altezzaclub

Ah- that's good to know. It means the Weber definately does make a difference. Like my SUs, guys often do carbs/cam/exhaust all at once and I wouldn't know what just changing the carb did. Post up the solution when you find it-

Arrgh! What's a flatcap?? I have seen plenty of nice cars ruined by the "matt black, chopped springs, dildo gearknob" drifters, and I do get the feeling most the beautifully done (and expensvie) KEs are owned by guys over 20... but its al a phase that passes.

Nice- If you can buy it for under $900 grab it.

Probably as may opinions as there are oils on the market... Ask Billzilla, and read 'Bob the oil guy' for background, although I haven't chased race oils on his webpage.

Weelll.... I went out into the rain and sleet & swapped the oil sender units between the Pintara and the KE70. Different connections so it was a bit micky-mouse, but a drive with the Pintara unit showed everything as it should be. Light on with key, no light at idle. Checked each with an ohmmeter, 2ohms on the bench for the Pintara, 30ohms for the KE70... More, but no specs for that. Re-fitted them, phoned the spares shop, they have a KE70 one there, $10... jump in the Blue Streak aaannndd... It works perfectly!! So, light shows nothing at 900rpm, then a slight flicker as the revs dip below 800rpm momentarily and bright as usual when engine off. I dunno- must have been a dirty connection on it? Something inside? dirt? air bubble? Anyway, I'll see how it behaves over the next week and I'm so glad I don't have to change the pump!! Cheers Team-

Possibly Celicas or possibly Coronas, both of which had T motors overseas and you might find an import. There is even a Lite-Ace van at my local wreckers, but minus motor & gearbox. Where did your box come from?? Are all the ADM AE86s & AE71s using 20spline? I'm mulling over the T box change, so I'm also trying to find out which car to raid for which part.

Sounds like no idle circuit. See if you can hear & feel the solenoid going 'click' when you turn the key on. If it is, then it is probably opening the idle circuit, and then the nest thing is dirt in a drilling or the idle jet. Pull the carb apart and hose petrol through the idle circuit with a syringe, and make sure the idle jet is clean. They might have fked up the rebuild somehow and without the idle jet working the mixture screw won't work. The solenoid shuts off the idle circuit, so it won't make any difference once its running on the main jet.

OK, the use of the gauge was to see if the sender unit was reading correctly. Let me see if the Pintara sender fits tomorrow, and if it doesn't then getting that gauge would be good. Once I've tried it I can return it or pass it onto someone else who needs it. That will say either new sender needed or new pump needed. I can't see how the oil pump is worn out when the motor isn't that high a mileage, still under 200k, maybe there is something else I'm missing.... faulty sender, shit under the release valve, pump bleeding around the gears, worn bearings...

yep- I fitte it without any sealant, thinking it would work best that way, but it leaked at all 4 corners. Lifting the motor in place and dropping the sump a couple of inches got 3-bond in there, but only the front stopped leaking. Just been a nuisance for the last year or so... ..and lying in bed thinking about it, I realised the only relief valve I can access is the oil filter over-pressure one on the side of the motor, the actual pump relief valve is in the damm sump! I'm going to have a replacement pump sitting there before I drop the sump anyway! I like that 18R mod for more pump volume, but I can see you need stacks of stray bits sitting around the shed to do things like that. No aftermarket oil pressure gauges at the wreckers either, they are a thing of the distant past.

Sorry to hear that, they obviously don't intend to keep it. Hopefully it was an easy ride home and it will be sitting in some back street in a trashy part of town.

Yep! Don't do anything until you have done that! Even if you have to buy a compression gauge, it will last you all your life! Then check the low cylinder's tappet gap. It would be painful to pull the head off and find you didn't need to because a tappet jammed the valve open...

Ah well, I'd better do somethng about it then!. I've dropped the sump in the past to tackle that dammnable gasket leak, it meant jacking the motor up and suspending it, but I couldn't get the sump out of the car at that time. If it has to come off the g'box then it will have to. Thanks Shane, PM sent..

Shocks don't do that, springs do that. I suppose you want to convert to coilovers, where the spring is mounted over the shock and it has a threaded spring base you can wind up and down. Not so simple, they will need the body reinforcing to take the stress at the shock mount. Alternatively, gas shocks will raise your car slightly.

