altezzaclub

That engine bay photo in #525.. Beautiful! Just beautiful!

You've probably read this reply, but just in case... How much experience have you got in building engines and fabricating/engineering?? That will determine how well the project goes and how much it will cost. (we're talking $5000-$10,000 here) If you can do it all yourself its cheaper, if you take the car into an understanding sort of guy that builds hot-rods and custom cars it will cost a lot more. As I've said before, you might be better off getting more power from a K motor while you learn what the car is all about, it allows you to keep it on the road and have some fun rather than having a half-finished project sitting in the shed for years and years. Find a spare 4K to hot up, even if you over-bore it for more grunt, then swap it in one weekend. 4AGEs take months and months, or years for people's first ones, and other motors even longer.

Start here- http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/64432-how-to-tackle-that-engine-conversion/ It will be harder if you use non-Toyota parts, every manufacturer has parts in common over their range, but if 4AGEs aren't around then go for what you can get. There are some great non-Toyota builds on here that will point out pitfalls before you run into them. The obvious things are often the easiest, the engine mounts, the hydraulic clutch setup. Other things turn into real headaches, like getting steering clearance organised, finding an LSD diff and wiring an ECU into a basic carbed car. If you are also going to upgrade the suspension, brakes etc I'd suggest you do that first and maybe swap the 3K for something hotter like a 4K or 5K using the usual cam/carbs/exhaust. That is a lot more achieveable if you're starting out in the engine conversion game, allows you to keep the KE20 on the road while you prepare a faster motor, and you can sell it later when you're prepared for the twincam conversion. I like the Miata idea, RWD, 6-speed g'box, good motor, lots of research and aftermarket parts sorted out. Good luck!

Noo... the hole is tapered isn't it, to fit a balljoint. We are talking about the tie-rod end here aren't we?? Same for the steering arm onto LCA hole too. Then your Corolla steering arm probably won't fit the Celica strut, I know a KE70 steering arm won't fit an RA40 Celica strut the holes are too far apart. ..and using the RA40 Celica hub and brakes you can't fit 13" wheels on any more. So there are a few problems that pop up. Can you cut the leaf spring mounts off an old diff?? If not just copy them, a flat plate with triangle sides to hold the plate off the diff as it needs a hole in it to locate the spring pack bolt doesn't it?? I had to change the KE70 rear driveshaft U-joint & flange to put an RA60 diff into a KE70. Shortened the driveshaft 8mm too and balanced it, so it all got quite expensive. I'm sure you'll work it out!!

Ugly! Just butt-ugly! look at that front... Nice mechanicals though!

Chase the 3Y motors in the Great Wall utes, the early ones. They're only a couple of bucks each

Make sure you get a one-piece gasket for the manifold, and check that the holes are clean for the bolts. The stock setup always seems to let go. Have a look through "The Girls KE70' in my sig, its all simple stuff that helps keep them running smoothly.

Ah well... A few days and lots of rattle cans.. Once the doors were done & there was a little paint left I couldn't stop! then bought another couple of cans, then another.. So now- Then the big project starts.. both blue and gold KE70s in bits, pieces being swapped all around at The Woolshed aaannd...

That's a nice colour- I hope you cleaned the overspray off the tail light! Looks good with white rims. Will the R31 diff need shortening, or can it carry the stock rims OK? I assume the alloys you have on are 14x6, it will be interesting to see how they fit.

That 177 shold be 172. Looks good on a graph anyway... My first experiences with a 4AGE will happen during this coming week. I hope I don't have to open it up before it runs OK, but once being used as a daily I'm sure it will become a test bed.

If you want a wiring diagram PM me an email address & I can mail you one. If I post it here it will get automatically resized smaller.

yep- there go the tyres! How does it drive? Turn in sharply?

It sounds like a lot of hours with a multimeter in your hands. You should be able to measure the resistance from any bit of metal back to battery negative at under 3ohm. So any earthing part of a light circuit should show that. Really , it means tracing the circuit for any system not working length by length until you find the problem. The headlights are funny, they supply power to both bulb filaments at once and earths one of them via the steering column switch. Take the first opportunity to replace the system by a relay setup that supplies power to each filament and earths it at the bulb. Much better adn brighter.

