altezzaclub

I took the springs out of another car, which make mine 60cm front and rear on stock 13" tyres. I 'm pretty sure they're just cut stock springs, and the ride is quite firm with them. That is measured from the ground to the highest point of the arch, and it doesn't look lowered particularly, unless you see it beside a stock KE70 and realise how high the rear usually is..

OK, I marked the pulley out to 40deg... not enough it seems! :o I was running with 18deg static, having just added advance w/o reading it out on the road yesterday, so the first measurements went off scale. Then I knocked it back to 15deg, read the advance and have subtracted 7deg off all the readings as I've taken it back to 8deg now. (and it feels a bit flat for sure) This is sitting in the driveway, so it doesn't count throttle demand just empty revs. I'm sure 3500rpm going up a hill has a different vac curve. The 4000rpm reading I judged to be 43deg, as it was 50deg at the time on 15deg static! You can see the vac adds more advance the higher the revs get. I'm wondering if the SU port works like any other carb, or does it have a different effect with the floating piston and keeps adding vacuum. To get 3500rpm in neutral wouldn't open the piston very high. It certainly doesn't mind lots of static advance, maybe a bit of the 2500ft altitude and the ground cam, but it would be a worry going up a hill foot flat at 110kph. I'll ask everyone when I've though some more.

Ported Felix, on one SU carb. I've been at it today for a quick timing light curve shows 18-20deg up to 3000rpm with no vacuum line, and with a vac on it kicks off at 18deg 1000rpm, 1500rpm, then hits 20deg at 2000, 25deg at 2500 and 30deg at 3000. I fitted the hose while it was at 2000rpm and you could see the timing jump 5deg. I can check manifold vac effects over the weekend, and also grab Rob's vacuum guage to check what the SU port does. I'm just about to mark the pulley carefully and re-do the curve, as I had to "measure by eye" the degrees over 20.... Once I have it pinned down I'll put up a post and have a think about it.

That's a pretty good list Towe.. Sinister there is a thread called the ultimate overheating thread or something like that- Why pull the head unless the gasket is blown? ..and if you haven't confirmed its blown do that first. First symptom is a car hard to start in the morning first time, then fine all day after that. (water leaks into the cyl as it cools at night and condenses on the spark plugs) Crude test is- one morning before you drive it take off the rad cap, full the rad right up and then start it. Let it idle while you watch the water level. If it bubbles over the top before it warms up you have compression being pushed into the radiator through the head gasket. Professional test is a leakdown test at a garage or the test kit that shows exhaust gases in the radiator. Jets would show problems in other areas. Blocked idle jet means car wont idle, blocked main would mean car coughs, lacks power, or won't run above a couple thousand RPM, blocked secondary means car won't run up top. A bit of shit in a jet would run it lean, which would overheat it, but it would be so bad you would feel the lack of power. Overheating- radiator blocked or cores had it, thermostat jamming, motor water channels full of shit, water pump knackered. As Towe said, retarded ignition leads to overheating. So now we heve educated you, you can go and find that the points need replacing and timing resetting! :laff:

A day or two back I fitted an electronic dizzy. It came via Twinky, (thankyou very much!) one of KEmotorsports units. I wired both wires to the coil, bolting one to the original dizzy wire so I could always swap back. I don't mind having a 12v live bolt hanging in the engine bay, maybe I'll fix it later! It started straight away, but when I drove away it had lost it's sparkle and felt very flat low down. I was taking it over 3000 before it started to move, so I figured it was not advancing. It took quite some thinking before I found the vac advance delay valve the mechanic had fitted when he dyno'd the car initially. Once I ran a drill through the middle of that things improved. I reset the plug gaps to 38thou and stuck a few more degrees on the timing. I don't know why the stock dizzy ran OK with that valve, I suppose the advance curves and the vac units are different. There is scope for more tuning there. Today I noticed it handles slow 3rd gear intersections when cold much better, no hesitation or misfiring, and generally runs cleaner low down. For the SU guys, I've been thinning the dashpot oil down to try and stop it running rich on accelerator/cruise, and had gone from Johnson's Baby oil (thinner than ATF) to 50:50 baby oil & turps... The other day I took the springs out and found it ran fine, just on 14.7 with a constant throttle around town, but leaned out hard as revs increased! So, the springs are more important than the dashpots in determining acceleration/ cruise mixture. The dashpot's function is over very quickly, only a second or so. Now I want lighter springs!

..like those blouses in V8Supercars who need powersteering... :laff: I wonder how much feedback they get? If you watch someone like Lowndes in slow motion he can add precisely the right amount of steering when he kicks the tail out fractionally in a hairpin. He just turns the car quicker by over-steer and takes the lock off faster, you wouldn't notice it if you watched at race speeds.

Get the $100 one- actually it cost me $75 a year back. The 4K never puts out enough power to worry it unless you plan dropping the clutch at 4500rpm or kicking it in and revving it to slide the car, both abhorrent activities! :laff: Don't forget to undo the driveshaft and leave it in the back of the gearbox, or oil will pour out all over the floor. If its not clean under there now, take it down to a DIY carwash and water-blast it. Its much nicer to work on a semi-clean car! Aligning the new clutch plate in the center of the flywheel is the hard part. Buy one of the plastic shaft tools if you can't get it right. I just assemble the clutch lightly and look down the middle with a small torch to get all the circles concentric, seems to work.