I've just been chatting to one of the guys and thought I'd copy this over and anyone else can add more ideas. I find that buying a car and having a garage do a service on it leaves a lot missing, so the more you can do the better. Things to do when you buy a car- Get a little notebook. Write down date & Km of last service. Keep the notebook for as long as you have the car and write down all the things you do. Jack up a front wheel, feel for bearing wear by shaking it vertically then steering wear by shaking it horizontally. This will be on Youtube somewhere I'm sure. Take off the wheel & little bearing cover and check for grease in the wheel bearing, then set it to 'just not tight' so the wheel spins freely. Usually this is "tighten to just over finger tight and back off 5minutes" but it should be right on the point of feeling a few mm looseness with a wheel on. Check the nuts and bolts in the suspension & crossmember and whatever else you can see while lying under it in the sun. (I use a torch ) Anything with a dark/clean ring around the nut/bolt is moving so its loose. Check the brake pads & look for leaks in brake lines and shocks, and check steering boots on the rack. Check tyre wear and if it is uneven across the tread or feathered at all take it in for a wheel alignment. Do the other wheel, then the back wheels & suspension.(no bearings to shake there) Change the oil and oil filter, air filter and petrol filter, points and plugs. Change the gearbox oil and diff oil and the radiator water & antifreeze. If you're keen, pump out the brake fluid and fill with fresh, it absorbs water which rusts the cylinders.. (This will be only time you need to do these in the time you own the car.) Set the tappets, plug gaps and points, and set the timing. When its warm after running set the idle mixture and speed. Open the doors, bonnet and boot and oil the hinges & grease the door slides that holds them open. Write down what you did & the date. You might want to see what they've just done in their last service, check what you can of it, (mechanics lie like real estate agents!) and do the things on that list that they didn't do. Once a year change oil and filter together, using a genuine Toyota filter. If you do 10,000km in six months change the oil only then, depends on how much use the car gets. I usually go for once a year as we only do 10-15000 km a year. Write down date and Km. If the diff and gearbox aren't leaking you don't need to worry about them once you've changed the oils, its just an annual oil/filter change, plugs and points, and every few years an air filter. I usually have some reason to be under a car every few months and I check all the nuts and bolts & look for leaks, easy enough. Get a dwell meter and it will show you the slow closing of the points as they wear over 6months, so just re-set them and re-gap the plugs. Otherwise it slowly loses performance over a year or two.

That's hard to measure unless someone has KE25 springs sitting free in the shed... Can you compare ride heights? Ground to top of arch.

4AGE it appears... http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/51097-4k-twin-cam/

Other ones to look at would be worn throttle shafts or worn throttle linkages holding the throttle plate open or not.. I've had it where it idles when you release the throtle slowly and it settles in one place, but if you drop the throttle off quickly it reverts to a slightly different place and kills the idle.

yep- told the daughter we would hit the wreckers and see who left a stand-alone gauge in their car... The thought of changing the pump makes me quail... is it time for the giant step to completely un-needed 5K pistons, or shall we soldier on with low idle oil pressure until next year sometime...

Not that I've found, and a dyno run is $80 locally so I haven't done anything about it. I have two sensors, one for each carb, and they were a Commodore pair out of one motor so I'm assuming they are in agreement. The carbs behave very similarly over the whole rev range with them.

The oil light in The Girl's KE70 is coming on just under 1000rpm, I'd say 900rpm really. With the grumbly idle its up and down all the time as it peaks at 1000rpm then drops, so the light is on more than its off. A quick oil change of 10W40 to 20W50 had no effect, so I'm thnking of putting a new oil pump on the list. Repco don't even list one nowdays... Anyone have a better idea of what pressure the light comes on at, and how that effects the runnng pressure?? Anyone had to replace an oil pump recently? Any advance on a stock 4K pump for better oil delivery? Same pump in a 7K??

Then sell it on here to all the guys doing the auto to manual conversions!

If there is a range for toe measurements in the specs, have them set it towards the toe-in end of the range rather than the tow-out end. Toe-out makes it track more. The Altezza specs are total toe +0.8mm (min -0.7 to max +2.3mm) So anywhere from toe-out 0.7 to toe-in 2.3 is considered fine. However toe-out crucifies the tyre's inner treads on those cars, so we always aim for 2 to 2.3mm toe-in.

Ah damm! You just can't beat that much fun! Cheap motorsport is always the best...

Well, it did Orange -Armidale and back to Tamworth on a tank, running at 6.6L/100km, or 43mpg, which I thought was brilliant at 100kph with foot flat going up hills .. mind you, that big high pressure system with South Westers meant a tailwind all the way! So, the lure of the gravel was too much and we never made it over the Kandos-Muswellbrook road! We got to the gravel pass & the girl went up and down and up again, learning about swinging the car around and sliding it, and we stopped in a couple of big gravel depots to practice handbrake turns. Here we were being typical 'P' platers in the middle of nowhere and this little FWD something with 'P' plates & a couple of young guys stops to watch, and as we drove out they drove in... Still, its the best way to learn skills that are vital in emergencies, the same as I had her left-foot braking going downhill. She took me out for a pub dinner last night and we sat eating on bar stools watching a young guy slowly fall off his... he spoke to the staff from a horizontal position quite happily, although he was as white as a sheet, and they helped him up. The girl reckoned he was gonna chuck at any moment but I reckoned it was all a ploy to get hold of the barmaid he was busy chatting up now, when he slowly slid off his stool again! When we paid the girl asked what happened to his beer, sitting untouched on the table, and it turned out he was kneed in the head in a football game that afternoon & hadn't even started to drink, & when we went outside he was off to hospital with the ambulance! Well, another time for the Muswellbrook road!

So no points to worry about.. No tappets either with the hydraulics. Check the plugs and compressions and see what they are like. If it runs badly in certain circumstances, then get it running poorly and immediately flick it into neutral and turn it off. Then check the plugs on the side of the road and see if it is leaning out or flooding at some point. If it was playing up at idle and getting off the line it could be the carb idle circuit, but the rest is pretty bullet-proof.