altezzaclub

After my years of owning Datsun SSS I thought Hatachis were the norm! They never gave me any particular trouble except a tendency for the rear float to stick sometimes and need bashing with a coke can! ;) I think that was only on one particular car, but tis a long time ago now. If you don't run spacers the throttle plate hits the manifold when it opens unless the Lynx is opened up to the full size, and the complicated-looking pivot arm that carries the idle screw hits the face of the Lynx. Mine had already been hacksawed down to the minimum shape, so I'm just putting in a couple of 2mm Lexan spacers as heat insulators.

Haha! What's changed??? Rhys I'd say Jip's manifold is a typical $300 one, grab it while you can, unless you can convince the Old Fella to make two Datsun/KE manifolds. Jip's SUs are terribly old and it will be a lot of mucking around trying to get linkages & chokes sorted (I still haven't finished the ones I bought off here 6months back!) so using the Lynx manifold and Datsun carbs would be great. Maybe that's the way to go Ol' Fella, make a run of 5 Datsun conversions and sell them around here!

I don't know what box that is Jono, but the K50 I replaced my K40 with had the clutch slave on the same side! It was a very simple swap!

Man you move fast! Soooo.... twin carbs and a cam cut to go with the extractors! Looking good!

Seabiscuit has it right! You will need the Lynx manifold for a 4K, although those Datsun carbs are great for the job. The manifold is going to cost you $300, they are hard to find and you will pay that for one with an odd pair of non-working carbs on! The 4K will run inch & 1/4 carbs (32mm) or inch & 1/2 (36mm) like those Datsuns.

Soo.... Are you thinking of chatting to a casting company and having a run of 5 of them copied?? ..and maybe some Lynx manifolds cast up at the same time? I owned an Armstrong Siddeley Typhoon and was in at the start of that club in 1967. My dad got involved and ran the spares division, and ended up having all sorts of Armstrong stuff made and selling it worldwide through the various clubs. I'm sure we could do the same with 'rollas. I reckon you could sell 5 K-T bellhousings quite easily between here and AE86DC.

Lol! Thankyou for that kind offer!! I hope I find something closer than Norway too!! Cheers PS- have motor on floor in bits! Bearings slightly worn so will replace if cheap enough, all due to previous owner using oil filter w/o non-return valve so it started up every morning with no oil pressure for 30seconds! Cam out and due to go to Wade Cams next week. Back of the valves and inlets look very dirty and I'm wondering about taking the head off to polish it all up! It is always a bigger job than you think it will be! ;)

Well done! It must have been hot in that sun! I see some nice machinery driving around Kingaroy when I go up there, some amazing stuff parked up in the country.

Do you want to lock the mechanical advance weights, or the vacuum advance/retard? What is the advantage to you in not having the ignition advance with revs? You can make it advance less by altering the slots under the dizzy plate where the arms run, and you can make it advance slower by changing the springs on the arms. You can stop it retarding on acceleration by screwing through the base plate where the vac advance/retard rotates it. But if you lock it at 10deg advance at idle it just won't rev.

Now we have the motor out of the KE70 its time to get the cam cut, extractors on, SUs fitted and bearings checked! What I would like to do is re-make the whole exhaust in 2" and 1&3/4", so would like to borrow a pipe bender for a couple of weeks. On that note, I've just paid $25 for a 1/8" BSPT tap for threading holes to suit brake booster fittings going into inlet manifolds. Its the sort of thing you'll only ever use once, so if anyone wants to borrow it sometime let me know. Its a lot easier to mail than a pipe bender!!

Might do... You will find (in NZ anyway) 1990s Nissan Sentra wagons running around with Mazda badges on! There were a few cars like that, like the "buy a Holden with a Toyota badge" in Aussie in the 90s. I think manufacturers were trying to spread their range of vehicles without doing any hard (and expensive) work. Not to mention the whole range of Hondas with Rover badges & Ford and Mazda sharing everything except the badge... But Sentras and the KE55... I don't know about that one!

