altezzaclub

Nah, no-one owns them, horrible things! I just wanted to get in before Insanity comes along and goes on for ages about how wonderful they are and how many different ones are stacked up on the farm in various sheds! Personally, anything with leaf springs is horrible! So you've got one of the better ones there, and for what you paid its a good buy. I think he paid more for his rims than you paid for your car, certainly if you add in tyres... You've probably seen his build here- http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/60067-grumpy-the-jdm-rt104-corona/page__hl__%20grumpy

I saw a few ideas while searching images for dry sump pumps. There are a couple of KW to be gained it seems, a horizontal meshed screen and a scraper, but I assume it would be difficult to fit it all together around the oil pump and pickup. The advantage of fitting the scraper to the block is that you can see it as you assemble it, and have the clearance quite small. Fitting it to the sump means the sump must be fitted in a very exact place each time. I'm looking at taking the next step and running a dry-sump scavenging pump & tank while keeping the stock oil pump to circulate oil on the rally car's 18RG. That clears oil and vapour out of the crankcase completely.

.....aaand.... you were amazed at the difference it made!! Take 5kg off a flywheel and a 1000kg car accelerates noticeably faster! I reckon its one of the easiest and best improvements you can make.

Tyre time... having put a rock through the sidewall of a Bridgestone Turanza, I figured I'd replace the pair. I fitted a pair of Bridgestones and a pair of Falken Sinceras at the same time back in 2010-2011 or so, I figure about 50,000km ago. They are worn the same amount, which agrees with their completely swappable handling! Putting either set on front or back doesn't alter the handling at all. They've only got a couple of mm left before they hit the wear marks anyway, They were 175/70 x 13, and seeing there is a great lack of decent sports 13" tyres I thought I'd try a Maxxis UA603 as they come in 175/60 profile. They're $125 a hit compared to $90 odd for the others back when. This will drop the 3.9 diff ratio down to about 4.1 when on the back. The plan is to run them up to Walcha on the back and check what they do for fuel economy, then swap them to the front for the trip back and see what they do for handling. The longer plan is to replace the Falkens when they wear out with a pair from the wrecker early next year to run all four out together, then decide if we want 14" or not. I figure a lower profile with an aggressive tread and better grip won't last as long as the old ones. By then I will have decided on which diff to use too.

Why don't you use the Y engine?? The 1800cc 7K has a bore to stroke of 80.5 to 87.5mm That's a long stroke slow-revving motor. The 2Y 1800cc has one of 86 to 78mm, so it is oversquare and would rev far better. Looking at them they are very similar, crappy old 8valve side-cam tractor engines out of TownAce vans/utes, and Wiki says the valve gear can be swapped so there can't be much difference in it..

Charge light means the alternator is not charging. Alternator problems usually mean brushes or diodes, both inside the alty. The other problem place is the voltage regulator. It depends upon which alternator you have. It is not hard to strip the carb, but you must remember where everything goes! Take lots of photos or draw pictures of what part is where, and strip it onto a clean bench with good light. You can buy 'kits' with replaceable parts and gaskets in for them, but often you do not need to replace anything.

It'll work upside down OK, but you will have to bleed it the right way up to start with.

Do you mean the pump jet? The brass pin that sits in the throat about halfway down and should squirt petrol out when you open the throttle. In the red picture it is worked by the arm "A" and pumps out a jet of petrol from "B", down in the venturi. If you don't get a squirt of petrol the carb needs stripping and cleaning. You can see it is made of three sections in the next photo, and its the middle part that does the work. Either strip and clean it yourself of take it to someone who fixes them. I use a syringe with petrol to squirt through all the jets and passageways.

How easily do we want them to be read? Someone driving past can read it, or someone following you down the road, or someone can only read it when you're parked?

Can you detail what happens?? Does it start and rev OK? Will it hold 2000rpm on the accelerator? If you slowly drop the revs to idle does it instantly die or run badly for a moment then die?

