altezzaclub

I modified a rubber channel to fit under the new alloy radiator, then drilled a hole at the top of one side to be tight, and the other side to be slightly loose so it can slide under stress. Hopefully this will allow the front of the car to flex without flexing the rad as well. I'd already cut the front out to help with motor changes, and when I put the top strip back it it was reinforced so is stronger than the floppy stock one. These are the modified KE70 spring tops we made to keep the front springs in line and captive- Back outside, things are growing. The green manure crop is now waist-high, compared to this photo. A quick trip in Pete's R44 showed how patchy the watering was, and we now have even water over the whole area. The trial vege garden is producing, Steve has a regular run on Tuesdays to organic shops and restaurants etc up Armidale way, zuchinni, beans, silver beet, and beetroot. But the main course is in the glasshouse, 6000 seeds planted every two weeks, to be planted out in the main area when the green manure crop has been slashed & dug back in. All the Brassica family, brocolli, cabbage, caulis, kale.. for winter frosts.

More shiny goodness from SamQ for the back of the head, although we only wanted one outlet and plugged the other 3. We cut the steel bypass line to fit and cleaned all the water pump gear. The hose fittings were all corroded, but some bog tidied them up. Then we moved onto gearbox and thrust bearing problems.. The difference in the wire clips shown on those thrust bearings shows how different the Altezza J160 box is. No other Toyota seems to have the same clip system. However it was one of several major problems involving the clutch stuff. Basically the Altezza crank sits about 14mm further out from the block, so on a 4AGE the gearbox input shaft doesn't go inside the spigot bearing, the thrust bearing carrier falls off the front of the input shaft tube, and the slave arm pivot can't stick out far enough to let the arm push the thrust bearing far enough forward. We're currently looking at the best way to move those three components forward. We only found this out after buying a slave cylinder (off another Toyota) but on Ebay they can't be determined if they're left-hand or RH, and of course it is upside-down on the J160... so useless! Meanwhile, the boss was there in my chair and wouldn't even let me have lunch!

Stu, we would've loved that! next time... Well, another trip, more work... Into the Sigma LCAs.... they push the steering arm and strut out so far that the steering arm balljoint runs out of angle and the LCA with the steering arm on it can't match the angle of the face on the bottom of the strut. Alternatively, if you put the assembly together then the steering balljoint jams on the edge of its cup and that is the limit of suspension droop, and THAT won't be good for the balljoint. In the photo here the balljoint jams on the inner edge of its cup. We made a couple of wedges to fit between the LCA and the balljoint, so it tilts the balljoint and makes it more horizontal. This tilted the balljoint just enough to allow the strut to bottom out without the balljoint jamming in its cup. With the front suspension done we hit the rear arches. Without springs and shocks the axle goes right up and hits the body in several places at once, a wonderful design. With the 14" rims we needed to chop 75mm out of the top of the wheel arch and re-weld the inner and outer skins. We cut the arches off the front guards of one of the paddock Coronas and made those fit. They aren't a dead copy of the KE70 shapes, but now that they are trimmed, riveted, bogged and painted they look fine!

As far as I know, yes. We've never found a difference swapping parts round the models except for the panels in the front & the mechanicals.

Looks like a relay. Get the wire colours that go into it and check a wiring diagram for their function.

Haha! Excellent Pete, so I can expect some clever ideas as we progress with the build...... The overall aim at the moment is to get it back on its wheels with the motor & gearbox in, some doors hung on it and some ballast in to see what the ride height is like. I need to move the rear shock mounts to make the most of the Bilstein's travel, but I need an idea of ride height for that. So solving the 6-speed problems plus the 4AGE conversion problems plus random suspension modification problems are all part of that road..

Well, another trip and yep, struts done... Of course they don't fit!! The Sigma LCAs give it such a camber angle that the LCA balljoint runs out of angle. I assume people who use them ignore that and let the droop limit be the balljoint jamming. Anyway, another little problem to solve later, we'll see how it all sits with a motor in. Ah.. hang on, assembling the flywheel & clutch shows the clutch plate has the wrong number of splines! ..and we need an Altezza slave cyl. You can pay a lot of money for these, or find out which parts bin Toyota used and buy them for Coronas or Hilux or whatever! The gearbox mount is welded up and ready for fitting, that will be interesting! A constant irrigation has grown the manure crop and taught a lot about plumbing! ..and someone is going to be eating a lot of zuchinnis in a month's time! Steve's dad Pete took me to the Avalon Airshow for a week to look at the helicopters for sale. We spent an excellent day at the RAAF museum while we were there. So, Orange for a week, then back up to get that motor in!

