slapper

this is worth a post of its own I reckon. I've stuffed this into my offline favourites as it looks like it probably shouldn't be online ... so maybe it'll disappear. Looks like a complete late (from our perspective anyway) model 'rolla manual. http://aarc.epnet.com/application/8586/8586.htm enjoy, Slapper

aaaaahhhh ... google gold: http://aarc.epnet.com/application/8586/8586.htm looks like a whacking big toyota corolla manual gotta love the 'net :P Slapper

just realised that topics posted in sub-forums don't show up in the "recent posts" home page view. so ... I'm posting a link to my sub-forum topic here so it'll show up in the summary view ... in a nutshell ... I'll be replacing the head-gasket on the 4A-C (AE71) on the weekend and am looking for supporting info - Damm it, but Gregorys don't do a manual for the AE71 and I'm baulking at the idea of buying a later model corolla manual just to get the 4A-C info :P http://www.rollaclub.com/board/index.php?showtopic=5982 cheers, Slapper

ohhh yes ... I dno't want this to progress to scorched engine status! At the moment, on a warm day, it drinks about two litres of water for a 30k trip! Adelaide - I've now ammended my profile so it should turn up in my siganture. just trying to anticipate what I'll need to know ... head torque, cam alignment are all I can think of ... ask me again Saturday arvo when I've discovered all the other things I also need to know! Nice thing about Gregorys et al is that they're *usually* helpful about what needs to be pulled off first, second, third etc without completely dismantling the car just to get to the head gasket! cheers, Slapper

evenin' all. well, the handy dandy replacement corolla whilst the ke25 is in bits on the shed floor has started drinking coolant at ab alarming rate. It's not overheating (yet), there are no bubbles in the radiator and no evidence of water in the oil ... but it's issuing an unusual amount of steam from the exhaust - I'm guessing head gasket! trouble is, I've not been inside a 4A-C yet and gregorys don't do a manual for the AE71 - I'll ge farked if I'm going to buy a manual for something else just to get the 4A-C engine bit either :P I'll pull the head on the weekend (hopefully I'll be able to baby it along until then) but does anybody have some info on repositioning the cam belt, torquing the head bolts etc? Ideally a scan of the engine section of something with a 4A-C would be best, but I'm guessing that's going to be unlikely! cheers, Slapper

oops - "after-market springs" I meant ... Slapper

then whack in the variations that occurr as suspension travels ... combine that with rear roll-centers (*easy* to plot with solid rear axle), think about the roll axis (is the rear center higher than the front etc) and it gets really ugly! usually, if you just drop it straight out, you drop the roll center (at least as far as the front is concerned) by more than the center of gravity ... some of the pain will be offset by stiffer springs but you will invariably have to think about roll bars, RCAs etc to get most benefit. As you say, dropping by up to 40 mm or so keeps you pretty much within "factory tolerances" and doesn't alter suspension geometry by enough to make too much of a difference - and you usually don't need shocks with a shorter stroke. Problems come with shorter and stiffer shocks *without* increasing the damping ... the stiffer spring wants to rebound faster and you finish up blowing oil seals around the shaft. You also finish up under-damped which means your shocks are not doing enough to slow the spring travel down and things get bouncy - this is in addition to stroke length problems. In general: most "off the shelf" after-market shocks are around 20% shorter and stiffer than standard shocks - which makes them about as stiff as a standard shock when it has been compressed by 20% ... so standard shocks are still within cooee of something useful. 2006-01-09 edit: that should say "after-market springs" :P All serious stuff - luckily I'm not too obsessed (and don't need to be with what my cars get used for!) and make do with compromises to a large extent - even my neighbour pokes shit at my under-spending mentality :rocknroll: cheers, Slapper

not necessarily true as far as my various reading tells me! :) for a start, when you compress the suspension, the ends of the arms will start moving inwards, pulling the wheel more into positive camber. In general, you don't want your lower arms to deflect beyond horizontal. look for articles about roll-centers to also show why flat control arms are usually not a good idea ... draw a line 90 degrees from the strut top toward the inside of the car - draw a line from the bottom of the strut up through the lower control arm ... where these two arms intersect is the "instantaneous center" draw a line from the instantaneous center to the midle of the tyre's contact patch - where this line intersects the center-line of the car is the roll-center for that particular suspension configuration (note that it will all change as soon as you start cornering and things start compressing on the outside and extending on the inside). The roll center is interesting because this is (in a very simplistic nutshell) an indication of where your suspension is able to apply force to counteract roll - the further this point is offset from the center of gravity, the more of a tendency you get to roll the car. The flatter your control arms are, the further you move the instantaneous center away from the strut, and the lower the roll-center moves (sometimes below ground level even). If the roll-center is already below the center of gravity, this moves it even further. Of course ... the problem with all this is that - although I can plot the roll-center for the front of the corolla, I'm not really sure where the center of gravity is :S When you lower your car, you can stuff the roll-centers so badly taht you actually finish up with *more* body roll than before - then you start fitting roll-center adjusters that extend the bottom of the strut back down to tilt the lower control-arms back toward their original angle. enough!! cheers, Slapper