It won't hurt to try it without it. Eventually the fine dust that gets sucked down there will wear the rings faster, just like in a racing car. But just in case it is part of the problem it is worth taking it off to try.

Can you wind the idle speed up?

What sort of air filter is that? If you take it off and have no filter, does the car run better??

Yep- Make sure the manifold surfaces are flat, they can pick up a bit of distortion over the years. A bit of silicon helps too.

http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/27374-one-piece-manifold-gasket-who-makes-them-4k/

Is it a chain-driven or belt-driven cam setup?? I know the MX5 forums are full of mods for the whole car so you can really make them go, and with the great lack of modern RWD 4-cyl motors its a drop-in alternative to the Honda S2000 or Altezza motors, both of which are already old. The newer MX5 has the Altezza's 6-speed too

All I can see is a 4-valve twin cam injected 1600 with a 5speed and an LSD all screaming.. PUT ME IN A KE70!!

What I would really love would be for you to run a topic on 'engineering a car'- what you see as the right way & the wrong way to do something, what you see come through that is well done and what is badly done, and what you consider important and what is not. It may take a month to get the basics on paper, but it would serve as a starting point for all the youngsters thinking about modding their cars. Give us an overall picture, such as- -what engine change triggers a brake upgrade and why, how much of a brake upgrade, what is better to do than other things, like rear discs or not, does it just have to pass a brake test G-meter or is there more to it. -what is considered important in lowering a car severely, such as keeping ackerman steering, bump steer, increasing the size of components, rear suspension problems introduced, the higher chance of losing control with certain suspension setups... cheers

If they want over $250 for the usual blue Hurricane extractors PM me and I'll see what they are here in Orange.

right, and wrong... you'll get plenty of wise-ass comments asking old questions. As far as I know, somewhere along the way you have to pick an engineer, and they are getting less and less enthusiastic to take any responsibility. From that point of view I'd use a KE70- larger, better handling, more stable, newer model... not as cool-looking but more likely to get away with a more powerful motor when it comes to registration hassles.

Stuart, on the dyno run, what gave the nasty dip in the original torque curve around 4500?? Yu lost about 75nm from 3500 to 4500.. Did you find out? It looks like ti was dying from leaning out and then the cam suddenly cut in... Boosting it certainly sorted that out.

Crappy welding? Let me irtroduce you to Mr Grinder! Many an abysmal weld has been made to look great by the application of time, elctricity and grinding discs.. sometimes even cutting discs! Besides, a lot of those welds will not be seen! However, there is no solution like gas with Mig, it is well worth the many dollars it costs! Getting the power down through the rear suspension will be interesting!

The capacity should remain the same I thought- A short rod will pull the piston down further and push it up less, so you effectively move the same stroke down the bore. I think the 7K block is heavier than the smaller K's, maybe that is an advantage in boosting. Dished pistons would drop the compression for sure, so the D-dish 5K pistons should fit and drop the compression, cheaper than custom rods. The stroke will be 87.5 compared to a 5Ks 73, so its a lot more and there's not much you can do to make it rev. Its all about long-stroke torque in there. A shorter stroke comes from a different crank swing, so if you regrind the crank off-center you alter the stroke. I don't know if a 5K crank would fit in the block, but that would obviously shorten the stroke to 73mm and give you the 5K's 1500cc. I haven't heard of other cranks that would fit the K block, nobody bothers to hot up that motor...

Not that I can think of- how much shorter are we talking?? 2mm? The top of the cylinder becomes part of the combustion chamber and the piston is down further out of the block at bottom dead center. Certainly lets you run a high-lift cam! The stroke and the piston speed remain the same, I can't see it changing the rev range. Nearly everyone who talks about changing rod length is going to change the stroke

I reckon the fuel bowl seam should be level.. I hope you're going to have a quick dyno run, even a 40kph-100kph in 3rd with a stopwatch, to get 'before' and 'after' power figures! This will be good....