altezzaclub

Dear God! Don't tell me we're going back to fake woodgrain!

No More Nails ! Whatever it is, I reckon it needs to be more flexible than an epoxy.

Ah! We want a blow by blow account of the Keihins, the problems of fitting and the problems of getting them to run nicely... I'm quite intrigued with the idea of quad bike carbs!

lol! Rally cars don't last long enough to rust! The rain destroyed the roads, and Forestry will take months to rebuild them all. Luke- gymkhanas and track sprints are the starting points, hillclimbs too. Events where you aren't in a pack of cars all together, if you like your car. You could go to any local rallies and randomly chat to people, the teams are always looking for helpers in the organisation part of it and being on a service crew is a good starting point. (Obligatory Warning- Motorsport is highly addictive and destructive of wallets)

Brake shop only I think. Make sure you know the diameter/take a sample.

Cheers Tom. The rally year is in disarray with all the rain up the NSW coast, so the rallysprint AND the first rally have been cancelled. This is a silver lining for certain young men who have not devoted enough time to getting the car running yet... and we may look further afield for some events later on & see what's in Sthn QLD..

Yes, you will. I fittted the 4speed to start with then swapped that for a 5speed later. I think both manual boxes are the same length, but the auto control hole is further back.

In that case definately get them to clean & measure everything. They can tell you which piston should go in which hole from the wear sizes, and how much of a hone each cyl will stand, and if the crank is straight in the block.. It would be sad to rebuild a dud motor because someone else threw all his rubbish bits together to build a quick sale. That is what we found with the "18RG motor from my race car, freshly rebuilt..." :glare:

Pay the money and have an engine shop measure crank, bores, pistons and big ends with the caps on. They can sort out which will be OK with which, and you just chalk it down to education, which is always expensive. When you have it right, use a centrepunch to put a dot on #1 rod and cap, two dots on #2 rod and cap and 3 dots on #3... if it was mismatched when you bought it I would have it all measured up before assembling it again. Never trust someone else's work!

..and for the motor part you'll need to tell us what is in it... I figure I can see a steering wheel on the passenger's side, so it won't be a K motor, and your 1.8 must refer to the 3T engine that we didn't get here. If you have the Californian emission one then the first thing would be to find out if you can strip it out to Jap spec & fail all the emission testing. Can you find out what compression ratio its running?

Ta for that then- I was just talking to Steve about 90mm pistons and then the smaller of the high comp options he's looking at. Dang, things are expensive for those motors! Listing the bits for a rebuild came to over $7000 ! I think we'll settle for less power for less money & make it torquey and reliable.

yep! haven't had to use a flaring tool for some years, but there was one lying around somewhere. The bender can be avoided, there is a lot of cylindrical objects around a garage (mainly steel pipes) that you can make the right diameter curve around. Just make sure you are making the right cone with the flaring tool each time. ..and modify that damm front strut clamp so you don't have to crack the brake line to take the strut out.. well, that's what the KE70s have!

Don't encourage him, he'll be trying to steal the motor out of my Altezza! As far as I know the 18RG is 88.5bore X 80mm stroke, so its more than square. I think its the 2valve design that limits it more than the stroke, but the main thing is have it hauling hard from low revs so it gets you out of the shit drifting in a corner rather than pulling 8300rpm down a straight. Have you got any photos of the pistons Craig, it sounds like another reason to stick to 11:1 rather than 11.5:1. Did you do any work on the crankshaft apart from balancing it? If we're going to seriously build a rally motor I'd like it lightened and knife-edged. What flywheel did you use? ..and did you ever use larger inlet valves??

I'm sure you would've noticed the brake fluid going down if it was losing very much. I'd just gather as much information about when it happens (how fast were you going, was the motor cold or warm, did the pedal go hard when they didn't work, or did it stay normal-soft and they didn't work...) then go see a brake place. If you can get someone professional to diagnose it for you then you can decide to tackle it yourself or not. It might need a special tool to rotate the booster halves apart, so its either get it rebuilt at a shop, grab one from a wrecker or buy a new one. If it is a brake cylinder problem you can easily do it yourself.

yep, that is the brake proportionaing valve and it does exactly what you say.. which is why I want it all ripped out and an adjustable one put by the handbrake. We are lucky that the rear slaves we picked make the rears lock up with the pressure that valve lets through. Steve is chatting to Nick Arias, but I don't know him or where he is from.

