rob83ke70

that would be the go. the booster moves forward at least an inch. maybe I should look into something like that for those pesky vehicles that this is a problem with. Robert.

next time you have an ra rodeo (or even an rc colorado or dmax i think) get someone to press hard on the brakes while you watch the side view of the master cylinder, it flexes about an inch (or more) at the booster. problem is the booster is too large and too soft.... not quite sure as to how to fix it as such. Robert.

anybody ever driven a car with brake booster flex, and the horrible feeling brakes that go with it? (think holden rodeo) anybody know an engineering solution to the problem? reinforcing the booster somehow? a thicker smaller diameter booster? any ideas? Robert.

I think I put 2 1/2 sets of headlight surrounds into the tub yesterday... haven't got around to matching them up yet. See how I go today ;)

okay... so there are several different variants of the ke10 grille I'm assuming. My compliance plate says 1969, so does anyone know which of these three grilles suits the 1969 generation of ke10s? This is my first ke1# car so I honestly have no idea. ***EDIT**** sorry I'm logged in as rob...

The car is a 1970 KE11 2 door sedan. Bit of basket case when we got her, but it is slowly going back together. The plans are as follows: Engine: 4k, rebuilt, balanced, tighe 104 camshaft, twin aisan downdraught carburettors, elec dizzy, extractors, 2" straight through exhaust with 2" tip, between 10 and 11:1 compression ratio, lighter flywheel, not sure whether to go tosco 3.9kg or just machine the stock flywheel yet. Thermofan, probably a heavier alternator. polished aluminium bits. Gearbox/driveline: k40 out of ke55, standard ke11 borgwarner diff. Holes already cut in transmission tunnel, plans to neaten the mess up and make the ke55 box fit neatly as I have a few of them lying around. Unsure about changing stud pattern. Brakes: ke70 slotted RDA rotors, probably a softish pad, maybe bendix gct's. Standard drums on the rear. Upgrade to dual circuit brakes. Wheels/tyres: either steel rims with 4x110 pattern or chrome speedy's with 4x114.3, 13" either way, probably 185/65r13's in as sticky a road tyre as I can get. Still unsure about changing stud pattern or not. Body: rust to be repaired, paint to be repaired. paint is 2pac over acrylic, not a huge fan of technique or colour, but I will be repairing what I've got. Already adjusted doors and had drivers hinges rebushed. have to bend boot hinges to identical shapes as they are wonky. Have to buy bonnet, paint valance and bonnet, repair rust in guards, clean behind guards, and touch some paint up. Plans for sealing boot off and engineering as two seater, sheet aluminium to be used to seal boot and probably replacing door trims as well. New carpet, small non reclinable race seats. Have to repair broken seat mounts, and sort out strong mount points for race harnesses, not happy about how seat belts are at the moment, I think they would pull out of the body in the event of them being needed... Plain black three spoke steering wheel to be fitted. New rubbers need to be fitted. Suspension: front swaybar to be fitted, either carefully fitted whiteline bar done so it does not foul brakes, or kmac bar. Rear leaves have been played with, have 6 leaves per pack and look lower and stiffer than normal. May need to reset front leaf to lower a smidge to match rear of vehicle, strut top modification as shown in faq will not work as most of the weight is taken on the leaf spring not the coils... Plans: this will replace my subaru L series wagon as the daily driver, and I'm planning on competing in khanacrosses and motorkhanas in bathurst. I just want to get into a smaller more fun to drive car, the stationwagon is a bit large and has some scary mechanical ideas in it's design. I'm thinking about naming her "Kell" as it is a KE11... timeframe for completion is by the start of 2011. I'm open to any suggestions and ideas as well, so feel free to comment! Robert

repco can't/won't get any strut tops at all. auto1 don't seem very promising... not for a corolla anyway, probably easy as for a falcodore... midstate spares haven't had any luck getting them either... pedders are going to call me back tomorrow... that exhausts all places locally. APPARENTLY noltec is now whiteline and APPARENTLY they no longer make a whole lot of goodies they used to.... and things aren't available anymore and so on and so on... maybe autobarn??? maybe ring bursons in dubbo??? I'm open to suggestions here. why is it that when you start talking performance bits for a corolla, or motorsport/racing bits nobody takes you seriously or really bothers to care?? do members of the general public (non motor mechanics) get treated better?? I've got part numbers out of a noltec book, this SHOULD be a no-brainer!! I'd be tearing hair out now if it wasn't so short. Robert.

