altezzaclub

Yeah... ask your Dad, he seems to know how to do it! The trouble is that you're just starting your racing career and it is all about experience, especially when the driver is doing the car setup/building as well. Try different things on your gravel test track- brakes, suspensions, weights ... everything mentioned here. The more you do the more you learn.

...and very little point in doing anything apart from a polish and port matching if you're using the stock carb. Save the cash and get better carbs & a set of extractors then do the head, matching the three units up to each other. Add a cam grind and you have a much perkier K.

With your comments in mind it would certainly have be cheaper to buy one sight-unseen than one you can take a look at. There is a big risk factor in buying a pig in a poke, like Ebay products, so you'd want a local source of the halfcut or you'd have to proceed on the assumption something could be seriously wrong with it. Thinking of that, you could probably organise to get someone in altezzaclub to buy you one in NZ then ship it over if you wanted to. Altezzas over there are common as chips.

I can change up and down without a clutch on gravel, its just part of left-foot braking, but you have to lift the gas off to allow the revs to drop as the motor is doing less revs in second at the same speed. If you want to go faster, sort the brakes out. Most people can't brake at the maximum possible and have it slide in the right direction into the corner at the same time, so you can make massive gains if you can outdo them there.

Willing to haul it up to Bathurst?? BLCC run tarmac days on Mt Panorama with hillclimbs and sprints etc.

A 3K I don't know, but I do know how to measure them! If you just tell the head shop to mill 20thou off, you're assuming it has never been touched before. If you measure the combustion chamber volume you can easily calculate how much to shave off to get any particular compression ratio. All you need is a flat piece of plastic sheet with a hole in it, of a size that covers the combustion chamber face, and a pippette or burette or syringe. You need the valves in place (if they're not on springs I stick them in with grease) you tip the head upside down and put grease around the edge of the chamber. Fill the syringe with turps, press the plastic sheet onto the grease and fill the combustion chamber with turps. You need to measure this fairly accurately, so a pippette is best, just like in the photo below. I took that after I'd done it and lifted the perspex, that's why the grease doesn't seal completely. The area of the combustion chamber is measured off a piece of graph paper- just push it gently around the edges of the chamber, then draw around the shape. Count the squares inside and work out how many sq cm it is. Now you're a race engine expert! If the piston is flat there is no combustion chamber there, the gasket has 5ml in it, and the head has what you measure. So the biggest volume is when the piston is down, 1/4 of the engine capacity+head gasket 5ml+head volume, and that compresses into the smallest colume at top dead center, head gasket 5ml + head volume. Work out how many ml you need to drop off the head to get 10 to 1 compression and work out how many mm to shave off from the area of your graph paper. Its not hard, its something you can use on all your engines for the next thirty years and it puts you in control!

Pink jemmy, read this line- Having driven rally cars for years I can appreciate the difference between a well-setup car and a poorly setup car, both using the same cam. No, my car's not a dog to drive in traffic, but having driven ones that are I can tell you there is very little pleasure in having a daily driver that only works above 3500rpm. Here is the usual list of mid-range cams-

Crow 606... here's the usual list-

What else are you planning to do on the engine? It may be easier to haul it out anyway... rob83ke70 knows those engines well, I'm afraid I'm a K-series man myself. You could always PM him with questions in case he misses your posts.

I imported my Altezza myself, but I was immigrating here so it came it under a different paperwork system compared to just buying a car overseas. It never needed to be engineered or have stuff like rear kiddie seat anchorages added.

This is the important part. People have voted for Socialism over the last 50years, and now they have got it. Socialists believe we are all responsible for everyone, we share and care about everything in society, and the results are that we have a welfare state and laws like these. In actual truth, you should be responsible for nothing but what you, as an individual, do to someone else and there are no excuses about upbringing or how poor you are or you were drunk at the time... you do it, you're responsible. This Libertarian idea of individual responsibility has fallen out of favour since the Socialists took power, and laws like this will continue to destroy any individuality in life... You will not smoke cigarettes You will not take drugs You will not eat fat foods You will not make remarks or jokes about a person's race or religeon or... That's what democracy brings you!

