altezzaclub

You can make a tool to clean the ports in one minute. All you need is a length of steel rod about 5mm diameter, maybe 10mm long. Round one end and cut it down its length with a hacksaw for about 40mm. You put it in a drill and slot a length of sandpaper into it, and the spinning sandpaper will polish those ports up fine. or for a few bucks you can buy a sandpaper flapper wheel. Looks good with those wheels!

Haha! cute!

Hire one? Make up a timber crane, 4X2's will do but 43 would be better, 3 of them in a pyramid that fits over the engine bay with 3 horizontals holding the bottom of the legs in place. Stripping the motor in place and lifting the block out with mates is fine, but its nicer to put a complete motor back in. Here's ideas- https://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1144&bih=858&q=wooden+engine+crane&oq=wooden+engine+crane&gs_l=img.12...1276.4682.0.6660.19.12.0.2.2.1.600.2551.2-1j4j1j1.7.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.64.img..13.6.1946.WIPcpBkT1Wc

Mudwasps! grrrr..!!!

You'll only know what you strip it down anyway. Head off will show you the wear in the bore and the valve wear. Sump and bearing caps off will show you how bad the bottom end is. maybe it just needs a valve grind maybe it just needs a hone & new rings maybe it just needs a rebore with new pistons & rings maybe it needs a head job, a rebore, a crank grind & new bearings... ah no, long block time! So make sure it is a compresion problem then strip it & chase quotes for what it needs. New is always better.

It had to be like that- I wonder why they made two holes? So definately not a cam timing problem.

That's what I expected. So if the paint marks are both vertical then you shoulld have the inlet pin up and exhaust pin down, like the diagram. Surely your exhaust pin can't be up as it looks like in your photo??? There must be two pin holes in the cam gears & the exhaust pin must be in the bottom hole in your photo. It wouldn't have ever run if the cam was 180deg out. I reckon its in the compression... That is, you have actually seen a spark plug sparking haven't you? If they fire and they're wet then it must be lack of compression.

Ah, Loktite, a wonderful product!! You must try it sometime! Actually, I assume the last guy who put it together didn't own a torque wrench. or if it WAS torqued, there is some other serious problem in there!

Fascinating! So, is the cambelt mark for the aligning actually stamped into the rim of the gear at the factory?? Not just a spot of white paint? ..and if the pins are opposite on inlet and exhaust then the only way to get it like you have it is to be using two inlet cam gears.. or have the white mark on the rim in some random spot. Take the cam cover off and look at the cam lobes. Work out if they are in the correct positions.

They just never made any good ones for the Mk 1. The MK 2 looks great with some of those kits. The squarish flares from the Datsun Stanza rally cars to suit the wedge look or round ones with flat sides like the MK2 Escort raly cars?

Tow it! If it won't fire up in 2nd gear when towed it is seriously dead. If it starts and revs but has no power its probably a strip-down job to chase compression and head gasket. See if you can hear if it is one cyl that is dead when you let the clutch out while its running. If you can get it going give it a hard time then turn it off without idling & whip the plugs straight out. Look for a different coloured plug. The leakdown test would be good, although you will catch up with that information when you pull the motor down- head gasket, burnt valve or rings...

Widebody kit! http://www.mr2oc.com...t=368417&page=2 http://www.mr2oc.com...hlight=widebody http://www.mr2oc.com...ad.php?t=438949 http://forums.bcmr2.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13237

I've got this set lying around if you want something more suitable for the period. They're 14x6 & fit Corollas, typical of the 70s and 80s rally cars. The freight from Aussie may be a killer though.

Too lean..?? Accelerating means the accelerator pump hoses in fuel and covers the lean spot.

yup- look down the carb throat and flick the throttle wide open. You should see a jet of fuel squirt down the throat. Then see when it starts squirting after you open the throttle. If its not immediate then its carb strip time. It could also be your dizzy not retarding and advancing correctly. Grab a timing light and make sure it advances and retards up to 2500rpm and back, and if it has a vac diaphram on try it with that disconnected as well. Inlet leaks also can do this, so check carefully for any splits in vacuum tubes and if you suck on the vac advance tube it shouldn't let air through continuously. A common one is the inlet gaskets, so check the nuts and bolts holding the manifold on. The inlet leaks will also give you a fast idle.

