JDM55

so can't realy do anything else on the alternator till the parts are dry, going to send them all off to an auto elec to put new bearings and new bushes in it and get it running like new again, also they can assemble it for me,so till then, back to the engine,didnt get much time tonight to get alot done , work is chaos at the moment,but started a few small things... i managed to remove the front pulley,by using a 3 pronged puller, and heres the front pulley, abit rusty and crusty,but ill soon sort that out, again to my surprise behind the pulley where you couldnt see what was going on, was actualy very clean,no sign of leaks from the front seal, pretty much my idea here is to take off most of what i can get off and clean it , paint it ,recondition it ,what ever, just give everything a general tidy up, also I'm learning alot about the engine as i go so thats always a good thing too, so next thing i looked at was the plenum chamber thing,is that how you spell it?probably noticed already my a1 spelling hahaha , it was a little fiddley to get off and ended up having to remove the heater hosing and pipe work behind it to allow it to come free,dam japs and there small hands, have no idea how they get to some of those hose clamps if it starts leaking , and here it is off finally after working out how to navigate it off the engine,some thing i noticed straight away was how clean it was inside,was realy expecting to see alot of oily crap,as ive seen in other engines on the net, but strange enough it was very clean just a few little bits if oil ,

good spotting there mate ,yeah its a recent holden clolour,called voodoo,but ive thrown in a few extra spices to the mix :P

yeah i did evan, 4 coats of base coat, with 2 coats ppg deltron 2 pak clear, sure does looks nice and bright ,which is how i like my colours :lol:

nice! never new that one , would you need to calibrate the speedo at all with that set up? i got an rb20 gearbox not sr but i think the cable input thing are the same ,

if this happened ,would there be a freight option in there? ie buyers from other states hunting the very rare parts? i know in melbourne theres becoming a shortage of the oldies.... if not i still say do it I'm sure alot of the boys would benefit from something like this, how big is the back yard????

depends what the sr is put in ............. :huh:

pretty much decided on my colour today was forced into it as i needed these alt parts painted, so here it is,or at least something very close to this .....

yes you do sort of ,well you can't use the corolla one its a cable driven speedo ,where as the 180sx had a digial/electric speedo, I'm using a 180sx dash cluster, hopefully i can figure out how to wire in the speedo too ,lol theres a lot of wires coning of that thing, may do a little write up on it a bit further down the track, i think most people just go for autometer gauges and that, i wanted more a factory look ,so going to try the 180 dash......

so hopefully all that burble was of some interest to someone ,and learnt alittle about polishing, by no means was i say ing that is the only way to do it ,there are many ways ,that is just the process i use,since i know it works well for what i want, looks heaps better than rusty coroded crust covered in dirt any way you think????????????????????? :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock:

now just a quick reminder of what i started with and the state of it, to help compare, after the detail polishing the main big areas were polished with the big wheel,then cleaned up , rinsed in hot water,gets rid of the polish still stuck in gaps,an old tooth brush is useful to dislodge stuborn polish too( just don't go using it on your teeth afterwards) :blinks: oh yes she was a sexy beast of a thing,lol and then final products of the work done:::

there the tools you realy need to make this work properly,not terribley exspensive, the little buffs cost me 18 dollars the mop buff cost me about 21 dollars and the cutters were free from work the dremel was about 65 off ebay and the hand drill about 50 or 60 in bunnings so if you intend to do a fair bit of this sort of thing ,then thats your ruff start costs i guess, any way back to the goods,sanding done and on with the fun part, best to wear goggles or some sort of eye protection when doing this as the cutters can fly every where!, rubber gloves are recomended to,things get a bit messy and alot of black sludge is produced, some overalls or some kind of suit to protect your clothing can help to if you don't want to get covered in sludgey stuff, but most importantly is the eye protecting,if you can't see then you can't apreciate the hard hours of sanding and see the gleaming master piece yourve created hahahah :dance: so back to the alt :: i use a little bit of water in a spray bottle to get the polish to spread a bit,also keeps the heat down on the area your polishing,as for the best way to do this, ive found a touch of water on first,add a bit of compound/polish of your choice( don't need very much at all) then start by spreading the compound around the area you want to polish, going from there you can turn up the speed on your dremel and start to get a bit of a shine hapening, once the area has a decent shine, you can add a tiny bit more compound ,and speed the dremel up further to get a final shine, this is realy where you see the hard sanding pay off,or on the other hand where you see how slack you were,lol these ones i was using the dremel and a small tiped buff pad from the pack shown earlyier, and just going up and down the slots and holes,and some of the hard areas first, doesnt look like it from the terrible pictures,of my awesum phone camera, but the shine is almost instant,when you get the machine going... can see a little better in this one the top right hand slots starting to get shiny virginey :rocknroll:

after the hole sanding process ,starting at 80# working all the way thru up to at least 1000# ive also found if you can stretch it to 1500# you can get a bit more shine out of it, when you get to that stage ,it will almost look polished as it is! ,but all that sanding is realy just the prep work for the actual polishing , that is done in 2 stages, first stage is the detail stage,polishing the very small holes ridges,bumps,tight to get places, second stage is the over all stage ,doing the large areas that are easy ,and giving the item an over all shine, you could do it by hand if you didint have the tools ,but at the very least you should try to use a electic hand drill,actualy my weapon of choice, my ryobi 750 watt electric drill works very well, for the detail work you could use the hand drill iff desperate but its large and harder to use when trying to get those small areas, best option is a dremel,or an air drill or die grinder type tool, you can get a cheap rip off of the dremel on ebay for a bout 50 bucks from memory ,usualy comes with a hole bunch of polishing wheels and buff pads, very handy ,or if you want to do alot of detail polishing then definatley need one of these kits:: also the main polishing on the drill can be done using a buffing pad or mop ,also can find these at ebay but there a little pricey there, best to go to bunnings warehouse,in the tool section they have buff mops for between 15- how ever much you want to spend, your also going to need some sort of polish,theres autosol ,and many metal polishes out there,personaly i think these are best for bringing the shine back up on an item that has been polished before,and may have lost its shine from sitting a while, best option here is some cutters or compounds of a corse nature, you want to cutt the surface to bring up the shine,same theroy as a cut and polish on your paint, so auto cutters /polish works surprisingly well here also, this is my fav for this job, 3m perfect cut 3 ,its a white paste that feels rather gritty but it works extremly well on freshly sanded alloy,or tho a little pricey to get in the store,general compounds and cutting polishes would work rather the same....

this is what i was meaning when i was talking about the scotch brite, cut it up into disks and attach a couple to a bolt and create a mop sort of thing to go on the drill,works realy well for tight areas,,,

here ive moved to the vice ,makes life a little easyer when sanding for long periods, this is at about 180#/240# stage

awww yeah very helpful there mate ,thanks definatley look into those ,yeah probably better to replace them i think too, probably would get away with them but who knows if there still as strong as they once were,and yeah fly wheel chopping my legs off isnt my idea of a rip roaring good time :hmm:

so a basic run down of the grades for those who don't know would go something like this:: 80# very ruff and good for removing mold lines with out doing to much damage 120# 180# also a good starting grade for things that are say maybe flat with out mold lines or grain 240# 320# 500# 600 wet, :::::: this is where you would introduce using water with the sanding ,by this stage scratches are getting very fine and you want to keep the item very clean while sanding , even a small piece of metal or grit sliding over the surface of what your been sanding can leave a nasty scratch causing you to have to back up thru the grades in that area to remove that scratch, so heaps of water and clean sand paper are important here, 800# wet 1000# wet 1200# wet 1500# wet thats the basic run down if you wanted to do a realy nice job and take the time to sand thru all the grades, ive also found a litle trick for cheating ,that is around the 600-800 grade mark you could introduce red scotch brite, which is much more flexable than sand paper and makes getting into hard shapes alot easyer, i also developed that trick one step further and cut scotch brite up into disks and then would bolt 3 disks together and stick them on a drill, this way i could mow down that section alot quicker and get into alot more areas that the sand paper would other wise struggle to reach,,,,

you can see here how the rusty corosion is just about all gone and your left with raw alloy to work on, now check this shell half out,a lot more complicated than the front one,but again using the same process, ie air sander or electric first(realy help) then going over by hand ,getting the hard parts,maybe using a dremel for the realy small gaps can help too, ahh love the look of raw alloy , :happy:

so the basic process with polishing (this is how i do it any way) goes a little like this:::: you would start off with a fairly ruff grade of sand paper,now the first grade can vary depending on what it is your sanding and the condition of the item and if its resonably smooth or realy ruff,ie if its reasonably smooth with out much grain you mite use say 320# or if its realy realy corse and grainly you mite start with say 60# it all depends on what it is your polishing and what sort of overall look you want, so you got your starting gritt,just for agument sake I'm going to use 80# on this alternator to start with, 80# is corse enough to cut down thru the molding marks and ridges left from when it was produced in the factory, you can leave these but if you want a realy good over all look its best to knock them back the same as the rest and get it realy smooth, from there,you just work your way thru the grades ,if you want to do it unbelieveable ,then you would do every grade, if you want a quick job you can skip 2 grades in between , when you sand with each grade of paper you want to be realy consistant, and even,by this i mean ,say you start with 80 # then move on to 120# ,you would do the same amount of sanding with the 120 that you did with the 80,already can see this is a very slow process doing it this way, but ive done it a few times on various things and it realy does work well, you want to get out all the sanding marks of the 80 with the 120 before you move on to the next gritt, that part is very important if you want it to look like chrome,then from there move to the next grit,lets say 180# same again here, sand the whole thing exactly the same if not more than you did with the 120 gritt,this way your always moving up the grades and removing all the previous grades scratches, make sence???????? ok will I'm not the best at explaining things so i let the pics show what i mean,, so here ive striped apart the alt,got all the parts out and I'm left with 2 shells ,thats the parts I'm going to polish,the front housing and the rear housing , so starting with 80# dry sand paper on a air sander ,i hit the hole thing the best that i could, (keeping in mind the shape and little gaps on this alt ,most likely wont turn out as good as say a 4k alt that has very solid sides and not so many holes and fiddley bits )) non the less, sanded the hole thing with 80 and then went over the hole thing by hand with 80 again to get the hard areas, you can use things like a drill bit with sand paper rolled around it or a nail or things like that to slide into holes , and hard to reach areas, if your pimp then you may have several dremel fittings with the appropriate grades of paper to help with these hard areas, the key being to complete the 80 before moving on to the next grade and not being a slack ass, thats the hard bit :no:

going to be jumping around a little bit with this hole section , thought id do a little bit of a guide on polishing stuff, most of you probably know how to polish and its not that hard realy if you have a fair bit of time on your hands ,you can do a very good job, in my case time is limited,and polishing stuff can take up a great deal, if i was building a show car then by all means would definatley spend at least an extra month or 2 on extra detailing ,but I'm building this as a daily to be driven car,so no need to get to rediculous with it,that being said, with a little elbow grease can turn rusty parts,specialy anything alloy,into a shiney master piece, :y: you can do metal as well but its not as good as alloy, pretty much a poor mans chrome haha so heres the alternator that i just pulled of the engine,have a good look at it, sorry bout the quailty of pics my crap as camera phone is all i have at the moment, see all that yuky corosion and rusty crusty crud,disgusting haha actualy when i got it off some how it was full of dirt??? must have been learning over in the junk yard or something , don't worry i got rid of the dirt :P

fly wheel off........... and again the kick your face in rattle gun saves the day with the removal of the front pulley bolt, :dance: then going back thru the wierd ass way of hanging the motor to the stand ,shes back on ,minus engine mount brackets, and fly wheel. job well done

pm sent mate cheers

any ways, i after a little thought on the advice from you guys,decided that it was in my best interest to remove the fly wheel and see if it could be machined to save it, very surprised actualy how easy this was!!! i had read a few threads on other forums about crazy ways to lock the fly wheel to stop it turning while cranking on the bolts, so was a little nurvous about running into dramas with the bolts them selfs, but to my surprise the rattle gun kicked ass yet again! stoked, probably the easyest thing ive done on this build so far, :dance: these were the 8 bolts in question,holding the fly wheel on.read horror stories of the heads being rounded,due to how hard they were to remove...... lucky the rattle gun kicked some ass and is now my new fav tool :laff: had a real good look at the bolts, some looked perfectly fine ,a few of them looked almost a little warped? strange, i think if i can find a cheap enuff set i will replace them, but I'm not paying 80 dollars plus shipping for factory bolts thats just mental! this is what it looked like behind the fly wheel, not to bad realy , was expecting to see alot of gunky leaky oily stuff, but there was none,just some dryed up dirt and crusty bits.... gave it a bit of a quick scubb to get a better look, everything looks fine behind there. question should i change this seal any way to be on the safe side or better not to disturb it at all?????????????

yeah i know man dear as aye but if it was going to help drasticly id seriously consider them,that is, if there were to actualy fit with my wheels, i think the ruff size of the spring is 3inches in diameter, i have less than 5 mm between the strut and the wheel ,shes tight like a tiger in there

so xt130 ,ke70 and ke55 struts are all the same basicly what your saying??? hmmm well i know for a fact my 55 struts didnt have the hell camber issue i have now with the xt130 struts in there, strange buisness, shes a tuffy .... my biggest problem i have is camber, the brake up grade itself is ok , not huge i would like to go the hilux option,just for some beafy stopping power, i looked at getting camber kits and coil overs probably would just about set the camber right,how ever i run into another issue and that is my wheels are far to close to the xt130 struts to allow the fitment of a coil overset, thus can't use camber adjusters, could use spacers on the wheels , but there already sitting out further than i want and the fact i need this car engineered means no spacers allowed, i guess i could change the wheels ,then i could have the big brakes ,the xt130 struts,the coil overs , and the adjustable camber kits, but i like my wheels and it would be another large exspence i most definatley don't need right now, more research more time should be able to work something out!!!!!!!

ive been told the ae86 is a good option when it comes to the hole camber issue, the problem there is getting a set! very hard to come by and no doubt cost you if you find some, i think by the looks of the hole thing this is an issue that will continue to be debated till the end of time , i guess in the end its what works for your set up that matters,just wish there was some more genuine info to go off rather than try this try that, been there and it cost me a hell of alot of cash , just want a decent up grade in braking with out the camber issues , will continue to research i guess