Still chipping away. Cross member is painted and if I'm happy with the finish I'll bolt that in over the next few nights and start putting suspension components back in.

 

So the immediate list is:

- Cross member fitting

- Pressure test the heater core, fit if OK or take it to a rad place if it isn't

- Wire wheel and paint the end of the steering column that pokes into the engine bay. It's grubby and it just annoys me!

 

Hopefully the core is OK and I can get to putting that back in so I can put the dash back.

 

Phone is f'ed, it won't read my SD card so I can't take pictures with it. If I remember I'll grab the proper camera.

Cross member is still tacky, so perhaps I painted it too thick :/ I hope I don't have to re do it, that would be a pain.

 

Tried to pressure test the heater core but couldn't get nice sealing with my dodgy bike tube plugs. Was going to keep trying but the 1 year old sounded like he was going to be a pain all night so I quit to grab any sleep I could just in case.

 

Slept fine, don't feel any better :) Annoyed by lack of progress though!

All good on the cross member. Rack is back on. Now I'm chasing some tie rods and I've cross threaded and wrecked on of them and can't get it back on. Hoping to rectify that with a wrecker run tomorrow so I can get the cross member and suspension back in. Cleaning it all a little, but not getting too carried away with painting for now. Only the bits that will really suck to get out again at a later date.

 

Stupid plumbing in the house busted which slowed me a little! :/

Spent some time working on the donor car. I've managed to get the engine to start now, but it won't stay started. I was trying to set base timing but it kept conking out. Then I worked out that you're supposed to short the diagnostic plug, damn fangled EFI!

 

I've picked up some replacement tie rods, so when I get a chance I'll get that back together and the cross member back in.

 

So next steps are:

- See if I can pull any codes off of the donor car and manually set timing. Hopefully that's all I need, if not I'll work my way through the 4AGE diagnostic manual.

- Give the tie rods a scrub and then put the cross member back in and bolt up that and the LCA's, might as well bolt the struts back up too

- Scrub and paint the steering column

Edited January 19, 201511 yr by snot35

Oh, I finally have a decent phone camera too, so I might actually get some shots in here!

Did you have a play with the rack and check for any movement under the two adjustable nuts? Those giant hex plugs with lock-nuts around them, one pushes the rack on the pinion & the other tightens down on the pinion bearing. I set them up on one car sometime, they get tightened down to a column turning torque. Too stiff and the column is hard to turn, too loose and you get play between the rack and the pinion.

Yeah I gave the rack a freshen up a few pages back. The car came to me with split boots and a pretty grubby rack, so I gave it some attention. Seems to be reasonably well adjusted now, so it's back on the cross member with new boots and mounting bushes. :)

My time is currently going into getting the donor car going:

 

http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/69731-car-no-start-ae82-twinky/

 

Why I thought it was going to be a quick job, I don't know! :)

 

Loose timing belts and a lack of proper coolant use makes me worry about the condition of the donor. I'll press on and try to get it going so I can work out the condition. Otherwise the hunt may be on for another.

So I've ordered a new timing belt for TEO (The Evil One, the twinky that won't start). I should be getting that tomorrow. Hopefully I can then time it, reassemble and get it to start to I can move on.

 

Cleaned the shed the other night, so hopefully that will allow me to be more productive!

TEO is mostly back together as of about 11 last night. I didn't want to carry on trying to start an uncooperative car so I moved to the shed and started cleaning up the tie rods I picked up. I'll clean them up and get the cross member all back together and into the car so at least I feel like I'm making progress!

This is still going. The cross member is back in and struts bolted up. The radius rod/sway bar mounts are all assembled and in with new SuperPro bushes.

 

I bolted it all up and then worked out I put in the sway bar upside down. Feck. Still, simple enough fix. I also need to take the struts back off, I can't quite get the radius rods in there with the struts at full droop and jacking them up raises the whole car when there is no motor in it :)

 

It doesn't look too pretty as I'm skipping a lot of painting just to get it going. I have painted the brake master though as it was way too rusty for it not to bug me. I also painted the end of that steering column as that was pretty rough. I'll see if I can sneak out tonight and get some of that stuff mounted so I can concentrate on the engine.

 

I may grab pics, it's not very impressive though, so I may not :P

Oh, and I picked up some TRD spark leads for the 4AGE 'cause, you know, pretty :)

Sorted out the tension rods and all the front bits. Finished the steering column, so now the column is back in and hooked up. I sat in it and made brumming noises for the first time in a long time! So the suspension is done except for the tie rods. Everything else is complete with new bushes, so it should steer pretty nicely now.

 

Next up:

- Clean up and refit tie rods

- Clean up brake distribution block and refit.

- Reassemble and refit brake master

- On the weekend get TEO started so I can finally rip the motor out

 

I took pictures, but my shed is dark and they're shit. Next time!

This is still a thing. Lots of life stuff getting in the way that's really boring, I won't go on about it.

 

Spoke to a bloke at the car club about the donor not starting. He gave some advice. I've cleaned up the dizzy which was a bit oily and found that the wires to the top pickup have both lost some insulation. May or may not be causing trouble. New pickups seem impossible to find which is annoying. The insulation on the wires seems brittle and heat damaged, which isn't ideal. I've taped up the wires and set the pickup gaps. I'll plug it all back in and see if that helps then go through the diagnostic guide the car club guy gave me. If it is that I'll hunt down a dizzy in better condition and hopefully be on my way!

 

Brake master is back in and looking OK.

Dizzy cleaned on the donor and all bolted back together. I did a compression test and she doesn't look great and the fuel pump seems to have stopped. I'll see if I can get that happening. Putting oil in upped the compression significantly. I'm hoping if I can get it going a bit it may actually start and loosen up. Otherwise it's at least a re ring. Not happy!