altezzaclub

Stock carb?? What vac hoses are hooked up and to where?? There aren't any hoses hooked to the exhaust manifold, so nothing on the inlet should have changed... How are the thicknesses of the manifold flanges?? Same, or are the inlet flanges thinner where the bolts go on?

Photos! Having not seen leaf springs since my 1949 Armstrong Siddeley its a bit hard to visualise... Rob- Pm me with an address if I can pop around for a look over a cup of tea. We're in North Orange.

If you've got a spare engine you can put them in and measure their specs on one cylinder. A degree wheel will give you inlet/exhaust opening times and a dial guage will tell you valve lift... You might have something quite surprising in there! Nice score! I'm amazed at what is parked behind the sheds on farms around the Central West here...

Robert I had mine lightened at Motor Reconditioners in William St. No problems, $110. Cheers Keith PS- the exploded flywheel on the Skyline looks thinner in the middle than at the edges...

To get back to Blane's question... You should clean the ports and combustion chambers up first and get them smooth and free-flowing, with the port diameter matched to the size of whatever inlet you are going to use. Then measure the volume of the combustion chambers with a burette and chop out metal until they are equal. Then decide what compression ratio you want and calculate how much to skim off to get that ratio, and take it down to a motor engineer and tell them that. Get a cam cut, fit twin carbs and a freeflow exhaust and away you go... faster and poorer by several thousand dollars!

I also think you remove weight from the outside, which removes the inertia of the flywheel making it quicker to spin up and easier to stall. When we converted from auto to manual I had the local motor engineers take the stock 4k flywheel from 8kg down to 6kg. Nothing flash, but it helps. It was very noticeable in the Altezza when we went from the stock 15kg dual-mass down to the TRD 7kg one. It accelerates much quicker in 1st and 2nd. This is the machined flywheel beside the auto flex plate.

What did you do?? It was obviously leaning out low down...

Yeah, put up a post about that whole episode cale... That sounds like something that could drive any of us nuts trying to fix! Return lines are nice because otherwise the pump diaphram is working against a high pressure and can't pump the fuel anywhere. Stresses the flexible diaphram, but in saying so most old cars never ran them and the pumps survived OK.

Well, all you can do is either decry the lack of morals of the person doing it, or admire them for persistant capitalism. A bunch of dickheads worldwide, I get them on altezzaclub too, they must piss off more peple than they get customers.

Shouldn't be head gasket with those symptoms, head gasket problems happen every day at startup usually. Once you've got over the flux capacitor, check the electrics as it sounds like the lowering process knocked a wire loose somewhere, and probably to do with the coil or earth return. Poor power flow would give you a misfire and also kill the engine with the lights. What other problems have shown up?? Oil in the air filter comes from the tappet cover vent and is quite normal. Make sure you let us know what it was when you solve it!

...and you are running on the battery, so soon it will just not start for you! Put a voltmeter on it, should be pumping 13.8volts or thereabouts when running. Expect to need a new alternator or voltage regulator... Time for an auto sparkie, as Medicine Man said.

I made ours 6kg, cost $100- easy to drive with but I can't tell how much quicker as it was an auto and its MUCH quicker with a manual, the flywheel being part of that. When I fitted a lightweight flywheel to my Altezza I was surprised at how much quicker it was in first and second, right from the time I picked it up. That went from 14kg down to 7kg, so it was very different.

The engine won't use any more fuel at idle than a single carb, so fuel pressure is fine. Has to be blocked jets or air leak...

That's quite unusual, how about a sound clip of it... It won't be clutch plate, as that is gripped tight when decelerating. Probably a loose panel or cable as the only thing that moves when you decelerate is the engine/g'box/exhaust tilting.

Did you do bearings when you did the rings? Big ends and mains? The oil light flickering is oil pressure getting down to 7psi, which is when it comes on. The lack of oil pressure can be three things, faulty sender (unlikely), bearings worn badly, or oil pump wornout. The rattle could be bearings or timing chain, but I'd say bearings seeing its with the oil light if you didn't change them. Does it rattle badly for the first 20seconds on startup, with the light on?