Any spraypainter will have diffeent incentives to you. They will want to get it done as fast as possible to a minimum acceptable standard to maximise their income. You will want to get it done to a maximum quality standard for as little as possible. As Mechanical Sympathy said, its all in the prep, so inspect the paint caefully and see if it has any shrinkage cracks in it, or stress cracking, or tiny bubbles or... A painter will just take it back to a good enough coat of paint and spray over the top of that. It might be that the coat on there is in good enough condition to rub back and undercoat, or it might be that it is a crappy respray already and that paint will need to be sanded right off. Ask a few painters what they think of it & get them to point out problems. The best way is for you to prepare it and them to spray it, but that is also the hardest and most soul-destroying endless job in the world! I stripped and sanded 3/4 of The Girl's KE70 and had a spray shop paint it. Cost me $800 and it looks superb in two-pack paint. If i'd been richer and less of a clown I wouldv've done the whole car, as one side looks faded now.

Nice one! Ask him endless questions & learn as much as you can from him, its not hard and once you pick it up you're set for life! There are electronic conversions for the ignition system that will put out more than triple the voltage so they burn the spark plugs clean. You can buy an electronic dizzy that just drops in, or the insides are changed to electronic parts.

We're putting a J160 Altezza box behind a 4AGE. Niteparts in NZ make a 14mm thick alloy adapter plate, so you have to machine 14mm off the back of the bellhousing. It was about $700 to buy. LEEN do it in a more complicated way and their kit is $3000. The bell housing looks like it fits in a KE70 tunnel, but the gearchange mechanism is higher so the top of the transmission tunnel needs to be raised where the gear lever goes in. The ratios are amazing! 4th 5th and 6th are very close so they suit the revvy nature of the 4AGE..

Well, I think ours is a positive scrub radius on stock rims Dave, and the FWD is a zero. It will make the steering heavier, which is OK as a KE70 is really really light. You can see the change in the third photo from the top, the red & green lines. I think FWD moved to zero to help with the torque steer and riding over bumps. Power steering gives FWD easy steering, but it always feels 'dead' and very smooth to me. Without using FWD rims that don't have dish we would get negative offset and make the steering heavier again.

The bronzey colour is good! Put yellow tape stripes along it where the red ones are now!

Nah- these moors are dead simple! If you're ever going to learn about motors this is the time. Do you own a multimeter? A set of feeler gauges? An air compressor? So, what makes you think there is something amiss with the dizzy?? Look up how they work, and then take the points out. Open them in your hand and see if the two mating faces are reasonably flat or if one is burned hollow and the other has a volcano on it. If they are burned, replace them and get a new condensor also. Reassemble them, and with the points rubbing block on the tip of a dizzy lobe set the gap to 13thou. Put a tiny spot of grease on the dizzy shaft cam so it ends up on the inside of the points rubbing block to keep it lubricated as it turns. Carefully make sure they don't earth out the wire from the coil when the points are open, and a $10 multimeter is good for that. When they close they short out the coil and cause the spark, and then they open and stop the flow of power through the coil. The plate in the dizzy that they are mounted on should turn if you just suck on the vac advance diaphram hose. That's how the vacuum signal from the throttle influences the ignition timing. If the dizzy is lubricated it should all be good, but if it is dry and rusty in there you will have to sort it out. Let us know what its like.. Once you have the gap set, the only other adjustment is the timing that it fires the spark plugs. The easiest is to turn the motor until the pulley mark shows 10degrees before top dead centre. The loosen the dizzy clamp nut slightly and turn on the ignition. If yuo turn the dizzy to close the points, then turn it bck again to open them, you should hear a 'crack' and see a spark. That is when it fires the spark plug, so do it a few times adn get it just sparking at 10deg. Do up the dizzy clamp bolt again. Over time and Km the rubbing block wears away, changing the ignition timing and the 'dwell', the time within the turning cycle that the points stay closed. This affects how strong the spark is, so you get misfires. Pop the plugs out and set the gaps to 25 to 30thou. Line up all 4 and take a photo of the tips and post it up. Don't worry about the smoke when you start it up, oil always goes down the plug holes when you do this, an abysmal part of the design. There you have just tuned the ignition system! ----------------- The carby is not hard. All this shit is on the 'net, probably lots on Youtube. If you just take it to a random garage it will cost hundreds for the carb and maybe only one hundy for the dizzy. New carb.. well a Weber DCOE and manifold will set you back a grand... Doing it yourself will save you thousands of dollars over the years you own the car. If you're lucky there is a Rollaclub member living near enough to give you a hand. Here- https://www.google.com.au/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=2cL2VcP7KM7u8wf1nYHwCg&gws_rd=ssl#q=how+to+replace+points+in+a+distributor piles of vids on this page alone. This is a good start- http://www.dorikaze.net/showthread.php?37442-How-to-rebuilt-Aisin-Carb-2T-3T-3A-4A have fun!

