JDM55

thanks man, yeah i didnt think i would either tho vic laws are so strict and since a lot of law changes recently ,aimed at us guys,who want do stuff like this to older cars,just going to get harder and harder,ill be lucky if this finally gets a tick,but its gettng there slowly,glad you liked the read,good luck with your car too.

the problem with the wheels is ive got them on xt130 struts at the moment and tyre to strut clearance is very close like 15 mm or so,so once i get a spring on there with large nuts they hit for sure, by how much is a bit up in the air atm , havnt fully sat down to work it all out yet, i think the off set of the wheels are going to cause the problem , i was going to use the xt130 strut and run the big brakes ,ive got all the parts there to do it, so it seems like a waste not to use them ,its like nearly 2 grand worth of gear just for these struts,ill take a few pics tomorrow and throw them up here, maybe theres a way out of it ,spacers welded to the hub then grinded flush ,or get alloy spacer welded to the rim and clean them up and paint them you wouldnt even be able to tell, but spacers also casue the rim to be pushed out maybe past the guard edge,tho the guards were rolled and pumped out slightly ,i may just get away with it ,

awww yeah thats good as,yeah he deffinatley seems to be on the professional side,takes things fairly serious but will listen to what your thoughts are and maybe even open to a bit of perswading, the reason he said i can't have a pod filter,even if it was in a box was becasue i have an intercooler , and your only allowed one or the other, not realy a biggy i just gota make something that dosent look like ass and does the job and keep him happy lol, but it was good to finally get a bit of a step ahead,at least he didnt tell me to redo this and that , so was a good visit,and given me a bit of a boost in knowing I'm on the right track and just to keep up the same standard of work,then everything should work out fine ,and may actualy get this thing road legal ,which would be great, not to keen on driving around looking over my shoulder every time mr plod goes by, :)

so that was most of the good things that came out of the visit, now a few not so good things, but even these arnt realy that bad, 1st one he didnt like the engine brace at all, no biggy realy its just a bolt in bolt out deal , so will have to come out ,for a bit 2d one steering wheel, the one i have in there atm is like a 12" cheapy racing style ,wheel,actualy ,i did like the feel of the smaller wheel , but that has to go and a replacement bought, so more cash needed,how ever on the flip side of that problem ,there are now adr approved steering wheels ,so ill try find one that i can put up with 3rd one , air box, now this one was a bit of a debate, i had allready made an alloy air box that held a pod filter, and it fitted the spot realy well ,but no good it has to be a plastic stock factory sr20 box or simular,ive already tryed a few factory boxs but getting something that will fitt half decent in the spot,after a bit of abck and forth , i managed to convince him to let me make my own plastic box,so it will fit the spot properly, so i can do that as long as the box is 1 excellent quality and 2 it takes the stock paper filter, so i agreed to that , means a bit of redesigning things and changing the set up, and building a plastic box, but think i can pull it off, 4 needs all brand new seats belts not realy a big drama but its an extra cost for mr broke, and he also trying to get me to change the rear seat belts to a retractable set up , tryed to explain what he ment but i ddint quite follow his explanation of how to do it, so will try get away with just stock ones for the time being, to much other things to deal with, 5 exhaust has to be below 96 dbs ...... 6 needs all the emissions gear hooked up to go thru emmision testing 7 lowering he didnt want to see it slamed on the ground , but even if i wanted to i couldnt , i have clearance issues underneath the car, 8 if i run coil over struts I'm going to run into a major problem with my wheels, as they will hit the coil spring due to offset, and spacers are illegal so no idea what i can do there to get away with that, :bash: a few other gay things like that but all in all thats what was discussed and on the whole he was generaly happy with the work and the standard of work ,but i deffinatley got the impression the thing that he likes the most was the fact that i had orignised the pictures and had supporting text for each thing i had done, so there you go guys ,if your going to do anything like what I'm doing , make sure you got a camera handy and take alot of photos, i have literally thousands of shots ,of everything and it seemed to have payed off , i guess it makes his job easier when he dosent have to go sorting out whats this random picture and whats going on here what did you do here etc, so that was my friday with mr engineer, better than i thought it was going to be thats for sure , but still left with alotof un answered questions, and the whole air box thing is anoying me ,casue i spent ages making it and i can't use it , mmm maybe i can figure something out , any way more to come soon!!!

