altezzaclub

The only way to streamline Mezz's unfortunately accurate process is to buy a donor car or a halfcut coming in from Japan. I don't know all the models that used that motor apart from my son's Levin BZG, but the worst thing you can do is buy just a motor and then try to fit it. I was thinking of a Skyline motor into my R31 Pintara last week and looked at the wreckers... when I saw how they chopped all the hoses and lines I decided I'm really quite happy with the CA20 in there! :laff:

Are you talking a 4-link like a Datsun Stanza, where the lower arms are straight & the upper ones at 45deg when seen from above?? So you go to coils and do away with the leafs... or are you looking at keeping the leafs and fitting the same sort of 4links to them? We turned our rally Stanza to a paralell link with a panhard, but the floor wasn't strong enough to take the pounding the mounts gave it and Nissan got upset. We were a semi-works car at the time.

A leaking head gasket makes it overflow before the thermostat opens, so check it cold before driving it. The compression that leaks into the water jackets can't easily go up past the closed t'stat and as more bubbles leak in they push the water backwards up the radiator and it over flows. Once a cup or two has been pushed out it doesn't lose any more because the bubbles can escape without having to push water out. When the thermostat opens warm water flows upwards and any bubbles do the same and escape under the rad cap. The other thing that a blown headgasket does it make it a bit hard to start on all 4cyl first thing in the morning, but then its fine all day. During the night a trace of water weeps into the cylinder and condenses on the plug, then it doesn't like to fire up easily. Once it has been driven & is warmed up it will stay dry until the next night. The head job is not a biggy in itself, but once the head is off you think.. 'might as well do the valves too, and maybe a little porting out of the inlets and raise the compression a bit..'. and away goes the project. Phone an engineer and see what a head skim will cost, then ask him how much for valves/seats as well. Then get a price on a head gasket set from Repco or whoever. Should total around the $300-350 mark I think, so you would need to be sure the head is crook before you did it. This would point to it not being a head gasket, so hit up a radiator shop and see what they reckon.

First thing would be to strip the motor in there and find out what is ruined and what can be salvaged. Weigh up the cost of rebuilding it to get a good motor against the cost of buying a cheapy that might be almost as bad.

The worst will b inside the channel as stuff gets trapped in there. The inner vertical face is part of the car, which will rust also. The curved outer face is the channel you buy, so that ends up brand new. All you can do is clean the rust off with a wire brush in a power drill and patch any holes, then treat the metal with some rust kill product. Give it a couple of anti-rust coats of paint (no-one sees it!) and then weld on the new channel. If you want it to last more than 15 years you could rustkill spray the inside afterwards to catch the weld spots where the paint gets burned off. The companies who do that drill a small hole in the back of the channel under the rear guard and spray anti-rust wax in with a long tube that sprays outwards. Then they just put a rubber grommet in the hole.

Nope, just old and to the point... Bought my kids up already and got them into shape, so I don't try to do the same for everyone else's. If you want help and advice Sam, you have to ask the right questions. There are guys on here who can tell you the best way to get more power, or more power cheaply, or much much more power, but they will all want to know-

haha- you're right Philbey, but I get carried away sometimes with the amount of BS being forced on us all.

Well, hopefully hte rebuilt alty will fix it. So if the tacho doesn't drop its not actually misfiring a cylinder, so I wonder if that is a voltage spike coming through. I expect the sealed regulator is a throwaway unit, all you can do is check it with a voltmeter. Even that is difficult these days as the digital meters are much slower to react than the old analogue needle ones. You might end up paying an auto sparkie to check the supply side and make sure you're getting steady 12v. The option is to run it with the alty circuit disconnected and see if it still plays up when running on the battery only. That eliminates the alty and the regulator. Is it easier to get a Weber downdraught than fix the Aisin?? Fiat or some Italian car.. I suppose it would be nearly as old anyway and probably in no better condition. A KP Starlet electronic dizzy would be a good buy, there is a guy sells them in the USA. It should drop straight in and is completely self-contained. I've got an electronic van one in mine and it has cleaned up the occasional misfire and improved low-down pulling power.

..and the revs make a difference, as there will be a speed in each gear where the synchros don't do as much work as at other speeds. Our 5K is well-worn, but drives fine if you don't rush it through the gears and change around 3000rpm.

I wouldn't expect it to ahve two pipes, they usualy suck back down the same overflow pipe. So, its not sucking back.. how much?? Half the level of water above the radiator tubes?? or only a cupful?? How hot?? Can you put a thermometer in the rad and measure the temperature to check that the guage is reding correctly? Just take it for a quick wiz to have the gauge just move, then take the cap off carefully & dip a thermometer in there while it idles. I'd expect it to read 75-80deg when the gauge shows just under half, which is where it should normally run. Have you done the headgasket bubble check?? Before starting it one morning take the cap off, full it to just about overflowing into the overflow tube, then start it and lt it idle to warm. The test ends when the t'stat opens and the top hose gets warm, as does the water. A leaking head gasket will cause t to overflow before it gets warm, and bubbles should appear. This is not a very good test, so if it looks like it might be leaking you need a leakdown test done, where you pressurise a cylinder with a compressor and make sure it doesn't leak into the water. The option is the liquid from Repco that changes colour in the rad if combustion gases leak into the water system. How is the radiator top, where the cap goes?? What you might have is an air leak that allows air to be sucked back in instead of water as it cools. How about having a radiator repair shop check it out??