spin it up heaps without the plugs installed - water will spit everywhere. then drop a teaspoon of meths down each cylinder (through the sparkplug hole) before you plop the plugs back in ... it will combine nicely with the water to assist the drying out. once copped a cylinder full of water in the bike through the exhaust (handy hint #3: keep your eye on the toddler with the hose if you don't want this to happen again :)) - meths was the last step ... unfortunately, you will have sucked water in through the carby ... so your intake is also full of watery goodness - like they say, CRC or equivalent everywhere - you may also want to try some "start ya bastard" or "aerostart" to assist ... good luck! Slapper

I haven't googled or read this stuff for a while, so some of the detail may be a little fluffy ... but this is how I understand it: Extractors are tuned to provide best performance around a specific rev range. Length between "refelection points" is what's critical ... in particular, the length from the exhaust valve to the first "pipe join" - ie. the length of the primaries. The shorter the primaries, the higher the rev-range the extractors work best at. A performance boost at low-mid revs works well in lots of places ... motorkhana, the street, rallying, the street ... the street. To get this, you need reasonably long primaries. Problem: there is only so much space in an engine bay and under a car ... it can be hard to make the primaries as long as you'd like, and still have room for them to fit. Compromise: rather than make the primaries as long as you'd like, make them shorter (1/2 the desired length would seem to make sense from a harmonics perspective) and add a second pipe join (reflection point) at the desired primary position. Join the primaries with another such that both exhaust ports are not open at once. What you get is an effectively longer primary with only 1/2 the pipes needing to be accomodated (at the end). So - in general: 4-1 are usually tuned for high rev-ranges and 4-2-1 are tuned for lower (mid-range) revs. My 4K rarely gets to 7k (horrible noises indicating valve float/bounce happen there!), so I use 4-2-1 extractors. chairs, Slapper

I suspect the 2X extractors *would* fit a 3X ... if you were replacing the rest of the exhaust as well. The 2X exhaust hugs the transmission inbetween the floor, the gearbox and the x-member. It certainly looks like this would still work with the 3X as well as the 2X (apart from the 3X good idea of routing the exhaust heat *away* from the gearbox rather than right next to it). You'd need to replace the rest of your exhaust as well as it would be in a different spot under the floor. The 2X extractors hug the engine tighter as the engine bay is smaller *and* they need to hug the gearbox. All up, it would certainly be a safer bet that 2X extractors would fit a 3X car, but the safest bet wuopld be that 2X extractors would fit a 3X car :D Slapper

no problemo - whack it in the FAQ Incidentally, the remedy for 3X extractors vs the 2X gearbox x-member problem is to weld a U-shaped relief into the gearbox crossmember so the exhaust can go wherever it wants. I suspect I dropped some photos in the oldcorollas piccies area if you're keen. However (there's always a however!) ... you also need to worry about the steering idler arm ... because the 3X engine bay is slightly wider, my 3X extractors swung further away from the engine than was a good idea for the 25 - resulting in a nice little dent where the steering idler thumps into them on hard left turns (made worse by the engine twist when you rev). All up, I had the exhaust shop heat, bash, bend etc to the point where I would've been better off buying brand new 2X specific extractors than the $50 wrecker specials plucked from a KE30. Slapper

ke20 and ke35 route the exhaust differently ... gearbox cross member goes one side of the car to the other on a ke20, it's about 1/2 the width on the ke35. On the ke20, exhaust tucks up into the transmission tunnel (over the x-member), right beside the gearbox, .. on the ke35, it goes out to the left between the end of the gearbox x-member and the side of the car. ke35 extractors *won't* fit into a ke20 without modifications (I know from painful experience!). The longer gearbox x-member in the ke20 gets in the way, I would've thought that ke20 extractors would fit in a 35 though ... Slapper