Hmmm.... I've never been in that situation Chappo, the Altezza was a private import I bought with me so he just took it as it came, and the KE70 is just sitting an inch lower on cut springs and stock wheels, so it looks normal. The 'Woo we got for free for my son to run around in is dead stock, so that's no problem either. He does race Mk 1 Cortinas at Bathurst so he might be rather petrol-head friendly anyway! Are you thinking of moving to Queanbeyan?? There must be some small garages there that handle rego stuff.

Nope- certainly MUCH easier than in New Zealand! Local garage does all our cars- Quick look over lights & indicators, careful look over paperwork for chassis number and a quick test drive for brakes.

Now it looks much to smart to use in motokhanas! Well done!

I'm with Evan- there is no excuse for text-talk but if you're that cool, that's fine... To me its akin to watching an African with an oil filter in his hand and knowing he is completely incapable of reading the figures on the box or of measuring it to see if it will fit. He can screw it on, but he hasn't got the communication skills to know if it is the correct one. Anyway Jace, the KE55 doesn't weigh much so modding the 4K will keep it up with the traffic and give you a lot of fun, but if you want to go fast it will need cubic inches. How fast do you want to go?? Traffic light drags against 'P'-plated Commodores, endless burnouts round and round, or touge racing through the hills of Adelaide?? The 5K will make easy driving power and the 18R give you most power if you spend enough.

Well, you're right in that these are motorsport-orientated ideas, I worked it out on a rally car over thirty years ago & Rob's car is used for rally events. But it improves the efficiency of the vehicle, has no downside and costs very little, so its a handy thing to take from motorsport to road work.

Sure, but how snug? A millimetre will kill the heat transfer efficiency, even the coat of paint will act as an insulator.. As I remember it, we took Rob's struts apart to see if we could re-valve them, thinking they were wet ones, and found inserts inside. They were 'dry' so we poured the oil in and filled the strut. They weren't 'loose' at all, but it still took a noticeable amount of oil to fill the airgap.

It does exactly the same job- If you put a shock inside a nice insulating metal cylinder where it doesn't touch the walls, how does it get rid of the heat that is generated in it's oil? You nice new insert will be worse off than your old wet shock! The moment the shock oil heats up the shock loses its efficiency as the viscosity thins. Does someone want to pour oil around ONE of their nice new shocks when they put them inside a strut and feel the temperature difference after a blast? ..or even a performance difference over a hard-working bumpy road?

Copy it and make half a dozen!

Fair enough- good idea!

Yeah, rear too low will factor in understeer. Still, they're easy to change and now you have the different options to try.

Yep- Altezzas have the torsen LSD in a lovely IRS. Much better than my old Datsun and quite adjustable. You can get the TRD options too, Google search altezzaclub.org.nz and there will be posts from some of the guys about it. Have you looked through http://english.auto.vl.ru/catalog/toyota/ That may list some 4WD variants we've overlooked. There's the Fielder 1500 here in 4WD http://english.auto.vl.ru/catalog/toyota/c...fielder/2002_9/ and the Camry http://english.auto.vl.ru/catalog/toyota/c...a_wagon/1999_:dance:

Yep! Most of the strut is filled with shock, so it only takes a few hundred ml of shock oil. Rob might remember how much, we did his recently.

Any ideas of what car the diff would come out of? The Toyota IRS that come to mind would be early Celica and then Supras, but they are too heavy for that body really. The Datsun 1600/BMW 2002 would be a closer fit I think. I assume you're going to cut out the whole rear floorpan and weld in something from another car, as the shapes will be completely different. Its much more complicated than turning leaf rear suspension into trailing arms, but it can be done. Nissan turned the first FWD Exas into RWD for rallying, like Ford did with their first FWD Escorts. Until recently in NZ I owned a 4WD Nissan Pulsar that had a nice lightweight IRS in it, but I don't know if you can find them in Aussie. You might be able to get someone in NZ to send over the rear end from a 4WD small saloon like Corolla or Honda Civic as almost every Jap car seems to have a 4WD version imported there. Then again, the Toyotas were probably 5link live rear axle, althugh I never looked under one.

Do you guys fill the strut with oil after you've put the shock in?? The few I've taken apart have been dry, which would not get rid of heat very well.