Mildura will love that! As far as I know they are the only people making the industrial ethanol from cane, so its a monoply for them & they can charge what they like. Its all a scam, without Govt subsidies pouring our taxes into it I'm sure it wouldn't be added. Just think of the CO2 produced burning coal to heat up the feedstock to distill the ethanol off just so we can burn it... madness!

Ah, OK I take it back. The local 95 I buy has ethanol in, but maybe other brands don't have. I haven't pinned down anything on the Altezza, apart from that my $1000+ head job is due to poor combustion putting soot particles on the valve seats and holding exhaust valves open. I reckon it was one tank of 95octane fuel on a trip back to Orange that caused it, but the fuel company disagree.

yeeesss.... even a topic title like "Need help" will get you whipped! We don't want to have to read your stupid topic through to find out if we can help or not, so perhaps "What can I do to get more power" would be better. Then everyone could flame you for not searching it yourself... :laff: Come back when you can tell us what you can do in mechanical work what you want the car to do & how much you have to spend. School holidays still?

You need the rear soft for squat to give traction, otherwise it just lights the tyres up. How soft, no-one can tell you, its just trial and error. Did you see this version of a Caltrac? Very neatly done. http://www.hotrodsandhemis.com/traction1.html

with some clutch slipping and revving, and don't even mention trying to start on a steep hill... :laff: Ther was a forest stage that started on a steep uphill, maybe 20M up from the bottom of a gully. We were first privateers so got to watch the factory Escorts/Stanzas/Toyotas trying to get close-ratio high first gear cars off the line and up the hill. Most hit the clutch three times in first gear to get it up on the cam! I figure he'll get a couple of grand for the cam, there's nothing else like that!

...and those who voted for Juliar Gilliard have got us forced into ethanol fuel this year unless your local pump has 98octane. Don't use ethanol fuel in two-stroke motors, my head machining shop said. It won't burn quite the same, so compression ratios can all be altered.

Wade 169 specs, a 41/70 cam, 291 duration. I'm using a Crow 606 on twin inch&1/4 SUs, a 26/64 cam, 270deg duration. Lobe lift 0.264 Ex 66-24 Inlet 26-64 Its pretty mild, lumpy idle but not flying over 6000rpm. I wanted mid-range more than topend, which it does very well. Putting a cam from a 1300cc into a 1500cc will move the power down, so you can go for something wilder than you would in a 4K.

I've seen voltage regulators flicker, the points inside open and shut and spark.. Sound like that will be the next thing to play with, can you open it up?? The old ones were able to be opened and you could sand the points clean, just like distributor points, and reset the gap by bending the arm. Even if you jammed it either open or shut and idled the car it would show if the flicking of the regulator was causing the tacho to drop. Run it on the battery voltage for a few minutes or run it on charge at idle, neither should worry the circuit. The alty has brushes that wear away, and they're fairly easy to check. The diodes burn out and stop it charging, but they need unsolderng from the circuit to check that they still flow power one way. You need a special meter to check a capacitor, so just swap through a couple and see if one of them cures it. Doesn't sound likely from what you've said. Only 30deg+ down here... cloudless blue skies, sunny days..... :laff:

Yeah slow down a bit Mezz! Philbey and Twinky are both dead right- if you want to know what specs you have you will have to measure the combustion chamber volume with a burette or pipette. That will give you a static compression ratio. Then that is reduced by your porting/carbs and camshaft overlap to give you a dynamic ratio, which is what you measure with a compression gauge. So although you have high compression in theory at idle the cam is bleeding it all away and it only ups the compression at higher revs. If you're not really worried about WHY it goes like it does, just tidy it up and run it the same, as Twinky reckons. If its going well don't mess with it! Did you buy the car with that motor, or just buy the motor?? Can you ask the guy who built it what he did?? Oh- check the back of the cam for numbers and post them up. Most cam grinders stamp them with a code.

Excellent decision! ...and when you have the old channel off you can fix the rust in the car chassis around them before you fit the new one. Snowy countries are very hard on cars! :(

Not being a leaf spring fan, I'd put them on the list ahead of a rear sway. You can get plenty of oversteer from a leaf rear end anyway. The LSD, a pair of tramp rods and a panhard rod would do it.

Ah- does the include So you have new points, cap, rotor, coil, leads, and wires, with the gap correct and the timing at 10deg??

So... when idling the tacho drops momentarily?? So the coil doesn't fire one cylinder. Do it seem to miss that one cylinder once every few seconds? or is it worse than that? The tacho jumps when you fell the miss?? It sounds electrical, because if it was in the timing or cam or air leaks, the tacho would still register a plug firing. Is it different between idle, a long acceleration, cruise, or decelerating?? Got a video or sound file for it?

Sort out your head first! The Skyline and the Corolla are chalk and cheese, so you need to decide what you want a car to do for you.. cool & retro or fast & powerful. If you can't decide that, then you will be disappointed with either. One will be too slow and the other will make you just another kid in a turbo Skyline... If you have worked in panel shops you don't need to buy a car that has just been painted, you're better off to buy an un-touched one and do it up yourself with the skills you have. That way you can spend less money buying into it and add value with your work.

Depends where you think the body flexes. Have you ever seen a KE70 crack? Triumph 2000s used to crack around the "C" pillar, the Mazda RX2s used to crack in front of the A pillar, but they were being rallied and that is really hard on a body shell. The struts across the suspension towers would be good, the front moreso than the rear, but underneath the car is better setup than the modern FWDs that have suspension arms hanging out in mid-air. Door bars and extra bars from the shell to the front would be nice in an accident, these cars are terribly weak compared to new ones. Mitch will have some good ideas, he works on V8Supercars. Let us know what you find out.