altezzaclub

So many distractions! I came up last friday but Pete reckoned we should go and watch the Border Ranges Rally. 2hours in the chopper, spend the day chasing the cars, stay at a farmstay for the night and back on Sunday. Beautiful smooth roads that didn't break up, some lovely machinery.. all very nice! Steve is back at home more so we have a chance of getting the car finished and getting rallying next year. Its all planned for this week, but... Pete borrowed a trailer from a neighbour for feeding out hay (at 1200kg per load) and the pivot bar stays were the most horribly designed (and broken!) things I've ever seen. So its been welding up the trailer for the last couple of days. Now we need to clean out the tractor shed and fill it with KE70s to get them out of the weather!

Holy shit! That must twist the whole chassis up!

I put one on The Girls KE70 when Ifitted the 4AGE a few months back. It was in the AE71 that the crossmember came out of, a 2" system with a silly stock pipe from the driver's side across the car. I just cut that off and used a VL Commodore 2-1 extractor pipe to join the 2" to the 4AGE manifold. It wasn't hard to cut up pipes and re-weld them here and there. It works perfectly.

That's a tough one... You really need a $500 TAFE course in welding to learn the basics, then a MIG. Best bet is to borrow or hire one rather than buy one straight away, you need to build up enough experience before deciding how much to spend as a cheap MIG is hard to use. We're keeping an eye out for welding shops selling stuff and farm clearance auctions. If you have those cars to do and you're under 30 then doing it yourself for the rest of your life will be a great investment. Paying someone $70/hr will send you broke and make the cars completely uneconomic. Hopefully there is someone in Sydney that can help with loaning you a welder for a few months and helping you learn about it.

I've just done one, so read "The Girls KE70". It is about the cheapest you could ever manage when it comes to the ancillary bits like fuel systems, air cleaners, cooling system etc. Put aside $3000 for parts, and hope you can do everything mechanical yourself. Put aside $10,000 if you want to put it into a garage and drive it away all done! If you can get a RWD 4AGE you will be well ahead as it makes the inlet system & exhaust manifold simple and the cooling system easy. The FWD will need the inlet manifold cut and welded on backwards, a set of extractors for the exhaust and a remote thermostat system made up. All that is on the web. Don't rush, work out what components are worth and keep looking around for them. Start with a crossmember to fit the 4AGE and the pedal box conversion to hydraulic. Get a motor with as much on it as you can, a gearbox with driveshaft and then see what you need to buy in the way of air cleaner boxes etc. I had mine engineered with everything quite stock on it, he was happy with stock suspension & brakes, and it cost me $700. Sadly that's no use to you in Vic. Ask questions as you go...

Twin 40s... If you were going to race it the 45s would be good, but that cam is fine for daily driving. You'll need around 30mm venturis, which is why the 30mm quad bike carbs are an option for 4Ks.

haha! I hope the heater works!! My wife & daughter were just up there, the girl went to Svalbard and the wife stayed on the ferry visiting all the towns around to the Russian border. Even in summer it looked cold! It must have a good motor, but it looks like the body will need a stripdown and rust removal before you spraypaint it. There is always more rust than you think..

I think what you see is correct- the T18 is different to the KE70. You'd need the T18 plugs off their wiring loom to cut 'n paste the T18 cluster into the KE70 loom, so sell the T18 one & buy a KE70 tacho dash..

Well, this little red RT132 has been sitting at the wreckers for at least 5years and no-one wanted anything off it. The front left hit something that ruined the corner and that was the end of the car. Pity, they were quite a nice package for a Corona, smaller, macpherson front end, 5-link rear end with T-series diff, 22R motor.. If I'd known about them I'd have looked at getting one. So Jase hoisted the KE70 off the roof, put the Corona on blocks in the lane & I whipped out the complete front and rear suspensions. Pulled another pair of axles out of a leaf-sprung T-series nearby and put it all in the Pulsar hatch for $200. Off to the Woolshed next weekend, spares for the rally car!

Are they just a press fit or can you weld them without the weld breaking off the cast hub?

Yes, that is what I believe too, so it is definately oil smoke. So it must be either getting up past the oil rings or down past the valve stem seals. Maybe the oil rings are just worn enough to do this under vacuum, but not worn enough to let oil up generally. Don't push the clutch in when going downhill, then all will be fine!.

