altezzaclub

"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.

Oh, so you'll know what its like to drive as a lowered car for sure! Find some soft bumpstops for the rear, we're using Falcon fronts atm, and take out the stock ones. Check if the shocks bottom out before it compresses the bump stops, or if the coils bind first. The diff is a marvel, it goes right up to touch the body everywhere at once if you check it w/o springs or shocks. The fronts may come with bump stops or not, but work out what crashes first when you run out of suspension travel. If you're not loading the car with 5 people and their luggage you can run it with quite different settings to original.

"Basically the same as 86 but should be easier to find. These days though potentially just as hard. " Yep, it may depend on what you can find, as all these items are getting pretty rare these days. You could cut the seats off your KE70 struts and weld them back on lower down, a simple operation that gives you an idea of what height you want the car to run at. I'd chop the springs a coil or two, most people think its a terrible idea but its only got to last you a month of driving until you decide if its bottoming out too much or you're fine with it. With bumpy roads you don't want it too stiff or lacking travel. Then find 50mm struts to replace the little KE70 tubes. Corona setups are more common in the wreckers these days, or just buy aftermarket coilovers. If you get pillowball tops they will be very harsh and noisy compared to urethane. I'd try to find the lightest brake setup that works too, you don't need massive heavy calipers & discs pounding up and down as unsprung weight. If you're not getting brake fade currently then the KE70 setup is adequate for what you do. I fitted little Diahatsu ventilate discs & calipers, they weigh about the same, and one day I'll get 50mm tubes welded onto the KE70 hubs for larger shocks but the same steering setup. Find a larger rear sway if you haven't fitted one already, a Celica or an aftermarket one. One of the nicest handling tuneups you can do, along with Corona LCAs.

In theory you can do it in the car, but its a dog of a job. The new gasket has to go under the oil pump, which goes down low in the sump. KE70 sumps have studs in the front 4 holes which means the sump has to drop a lot to clear them, I'm not sure about your KE55. I lifted the motor as high as I could without taking it out to do it. So the radiator hoses came off but most everything else stayed attached. A better way would be to lift the motor a little and drop the crossmember, only 4 bolts and two engine mounts there. With the 6-speed in the rally car the only way to get the motor/g'box out will be to drop the crossmember and let it hang on the steering arms/castor rods, and having done it a few times a day in the last week it gets pretty simple.

OK, found one of the new sump height, this is the lowest I'd like the sump without cutting the crossmember. Lowering it tends to make the gearbox more level without hitting the floor. The gearbox shifter ends up here, hard up under the floor for the same reasons as the low sump. Options are to cut through the main crossmember of the floor, shown just above the bolt-holes in the shaft. or fit a really flat remote gear lever link, which is what we'll do. The mounts go on the angled faces where that 10mm bolt is, and we will hang the gearbox from up in the tunnel for more ground clearance.

Ah, back home after a short trip up there- We cut the engine mounts down and re-welded them, and started on the custom gearbox mounts made from KE70 sway bar mounts, urethane bushes and some 4mm plate. I'll get photos next time. We pushed the Slowdeo 4WD ute with the blown head gasket down the driveway to the road and put on a sign saying $450! If we can sell it for that we'll buy a Sam-Q remote for the 6-speed, otherwise we'll have to build one. I've left the body un-touched so we can swap the cross-member, motor and gearbox with the mounts into another shell easily without chopping the floor up. Kobar got stuck on the hoist for a few days with a collapsed front hub bearing, and they just got that going yesterday with a new diff locker too. Steve got the 4Ha of paddock disced up twice, lime & sulphur spread and a green manure crop planted all just in time to miss the rain! He did find time to do the gravel khanacross in Mao! ...and it was christmas so we needed christmas lights on the hangar!

Tengo un diagrama de cableado para un KE70, pero podría ayudar. Si desea una copia, envíeme su dirección de correo electrónico. Si mi español es pobre, ¡culpa al traductor de Google! https://www.dropbox.com/s/s0xs2udvrv9qfl2/downloadfile.jpg?dl=0

"Just gotta wait and see if she comes back. " Gah! That's terrible! Best of luck for a full recovery.

So you're going to fit a FWD cross-member and suspension into a RWD?? I've been looking at using FWD LCAs and struts on a RWD, the extra track would be good. However they don't have a cross-member as such, the chassis is very different and the LCAs mounts onto that. It would be easier to use a RWD crossmember on it.

