massive grin.
All my Christmas's had come at once.
Then 5 days later the engine blew.
Now don't get me wrong, i strapped this car. 4 gears, she was quick, not fast. 0 - 60 she was a little demon, around corners, all high revs. She loved it. I did oil changes religiously every 6 months, everything was up to scratch. I washed this car twice a week, i love her why wouldn't i? (this is where i get strange looks from girls).
We couldn't figure it out, everything was sweet. But she wouldn't rev, would just die. I had mechanic mates look at it, random mates and mates of mates. No one understood. I claim a bent rod, or valve or something, somethings just a little off. The engine always had an idle like it had a massive cam, then was unnoticable under load and on acceleration. Weird car.
So i did the only thing i could. Bought another rolla for the engine. This is another entirely long tale for another time, but long story short i met an old guy called Norm, bout a roll and a 5 speed box off him for 200 bucks and he towed it to my house on his car trailer. Fair dinkum queenslander, awesome bloke.
So i ended up with this.
awesome chromes which i needed, perfect bumpers, rust everywhere and a sweet engine. Water proof too, like a movable shed for my parts :happy: but the 5spd ended up being for a ke55 not ke70 and as i didn't want to hack at mine i sold it.
So we tore the engine out of my car, and tore the engine out of the new yellow one i've just bought. pics of a crappy 4k and engineless ke70 aren't really interesting.
Now i had 2 choices, put a VRS kit through the yellow engine, drop it in and just have the car running in a weekend.
OR
Go nuts.
I took option two.
We took the block from the yellow car and head from the blue car and combined.
- Full tear down.
- Acid bath
- Over bored cylinders, 20 thou oversized pistons, new oil rings, bearings.
- Twin row timing chain.
- Spaced oil pump.
- Every seal and gasket brand new.
- New elec dissy, GT40 coil.
- New fuel pump, water pump.
- 32/36DGEV (disabled choke) no emissions at all on anything.
- Head recon, acid dip etc new valve seals etc, valve seats, port matched to inlet manifold.
- Inlet manifold bead blasted and all emissions gear rerouted and taken off.
combined with new radiator, recon master cylinder, thermo fan and recon wiring loom. this might not sound crazy to some of you, but it was well beyond what i had imagined i'd end up doing. I wasn't planning on spending thousands on the engine, didn't even want to spend hundreds haha. But i went nuts. I also sprayed the wheel arches in sound deadener and decided to respray the engine bay. I went with an Audi/VW 2pac blue as it was hard to find a shade of blue that didn't have purple in it in the sunlight. While all this was happening i took out the crossmember and steering rack etc and cleaned it all and replaced broken bushes and resprayed it all. I put some XT130 LCAs in it and bought a sweet whiteline sway bar for it too. Here are some happy snaps from a while back.
IMG]http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/3695/1001842k.jpg[/img]
pretty crappy engine pics i know, but i'll update tomorrow when i can get some, it's currently on the stand with everything on it ready to drop in.
I have also tended to the interior some more. I installed a decent alarm with 4 door keyless entry and siren etc etc. I got a oil and oil temp gauge and an ammeter to keep an eye on a pesky battery drain problem. I also took the little green clock out of my wrecked tacho dash and put it in my clock dash, just for shits and gigs.
And that's about it. I never intended this build to go fast, but it was more of a learning experience for me, parts of all 4 ke70s i've had will combine to make this one awesome one. I've got heaps more pics, all the ignition gear is installed, i'm just waiting on my Exedy heavy duty clutch. New rims have also been sourced, some meshies that fit nice and snug, once i've finished lipping the guards i'm half way through. Just gotta get the camera out for some fresh pics.
I'd just like to thank a WHOLE lotta guys off here, um Felix, 7shades, Littleredspirit, Evan and Simon i'm sorry bout the gearbox again :blush: anyone i've forgotten i'm sorry, i'm sure i've forgotten stuff on my car, but you win some and lose some.
So yeah, i've spent WAY too much money and time on her. Owned for about 2 and a half years, and driven on the road for about 8 months tops, haha. And in fear of sounding like 17 year old on his p's (i am not that young anymore :( ) it is a great little car to slide around in the rain, in controlled situations of course. Nice little car all round, can't wait to get her on the track.
Big things in the next week! We could see firing!
Alec