I'm going to be resetting the front a smidge lower on my ke11, but definitely not that low. rear already is tweaked. Robert.

why can't I find anywhere that can get me adjustable strut tops for a ke55? where does everybody buy them, what brand are they and how much? Three parts places, and even with my own noltec parts book having a listing for FOUR different variants of them, with part numbers, and I can't seem to find them anywhere... give your favourite suspension place a plug here and I will ring them. Robert.

what is so bloody wrong about fitting a hydraulic handbrake??? can't be any more dangerous than a handbrake on the front wheels on my subaru!!! as long as the pipe joins are done correctly, I can't see the problem. I'm sure I will now be corrected as appropriate!

I'm missing a shim or don't have a thick enough shim on the pinion bearings, thus when the nut is tightened all the way up I don't have preload..... I will try to get some shims and goodies and have another go sometime this week. Robert.

put some decent tyres on your car and run sensible pressures and it will be a whole new animal. rear swaybar I think is the culprit for making the corollas oversteer slightly. I was four wheels drifting in an old magna the other day, I noticed it understeered somewhat as the road was wet, did a u turn around a round-a-bout and as the wheels were understeering the whole way around I started to feather the throttle and I produced a neater more controlled slide than most rwd cars can do on the exit to the round-a-bout.... thats my laugh of the day. Robert.

I think I have insufficient preload on the pinion bearings and I need to shim the bearings outwards to get this right. Anyone got any spare shims for borgwarner diffs??? Robert.

cylinder head will bolt straight on but lower compression ratio somewhat. there are two types of drums on the rear of a ke corolla, adm and jdm. jdm are bigger. I think that the wheel cylinders however are all the same. (ke30 onwards). doesn't matter as to whether it is a jap or bw diff, brakes are interchangable. Robert.

hey rebuilding a borgwarner ke55 diff, put all new bearings in it, put another carrier/crownwheel/pinion assembly (4.3 out of ke70) into it, old one was a 4.11. played around with the shims I have (not many) but I'm a bit lost. I get to do a lot of services at work and not a great deal of rebuilding and repairing, probably more replacing than anything else. Apparently I'm supposed to use a 20 thou shim if I'm reusing the collapsible spacer. When I put the shim in, I can't seem to get enough preload on the pinion bearings, and the backlash is a bit much. Without the shim, I have good backlash, and maybe only JUST enough preload... My drama is that after it has all been put together, then disassembled and put back together again, I have noise under drive and noise under overdrive with some chattering type noise on coast. It would have to be the crownwheel/pinion gears making the noise, and I figure they would have to be adjusted wrong, but the question is how do I adjust it correctly? I was enlightened AFTER I put it together tonight as to the trick to making the pretty patterns with the bearing blue, you need to use a prybar or similar to put load on the carrier when you turn the pinion thus creating nice patterns. I had all the trouble in the world making patterns and more or less gave up on the patterns. Not like I have any spare shims to play with anyway. Anybody with spare shims?? Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong? This really really irks me because I'm a mechanic, but I don't get to rebuild diffs and gearboxes and all those fun things. I can hardly remember the brief bit on diffs we did at tafe as an apprentice. Yes you can all laugh at me now! I'm going to dig up something nerdy like trigonometry now so I can stop thinking about the damn diff noise. Robert.

the idea was to mate ke20 ball joints to ke20 struts into a ke11 body, but I have since changed my mind as to the merits of the whole operation. Robert.

on closer inspection, and further playing with, I think that the ride height is ok stock, but would probably be better an inch lower. I will be putting ke20 spring hats in as per the faq, and leaving the leaf and coils as they are, and fitting front swaybar. Rears should be heaps stiff with 6 leaves per pack as they are. ke70 girlock calipers, slotted discs, bendix ultimate db1086 pads, and 185/60r13 sticky tyres, and I should be set :hmm: Robert.

can somebody confirm whether the ball joints in a ke20 fit into a ke10 lower control arm? I have the cars apart but it is a huge hassle to get the control arms down to a press especially if it doesn't work... Robert.