Well Rian, I prefer oversteer in a car, which is why I don't drive FWDs. So I like the nose to have a lot of grip and the tail to have less. However manufacturers think that is too dangerous for the average driver so they make cars with built-in understeer, the idea being that you will run wide if you go too fast, lift off and slow down, and the nose will hopefully come around the corner. On my cars the tail will step out and you will exit sideways or backwards.. So to me the front sway bars are already too big on most cars and I usually mod them in odd ways to make them less effective. You need to keep some sort of balance between springs/shocks & sways at each end, but tuning them to suit yourself is part of making a car satisfying and individual. I've never put a thicker front sway on a car.

The third generation RA60s or any of them with a live rear axle on trailing arms like a KE70. There were two side-by-side at the wreckers when I was down there last year, one with KE70 suspension and one with independant rear. Just take a look under any you can find. I think I cleaned the wrecker out of Celica sways and Corona front LCAs and mailed them to club members.. :blinks:

You'd be better using a 1UZ-

I'd go for -1deg to -1.5deg camber if I were you. The less that gives you the turn-in you want the better, as it chews tyres out. You'll need more toe-in than standard to compensate for the inner edge wear.

If you're down the wreckers, grab a pair of Corona front LCAs. They're about 10mm wider than the stock control arms, are a quick bolt-in, and worth half a degree of camber. The Sigma ones are wider again, but I don't think they are as easy to fit.

What camber have you got in the front? That will affect the turn-in a lot. Stock lower control arms?

Just get a $20 Celica rear one from the wrecker and bolt it straight in. If you like the change then go buy aftermarket ones. One of the best (and cheapest) mods you can do- I do it to all the cars I own. Overall, a stiffer rear sway takes out understeer, and a stiffer front sway puts in more understeer.

Well, it ran down to Sydney at 6.4L/100km, took the usual 3hours in traffic, but it hold 100kph up hills much better now! I couldn't really do a measure on the return trip last night with richer needles as some dude rolled his container truck in Mt Vic and thousands of cars spent a couple of hours with their headlights on and motors idling just to inch forward every 15minutes! However it hasn't stopped the lurching over-run, although its not there on a country run of course as the throttles never get back to idle with overrun at 2000rpm in third, which is when it is the biggest problem. Just slowing down to turn at an intersection in town is when its most jerky. So far I've disconnected the PCV, the brake booster, the vac advance, and the charcoal flter, none of which have changed it so its not air leaking in through any of those hoses. What I'd like now would be a pair of colour-tune plugs so I can watch the colour of a couple of cylinders at once as it slows down.

Try marking the dizzy & block with white paint (typing whiteout) and see if the dizzy turns when you drive. That wll tell you if its internal or external on the dizzy. If its turning its dead easy, a clamp problem. If its internal you'll have to strip the dizzy and look at its operation carefully. The advance plate as KENut says, or inside the vac advance diaphram.

Fair enough- get a cheap 4K off someone on here and rebuild it slowly then drop it in. Buy these right now and save them until you need them! They are a bargain! http://www.rollaclub.com/board/index.php?showtopic=36821 Mine cost just under $2000 for the whole mod. Buying carbs/ extractors $600, cam $185, gasket kit/bearings/choke cables/fittings/stuff from spares shop $500, airbox made and fitted $115, exhaust fitment $130, head engineering and crank clean $165, other bits made it $1873. I did bearings at the same time as the car had been run with the wrong oil filter and the lack of a non-return valve meant it started up every day with no oil pressure for 30seconds. The bearings were marked so I replaced them with standard size again, and it is better now. I had an airbox made so it takes a new Corolla paper filter and it is inside a cold air box. Somewhere in there is $60 for exhaust manifold wrap to also keep the engine bay cool. I better do a write-up on it now I suppose. All the usual stuff people do to work over a 4K as a daily.

Crow have just told me- He said to email him directly- Just take the spaces out that I put in to prevent the bots recognising an email addy. martin@ crowcams .com .au You must have got the office cleaner with a sense of humour! :happy:

Twin inch & 1/2 SUs on the Lynx manifold, or twin Webers- you could use 40DCOE or 45's. Webers better, but more expensive to buy and to run. Anyone got some real-life experience on engine life using foam socks V. paper filter & airbox??

Well, the word is that the needles are running lean all the way through once they get off idle. The points he replaced but thet hasn't solved the jerking over-run. So, off to SU-Midel for needles and maybe new throttle shafts & discs, just to make sure the air leaks are minimised.

Ah- OK, the Jaycar kit needs a separate igniter too- $145 would do it-