altezzaclub

If the inside (vertical) part of the channel was OK we would cut along the outside top edge of both the car channel and the new one, then weld right along that seam. Its not as good as replacing the top (horizontal) part as well, but it saved a lot of work taking the old channel off the pillars.

Worst comes to worst, just take it to an exhaust shop.

What's a 4K worth at your local wrecker? Buy a running spare and fit it, then strip yours and learn all about it. If you've replaced the water pump & t'stat you're halfway there! $875 is crazy for such a simple job.

Make absolutely sure it is the head gasket before starting on it. Its not a big or difficult job, any home mechanic with a torque wrench can do it. You will have to pay to have the head skimmed flat, about $80. Look at it as an opportunity to catch up on maintenence and do some mods- How is the condition of the motor overall?? Check every bolt/nut & bolthole for being clean and smooth to the end of the thread Get the head skimmed more to raise the compression ratio. Pull the block out and drop the sump- check bearings and upgrade the oil pump with the washer trick. Tip the motor over and get all the rust out of the block with a wire Buy a set of extractors and fit them Carve out the ports and match the inlet manifold, clean the inlet manifold up inside & polish any sharp curves You might as well make it faster and better while its apart.

Speaking of which... anyone want to run a book on how many cops will be checking cars in the carpark at this meeting? 10? 15? 20+?

maaate! You should see the roads around Orange and the Central West! We ahve every sort of surfacedefect you can find, from potholes to alligator cracking. The surface is so bad it throws the car around and their answer was to drop the speed limit on the road to Cargo to 80kph. Add kangaroos at any time from 4pm to 8am, and trees right beside the road and of course you will kill a lot of people. That's without counting the B-trains of 30 or 40tons who roll, jack-knife, lose loads of steel, lose wheels... The Govts don't really want to stop accidents, think of how many people they keep employed!

i've never seen a Govt Dept worry about unintended consequences! Of course it will cost jobs in some private sectors, but new laws always open up new jobs in the bureaucrat's sectors and some for crony capitalists. In this case there will be more people involved in checking that these regs are being followed, read "more cops, lawyers, magistrates, Counrt balffs" etc. The crony capitalists here will be the engineers who make their living from Govt regulations, and they will be pushing to make it as hard as possible to become a certifying engineer (always fight to raise the entry bar) and to limit the numbers of engineers in the market. (more Govt regs to control the number of people doing it to keep prices up) On top of that they will be working hand-in-glove with Govt bureaucras for more rules and interpretations down the line. We already have thousands of illegal cars, this just raises the bar to legality and becomes just one more entry-line on the ticket they write you for a non-complying vehicle. Some people worry about that, others couldn't give a shit. Overall it is one more little step by the Federal Govt to take over the power of State Govts and display their complete uselessness. The moment Canberra was allowed to tax people the State Govts became useless and should have been disbanded. We would have the same laws for everything over the whole country, for better or for worse. Anyway, who is going to organsie a club run down there that day? (oops sorry Irokin)

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...