altezzaclub

Bore the 4K to take 5K pistons, so you keep the solid lifter setup.. Have it sonic tested to make sure the walls are fine, and if they are badly corroded then just grab another 4K block from the wreckers & test that. If you're keen, have the crankshaft lightened and knife-edged, certainly lighten the flywheel and have everything balanced. You could make a K/T oil pump combination with more capacity, or buy a new K pump. Have the head cleaned up, skim 25thou off, and fit quad carbs from a motorbike. Match that with a 280-290deg cam so it is all still quite streetable, and have the rocker pedestals machined to keep the correct ratio with the new valve springs. Go have fun! One day I'll do it, I reckon it will be quicker than a stock 4AGE & astound a lot of people.

That sludge does not look good, but I don't know of anything that will really clean it out. The patents start off with a 50:50 mix of kerosine and diesel... drop the oil, fill with the mix, run the motor on idle for "a while" then dump that too. Don't srive it, there is not much lubrication in that mix! I've done it, its nothing spectacular although it does come out filthy. From there you can work your way up through the various oil flush products. The best way is to have it all dipped when you strip the motor and the oilways cleaned out with a brush, for if the oilways are sludged up you wouldn't want to be modifying it for a thrashing.

ok, simple things first.. buy a thermometer that goes to 100deg C Take of the radiator cap before starting it one morning, make sure it is full of water right up to the neck, then start it and let it idle until the temp gauge goes to the red. You can read the temperature and note it every minute, and you will see it jump up when the thermostat opens. You can check that temp against the thermostat specs, 78 or 83 or whatever it should be. You can check the gauge reading against the thermometer and see what real temp the red zone is. Maybe it will hit 100deg, maybe it won't. You can also see bubbles coming up from a blown head gasket... Then you will know what to tackle.

Can you get some exact L/100km figures, from full tank to full tank?? I don't think it will make a lot of difference if the car is runnng in 'as-new' tune at the moment, so about 7L/100km. Certainly it does help with some low-speed hesitation & cold running, but that is really tiny compared to the rest of the work a car does. If the points are in good condition, the coil and condensor also working fine, then electronics won't make a big difference. I'd expect the greatest gain is in high revs where you would get points bounce with stock gear, but I can't see the averge driver needing that either. The third place it helps is in modded motors where you are running outside the usual design specs. So I can run the SUs really lean and it fires cleaner with the electronic dizzy. What I've really done is made the car faster without using any more fuel.

It needs all the red flexi-lines replaced by copper tubing with brass fittings.. and a few chrome nuts on it... and a wisp of steam escaping from somewhere... Then you can wear flying goggles and a full-length leather coat with "Captain Frankenstein" shoulder flashes!

I reckon the problem is in this area somewhere.. A- Bad wiring connections or broken wire, either the solenoid activator or the main power wire. Both of those would have been shifted when you took the starter out then suddenly it started.. B- Solenoid coils/lever arm.So it jams when trying to throw the gear in or doesn't put power to the starter coils every time. I've seen starters that jam and won't work when you hit the key, so you get out and whack it with a wheel spanner to unjam it and try again... Taking it out would unjam it. C- Starter windings or contacts. ..and in theory the new starter should have eliminated B and C. It will be fascinating to find out what the final answer is!

The 5K dizzy I have went straight in and the other electrics stayed the same. The rate of advance was the problem, it advanced the ignition slowly as the revs built up so the motor felt very flat. I don't know if all the K electronic dizzys are the same in the weights and springs, so it might depend on exactly which dizzy you get. Would I do it again? Yes! Story is here- http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/42407-the-girls-ke70/page__st__45

Cage it up and race it! Track days, club racing, drifts, hillclimbs, anything competitive! Buy a nice one for a daily and once you eventually crash the 'ze', you can transfer the power-train into a nice body and put it on the road. By then you should be a much better driver. Definitely!

Nice score! The motor decision is up to you but don't ruin a nice granny-spec KE70, they're getting hard to find! Make sure you've got the time, the money, the parts and the enthusiasm before you start, because a half-finished project is worth nothing really. If you could get it finished and running faultlessly it would make a great car!