Friends had their Soarer declared dead as the ECU died, so he pulled it apart and saw burn marks on a capacitor. Paid a local geek $50 to replace all the capacitors and its as good as new!

They are pretty crappy compression figures... You'll hav eto do something about it soon. Tow-start it, that is the final test. I've had cars that would never start, or maybe cough but never run on a starter motor but fired up and ran fine when towed. Storing cars for a long time can be a problem. Once you've got it running do another compression test. Maybe valves are stuck open a tad, or leaky but OK when running. The plugs shouldn't be wet and smelling of petrol if the spark is good.

What is the tank situation in the KE20?? Outlet from the bottom? Tank sits in the boot? The killer with the KE70 is having the outlet in the top, otherwise an underfloor surge tank with no lift pump is ideal. They don't need to be those stupid one-litre things, just work out how much fuel the motor will burn around the longest corner that will cause surge and make a surge tank big enough to cover that. I'd expect a couple of hundred ml would do it, enough to run the motor for 15seconds.

Have you done this sort of conversion before? Just wondering at what sort of level you're looking for advice... The list looks OK, but its no small job.

Isn't that why people go drifting, to learn how to do it so they can do this?? I wonder if you can hire old cars like that in Norway...would make a great holiday!!

If you have enough length, hit the choke cable with your welder just behind the frayed part and melt the wires together so they never fray again.

Well, luckily the KE70 was left in the garage when The Girl went to Canberra to catch up with friends. She took the N14 Pulsar SSS that actually belongs to her brother but gets used as a run-around. When she was going straight in the left-hand lane of a traffic island the giant 4X4 in the right lane changed his mind and went to turn left, not seeing The Raspberry beside him he drove his bullbars into it along the doors! The Girl did the right thing and instantly burst into tears while taking photos of everything, and now we have a Pulsar to fix before we send the bill off. I figure if we paid the panelshop to do the job it would write the car off, so we grabbed a pair of doors off the wrecker. Sadly the red SSS he has there didn't have any doors on that side, so we got base-model ones. You can see how much the B pillar was pushed in by the gap between them here- Like this it went to the panelshop so they could pull the pillar out, and it came back like this- as good as any other N14 on the road. So now we have to strip the white doors in and out & sand them, rattle-can them red then clear, and fit the electric mirror & central locking from the SSS. Its sort of tempting to spray the other pair of doors white, & the bonnet/rear hatch also so we can drive a red 'n white raspberries and cream! Its a nice run-around and I was just talking to The Girl about a KE70 fitted with that SR20 in case the Raspberry was written off only a week before! Its just too handy to write off at the moment, it hauls wood & wheelbarrows and 20L pails of horse poo. I reckon it will cost under $600 plus some labour.

That is the killer for a lot of projects, especially painting cars. You can assemble the bits of trim and have the car quite original inside and outside, but to pay a painter $2500 to paint your $1500 Ke70 means money you will struggle to get back. The N14 Pulsar SSS we have as a run-around got driven into recently. A pair of doors was $150, pulling the B-pillar out was $330 but painting it at the panelshop would be more than twice those prices. Mechanically its fine, if a bit rattley in the body, but as the rest of the red paint is so faded it will be a rattle-can job on the doors That car is worth the same as any KE70, so while it would look like new with a couple of thousand spent on a respray, its money we would never recover.

Don't worry about the driveshaft, its one of the simpler issues. You will end up with a whatever gearbox (T50?) and a whatever diff (T-series?) and all you need are suitable ends and the distance between them. The rest is just money. Over here the 4AGE uses the T50, so that is the front. The diff could be T-series or Borgwarner, and they have different flanges. We're fitting a J160 6-speed onto the 4AGE, so we will have an Altezza front and a T-series rear on the driveshaft.

I reckon between $2000 & $2500. Average ones are under $1000, low Km under $2k and if it was really nice you might squeeze a few hundred more. There are still plenty owned by little ol' ladies that have low Km and no rust in the inland towns. Steve bought two great ones a year back and I think the pair cost $2K, but the biggest problem is a reluctance of the coasters to cross the Great Divide when buying cars. I paid $900 for my gold 1983 XX flatfront from a lady in Gulgong after I left a note on it when driving through one day. Not immaculate, it has little dents in panels and 160,000km, but its a good car for the price.