then the custom drive shaft ,got the tick also then the seam welding around the left spring hangers, got the tick the shortened r31 diff got the tick all the custom brake lines,also got the tick, the surge tank position and construction got the tick fuel pump position and fuel pump custom shield got the tick the 15" rims also got the tick, was very surprised that he would let me keep them, i thought they were not realy allowed, but as it turns out its not going by the stock corolla rims , ie 13" ,but it actualy goes off what the running gear is from, so the r31 skyline diff, I'm allowed what the r31s had , stock 15" and as for the front i just said celica shocks ,so what ever celica had, so that was a realy good thing to hear ,casue i didnt want to go buying 4 new tyres, and a full set of rims,ie you know 1200 dollars extra money that i don't have ,so that was a good thing ,i think he was also happy that the rims wernt like 18s so some thing realy stupid , apprently he comes across that alot. intercooler and fittment and sizing all got the tick,again he was happy to see i didnt just chop the whole front of the car,to fit a oversize cooler,so i was glad i went with that smaller size :wink: what else , aww yea the gearbox gear stick position and new hole cover,tick battery box relocated to boot with breather tube ,position and mounts and cable all got the tick, fuel line positioning (not done yet but shown how they mount to the car floor,was happy with that, engine bay, strenghtening tower to fire wall baces, all got the tick sheer panels, a new chassis rail between the sill and the main chassis rail for strenght at the front end, got the tick, tinted windows as they were legal darkness that was all fine, front struts and brakes set up, he was fine with that ,but i talked to him about changing them to xt130s with a full coil over and camber plates, to help with the camber issue of the struts ,and also the larger braking upgrade of hilux calipers and pugeot disks, and to my surprise he said thats fine as long as the welding of the sleeves is of high standard, :lolcry: so thats realy good becasue i was going to do that any way :P

wow haha thanks guys :) comments appreciated, well yes the engineer did come today , and after he left ,i was in a bit of a state of shock realy ,didnt know what to make of the visit, but what he did check over was things that i had taken alot of pics for and then grouped them 'into there catagories ,ie like engine mounts ( from stock xmember to choping up to designing to cutting steel, to welding ) that sort of thing, and i sent him a flash drive with the major things that i had done. he was very happy with the pics and the discription of how i went about doing each thing and what materials were used, so first thing i must say is , if your doing any rebuild or general mods you should deffinatley take ALOT of pics, like what he said to me today , once paint is covering things its very hard to tell if the welds are decent , and things are done to a good standard, so that was the first positive thing i got out of him. now this guy ( his name is jc btw) jc has engineered alot of hot rods ,that seems to be his area of choice, so my car is alittle bit out of the usual for him, but seems like the general rules that he talked about still apply to my build, so prety much what ive done and doing and going to do ,or planing to do ,is with in the guidelines of his rules. he was very pleased with the standard of work :wink: so that was another good thing ,and he could tell straight away that ive spent many many hundreds of hours doing the best job that i could do ,with the level of skills i have, so heres a list of the things he checked over and what he had to say about them, he pretty much was just checking thru the pics and discription of the things that i had sent him, first was engine mounts ,was very happy with them then general steering components ,and as they were all brand new there was no problems there, then the gear box cross member, he took measurements of the steel i used and the sizes of the cross member, also he asked alot (were these the original corolla mounts??? )so i think he was checking if i had modded alot of the main structural parts ,mounts etc, but the gear box cross member was fine,so ticked that. then the drive shaft loop, i used a after market one and pretty much bent and cut it to make it fit, he said that was fine ,but he did mention that 4 nuts were probably over kill, to that i said well thats how the dsl came ,it had 4 holes for each mounting plate.any way that got the tick :wink: more in a sec i need for just got home from work and its 2 in the morning lol.....