You could skim the 4k head to up the compression to match the 3k, but you would need to know the volume of both combustion chambers. Someone might know the 3K volume and you can measure the 4k with a burette, then calculate how much to skim off..

..and its a common problem in various guises, ours turns the dash lights out but not the headlights, so expect a stalk from the wreckers to give trouble unless you're lucky!

I cleaned it all up and put it together dry. We've only used it once, and the chuff has ALMOST gone. I'll run it for a couple of days and see if I can pinpoint it, and if I have to I'll pop it off and seal around the leaking bit. I assume it will be in the middle, but a bit of RTV should fix that. Certainly 90% better than it was!

Throw the oil filter away and buy one with a non-return valve in!! or "non-draining valve" A plain filter drains nearly a litre of oil back into the sump every night, and the engine gets no oil until the pump has filled the filter every morning. I had the same problem ever since we bought the car, 20seconds of bearing rattle in the morning with the oil light on. Changed the filter and made sure the new one was valved and the problem vanished. Tappets- do them cold first, inlet 0.2mm, exhaust 0.3mm- Myles has a typo there! Take the spark plugs out & use a spanner on the front pulley. With the tappet cover off turn the engine until the timing mark is on top dead centre on the front pulley, watching cyls one & four to see which rockers are moving. The cylinder firing is the one with no rocker movement, the twin cylinder is on exhaust stroke with exhaust valve closing and inlet opening. Turn the pulley until 1 is not moving and 4 has the rockers equal- ie number one is firing. Set the tappets on number one cyl. Firing order is 1 3 4 2, so turn the pulley again until cyl 2 has the rockers equal in their overlap, and set cyl 3. That should be half a turn. Turn the pulley again until the mark comes up to TDC, at which time cyl one is overlapping on exhaust stroke and cyl 4 is firing. Set cyl 4. Turn finally to get cyl 3 overlapping and set cyl 2. Fire it up and hopefully but unlikely they are quiet. There's usually one or two that are worn noisy, and you can chase them with a screwdriver handle against your ear and pressing the point against the tappet cover above each cyl. See if you can pinpoint where the tapping is loudest and pull that one down a thou more. Good luck

Convert to manual! We bought an auto early last year and it crawled around OK while my daughter learnt to drive, then we converted it to manual over Xmas and the difference is stunning. We also modified the vacuum hosing slightly and piled on the advance, seeing we live at 2500ft up! There's a how-to on KE70.com It went to Benalla and back from Orange at 90kph up hill & down dale, running at 6.4L/100km. She's not allowed to go 100! if not, dyno run it and see if you're getting stock power.

Ah- when I ph'd Toyota they said they were 2-piece... and $104!! I've since decided that was a complete headset, seeing we paid $10 for this one-

ooohh Taz that does look lovely! Measure the flange thicknesses Rundall, on exhaust and inlet. If they're the same that's fine, but my Datto extractors were thinner so I welded half-washers on the washers I used to make up the difference. How much were the extractors?? ...and let us know what difference they make!

I took the middle studs out & found some bolts the right length. Lacking a die tap for that size I took an old bolt, screwed a nut on it then hacksawed a couple of grooves up the thread. A wirebrush and a working of the nut up and down gave me a cleaning bolt that I spun into each hole. This picked up all bits of dirt into the grooves and let me check the absolute depth of the holes. Its amazing how much crap can be in a hole on a head. I don't know if you young guys do these tricks- We will see how this goes this weekend...

and a look at the head showed- The front stud of the middle ones had too long a shoulder... It was over 14mm from the head, while the manifold is 12mm and a compressed gasket is 1mm The rearmost stud came out with the nut, so the nut had bottomed on the stud before it tightened right up

but a steel block with sandpaper showed that the inlets had good sealing while the exhausts were not flat in line- hardly touching the middle exhaust properly. We could slide a 6 or 8thou feeler gauge under a steel rule across the middle, so the exhaust is recessed on the front face and even worse, the inlet flanges are a bit thicker than the iron ones! Also less than a mm, but it all adds up.