With that sort of fabrication in the front, what's the chance of a 5-link in the rear? You could design it to be low right from the start.

hmm.. the T-piece looks a bit lightweight for the engine moving around the place under acceleration. What we need is a stock heater takeoff pipe on the back there that leads to a 2-way valve. When the heater is off the water goes to the water pump, and turning the heater on diverts it through the car.

There's a carb picture here- https://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/68402-setting-mixer-and-idle-in-ke70/ Basically get the fastest idle speed with the mixture screw by screwing it in and out, then set the actual idle speed with the idle speed screw. It should slow down when you screw the mixture too far in, or too far out. Try half-turns first, then fine it down with 1/4 turns. Make sure the cold idle screw doesn't touch the throttle quandrant when the choke is in, it should just hold the throttle open when the choke is pulled out. It shouldn't need touching once set by the factory. The two gaskets go one on each side of the plastic insulator, between the pump and the block. Its stops the pump absorbing engine heat and vaporising the fuel.

Probably disturbed a bit of dirt that has got stuck in the carb idle circuit.. or maybe the new pump is more efficient and running it rich. Can you tune it out with idle mixture and idle speed??

As the man says, the hilux is the common swap. You might wander around a van wrecker with a tape, there are a lot of vans with 5-links and rear discs these days. I'd aim for the lightest casing you can find, and ute diffs designed to lug a ton or more offroad won't be light. In the end all that weight is bouncing up and down under a very light car.

Lovely work! I'm afraid our rally car will never look this good!

A good small torch might show you the pistons without a borescope. Easy to see the difference between the D-dish and the O-dish.

Arrgh! That's why we live on the West of the Great Dividing Range! Get a hobby that means travelling out past Kingaroy & carry business cards with your number and "Hi I'd love to buy your KE70 to restore" on them.. Drive slowly through small country towns and look in people's back yards.. I know where there's a Stanza and last week I saw a 200B wagon. I found a clean, rustfree flatfront at Lightning Ridge a few years back, but never followed it up. They are still out there and they don't rust away from the sea.

ha! Unsurprisingly the tanks went for close to retail price when you factor in the compete lack of guarantee. Naturally Steve HAD to buy SOMETHING, and this became the victim! I think he only bought it for the mudflaps.. genuine.. original... worth the $250 he paid for it! After trying to winch it on & finding the remote control batteries were flat, we swiped their mower petrol & Steve drove it up onto the truck. That was fine, except he was the only person who knew how to lower the Mothership's tray, and the Hiace slid back down if you took your foot off the brakes. In the end I climbed up into the cab & leaned over with a foot so he could get down and drop the tray, and much to everyone's relief we got it out of there after an hour of loading efforts. The last day was pumping out a couple of "nearly empty" dams.. Every farmer is having their dams re-dug and tidied while they are empty with the drought, and seeing the earthmoving man was on the main farm Steve grabbed him for a quick couple of days. Except it takes a couple of days just to pump the water out! The floating 20L is holding the hose, Steve's caravan water pump is by my feet and the Honda genset is by Kobar, running through several tanks of fuel to get it dry. Then Steve had to lead the procession through the paddocks to where the farms join- ..and build a tyre bridge to get them over the main highway! So, when I get back up in a week or so that should all be finished and we can concentrate on how to fit a large J160 6-speed into a small transmission tunnel without altering the body. Meanwhile.. more gardening!

Back to work! The 'Rona wagon was back in for a new master cyl & booster tidy-up, and it got a Woolshed wheel alignment too. I think we've solved all the teething problems, like the lack of dash lights after the cig lighter caught fire on the last owner, or the way it pulled hard right all the time, so it should be a good reliable car for Steve's GF now. We bolted the J160 up to the 4AGE and dropped it into the rally car. It will fit in the tunnel OK, but not on stock engine mounts. Decisions now depend on engine mounts, getting it in and out over the rack (won't do it), getting the 4th carb trumpet off the clutch master cyl (jams and blocks it), having a reasonable driveline angle to the diff.. Lots of things! Anyway, the crew are thinking hard upon it- In amongst it we had the local car club come around for a visit, an interesting collection of cars. ..and went to an auction to buy a couple of 22000L water tanks for the cell grazing.