altezzaclub

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.

They're lying in the grass at the Woolshed at Walcha... (some assembly may be required !) Decide how far you want to drive to get one & PM Insanity. We must have 6 or 7 up there we will never use.

You can calculate the current spring rate if you can see the top and bottom of it. That's because you need to count the 'active' coils, those that are not touching anything. So find out where the first coil lifts off the seated one and count downwards until you get to where the bottom one sits on the strut base. It could be 5 and three quarter active coils, or a number like that. Then measure the total spring diameter and also the wire diameter. Plug it into here- http://www.pontiacracing.net/js_coil_spring_rate.htm Alternatively you could take a spring off and compress it on the bathroom scales. Have a second person measure the length you start at (just lean on it a few Kg), then put your weight on it while they measure the compressed length and the number of Kg. You could try compressing it one inch, but its fiddly doing that.

Absolutely! The ask price is a dream... I am astounded at some Rolla prices on here too, and you only get an idea of reality from the way the price drops over the weeks.

I'd expect so- Check all the bulbs in the indicators, side lights and brake lights. Look for broken wires, corroded wires and bulbs, and twin-filament bulbs put in backwards. Then pull the steering wheel & indicator stalk off and solve the sticky indicator problem. I don't think it will be related to the brake light problem. Here's the KE70 circuit, it must be similar.

Without checking it.. stroke volume is 3.14x41x41x77=369.5 piston sticks up 3.14x41.41.0.3=1.6 gasket is 3.14x41x41x1.3=6.86 Let X be the head volume. So the BDC volume is 369.5+6.86+X-1.6-3.2 which is 371.56 + X The TDC volume is X +6.86 -1.6-3.2 which is X + 2.06 For an 11.3 to one CR BDC volume = 11.3(TDC volume) 371.56 + X = 11.3(X + 2.06) 371.56 + X = 11.3X + 23.28 371.56-23.28 = 11.3X - X 348.28 = 10.3X so X = 34.83 ..and can I have 25minutes of my life back please!

Fair enough. I pin the extractors to the head so they go on exactly each time, and I glue the gasket onto the head in a couple of spots to hold it in place.

ooohh shiny! You do bring them up nicely! Isn't there more to take out of the exhaust port to match the gasket? or doesn't that add enough flow to worry about?

We will wait with anticipation.....

Great lights and no styling there! We had them on Datsun 1600 rally cars...

That's no good! You borrowing a corner of some local garage and ripping it apart yourself? Did it back in the 70s when I first came to Aussie, the Beetle blew up on a trip from Canberra to Darwin....

Valve stuck open? (or closed) Do a compression check before getting too carried away. If the dud cylinder has compression it will be fuel or spark. See if the injector will squirt fuel into a cup. Might be the dizzy cap, a crack by that cylinder lead, but there's not much else if you've done plugs and leads.

Well done! So... more complicated job next time! What about a hot cam being fitted...

Its delicate! The solder lets go at the slightest force, so its a slow careful job really. Take the whole thing out and check it all, where those pipes join the heater core and the core itself, and pressure test it before you put it back in.

The speedo cable on the side of the gearbox just screws on. Grab a rag and undo it by hand, or a pair of pliers if its stuck. The clutch cable needs the circlips taking off at top and bottom to release the outer sheath, then take the hook off the clutch pedal and pull the whole cable out of the bottom drilling on the bell housing.

Either drain the gearbox or leave the driveshaft in the back of it! Otherwise oil will appear all over the floor! The cable is removed from the top and out through the bottom, not what you would expect, and must be taken out before the gearbox comes out. Hang it up and drop engine oil into it until it drips out the bottom. You'll have to line the clutch plate up with the spigot bearing in the crankshaft exactly, so the gearbox input shaft can go through the clutch plate and into the bearing. I can do it by eye, or you can buy a plastic clutch aligning tool. If you are a couple of mm out you will struggle forever to try and get the gearbox back in. Otherwise they are simple and strightforward.

Its surprising you can find anything any where near small enough in the USA.... not known for their small cars!

If you're going to motorsport the kit car, don't forget to look up Billzilla's page on how to turn the K50 gearbox into a close-ratio. It will be a challenge doing it in Thailand!

That seems right- Take a look at the rocker adjustment screws and see what 1.5mm would do to them. Are the rockers about horizontal when the valve is closed, that is, paralell to the block deck as the motor is slanted. or even pointing slightly upwards towards the valves would be better??.... skimming the head and valve stem length also affects all of this, and what you don't want is the rocker wiping across the edge of the valve stem or the rocker face.. Ideally I think they should start facing slightly upwards and go through the 'horizontal' to face downwards with the valve open. It will be interesting to see if you stick with 16thou tappet gap. Mine were noisy at that & I closed them back to stock.

blah blah blah.... You KNOW the big thing is in the handling from the new position of the motor!! ...I had a Lotus Europa in my youth.... Don't get runover by a truck. Those low cars are hard to see apparently.

I've read a couple of my daughter's Potter books & saw the first film.... but really, I find Terry Pratchett much much better. "Animal Farm" and "1984" should be required reading at school... They are great for pointing out what is behind our society.