I have six leaves per pack in the rear, and a single leaf in the front. the front seems high and the rear seems low. The rear's i'm guessing have been reset? the leaves are not all the same thickness either and the rear suspension seems very firm. Robert.

I have brass bushes. The driver's side door is on the vehicle now and is lined up pretty nice (the front guards probably aren't quite 100% right) and it shuts and opens perfectly. The passenger's side door is slightly more problematic, i've adjusted the position of the hinges on the body somewhat and adjusted the striker (part on the car body that the catch latches to) and its nearly right, but the door still seems to move up when it is closed fully. It opens and closes easily enough but doesn't seem quite right and I can't get any more adjustment out of it. maybe the door has sagged slightly or the body has moved? Robert.

In my readings on this forum I've found mention of wheel spacers being illegal.... I worked on a BA falcon RTV last week, I replaced a noisy front wheel bearing. Now the RTV is a jacked up falcon ute, and as such has somewhat different looking goodies in the suspension/hubs etc. They are fitted from the factory with a spacer plate between the wheel and the hub. They also have longer wheel studs than a standard falcon ute. I would also like to point out that there is nothing that directly mentions wheel spacers in the RTA's big orange registration inspection standards folder. HOWEVER, you must not increase your track width by more than one inch... conclusion: not illegal, but probably hard to find a legitimate context in which they can be used legally. Robert.

as long as you take it go a good mechanic that you know will do a good job. I have problems sometimes with the standard of work that comes out of mechanical workshops, I personally like the job to not only be done but to look like it is done and done well, ie clean the parts properly!! I know a lot of people that wouldn't bother cleaning the gearbox up, and even wouldn't bother replacing the rear main despite it leaking..... Robert.

buy a kit (pressure plate, friction disc and throwout bearing) and a spigot bearing as well. Take the flywheel off, get it machined (resurfaced) and if you are adventurous and have some other engine mods get it machined (weight reduction) as well. If the rear main oil seal appears to be leaking at all then replace it. Do a nice thorough job of cleaning the bellhousing/gearbox up, and fit it all back together. I'd use the opportunity to change the gearbox oil as well (nobody ever replaces gearbox oil these days) and you are all under control. not too big a job in the scheme of things either, and a corolla clutch is reasonably priced, I payed $130 trade for a heavy duty clutch kit a few years back. My subaru's clutch is worth $300 trade, and the later models especially dual mass flywheel clutches can go up to $1000 or more... Robert.

I have a ke11 in the shed, and a ke20 as well. the ke20 is fitted with coilovers, far too low for it and they will be coming out and being replaced with something more sensible. Has anybody played around with ke1x and ke2x front suspension to the point where they could answer: will the ke20 ball joint fit into the ke11 lower control arm? are ke20 and ke11 front struts the same height as each other? are ke11 and ke20 front wheel bearings the same? are ke11 and ke20 steering arms the same? and on a slightly different note: how much different are the axles in a ke11 borgwarner diff and the axles in a ke20 jap diff? I've noticed some stuff about ke30 axles not fitting ke10 jap diff, but there never seems to be very much written about borgwarner diffs. nobody likes borgwarners? I'm going to play around with the cars tomorrow and maybe I can answer some of these questions, but if somebody has already done it and can say yes or no before I spend the day pointlessly experimenting, then that would be good. Robert.

anyone out there running a complete stock ke1x? how much clearance do you have between the guard and the wheels? I have 185/70r13 tyres (to be replaced with 186/60r13 before registration) and no engine/gearbox/bonnet in the vehicle, there is at least 200mm between the guard and the wheel, if myself and kylie were to stand in the engine bay it would come down 50mm maybe. The back seems a lot lower, it has 6 leaves per pack.... As far as I know all the suspension is stock, seems unusually stiff though, front and rear. Is this normal ride height? seems a little high in the front and low in the rear to me... Robert.