Sounds like a carb problem- Maybe dirt has got stuck in a jet & is making it lean. Looks like you're going to start by learning about carbs & all those horrible hoses that are on the stock system. Check out all the little vac hoses and look for any splits. Replace any damaged ones or block them all up with a 10mm length of a 4inch nail, except the vac advance one to the dizzy and the one to the charcoal canister. You should look inside the carb and take out the jets. Hose them out with petrol from a syringe & then hose petrol through the drillings that the jets lead to. I have that problem with my Datsun when the fuel dries out and have had to do it a couple of times over the years. Run a 14 spanner over the bolts holding the manifolds onto the head, just in case they are loose. The stock auto is a horrible piece of shit to own. I changed ours completely when my daughter & I bought it, and I'm about to do the same to the second one I've got. It hates to start, dies all the time until really warm and is so slow I get mum's with strollers walking past me going up hills... It idles in the garage and dies when I put it in reverse to go up the driveway. You will learn left-foot braking to keep the power on when trying to get moving! The Girl's KE70 is quite a different beast, although the mods have been simple and cheap. Take a look through the thread in my sig. -------- Also- take a look down the carb throat before you start it and open the throttle quickly. You should see a squirt of petrol go down the throat from the accelerator pump jet. If you don't, that is your problem.

...and that's about it. It would take a welded LCA to get the FWD balljoint in the right place, but it would need an engineering cert for the increase in track anyway. It seems like most everything else is a close fit, and you'd need a much wider diff to match!! So instead of chopping down wide diffs, just match them with FWD struts! Super-wide-track KE70 with vented discs, 15" wheels, large-diameter shocks and the more you lower it the better the LCA looks!

The steering arms are the same length- The FWD tie-rod end screws onto the KE70 rack end- and the LCA balljoints can swap nuts. Here's the overall picture of the pair. I should've put a 30mm block under the FWD as it has a flat top, and the KE70 strut has that round extension of the rubber that sits up through the turret. So the FWD is a tad lower on the ground. So the strut length to hub is the same, and the steering arms are also in the same plane.

Back down Great Western this morning! A Yaris that had fallen on its side came in, but apart from checking it also had ventilated discs I couldn't get to it. Mabe some components are smaller than the Corolla. Anyway- I dropped the FWD strut down to its proper position adn took this shot of where the LCA fits. The LCA in the FWD is much longer.. 325mm plus the balljoint that bolts on, another 40mm The RWD stock one is 290mm Then rims... damm FWDs have 100pcd studs, so its stock 15" rims to check. and there is plenty of caliper clearance so maybe 100pcd 14" rims will fit OK.

You explained it perfectly... Someone will be able to do it, but it is tricky both in aligning the pieces correctly and also in getting the same metal in the welding rod. It will look great when you're finished, but so much rust to cut ot!!

Fair enough- because mine doesn't come on I"m always worrying about whether the sensor has packed up or the relay broken.. Do you reckon you'll run twin sensors & relays, one to each fan for when something breaks?? There's nothing more exciting than sitting in a queue of traffic at the lights wondering "will the fan come on?" "I'm sure it should be on by now.." What if it blows a head gasket just sitting here..."