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When it was all in there was just enough room for the spare wheel.

That was because the tank fed down to the surge tank sitting in the wheel well, and then into a filter before feeding the pump. The fuel line ran through a braided line inside the car, held down beside the battery +ve. The battery was re-mounted in the boot and got two holding clamps. (never trust one!) That put the fuel line, brake line and battery cable straight through the car, and all the stuff under the floor was stripped out.

The spare wheel well had a cross of steel bolted over it and a threaded pole welded in to lift the spare up to floor level and give quick access.

and as the cage was 2" too low we used a grinder to cut a diagonal out of the cage where his head fitted.

With the driver sitting up higher we had to strip out the hood lining. I'd have loved to cut the cage feet off and raise the whole damm thing, but we didn't have time.

The sump-guard we cut down to 2/3 its width and made new flexible mounts onto the front of the engine cross-member, then reinforced it with steel angle welded on its underside where it bent to go horizontal. A block of foam between that and the sump stopped rocks getting in there and having the sumpguard slam the rock through the sump.

This sorted things out under the bonnet once I had the carbs on & hooked up to their throttle pivots. Of course all this shit you buy aftermarket is in imperial thread sizes for Fraud Escorts, so it hits the bin instantly. That means I have to replace it all with metric and that takes some doing in a woolshed that is imperial only! Luckily Steve has plenty of Coronas rusting away in paddocks as clutch & brake pedal springs make perfect lightweight throttle returns.

To get more rear brakes to throw the tail out we fitted larger rear slave cylinders from an RA65 Celica. These leaked of course, so we bought new ones, amazingly enough off the shelf in Tamworth. Typical of the whole project, it took me an hour to fit the brake line into one slave cyl, it didn't want to catch the first thread and I was very careful not to cross-thread it. After an hour on the other side I gave up and went home, rather than force it and fck it. I could fit the new slave cyl in my hand to another brake pipe, and fit the old slave cyl to the old brake line on the diff, but I couldn't get the new slave cyl to go on the old line! The next morning I spent another hour checking it before finding that someone in the past had done the slave line junction fitting up so tight that it splayed the end of the fitting out over the cone in the slave cyl. This meant the actual threaded fitting was too large in diameter to fit inside the new slave cyl by an immeasurable tiny amount... We whipped the diff brake line off the spares car and fixed it, but another morning wasted. The brake and clutch pedal I lowered to give him legroom by cutting the shafts to the master cylinders shorter. With the larger rear slave cyls this would have had the pedal hitting the floor, so we scavenged a larger RA65 master cyl to pump more fluid. This didn't fit on the old booster (4 bolts instead of 2) so we had to clamp it on. Once organised and bled correctly the brakes came up fine, better than they'd ever been. Then I had to rip out the whole disaster of the throttle pedal with its short travel and re-route the 2M of over-long cable that I cut off and re-organised. We welded a new pivot point on the throttle pedal to give him more throw and I made sure that full throttle was on the floor. Then I fitted a stop to make it sit where the cables were at idle.

The front seat mounts were cut 'n shut in place, something that would do for a rally and will have to be tidied up later. They bolted onto the same place with spacers to move them forward.

The rear mounts we fabricated from scratch and the seat rails cut down in length to suit. This all worked out quite well.

It was a pity we never got the interior in white, but once everything was clamped down it was too late.

Inside we made completely new mounting towers for the drivers seat and moved it upright and inwards as well as forward. The brake line ran through the firewall to the handbrake then to the diff, joining the fuel line and the battery cable on the tunnel.

The tank went in with a flexible filler neck on two springs so it pops up when you open the boot.

With the motor and box back in we moved on- While crawling around in the boot we welded heavy washers over the shock holes and I even hooked the original fuel gauge sender unit into the wiring.

...and this is the top-secret headquarters of Toyota Team Woolshed

and this is the view South... Very quiet and peaceful countryside with no houses or traffic!

It was an unusual place to have a workshop- this is the view North

Other visitors included Steve's young boys who found the KE70 very tasty. They ate the gutter trim of his brother's KE30.

She's had the ute since brand-new, and seeing she lost her licence some time ago its just one of the pair she drives around the paddocks. Its a 1300 Datsun something or other...

We'd been getting visitors every day, you can't do things like this on a farm without everyone knowing, and Nell would come up with tea and bikkies for us starving youngsters. I saw an open sack of spuds in the back of her ute and asked if she was going to plant them A couple of days later she announced she was going to start a vege garden, I'd been chatting about how good mine was, so I went to see how a lady in her 70s or 80s digs a garden... I suppose I should've known!

With the best of our motor mounts, the motor & box went back in, and we fitted a full-sized battery (+) lead as earth to fix any wiring earth problems. I replaced the old exhaust manifold gasket and did the manifold up before fitting the pipe, which is where problems usually arise and that explained why the last one leaked.

So a morning was spent cutting the oil pump pickup to raise it and mod the mesh sieve over it, or it would have been jammed on the floor of the sump.

So we pulled off a stock sump off another and of course found it wouldn't fit nicely over our larger oil pump... Then I realised why the oil pickup was so abused in that modified motor..

For rear suspension we just raided the parts car and replaced all the arms. The shocks were replaced with re-valved Bilsteins that had about 50Kg gas pressure and instantly pushed the car back up.. for about $700. We spent a few hours re-positioning the exhaust to clear the diff, but hoped the extra height would solve the smashing problem. With the shell back on its wheels we could move it outside and get the motors out. We dropped the grooved sump off the rally motor and grabbed one off the spare 18RG. This turned out to be one that had been cut horizontally all around and re-welded on backwards, then covered with epoxy to seal it... so we made a note to strip this so-called "race engine" Steve had bought before it was ever used!!

With a cross-member in we fitted the Sigma LCAs and then we measured the brake disc thickness and replaced the hubs, calipers and discs from the parts car. This lead to further problems in the rally, as we shall come to... The struts came back from Sydney Shocks with $900 Bilstein front shocks with gas pressure greater than my 70kg weight.. and we cleaned up the old camber-tops and fitted all the front suspension on.