Unlikely to be a g'box bearing unless you could already hear it with the driver's door open at idle. If it rattles then just push the clutch in and see if it vanishes. Usually g'box bearings whine & growl, and often vanish in 4th gear. When you lift off the car is pushing the motor, so it does rotate it a little the opposite way. Hence the mounts comment above. Another one is the driveshaft being pushes back against its UJs, so check the UJs carefully. What sort of rattle?? Fast or slow?? Engine rpm? Rattley like a tappet or tinny, like a heat shield?? The "clutch in" is interesting. Is that disengaging the clutch, or just pushing on the pressure plate?? Just pushing on the pressure plate would load the thrust bearing, maybe that rattles at those rpm. Altezzas have one as you slow down through 3000 to 2800rpm, its very distinct. Caused by some resonance in the flywheel it seems. Most of my rolla ones have been heat shields or similar.

OK, thanks, so the bit I read somewhere about the importance of the dipstick seal is to stop blowby getting out, not air getting sucked in. That is the time you have the inlet manifold at high vacuum and sucking hard to pull oil down the inlet valve guides. It is a very strange problem, and it doesn't seem to be a problem of the valve stem seals. Maybe it is more unburnt fuel from when it stalls, something related to timing or idle speed or a broken sensor. Have you had time to move the distributor and set the timing correctly? Can we distinguish between a cloud of oil smoke and a cloud of fuel smoke??

You could pull the hose off the intake manifold and extend it into a plastic bottle, then block the hole into the intake with tape and try driving it. That isolates the drilled passages inside the intake manifold from the equation. I'm not sure what is in the tappet cover under the hose outlet, there is usually some thin metal splash guard with mesh to stop oil getting thrown into the pipe. If you have the tappet cover off you could give that a blast with petrol or brake cleaner to get rid of tar. Watching the plastic bottle will also give you an ide of how much oil is getting pushed out by compression. My 4AGE model doesn't have a PCV valve, I'm not sure if that is for all 4AGEs. If the breather system is blocked the extra pressure should blow the dipstick out a little, as the system relies on the dipstick sealing to stop air leaking into the intake. I've never tried it, but while it is idling just pull the dipstick out and see if the idle changes. Does it smoke when you drive away after idling at the lights?? Getting the timing right might improve the performance even if it doen't stop the oil problem!

I have a RWD 4AGE with the waxstat controlled cold idle, I'm not sure if yours is the same. Cold idle is about 1400, straight from starting up at -2deg, and warm is 1000 when it behaves. Under the throttle body is an air bleed into the inlet that is closed and opened by a wax cylinder in the water system, same as a thermostat. I think the waxstat responds quickly to random temperature fluctuations in the water, as I have a good cold idle and warming up idle, but it will randomly die when the motor is at full running temp. When you slow down and cruise through a carpark the motor struggles to dump heat it was getting rid of by the 50kph airflow a minute or two before. At slower speeds the water flow is also different, and the 4mm hoses might not flow water cleanly enough to give the waxstat the right temp. I figure a straight air leak in the inlet would give a constant problem, and the only variable thing seems to be the waxstat. Your oil smoke problem does sound like valve guide seals, I don't know why they would leak after being replaced, You only need them on the inlet valves as the exhausts are not under suction. More help may come from putting an o-ring on the stem above the seal, which is all seals used to be. When the valve opens the o-ring goes down and touches the top of the guide (or the seal in your case) & this puts the drop of oil on the outside of the guide instead of running down the stem. What is the blowby & the oil usage like?? Blowby carrying too much oil up into the cam cover??

Do you think there is some volume ratio between the airbox and the cc of the motor?? I remember someone at Popular Mechanics or similar chasing flow constrictions in an intake system using a manometer. I'm dying to see it in fibreglass!

It does look good! Take the boot rubber off and clean underneath it, check carefully for any rust starting where the panels are welded together. Clean out down in the sides of the boot too, these cars leak rain in through the tail lights and it collects in the boot. If the frame of the boot or bonnet is detached from the skin silicon them back on, they get real tinny-sounding and are likely to be easily damaged if not a solid unit. Take the front bunper off and the plastic will ease off the steel frame, which you can then beat back into shape. Same with the back one. Replace the bent guard and it will be a million dollars! Look through "The Girls KE70" build in my sig for ideas on easy mods to do...

