altezzaclub

that's quite a dilemma, as my crimping never seems as tight as the factory ones and I worry about loose joints in the crimped tabs. Mostly I crimp them to hold them in place while I solder them!

Nearly half that budget could go on a pair of DCOE Webers and a manifold, so there is not a lot left for a rebore and a crank grind, lightened flywheel, maybe the crank lightened, a full balance, new pistons, new bearings, new cam chain setup, a cam grind, a porting job and a high compression skim, a set of extractors and a new exhaust.... It all depends on how lucky you are at getting the carbs, if you can get machining done at "mates rates", and if you can buy parts at wholesale. It doesn't really cost any more to make it a race motor than a well-built street motor as you do the same things to it. Did you keep the hydraulic tappets Philbey? How much grunt do you reckon?

hmm... you better join the other gentleman with fuel problems and do a flow test. Take the fuel line off the carb and put it in a jar, take the coil lead off and crank the car for 15seconds. Measure how much fuel it pumps. I can do the same and we will see if your fuel pump/lines etc are delivering enough fuel. Actually, you need to be dead sure it is running out of fuel... could it be too rich and it dies? Are the jets correct?? You should whip the jets out, check that they are clean and post up the sizes of the airs/emulsions & fuel jets on here. Some of the guys with Webers can tell you if they are OK. Most likely I'd say the secondaries are blocked, so it will run on the primary throttle but when you boot it up a hill & open the secondaries no fuel goes in, just air. Strip out al the jets (idles too) note the sizes and push petrol through them and the drillings with a syringe or blow compressed air through it all. Float level is another point- I don't know if it is adjustable in the downdraughts like the DCOEs are, but if it is too low it will lean out. Something to check when you have the top off the carb.

..leaf in the fuel tank keeps floating over the outlet and getting sucked down onto it & blocking it. Then when you turn it off it floats away... true story! Ok, does it seem like a lack of fuel at all?? Can you wind it up in 2nd and 3rd to the redline, or run it up a hill at full throttle just to check that you are getting a full flow of fuel through? Can you turn it off immediately it starts to splutter and pull the plugs out, then decide if they are rich or lean?? Maybe it floods from too much fuel & dies.. injectors sticking open or something like that. I've seen a wire break off a coil and every now and then it would float away and the car would die, then it would drop back onto the coil and the car would start fine. Check as many electrical connections as you can. When its spluttering, pull over and pull the plugs off one at a time. Is it one cylinder midfiring a lot, or is it all of them missing a bit. Does it do it when cold only, or hot only, or both?

Might pay to drain the tank, remove it and wash it out with petrol.

So... $2k for the motor you reckon? and a budget of at least $15k for the car... Start adding up a full rebuilt and race prep of that $2k motor, a gearbox conversion & a rebuild of that, a diff with an LSD and a rebuild of that... All this is 20year old knackered shit or older. Then start on the suspension, which should be a bit better than a Corona front conversion and 3" lowering blocks, some decent brakes and the obligatory balance system and you can see that $15k vanish. Just hot up a 5K and drive the wheels of it until you have everything else done and it will blitz 2L cars with its handling. Then put a 4AGE in it. All those motors you mentioned will be too much for those Roman-era cart springs you have without some serious money spent on the rear end. Every successful race car's story.. build the car first, build the motor last! Oh- and go grab one of those close-ratio K40 race boxes the guy overseas was selling! Move NOW!

I'd say just get it running on stock gear Zak, mainly to make sure everything is working fine. Then change springs to get the ride height you want, and as Dave said, when you lower it the springs are usually harder than you want... and once you have the ride feeling good with springs and shocks, look around for rims last. I can tell you that going from 13" stock tyres and rims to 14" 205/60s has slowed the acceleration noticeably and lowered the revs at 100kph cruise, so that's another factor in rim size you will have to think about. Bigger tyre diameter means less acceleration and lower cruising revs.. it depends on what you do a lot of.

I can't see the problem being the filter or the fuel line if you've flushed them out, and PARTICULARLY as the amount of fuel needed to idle is a fraction of the fuel needed to accelerate. Maybe its flooding from too much fuel in the bowl at idle... dirt under the needle & seat.. If you are worried about fuel delivery, just take the fuel line off at the carb & stick it in a jar, pull the lead off the coil and crank the motor for 15seconds exactly. If you post up how many ml of fuel per time we can do the same and check it for you. You can spend a lot of money and not solve the problem sometimes.

The kit won't take out the wear in the throttle shaft, if there is any. That is the final killer of carbs usually, its just not worth reaming out the carb body and fitting oversize shafts. So check yours before you make a decision about kitting it or getting another.

My wife was going through old slides of when we lived there and came across this one- Thats when I was doing Clubmans handicap racing, in basically anything you bought to the track. A few of us rallyists took our road Datsuns down. I don't know if you guys can still do this, or hire Killarney for a trackday, its a heap of fun.. Love the background!

This is the big question! Is there a vac line disconnected that opens up when the motor gets warm or goes under power?? The top rad hose connection usually has a triple vac hose connector that opens a different set of valves as the water temp gets up. All part of the emissions gear. As blzbub said, you can block the whole lot off except the vac advance to the dizzy, but you can't afford to have any leaking. Might not be the carb at all...