" I just tested it and got 14.1 km per litre (7 litres per 100klm). " Ouch- That's what the 4AGE returns running the 500km up to the Woolshed and back.. and you've got a lot more motor there!

Just for fun... before you drive it anywhere, take off the radiator cap and fill the rad to the brim. Leave the cap off, start it up and idle it to see if water gets pushed out by bubbles before the thermostat opens after about 5-10minutes. Occasionally #4 head gasket goes, but if not then maybe a valve is burnt. The compression gauge will show a burnt valve, but not a head gasket blown.

The big job was fitting a plastic roof to make a glasshouse for growing seedlings- and it even has a wind-up wall! The electricity went off one evening and all the next day, and that's when I discovered there were no lamps or candles at Auburn Vale. What sort of 1920s farmhouse is this?? I dug out a lamp and made sure it worked for next time! I'd moved one of Steve's farm cats down to Auburn Vale and she'd had kittens down there. Now I have them living under the deck outside my room- but that's preferable to what lives IN the room with me! ..and if you're ever taking bets of centipedes versus redbacks, I can give you a clue.. Anyway- back up tomorrow for another hit! Maybe get those struts done AND the gearbox mounts if the MiG is back. No doubt there will be lots to do setting up the inside of the glasshouse too-

Steve had made a 40M long test vege garden and the smaller sprinklers were falling over, so we made a pyramid out of old waratah posts. Lewis said that was too complicated and found an old plough disc. I welded a post on that and we had the world's simplest stand.. That was the only un-used disc in the steel dump, but there was a worn one so we welded extra feet on that for the third sprinkler. They will do the last part of the green manure crop too, its not hard to move them around while the big sprinklers are fixed in place. While I was away Steve had cleared out the storage/junk shed part of the woolshed and moved the two spare cars out to a new home. Now we need to re-roof this one too! Then they stripped the timber cladding off the Woolshed North wall and fixed the rotted posts. The corner one was especially bad!

OK, so a trip or two back Steve ploughed a couple of hectares and planted a green manure crop. When I arrived up in Jan it was growing well, but suffering the drought- The solution involved a big handful of cash and an ex-Council diesel water pump. Not cheap, but a nice setup, pumping out the dam and covering about 2/3 of the crop.. With another handful of cash it was powering irrigation sprinklers. In the workshop I found the usual chaos, this time the Landcruiser farm ute. I needed the rally car's gearbox mounts welding, and the welder was back at Kempi being fixed, so I cleaned the hubs and fitted new bearings. We took one hole of the dustcover for a Terratrip probe and I put the struts together. Then the next problem.. The bushes in the camber adjusters are for 15mm strut shafts, pretty usual, but Bilsteins are only 14mm, so it was awaiting new bushes to be made. The AE86 springs don't match any spring top, KE70, Corona or Celica, so we made custom ones there too. Meh- forgot to photograph them, I'll do it this week.

haha!! Cheapest performance mod ever!!

You'll have to check the sound system wiring, some guys hook them to permanent power sadly. If its stock then it will be more lying under the dash with a light following wires and making sure the ignition barrel does actually turn off the ignition. KE70 wiring diagrams are on here somewhere. The carb problem sounds like a blocked jet, and like Big G says, pull the jets out, squirt them out with cleaner and squirt through the drillings in the carb. If you've got access to a compressor use that, or just get a 10ml syringe without a needle and push petrol through the drillings. A full stripdown would be best, but hey.... filter also as Spirit said, and just check the points gap & timing in case.. The choke raises the idle speed as well as doing mixture richening, so maybe the idle speed needs checking.

" the squeak goes away when i put even the slightest amount of pressure on the clutch. " If you're quite confident in this then it limits the options- Clutch pedal/pedal box vibrations Does it have a cable?? A likely source of squeaks if it does, it vibrates a lot when relaxed. Clutch arm going into the gearbox. Does it have a spring pulling the clutch arm back off the pressure plate? Thrust bearing Spigot bearing ..and that pretty much cover the components that get affected when you press the clutch pedal. Something may be making the noise as the result of the general engine vibration, rather than being worn itself. Also notable that its only when the car is under motion, when the motor and components are tilted under force compared to relaxed in neural. That makes it hard to crawl around searching for it.

