altezzaclub

nah- you can leave the clutch pedal in for general confusion! :laff: Auto->manual means that horrible pedal box has to be changed. The perfornmance drop with an auto is just amazing! Ours used to crawl up hills and slowly glide around town, and the manual made such a difference.

Just sand them back to bare metal, treat them and spray them.

Put up a topic on 'how to build your own strut brace' with details and photos.

nah... just give up and go play Wii or X-box or any of those modern things I know nothing about! See my topic on "why we need a Govt".... This is a common example of why we DON'T !!

Either a grinder ti strip the paint in the dents and to clean the rust out of the rusty bits, or paint stripper and a Linbide tungsten scraper to strip all the paint back to steel. I used the stripper & scraper- http://www.rollaclub...the-girls-ke70/ Where the car had tiny rust spiderwebs under the paint I took it back to bare steel & treated it with rustkill fluid. I filled a couple of dents in the front guard that hadn't been done very well while I was at it. The rest of the paint I sanded back and then undercoated the whole panel.

My Gregorys has a section on the gearbox.. "this is too technical for do-it-yourself and should be taken to a qualified repairer" it also has only one wiring diagram- "Wiring for the light circuit" Personally I consider it a completely useless piece of shit!

Don't forget the radiator... Teach the girl how to drive properly!!

If either valve is leaking it should puff on the compression & firing stroke. I imagine it would be hard to pin down, but the intake should sound back in the carb & the exhaust .. maybe in the pipe, one cylinder sounding 'off' compared to the other three. How about a compression test or a leakdown test on #1 and 2 cyls. We just modified a screw-in compression tester to fit a compressor and put 100psi into each cyl on its firing stroke. You could hear the air leaking into the exhaust pipe quite clearly. That was from carbon buildup on the valve seats in the Altezza, which I am convinced came from a lousy tank of gas on a trip home.

Diff is auto 4.3 and manual 4.1. Harder to find a good amnual diff, they whine after years of thrashing. 100kph in 5th is about 3500rm with the auto we use, a tad higher than I'd like, but it is great around town. Dropping from 5th to 4th at 90kph is only a few hundred rpm, so a taller 5th would be another good idea.

They've given up the Datsun 1400 bakkie, which was a shame. Do they still make the Mk1 Golf? They have some great local variants of cars. The V8 Sierra was a SAF classic, as was the Capri V8.

Take it to both & have a chat. Tell them the problem and ask them what they think it is, what they would do and what it would cost.

20thou You should measure it and do it properly. Set yourself up with a piece of plastic to cover a combustion chamber and a pipette or burette, or even a syringe. With the valves in and the head upside down you stick the plastic over the chamber with grease and fill it up with turps. All 4 should be the same, and around 31cc. Then you can measure the area of the chamber with a bit of graph paper to get how many square cm they are, and calculate how much to skim off to get a compression ratio. Depends what cam you run (as its never 100% efficient) and what CR you want. 9.8:1, 10.5:1? 11.5:1?? Post #11 here http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/42407-the-girls-ke70/

Ah- that's something Australians don't notice... I remember retuning rally cars to go from CT to the Eastern Transvaal.

All you want is the opinions from the experts. Once they have decided it has a blown head gasket or a ruined radiator you can do all the work yourself.

One day you will discover the mighty DCOE and all will change! :laff:

That is unsurprising! Using an 18R would be close, about 100bhp stock at 5500rpm, no doubt you could get a lot more. His Pinto motor puts out the same, so you could both mod them the same too. Then you can both go 16valve later.

The opposite of the leakdown test, which involves a compressor on a spark plug hole and pressurising the cylinder to see if it hold pressure. Whichever one you can do easiest will tell you if the headgasket is leaking between the coolant and the combustion chamber. The option is this one- http://www.hannuahoconsulting.com.au/gallery/Tools/block-tester-combustion-leak-detector/63532 Which you might find a garage or radiator place able to do for you.

Which motor is he using? You should run the same basically, 1600 or 2L, OHC or 16valve...

How is the thickness difference between the inlet & exhaust manifold?? If one is thicker it would be a source of air leaks, or if you have nuts that are bolted onto welds instead of flat surfaces. Photos in post #10 http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/42407-the-girls-ke70/

Ah- what exhaust manifold?? Stock or extractors??

Will it idle when its runing badly?? Will it rev smoothly in neutral when its running badly? Sounds like its running out of fuel, not a tuning problem- jet blocked or fuel pump can't deliver enough, blocked fuel filter...

My stock 3SGE has 210bhp, the 7K has 80bhp...... But the 7K will be easiest to fit!

For grunt I'd use the 2T (old, but OK) or the 4AGE, but the best is the 3SGE straight out of an Altezza with its 6-speed box. The only troubles would be finding a half-cut & fitting the bell-housing in the tunnel. It would be a lot of work to turn an MR2 motor around, and they are a genertion older. Cheapest would be 5K or a 4K bored out to 5K pistons. Price the Altezza motor up against a Mazda MX5. Both RWD configuration & same 6-speed box.

Sort out why its leaking- I usually rub that housing top on oiled sandpaper (about 280grit) on a flat surface (piece of steel I have) to get the corrosion cleaned off it. The bit on the engine I file gently & clean out the groove where the t'stat sits. Run a hacksawed bolt (poor man's tap) in and out of the holes a few times to make sure the threads are cleaned, as those bolts break off at the worst time possible! I don't know if the gasket will swell after a night in water and seal itself... it might.

Extractors will certainly help, but the main problem might be clearance between the DCOE manifold and the stock exhaust manifold. I don't know if they will fit together.