First In All Trouble... Surely they have all rusted into the dirt by now?? My GF had a Fiat 850 coupe (rear engine, RWD) when I had a MK1 Mini Cooper (front engine FWD) and it always scared the hell out of me when I changed cars and hurled her's into a corner... Completely the opposite handlng characteristics. That was in 1969, but I don't remember any great strides forward in Fiat quality.

Hmm... that points to a solenoid that is drawing current but not working. That will confirm that the starter is OK. It will need to be a fat wire, the starter will draw a lot of current. I used to use a flatblade screwdriver, but that is hard on a KE. Tell the guys who reconditioned it & see what they say. Maybe they did brushes and bearings in the starter and the solenoid checked out OK as it is dodgy some times & not others.

You're dead right. So it ocasionally doesn't power the solenoid, or you would hear it click. Dirty /corroded contact in the ignition barrel also..

Arond town maybe, but at 100kph you should be running around 7L/100km. Twin SUs, a cam, extractors and I can get under 7, even turned 640km out of a tank.

hmmm... did anyone inspect the ring-gear teeth while the starter was out? A not-meshing problem?

Does the red light come on if you have the headlights and the wipers on at idle? Even if the battery was dead the charge light wouldn't come on if the alty was working. The light is on when power flows out of the battery, and it goes out when power flows into the battery. So if you see that light on when you're driving then the alternator or the regulator is not working. The alty may not be charging enough to charge the battery up, so slowly you are losing battery storage until you top it up with a 240V charger. Then the battery is full again and lasts another week of being partially charged. Get the alty charge rate checked and the battery storage capacity. The alty is not hard to pull apart, check the diodes, the brushes and the bearings and re-assemble, so get a diagnosis done but tackle the work yourself. Depends on the loading in the electrical system at the time. If the alty is only 50% efficient, it will charge enough to keep the light off when you're not using the CD player, the wipers, the headlights, its not raining, or whatever reason. Pull 150watts out and then the battery has to supply it and the light comes on. One diode of the 6 might have failed.

I think that would be the problem Dave, and you would use a lot of sand if you didn't recycle it. You could fill all sorts of finely-made moving parts with abrasive, almost-invisible sand dust right across the garage. The main thing for the compressor is flow rate, not pressure, sadly you need the biggest compressor and the biggest tank you can find. Does it have a flow rate with the gun Jono, so you can see if your compressor can match it? The only ones I've used have been on commercial workshop compressors.

Did you ever get a stock carb to try on it? How about a run with an oxy meter up the exhaust pipe and see if it is leaning ut or running rich on boost. Dyno or just a drive around.

To me CDI is the name used for the first transistorised ignition systems back in the 1970s. Surely the stock ignitions are all capacitor discharge units, they fire the coil when the power stored in the capacitor (condensor) discharges. The biggest change was to get a unit that let the ponts act as a low-current switch to tell the transistorised setup to fire the coil. The low current through the ponts stopped them pitting and burning from the sparking, and the transistors discharged the capacitor's high current to work the coil. The Hall effect sensor went the next step and replaced the points as the trigger, but somehow there must still be a system of pushing either a 12V high current, or high voltage low current power surge through the coil. So when we're talking CDI, which part of which system are they using?

So... can any of you poor bastards with cart-springs tell us if it is illegal to weld lowering blocks onto the diff, so they are then part of the vehicle structure?? This idea of a long lump of steel held in place by two fragile U-bolts is quite worrying to a man who hasn't had leaf springs since the 1960s!

Very nice! ..and you can appreciate how far bikes have come since the 1960s!! Even then the Jap bikes were a massive step up from the British oil-leakers we were used to!

Looks like this-

5K dizzy is self-contained electronic, already CDI, & it comes brand-new so the shafts are not worn. Try the Hotspark anyway, it will be good to get reliable information on it for everyone.

Its because people pull the two bolts down too hard and slowly bend the flat surface on the cover. Easy to buy, I replaced one a year back, or file it flat again. I scored a flat block of 12mm steel years ago and I use that with wet 'n dry sandpaper on for all the flatting jobs. Grab one if you ever get the chance.

Lol! I put the Wade 169 on the graph, and it matched up perfectly with my Crow 606. There are two cams under the red curve. I've never had mine over 6000rpm, but the inch & 1/4 SUs might be a bit small for 7500!

Faaarkk!!!