If the plugs go black its just running too rich. The fuel level is too high I'd say as a starting point. Fuel is flooding into the carb through the needle & seat, so everything is fine except it dribbles out of the jets into the carb constantly. You could have a garage put a mixture sensor up the exhaust to confirm its running rich, or take the top off the carb and measure the depth of fuel in the bowl. Then you'll need someone with a stock carb to compare it to. ..or buy a new needle & seat and fit it anyway. The 600km back to home in the Hoonicorn showed that a 4K does the same as a 4AGE when driven at the same speed! Its usually cheaper to run by a L/100km or so, but I also drive slower...

What you did with the idle is correct, as you adjust timing you have to adjust the idle. K motors seem to like more advance than factory, but since I fitted the electronic dizzy and re-did the advance curve mine is back on 19deg idle. So long as it doesn't 'pink' it is fine. What were the plugs like?? ..and the points gap?? Ignore the guage, just run it from full tank to full tank and count the Km. I ran the 4AGE to dry over the weekend, carrying a 10L of fuel, and we got 680km from the 50L, so 7.3L/100km

Yeah, I've got both KE70s on electric fans now. Tridon thermoswitch in a DirtDevilRacing inline radiator hose fitting. That earths out a relay that fires up the fan. One has an 85deg switch (too low) and one has a 90deg switch. (which is fine) One has a dash LED that comes on when the fan is running just so I know, although you can hear them when waiting for the lights to change.

Well, up to Kingaroy with Steve to work on my rental up there, another 1700km of pleasant motoring at 7.3L/100. Left it at the farm in the tractor shed and boght home the Hoonicorn. 550km in the same car with a 4K certainly brings out the advantage of the 1600cc !!

I'd say you should get between 6.5 and 7.0L/100km at 95kph on the coast, and use a L/100km more around town, unless the choke is on all the time. Push the choke off as soon as you can each morning. The embarassing thing is that if you're getting 10L/100km you're better off fitting a newer 2L motor! Our Pulsar SSS does that, as does the Altezza's 3SGE. Don't worry about the spark plugs, they'll do much more than that, but check points and timing. They retard the timing as they wear and that knocks a lot of performance off. It does sound like a fuel leak somewhere. If the pump diaphram is OK, check for a tiny fibre/dirt in the needle/seat that might be running it with a high fuel level.

Smell them and avoid anything "good for the environment".. Run of the mill ones use methylene chloride or similar, like the old dry-cleaning solvent, mixed with waxes and any other solvents that are cheap. They eat into the paint then evaporate away (which is why you cover the panel in cling-wrap) and the waxes shrink out of solution and pull the paint off. Tergostrip uses phenol in their best ones, smells quite different, so buy one that doesn't smell like the last one you used. Use all of them outside or in a carport, the chemicals are not good for you! Chat to industrial guys who do stripping, you might be able to get hold of 5L of some really good stuff that isn't sold retail. Tergostrip B/O Tergostrip Brush-On is an aggressive, heavy duty paint remover and will effectively remove most paints and powder coatings including baked coatings, acrylic enamel, melamines, two pot epoxies and urethanes, road markings and anti-fouling marine paints.

Well, up and back over a week, working on the RA40 we have to sell. Bought The Blue Beast back & left the Golden Hoomicorn in a barn. Pete & I shake hands and he goes off to feed mooies while I head for Orange, about 10am, heading for Tamworth to gas up.No red light yet so these 4AGEs are really light on fuel.... Get 10minutes down the road and the Beast loses power... goes onto 3 cyl, then 2cyl, so I stop. Fuel needle is just on empty and no red light, electrics all look OK. Thinking the intank pump may have dropped off the pickup pipe again, I take the fuel level fitting out of the tank and look inside with a torch. Dead empty! So the fuel needle on this car is nothing like the gold car, which goes way below empty, and the light doesn't work! But that pump sure empties the tank completely! Hitch back to the farm, kick the fuel cans in the shed (empty) and dig out Miss Leone Subaru. Drive up to the Woolshed & siphon 4L out of the Hoonicorn. Get back to the bottom farm & find Pete there, so we head out in the Slowdeo and put the fuel in. Beast fires up and away we go. Finally get around to stripping it today, and the inside of the sensor for the light is borked.. Just a resistor that is immersed in fuel, absolutely nothing on the net about them. I'll grab one off another KE70 and hopefully that fixes it, my trips are 550Km plus running around at the end, so I rely on the light.

Looks very smart! Nice job!