altezzaclub

Ah- I knew that much... If you weld spring steel the weld is stiff and the spring steel next to it is flexible, so it breaks at the weld. I'll do some planning and see what people say. The maximum strength of a sway bar can only be the weight of the wheel and bit of diff it carries, as after that it picks the wheel up. I'll pop the stock one off and measure the torque deflection on it. I've got a couple of other sway bars lying around. Putting a stiffer one on the back of the Altezza gave pin-sharp turn-in and wiped out the trace of understeer it left the factory with.

I thought I might have a go at stiffening the rear sway without rushing off to Whiteline or similar. Has anyone clipped a second sway bar on below the stock one and hooked it up? I figure on making a double mount on the diff then using a pair of heavy little coil springs under tension at the chassis end between the two bars. That way the first sway bar works with the second adding more and more tension as the springs stretch. Any ideas?? Is there a Corona one or similar that a wrecker might have that is stiffer anyway??

<-------- I admin this one, and rollaclub is very similer. AE86DC is often too 'txt-talk' or poor English, too many stupid arguments and some other car forums are worse again. I'm always keen to answer people's questions if I can, learn from others about my questions and buy/sell bits for the KE.

The KE has absolutely crap lights by the time they are 20 years old, so I decided to reverse the power flow and fit relays, just like I used to do on the Datsun 1600s. The results were better than I ever expected, showing that the column switch is definately a drag on the stock system. I've put the 'how-to' up in the sub-club KE70.com here- http://www.ke70.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1856&hl= Its under $50 to do and makes a great difference. Probably similar for all the earlier KE models too.

Once you've sorted the electrics like points gap, timing, (and tappets too) then check the carb for leanng out. Let us know what it was if you sort it, it will help others...

Just do it, then put the head on w/o a gasket and turn it by hand. Cam timing affects piston/valve clearance a lot, so if you have one of those wonderful variable cam gears make sure you try turning it w/o the gasket at both ends of the cam timing range you expect to use. You will need the gasket thickness to allow for stretch in pistons & rods, some chain slack and a bit of valve movement. If the pistons touch the valves (you can put a bit of plastosine on the piston to see the clearance) you might solve it with cam timing (you just can't run the cam there) or mill an eyebrow out of each piston. Usually inlets hit, not exhausts. Chase up Rob here in Orange (rob83ke70) he's a mechanic with stacks of 'rollas, and will be a mine of information for you!

Definitely- Is it only the first start int he morning, or only when its hot, or randomly.. Does it turn over and over and never fire, or coughs and coughs but never catches, or catches but runs badly & dies or...

But don't expect it to work! You need to look at the viscosity index of the oils, or you will end up with something that thins out too quickly when it heats up. You should also test the viscosity of the oils if you don't have that listed from the manufacturer, as a slight change in viscosity may mean a big change in shock stiffness and you can end up with rigid shocks. I found a hydralic oil designed for machinery in Antartica worked well, but this was over 20years ago & I can't remember the name. It was quite thin but resisted temperature change very well. While I haven't had a rolla strut apart, we used to alter the valving on Datsun 1600 struts for rallying, a simple job involving blocking some holes in the bump and rebound valves, then use a thinnish oil. That worked OK. Slapper you sound like an old bugger, I'm sure you could teach the young guys on here stacks of stuff in some good tech articles...

Think carefully about the balance of the car. A turbo 4cyl may make as much power and be lighter in the nose. The 3SGE Altezza has a far sportier feel and better turn-in than the 1GFE 6cyl version.

Oh, I thought they pulled a couple of hundred amps... Then again, I'd never looked at the starter and read the wattage...

More research needed... There are three or four popular designs of muffler- *Straight-through with angled holes and fibreglass packing. Noisiest. *One pipe like above, but bent into an 'S' inside the casing so it is a bent-straight-pipe. Quieter but still rorty. *The inpipe goes through 1/3 of the muffler with holes and f'glass packing, then an empty middle 1/3 completey open, then the exit pipe goes out the final 1/3 via holes and f'glass. Better flow than stock and better noise. Quieter than either above. http://z4.invisionfree.com/lexusaltezzaclu...ic=2629&hl= *The typical one where a pipe goes all way down one side, the gases make their way back up to the top, then the exit pipe runs all the way down the other side. http://forum.altezzaclub.org.au/index.php?showtopic=2421 The thickness of the outer casing is crucial in stopping drumming and resonating inside, some have three layer casing (steel, f'flass, steel) othrs have quite thick stainless outer walls. Whatever you use make sure its heavy... ..and more recent designs with outside pipes and/or the adjustable flow paths using a remote. I have a nice design if anyone feels like making a production run of say 5 units...

Hell no, line the clutch up correctly an you can slam any gearbox on the back....