Well, when you say you can't see any leaks and the shoes are fine, I assume you pulled the drums off and checked the slave cyls and the front disc pistons. But if the master cyl leaks it will go out the back of the master and trickle down the front of the booster, or leak inside the booster, or if you don't have a booster it dribbles down behind the brake pedal inside the car. usually they all just give consistantly poor brakes and maybe a slowly depressing pedal if you keep your foot on it. It sounds more like a booster that doesn't work sometimes, but I can't imagine why.

Go back to the stock coil & ballast resistor and see if it fixes it. Shield the tacho wire? New plug leads? Not spikes from the alty by any chance?? Got a capacitor on there??

Does it have a booster? Does the pedal go down any further at different times, or does it always feel pretty good?? maybe the booster is not working sometimes, or not getting vacuum. If you just sit there with you foot pushing on the pedal for two or three minutes, will it slowly go down? When you say there are no leaks, does it use fluid, or does it have fluid under the master cyl running down the booster, or does it have fluid way under the dashboard where the rod joins the pedal??

No sweat- First, just run a spanner over the bolts holding the manifolds on and use a torch and a mirror to to look for exhaust soot leaking out underneath in the middle. It might be time for a new gasket. If the bolts are tight, wind the idle speed screw up to make it idle and check for inlet manifold leaks. I use a length of plastic hose to listen at the gaskets, or spray WD40 or CRC over them. Check underneath too. If that all seems fine, start on the carb. If you take off the air cleaner then look down the carb throat as you flip the throttle wide open you should see a jet of fuel being squirted down there. If it isn't, or its pretty weak, the accel pump is crook. If the jet of fuel looks weak, then take the carb top off and see if there is dirt in the bottom of the float bowl. That would point to shit in the carb, and to a broken fuel filter. There is a ball bearing somewhere in the accel pump system that acts as a non-return valve (to make sure the petrol gets hosed down the carb throat) that could have shit under it. The pump part is a diaphram I think on the KE70 Asian, that might have a split in it. Buy a 5ml syringe (you don't need a needle) from a chemist or a vet & use that to push fuel through the drilling and the jets. Just unscrew the jets and hose fuel through it all. Let us know what you find.

You want to delete this topic and we'll use the other one. its just double posted.

have you tried screwing up the idle control screw on the carb? Accelerator pump problem.... You need to check for leaks in the manifold gaskets causing it to run lean, and if thre are none then strip the carb, clean out all the jets and drillings with a syringe full of petrol, then check that the accelerator pumps works. While it is off check the bolts holding the manifolds on to see if they have come loose.. It is leaning out badly, either from dirt blocking the fuel ways in the carb or from air leaking in.

not a chance in hell I'd say... not even made by the same company, like the diffs.

Theory is that the charge light goes on when power is going out of the battery, and off when power is being pushed into the battery. If your red lght is on, the alty circuit is not charging the battery, so the battery is probably fine but being drained. Google your alty and how to check it. Basically, inside they are making AC power and converting it to DC via half a dozen diodes. The diodes fail individually and the charge it puts out falls, or the brushes wear out and charge drops or stops. So if it is not producing more power than the car is drawing from the battery, the light come on, hence it may only come on when the headlights are on, or the wipers plus the stereo or whatever. You whip out the plate with the diodes on, unsolder each one and check that it only flows power one way. Check the length of the carbon brushes while it is apart. Any auto sparkie can check the power output of the alty for you.

Well, what would the ultimate K motor look like?? Injected obvously, and a computer running a coil-over-plug ignition, stick with the side cam, but can we put VVT on there?? Go out to 5K pistons to make it 80x73, nicely oversquare, which may allow larger inlet valves... filfrederick's 4K-GE would be a different beast again.

Can you branch into wheel alignments? They'll always be a need for tyre fitters, (like there was for blacksmiths now I think of it...) but it is a pretty limited career. Where the growth seems to be is in computer systems in cars, you could PM Rob83ke70 and see what he reckons. He's a tech for Peugeot, and is constantly updating on ECUs with courses. Same when he was working on road trains a few years back, the ABS braking systems were all computer controlled and most older mechanics knew nothing about them. Its a bit of a tough time to find jobs with the economy slowing down, so don't burn your bridges without something to go to!