engineer is coming tomorrow,so been under the car cleaning all the dust and crap off the parts, love the custom grill and what the engineer will see....

well didnt get to much done this weekend , just manged a few small things as some how i stuft my knee realy bad , and its the cars fault ,lol ,was in a bit of an awkward position and was trying to pull the car forward, would think it would be easy, but my cars very heavy now and i strained abit to move it , heard a clicking sound thought it was the tyre running over something, but as it turns out, it was the ligaments and tendens in my knee that were tearing ,not good so I'm hobbling around on one leg now!! just hasnt been very smooth the last year, after the whole hospital episodes and being not even well enough to go to work let alone work on my own car, seems I'm just not having any luck. any way I'm down to one leg and hopefuly that wont fail me as then I'm f*^&Ked ,and back to the side lines :( and the engineer is coming this friday!! , only 4 days to go and i can't do any more to the car before he comes , so hopefully its in a half decent state to look at, mite try give it a clean over just before he comes ,make it all shiney ,lol ,not that that wil help him make up his mind on what ive done is good or not ,but yeah anythings worth a go , don't want this to go like the last time i had a guy come out, jesus ill take the guys head off with a slide hammer hahaha just joking , but realy have no idea what to expect,.......

thanks man, yeah its sloooowwwly falling into place, just a little bit at a time and then all of a sudden its getting closer and closer, having a big clean session tomorrow if i can get under the thing, i realy messed up my knee so I'm not moving to well at the moment, still managed to hobble around today and get a bit more wiring done ,soo many wires in this thing . got the engineer coming on friday ,will be interesting and abit nurvy to what hes going to say ,either way its getting closer and my next plan is to figure out the radiator and fan set up,get some water running through the engine,and hopely do a start up very soon ,just need the cash for a radiator!

yeah i thought about having it upside down, but the hoses were that firm i didnt realy have a great deal of options on where it sat,so its just staying there, and it was a pain in the ass to get the thing and hoses all together ,i just hope it doesnt leak, how ever i have access to all the cleaning gear i could want so a bit of oil from the filter change wont be a big deal to clean, I'm more worryed about the sandwhich plate and hose connections , spose we will see soon

so back to it this weekend,few small things to do this weekend, i was going thru my boxes ,and came across a overflow bottle ,totaly forgot that i had it, so thought id try fitt it in the engine bay, had to make a funky bracket, so got some card board,and came up with a shape,cut it out from a couple mm steel plate,drilled the holes,and weld some small nuts to the back,for the bottle to bolt up to .... this is the bracket mounted, had a spare mount that i didnt remove luckily,so it bolts straight on there and then fitted :) looks good and just fits nice and tight,

haha cheers man , i think i pretty much know what I'm doing sort of lol, well i managed to get the engine running twice now ,once in the car and once sitting on a pallet, using the basic set up, but its a bit tricky fitting it in the car and joining the billion wires , at the moment I'm just trying to get the basic computer,fuel pump ignition etc working , well I'm going to do a test start ,same as the first time i got it going, tho this time I'm making things a bit more permanant , realy i just have to figure out the boost solinoid and vacumm lines and charcoal canaster, stuff like that , again not sure how to set that stuff up with the engineer coming ,maybe ill ask him about it, ,hope he lets me keep all that stuff hidden away just looks untidy ,theres enough chaos going on in the engine bay as it is lol cheers tho

cheers for the comments there mate :) fingers crosssed !!! just hoping its up to the standard of what he usualy looks at, i know this guy has engineered alot of modified cars , so yeah hes probably used to seeing top notch work, just hope the fact that ive done just about every thing myself dosent reflect poorly against me, with other people being loaded with cash and being able to send there car to mechanics ,engine shops brake shops etc etc , but we will see soon!