Open the inlet tappet gap to close the inlet valve earlier and see if that makes a difference. Check all the gaps while you're at it... You never know... smaller gaps mean a wilder cam and a rougher idle. The stock cam timing marks don't mean a lot with ground cams, and if the tappet gap makes a difference you may need to retard the cam a couple of degrees. We drilled more holes in the cam wheel on our rally Datsun to give a wider spread of cam timing, and that worked well.

Sooo... that end has to fit inside the end of the crankshaft where the spigot bearing is. The end diameter piece you pick will have to be the same as the gearbox input shaft. Then you put the clutch plate on the flywheel, put on the pressure plate and do the bolts up evenly so they just nip the clutch plate. You should be able to just slide the clutch plate around with a screwdriver. Then put your flash alignment tool though the clutch plate into the end of the crankshaft and make sure it is central in the the pressure plate. Do up the bolts evenly and you should be right!

Mine ended up about the same- Looks like this, about halfway down the page... http://www.ke70.com/forum/index.php?showto...amp;#entry10181

:bash: Too true! ...and that should be the end of the argument! If you do a stupid amount of work you will no doubt fit a V6 in, but it will be more of a dog to drive than it was! The whole thing about handling is to try and keep most the weight between the wheels, so FWDs generally start off with the disadvantage of having the engine hanging out the front past the front axles. That's why it is so hard to stop them understeering.

If any of you guys are camera freaks you might want to check this- Once it was dark tonight I hung a sheet of white plastic inside the garage door, put the wife's Nikon D70 on a tripod and aimed it at the white centre of a headlight. With dip lights on it used an F-value of 5.6. I pulled the connector off that headlight's bulb and ran wires straight from the battery and back. Then it used an F-value of 7.1. So it reduced the shutter size to take the same photo because there was more light... How much more?? Well, the F-stop system works on a factor of sq root of 2 to double the amount of light, so opening a lens from F8 to F5.6 doubles the light getting in. The square root of 2 is about 1.41, so thats the size change to double the light, and we saw a change of 1.27 to get from 5.6 to 7.1. That multiplier of 1.27 is 90% of the usual 1.41 that F-stops are based on, and I'm wondering if that means we increased the light by 90% of double what it was. If that is the case then its worth fitting the relay circuit above and trying to get maximum light, nearly double what we get stock. Anyone know how these F-values actually work in real life?? If they are some odd logrithmic graph then it may not be that much...

$10 bought me a Duropro one- picture in here- http://www.rollaclub.com/board/?showtopic=27374

OMG! I've just read from the start olskool! Stunning work, reminds me of the three years I spent getting an old '49 Armstrong Siddeley on the road when I was 15... I reckon it was all a conjob by my old man to keep me in the garage and off the road! When I was rallying a Datsun 1600 my navigator was an engineering draughtsman, very handy for all the mods. When we moved the engine back we fabricated mounts out of 18guage panel and he put a piece of exhaust pipe horizontally from front to back, cutting holes in the "sides" and welding the pipe in. Said it made it much stronger than plain box shape. I assume he was right as they never broke. We had a crossmember made the same way as it no longer carried the weight of the engine, it was just somewhere to hang the LCAs on... That was all gas welding in those days, so I've never learnt these flash new wire-welding skills...

X2 ! and this... But if you wanted to mid-mount it and bolt the gearbox straight onto the diff it would be great fun! Ideally use an independant setup like a Datsun 1600 so the diff doesn't move up and down. (tilts the engine!) Means hacking the rear floor pan out and starting again, but Mr Bates does it to his "looks-like-a-Corolla" 4WD rally car. ..and you have the grinder already! Even better would be transaxle setup out of a VW Kombi or Alfa Alfetta , so the diff and gearbox is all one unit.

Get a 113 and when you're bored with it shoot it my way! :) http://www.tighecams.com.au/cars.htm

How-to and photos!!

ade- You can set the static timing easily by turning the crank to a handful of degrees before the mark you want, take the top off the dizzy, turn on the igition then turn the motor to TDC. You will hear the spark at the moment it fires, might even see it. Move the dizzy until the spark arrives at the timing you want. Dynamic timing (when its running) is controlled by the weights and vacuum system.

Yeah I hope all such people die in a fire! In the good ol' days they would hang a horse thief, dunno why we stopped... Still, you didn't lose the whole car- an alarm helps heaps if you're nearby, and a kill switch slows them down a minute until they find it or re-route it. The steering bar things just say "Hey I'm difficult, try the car next door without one..."

Actually, I'd love a "how-to" for a complete 5speed strip. I got as far as you when I was trying to get the idler shaft out Evan. I couldn't get the idler shaft out the front because of the cast iron sealcover/thrust brg carrier bit, and I couldn't get that off as it seemed to carry the input shaft.... So it still makes a noise in every gear except 4th... :P Anyone done a complete strip??