One way takes the door off the hinges, the other takes the door and the hinges off the body- Note how they shut before you take them off. If they have drooped (especially the driver's door) shape a bit of 1mm metal sheet and put it between the bottom hinge and the door to tilt the door back to where it latches cleanly.

of course, every petrol-head on a public forum does... just like politicians always tell the truth when they make promises, and police always tell the truth in court.... :laff:

You'll have to go over all the joints and check each one. The adjustment that Nissan talks about is needed bacause the two gears inside wear at the point they most touch, the 'straight ahead' position. The screw pushes one gear against the other to take up that slack, but then it is too tight when you move them off the straight-ahead position & they jam. Jack under the LCAs so the front suspension droops as little as possible and both front wheels are just up in the air. On top of that the gears wear in their bearings, the pitman arm wears and the balljoints all wear, including the outer tierod ends. While you ahve the car up stick a screwdriver in between each join and lever it up and down. If a rubber is split check carefully as the loss of grease leads to wear and failure. Two inches is far too much, youy should get it down to half an inch.

You're right- black is very hard to define a shape in. It certainly doesn't look like a lightweight car that you can sit up in and see all four corners easily, something important in placing a wheel exactly where you want it.

Google the carb- there is a lot about it on places like Alfa Romeo forums or Fiat, all the continental cars that ued them. You will need to either get an oxygen meter to check it or learn how to tell lean from rich when it dies. You'll need to learn about the idle jets, (up to nearly 3000rpm) the main fuel jets, (the rest of the midrange to top) and the air corrector jets. (they stop the top revs being too rich) Check EvanG's topic about his Weber, I posted a reference in there to a good tuning page I found one time.

Oh the irony! I'll bet you never forget how it goes together after this! If that is the solution, well done TRD !!

Ok, so a spigot bearing got rid of the bad shaking- take a bow Mr Trev! Fine vibration.. have you had the driveshaft off the diff at all? Driveshaft universals all tight? Might be flywheel/clutch balance. Clutch not gripping... is the free-play in the cable correct, or is the cable holding the pressure plate from clamping up tight?

hmmm... do you think he'll be brave enough to tell us if TRD was right and he made a major mistake?? Car Electrics 101.... Fail!~ :blush:

err... also guilty M'lud. :laff: Just left them idling and whipped the batteries over. With all these electronic computers in modern cars I don't think I'd be so keen to try it now tho'....

So are we saying that the coil dosn't feed to the dizzy at all?? That would explain the symptom!

What sort of meter are you testing with? A voltmeter or an ammeter, or a discharge meter from a battery shop? It sounds like the battery has a dud cell, so it puts out 12volts OK, but doesn't have a lot of storage capacity behind it to push out the couple of hundred amps needed for the starter motor. Try the battery in another car, or try another battery in the TE. Its possible but less likely that there is a bad connection in the wiring or solenoid that only works with some extra grunt from a second battery. The second battery doesn't add any voltage, its all still 12V.

What about the spigot bearing? A very good question indeed! No spigot would lead to a lot of vibration as the g'box input shaft hammered the end of the crankshaft to bits! Even if you fitted a spigot bearing it could be out of balance as that flywheel was not on that crank before. Maybe its just a bad combination... that shouldn't be much of a vibration tho' You didn't take the box out did you?? Fitting the driveshaft in a different orientation can upset the balance too. ..and I assume the clutch is slipping if it takes off slowly when you think it should take off fast. Does the cable pressure come right off the thrust brg? You should be able to pull the outer cable back 5 to 10mm away from the gearbox arm before the thrust bearing hits the pressure plate. Pop the box out and go over it all carefully. Mark the driveshaft so it goes back on the diff in the same place.

Sounds odd to me... is there oil in the diff?? I assume your mechanic checked that first.. Ok, when you turn a corner, the spider gears rotate, any corner at all. They rotate faster as you turn tighter. So from that point of view they should make the same noise left or right. However, the motor does drive one wheel more than the other, driver's side) so it may be that the spider gears are making a noise on "drive only", when you're turning left, and not on "anti-drive" when you're turning right. I've only run across wear-mark noises from the crown and pinion, and bearing noises. These vary with acceleration or cruise & speed. so they might get noisier as you go faster, or noisy speeding up compared to slowing down... but not turning corners. No chance that the backing plate is scouring the drum under load or some odd thing inside the brakes? I checked up rebuilding a noisy diff but it was going to cost too much, up around a grand as it had to be sent out of town. In the end we kept the quiet auto diff. The 5speed is a vital addition, every 4K should've had one!

Really hot suggests shorting staight to earth.. If you take the negative lead off the coil then touch it back on, does it spark?? If it does that means the coil is going to earth somewhere. Then make sure the points are open and do the same again. If it still sparks on that coil spade with the points open there is a short somewhere that shouldn't be.

Second that! Pick the top speed you want to do and work backards to the ratio that will do it at peak useable revs. 4.1 to 4.5 is much more likely. We rallied with 4.6, some guys using 5.1.

Yeah I wondered about that Jono. Bit hard without photos! Anyway- how did it turn out Chillin??

Well, it has an 'emissions ECU' that needs the O2 sensor. http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-327656.html here's a wiring diagram for it- http://home.insightbb.com/~jmengel4/wiring2.2.jpg That's from http://home.insightbb.com/~jmengel4/auto.html#enginespecs

Are you going to bolt the bracket onto the clutch pedal so it can be moved if needed?? That means it is a "U" shape, not an "L". It all sounds good, but I know working in that cramped space upside down at wierd angles is direct line to swearing and apoplexy!! I can see the cutout in the black insulation beside the clutch pedal on mine and the ridiculous shape of the pedal shaft. Any civilised manufacturer would have mounted the steering column between the clutch and brake pedals, not wound the clutch pedal shaft around the steering! It will have some strange leverages. Anyway- theory sounds fine- Good luck with it.