awesum man , looks great ,hope you enjoy driving the thing , wish i was at that stage! , peace

prepsol is good for that , to much thinners will start destroying the the plastics

some how it held, no leaks !@! well so far its not leaking and the pedal is very firm, i even set my phone up and videoed the slave moving in and out, so as far as i can tell its working ,but ill check it over the next few days and see how it goes... another thing ive been doing is wiring, now i don't mind wiring, some people absolutely hate it, i find it interesting and great when you finish and it all works like magic, how ever this kind of wiring is insane!!! i had to chop my engine loom completely in half!! and record every wire and then ,fit plugs to them , and then connect one half to the engine and then the rest inside the car, just doing that, took a very long time , at least 2 days of work and then a lot of fiddley stuff in the car, fitting the computer and fitting a relay board all ready set up , and many many wires!!!! even fitted the ignitor chip and boost solinoid under the dash,, hopefully mr engineer wont make me move it cause it looks like ass ,lol but wiring this amount of wires ,takes a lot of time,its a very slow process, what i do is right down exactly colours of wires and how a plug is set up, where the wires are going and what they are used for, then i can refer back to what ive done . got alot going on in there !!!

haha so i just noticed this thread is getting rather long , up to 30 pages with 435 replies and 29373 views!!! crazy , any way , ive been doing stuff this weekend,trying to get some more things done before Mr engineer comes for a look. so this week end this was a small job i had to do was make up a clutch line and connect the master down to the slave, found one of my old brake lines and chopped it up so i could use one fitting that would definatley fit and work, ( I'm so paranoid now about these types of fittings after the hole 3 attemps at doing the brake lines my self ,plus the nasty job of the guy at the brake shop ,he flares my lines and nearly all of the fittings leaked. any way i bent up a small line heading down to the slave ,i took this line to the brake line man, against my better judgement, he put a double flair on the line for me, it cost nothing fortunatley ,how ever ..... then i found an old brake line bracket, then from there i found a old brake hose that had what i thought was the right connection on it, hooked it all together and filled the master up, and proceded to bleed the line with my very trusty assistant,that also got some paint on it LOL colour matched ..... my trusty bleeding assistant::: pedal started getting firm ,continued to bleed then suddenly the pedal went soft again...... turns out , big leak, again!!! was not happy,the leak was coming from the connection that the brake man had done, DOH!!! I knew i should have trusted my judgment on that one, grrrrr well leasson learnt ,twice burnt. being the experimenting kind , i pulled the line out still connected to the rubber hose that was still connected to the slave. found that the leak was coming from around the threads of the rubber hose end,i tightened this right up as far as it would go, it was just about to break from the amount of pressure i put on the dam thing, blew the air gun around the threads to see if there was still fluid getting through........... there was..... some how i came up with the mad idea of welding the hard line connection to the rubber hose end,lol wrong move, but it was worth a shot. i welded careful around the threaded part and it was actualy working !!! nearly got right around the hose end ,but it must have gotten way to hot, because the hose just poped straight off the hose end! aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh god dam it , still not giving up!!! after all this stuffing around ,i had to get this working !!! was on the mission from nam hahahha put the welded hard line in the vice and ruffly guessed where the end of the hard line was inside the connection, idea this time was to cut the welded connection off and try to save the hard line,becasue 1 the top part of the hard line connection was good and didnt leak, and 2 i didnt want to have to make up a whole new line ,that takes ages, sooooooooo SAVE THE HARD LINE!!!! cut thru the welded connection ,and managed to slice right at the end of the double flare :) so pulled the line out and didnt lose much lenght of the line , nextt!!!!!!!! took the hard line this time to a brake service center, NOT MR BRAKE MAN !!! they did a nice job of the double flare ,was fairly round , this cost me 11 $$ i thought that was a bit much for a small job like that ,it took the guy like 1 minute and it was done , any way i could handle paying 11 dollars for one flare if the dam thing actualy did not leak! also i got a new clutch line custom made to lenght and with the proper end connections on it. back to the car, fitted the new hose to the slave , fitted the braket to the new hose, then fitted the hard line to the hose, be fore i go on ,any one with a sr20 in a corolla will know, its DAM TIGHT DOWN THERE ,JUST LIKE A ....... lol but under the car again ..... its like my second home these days ,may as well put a matress down and sleep under it and wake up and keep working haha. any way hooked up the lines to where they were spose to be , made every thing dam dam tight, i was sweating from the amount of pressure i put on the connections hahha, filled up the master the second time, and started the bleed process all over again , this time leak!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! f#@*$^@&*&@*$^*^*(!*(#*!(#&($&*$(@&(*#$@&mother $*&@#*$&@*#&*@#$stupid@*$@$*&$*@ couldnt believe it ,are you F#$%ing serious!!! any way this time the leak was from the master to hard line connection!!! well at least the double flair and new custom hose fully worked . after a long bout of throught spanners at walls and screaming alot of nasty words, i decided to try one more time and just try to tighten the connection a bit more.... now doing this may sound like the obvious thing to do, but if you knew how much pressure i put into tightening them the first time you would probably advise against it, any way wiped away the leaky fluid and got the flare nut spanner down there and tryed to tighten it again..... just a note ,to tighten the master connection you get about a 1/4 if not less of a turn then you have to take the spanner and jam your hand up under the engine,(which isnt at all enjoyable ,then get the spanner back on the flare nut,) and out of doing that you get like half a 1/4 of a turn ,plus you have to put fair amount of pressure to even move the spanner!! so long story short ,that connection is not easy to get to, bla bla bla raa raaa raaa i managed to tigthen the connection about 1/4 of a turn more . so again 3rd time lucky??? bleed the clutch line for a while and pedal got very firm and springy, by the last depress of the pedal i had to use my foot and hands to get the pedal to the floor!! shes bloody firm thats for sure . went over the lines very carefully and cleaned and wiped them so i could see if there were any leaks.................................................