Well, lift gives more torque, duration gives more power... Pick a cam that opens quickly, so its 050" lift figures will be a tad higher than others. They will also be limited in the max rpm from opening the valve open & closed too quickly. The max lift will depend on the size of the spacer you can put under the shim to make up the heel grind. I have heard of shims flicking out of motors, but I expect it depends on the rpm you're going to use and if it approaches valve bounce or not. If you're going for mid-range feel rather than peak rpm then the porting job isn't so important.

Over 6months of faultlessly running up and down to Woolshed Rallying at 1100km a time, and my wiring finally caught up with me! Out in the middle of the countryside it died pulling away from a railway crossing. The wiring for the idle-up valve that goes into the airbox must have swung back and been caught by the water pump boss, then torn off and shorted out. It runs off the same ciscuit as the injectors, so the motor instantly died. A young guy driving from Melb up through NSW to the Gold Coast stopped for a hand, he was mechanic and had everything in his ute, but it just needed a new injector fuse and a wiring tidy-up. What I also found as I pulled a plug lead off to check if we were getting spark was that the leads have gone brittle down in the valley of the head. So its running a nice blue Nissan lead on #1 at the moment!

"Well, Just got a call from the missus"- That's the great part.. Not only is she coming home but she's recovered enough to make phone calls.. Took months before my youngest bro could, although he recovered 100% after a time. Good news!

'. It doesn't get any better' You're right! I'm up here this week, I'd better take the photos I never remember to take!

First, go and find a gearbox shop that can completely rebuild your K-series gearbox. Greater power will break it, and I have never found a shop that can supply the cage roller bearings that run directly on the shafts. They also wear the shafts away so make sure the shop can rebuild the shafts as well. Personally, I think K-gearboxes are dead and will be the factor that kills our cars. You don't need it done now, but its no good doing a conversion with no spare parts in the future. After that you have the T-series gearboxes behind the T-motors and A-motors. The T-motors are Toyota's first attempt at DOHC, a compromise 8-valve motor, but still a giant leap ahead of the K. You could fit an 18RG motor and W-series gearbox from a Celica but they are all old and worn by now too. After that came the 16-valve A-series, the most swapped motor, and it uses the T-series box also. The most recent motor will be the Altezza 3SGE with the J160 6-speed gearbox. We are part-way through fitting the gearbox into a KE70, although behind a 4AGE and not the 3S motor yet. You can easily look up Wikipaedia for these motors and boxes, and the cars they went in. From then you run out of rear-wheel-drive options in newer cars, so it becomes a much bigger job. LittleRedSpirit's car is superb, you could do that. You could look to ute motors as you say, but all ute gear is very heavy and you are putting it in a light car. The diff would be a much heavier weight banging up and down in the back of a KE70 compared to a 2-ton Hilux. I wouldn't use anything from a ute, get the lightest gear you can. Finally are the options of non-Toyota, the Nissan RWD S-series and Mazda's MX5. The RWD layout makes them easier, and that is getting harder and harder to find. How many small RWD cars are left?? MX5s and BMWs..?? So- simplest is the 5K, then you have to change mounts and crossmember for a 7k, then a 4AGE, which is as hard as any of the others from 2T to 18RG to 3SGE. After that you're on your own...

..and that's exactly why aviation worldwide is stuck in a 1940s timewarp with splash-lubricated push-rod Lycoming engines on light aircraft and helicopters, and why we don't have a carbon-fibre helicopter flying anywhere at all. Testing and standards become a way to limit new competition into an industry, it favours wealthy established concerns. Sounds like road trips to Orange will be more popular in the future. We have Great Western here and two other old-fashioned walk-around wreckers an hour or so away.

lol! Is it written that they have to be an accurate representation of the gearbox?? Is it tested? I just grab comfortable small ones from the wrecker. That's a shame about the bonnet, its a unique trademark of the car.

That is heartbreaking!! We've had two old school daylies stolen & torched in the last 5years, nothing replaces the work that goes into them. Car thieves are such a waste of oxygen, I'd treat them the same as horse thieves in the good ol' days.. string 'em up.

Both mine are 340mm rear and 360mm front, a slanty and a flattie. The longer LCAs are on the Coronas, and I think the Celica but I can't remember.. they neatly take out the +ve camber on the KE70.