It would be helpful if we had spring rates on each of these... You just need the wire diameter, the spring diameter and the number of free coils.. (Usually number of coils minus 2) Plenty of calculators on the web like this- http://www.racingsuspensionproducts.com/spring%20rate.htm If we all use the same calculator we get comparable answers. The stock 5.2" (132mm) spring with 12.14mm wire (0.476") and 6.3 active coils has a rate of 105lb/in or 1.9kg/mm. Is not just what fits, its how stiff it is that matters.

George you had a senior moment writing that... change 'carbi' to 'dizzy'... fkj- see if you can buy a manual for it, there are several different versions published, and just Google "setting points" for videos on how to do it. I think I loaded one into the technical forum a month back. Once you have the timing correct then tackle the carb, which is where I expect the problem to be. You might have to blow compressed air down the fuel lines to clear them. If you get stuck just shoot me a PM.

Lol! There is not much KE70 left under some of those! Good to see motorsport is still strong over there!

A male version of those Egay plugs would be good. That would plug into the stock headlamp plug that supplies the switching power. Anyway, a week or two back I lost the main beam, and forgot that I had seeing main beam hardly ever gets used. Finally I checked it all yesterday and found the mods are working fine, but the dipswitch on the column doesn't seem to be. Its on my desk beside me as I work out just how those copper contacts all work... Some bad contact in there somewhere...

Does it stall?? Check the fuel cut-off solenoid, or a blocked idle jet. Does it just continue to idle roughly at really low revs? Wind up the idle speed and adjust the idle mixture screw. If the idle mixture screw does nothing you may have dirt in the idle jet. If the car was sitting for 6months you should pull the carb apart and blow petrol through the jets and drilings with a syringe or compressed air. Although before you do that, check the points gap and timing... worn points and retarded timing lowers the idle speed, and that's easier to check than cleaning a carb.

Ah- Teddy may have hit it. If they have a tendency to corrode the water will make it hard to fire up. The compression test quite likely won't pick that up, it probably leaks too slowly, what you need for that is a leakdown test. You buy the one with the screw-in hose and attach a compressor to it so you can pressurise a cylinder to 100psi, then turn the compressor off and watch the pressure drop. If it leaks into the water jackets you will see bubbles in the radiator, or if it leaks into the sump you can hear it as you see the pressure dropping. I had leaking exhaust valves and we could hear it leaking into the exhaust quite clearly.

Hit a wrecker and grab those bits- I found a KE70 in there that had almost new shocks. The exhaust is easy, the indicator headlight switch is always dodgy, (I have mine apart atm, I think they all give trouble) and you're probably right to get new belts. The car looks great, I can't understand why it was off the road.

Hot, inlet 0.2mm, exhaust 0.3mm on your 4K 1.3L engine... If you have the 4A-C I don't know I'm afraid.

10 points to Dave! Well done that man! Thanks for letting us know the real answer Craig.

Grab a voltage reg from a wrecker and try that. Even if you can take your one apart you might see what is wrong or burnt out.

Probably cheaper to replace panels than pay someone to fix them. Shoot me a PM if you're coming up to Orange in the next week or two & I'll come to the wreckers with you, but late in the week after Easter I'm heading to Cairns for a couple of months... I don't remember seeing a van around the wreckers, but the gaurds and bonnet should be the same. Really, the best answer if you can't buy good doors is to have a panelshop weld in new steel & then you bog, sand and undercoat them, then take them back tor spraypainting.

You could wait until the problem occurs, then spray the dizzy cap with CRC or WD40 which act as insulators. If that instantly fixes the problem then you know where it is. For a compression test you buy a gauge, take out all the plugs, have someone sit inside with the throttle wide open and while they crank the starter over 5 or 6 times you hold the gauge in a plug hole. The compression will shoot up the first few strokes then stop going up at its maximum compression. All cylinders should be within 10psi of each other, and they will range from 160psi for a good motor down to 120psi for a worn motor. here- every guy needs one! The push-in cheap one or the screw-in one with a hose.

MUCH too new for us Darcy! I think by 1997 Toyota did more in the factory than we can do to a KE70 with a $10,000 budget. Thye are still built to carry 4people + luggage, so you can change the suspension to give away the loading ability and have better handling. The motor will pick up a little from intake and exhaust mods, the usual pod filter and extractors/free-flow system, but not as much as they used to. A lightened flywheel will spin it up quicker if its manual too. The guys in Altezzaclub get maybe 7-10% more power with engine mods, but nowhere as much as the 25% increase we can get from an old 4K. The factory engineering has got so much better. Some of the guys here might have tackled something that new, but if not you should try the Toyota Owners Club in Aussie. They have much newer machinery. .................. Haha! I checked Wiki and the Australian version never got the new ZZ motors with VVTi... so bloody typical! If you have the 4A-FE motor then there will be a few guys on here that can help- the usual cam grind & compression increase will help, although the best would be a swap to a 4AGE if you want it to fly.