ahh thats great ,thanks for doing that, now i can see what you meant about inside the mount , looks good ,gives me some ideas now to play with, , now i just gota scrape up more cash! haha cheers

awesum cheers for the link there mate, i was thinking along these lines , its good to have decent pics to help tho cheers

crazy set up haha sounds good tho,pics would be good too , i guess i better start with the leaf set up first then build from there, i was thinking about that, was looking at the factory set up and the mounts for the front eyes have a bit of a lip ,so you would have to space the triangle plates out slightly to clear the lips of the mount ,sounds like you worked out the better way of going on the inside of the mount,any way awesum ,finally starting to get a good idea of what direction to go , mite have a go making a set with the factory mount set up ,not sure how much difference it will make but maybe ill call it an experinment and see what happens

awesum man thanks for that ,i think ill give them a go,did you keep the bush in the main eye or did you make a steel one???shoot us a pic if you get the chance that be helpful, but yeah ill give em a go can't be to hard to build lol

ahh i see now,cheers for the pics , how would you reset them to a height that i want? i have 15inch wheels , and at present its sitting at the stock height, i don't want it slamed into the ground, I'm thinkin 5 to ten mms off the top of the tyre, something ill have to look at havent realy thought about it ,was going to see how the front turns out and have the back a few mms higher ,but yes interested ,

yeah I'm interested in making a set ,can't be to hard ,not much to them , if i end up making some i can send you the templates ,haha i refuse to pay for things that i can make my self lol, hell end if i tryed a set out and see how they go ,there interesting sort of set up.

ahh oversteer no good , so many differnt set ups! just want to do something thats going to work and not make the car a chore to drive, maybe i should find a decent suspention place and get there opinions as well, tho no doubt they will try sell me something exspensive lol,. i don't want nor can i afford to buy exspensive items ,i just want something i can do or make my self with maybe buying a set of half way decent rear shocks , maybe kybs or something in the mid ranges, I'm leaning toward the vn shocks ,being shorter sounds the buiss for the reset leaves, ,guess once there reset you just chop up a leaf from another pack and clamp it on the front half ?? which leaf tho? top bottom middle does it matter where the leaf is taken from? man i must sounds dumb asking all these questions hahaha