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That day was stinking hot, I don't know how the control officials stayed alive, but I was sweating just standing still in the shade. The drop-out rate was pretty high, half the field, but the mighty 18RG gave no problems at all. We had taken the oil cooler off as superfluous and it seemed that it was. They have a reputation for suffering oil surge, and the stock sump had no extra baffles fitted, but we just added an extra half a litre of oil in case and it was OK.

His dad and I did 'The Old Dudes in the KE70' trip around to the end of the stages and caught up at the end of Stage 2. All I could see was a dirt-covered turnip with a helmet on and a grin splitting the face in half as he yelled "Yeah bitch, THAT's what I'm talking about!!" So we figured the car was working better than ever! I didn't get enough time to take a lot of photos, but I did notice that a lot of the competition were Datsuns, straight out of my days in the '70s and '80s rallying.

Saturday we loaded it onto Steve's dad's farm truck and headed off for a 3hour drive to the coast, Steve & I in The Girl's KE70 and navigator Adam in with his Dad. We still hadn't replaced the stock rims with rally tyres, so we were flat-out as the first cars left. When it came to car 45's turn they drove up the road only to find the Terratrip didn't work! I'd checked it turned on, but not being used to terrtrips I never checked it actually counted, and the parts car brakes didn't have the right clearance for the sensor! So they headed off without a Terratrip (or an intercom... another problem we'd missed...)

Down to the day before the rally, I had pulled the butterflies out of the DCOEs and re-set them, and checked the float levels and made sure the rubber hoses were clean and OK as I was swapping the fuel feed around from front to back and shortening all the lines. Starting it, the carbs opened perfectly and idled, but it wouldn't run above idle and it crawled along on one carb. We stripped the tops off to check and found the front carb low in fuel, so checked the pump flow rate. With a stroke of brilliance Steve said to use the wine bottle full of fuel to top up the empty carb & try it, and the motor ran fine... so we stripped the carb tops once again and took it all inside at midnight. On the kitchen table I found I couldn't see through the T-piece very well, where the first carb was fed, and Steve got a screwdriver then pushed the mud-wasp's nest out of the pipe! Re-assembled, the carbs tuned up beautifully.

We had the body going back together and as usual the bonnet didn't really fit, until I fitted the cross-strut bar and wound on some grunt. Suddenly the bonnet had 4mm down each side! but it leaned on the tower, not on the wings welded to the top rings, just the way I wanted it!

It turned out to be a solid chunk of steel on each end!

The Landcruiser steering bar was cut up and modified into an adjustable cross-strut bar. This took quite a bit of cardboard modelling & engineering, but it worked well.

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.