altezzaclub Posted December 14, 2013 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2013 While this was going on we were also pushing little bro Richard's 4K along. We whipped the valves out and found one with a large chunk burned away, it looked just like an oxy torch had been used. Then we found the valve spring compressor wouldn't fit the 18RG head out of Grumpy, those old twincam 8valves are at about 36deg valve angle and the heads are very wide. That meant making a valve spring compressor, so much time was spent designing and welding odd bits of steel from the scrap pile to fit under a drill press on a stand. We rescued that from the back of the Woolshed, one of the early ones that was designed to clamp an ordinary electric drill into the press part. We were hunting out ways of raising cash for the gearbox and were in the shed where Steve has an abandoned RA23, and we could hear a kitten crying. Naturally we looked for it and found one ginger kitten in amongst its dead litter mates, on the point of death itself. So then it was off to Nell's house to swipe some milk and an eye-dropper, and the kitten spent the day either in Steve's overalls getting warm or in a biscuit tin on an 18RG. Naturally WRC (Woolshed Rally Kitten) ended up down at the main house, and after Pete was scandalised by not only finding a cat inside the house but actually on the kitchen table, Steve took it off to bed. The next day we found a young Momcat with kittens of her own and introduced WRC to her and it seemed he got fed. She was quite pissed that we expected her to feed that giant when her kittens were only a week or so old. All to no avail, he didn't survive that night, Momcat took her kittens somewhere else. Life for farm cats is hard indeed. The next interruption was Pete's farm bike, a well-used Honda with an open cage on the back where the dogs ride. The side-stand had broken off again, and seeing the design was not up to real farm work we cut the whole mount off the chassis and spent a day making a new improved one! We had to lie it down to weld behind the plate, which meant fuel dribbled out from the carb onto the grass under it, and I said "Don't worry, move the bike a bit as no more fuel will come out" as I headed off to put on earmuffs and grab the grinder. That meant I didn't really hear Steve yelling about the bike being on fire until he was getting pretty loud! Another photo I should have got, of him dancing up and down on the burning grass around the bike! Sadly I forgot to take photos of course, but I reckon the stand will outlast the farmbike. That will eventually get stacked along with the other 8 or 9 buried in sheds, from old Bultacos onwards. Grumpy needed cleaning before parking in a shed awaiting the engine, so we hauled out the water blaster. That damm thing has never worked properly, it only goes when you take it back to Supercheap to complain! A day was spent stripping it and bypassing the switch, and then to solve any problems of lack of water pressure we immersed it in a tank with the hose going. Still a fail, it would lose pressure after a few minutes and you'd have to stop for a while. So that got tossed in the bin permanently! Somewhere along the way we found we had two lightened flywheels, but lightened in different ways. The only way to check was to balance them, so we made a balance from Rich's engine crane and by measuring the distance from the middle out to each one we could get their relative weights. and that is pretty well where it has got up to- The block-pistons-rods-crank are being honed and measured ready for re-use. Then we need to relieve the head and pistons with some sandpaer to make sure they clear. Next we will make sure all pistons and rods weigh the same before sending it all off to be balanced. The head I will measure the compression on, (should be exciting!) and we will check the cams to see if we have any modified ones. If not, we will see if we can get a pair cut. Rich is looking for a sonic tester somewhere for his block, then 5K pistons into the 4K, a cam cut and the head skimmed. Then that can go back together with the DCOE and the extractors on, and Steve can have back his paddock-basher 4K that we swiped! We spent hours going through a piston catalogue looking for 80mm pistons for his 4K, a gudgeon pin diameter of 18mm and a compression height of 36mm. NOTHING seemed to fit, the gudgeon is small at 18mm, or the deck height would be wrong, so its 5K or a lot of work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
love ke70 Posted December 14, 2013 Report Share Posted December 14, 2013 Why not through 1g Rods in it then see what pistons you can get once you measure pin height. I could measure a set up for you. Theyfdo fit though, I have tried myself and posted results in a thread on here. Cheers, Andy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezzaclub Posted February 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2014 Well, Richo's 4K is awaiting the 5K pistons he ordered, the 18RG Steve and I pulled down is awaiting 0.1g scales from Hong Kong for balancing, and the rally season starts in two days! So, this week up to the Woolshed. We cut the wheel well out of the boot to get the exhaust higher up and put a panel in the floor under the spare wheel mount. The fat arse on The Big Girl had always annoyed me, it was made worse by the constant pounding of stones pushing it out. With a brilliant stroke of genius we grabbed a rear bumper off one of the KE70 collection outside and hit it with a grinder. We cut the plastic away to get it tucked closer to the body, and chopped the steel frame out to lighten it. We had to make a couple of steel wedges to keep it vertical and just bolted it on with two 6mm bolts, to hell with mounts. The cars are the same width! Chopping off the the bottom of the rear panel got rid of the stone target and it will be quite un-noticeable. We discovered a bit of 2.5" chrome tailpipe, probably off Steve's dad's RX3 from the 1980s, so that went on too. We had to replace some of the pipe that had been crushed by the diff, and swung it over to the driver's side. With the exhaust tucked up I found the fuel line ran too close, so we had the outlet of our little surge tank swapped over to the other side today, and some old fuel line was re-routed away from the exhaust to the pump. The last job was to fit a brake cooling duct to one side at the front to hopefully stop the Terratrip dropping out mid-stage. It did it once in the Tumult rally, but came right over lunchtime before the next stage, so we figure it over-heated. We'll run the non-cooled side normally, and if that sensor crashes we can switch to the cooled side to see if it helps. More photos tomorrow! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snot35 Posted February 20, 2014 Report Share Posted February 20, 2014 Your boot floor says steep descent. :lolcry: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezzaclub Posted February 21, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 errr, well, living on a steep hill y'know.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
67Rolla-Ken Posted February 22, 2014 Report Share Posted February 22, 2014 What steep hill... I never saw a sign >.> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezzaclub Posted February 27, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2014 Back home in Orange.. A week and a half here then back up to the farm for the next rallysprint. There weree other distractions up there too, we renewed the two dozen giant discs on the plough, along with bearings and spacers as needed, but when Pete tried it a wheel bearing packed up. Steve and I were going down to Tamworth for exhaust parts, so we chased bearings as well. It worked superbly once it was sorted, but I never thought to take photos of a happy farmer in his tractor... With the drought destroying the grass, feeding out hay became the norm too. The Mothership was back to its usual job- Those kittens we put the ginger one with are now running around the back stoop. Plenty of photos of cuteness This one soon leant about catching paper on a string and killing it! Lots of tiny growls! ..and it dragged the string away from the others.. My Precious! Mine!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezzaclub Posted February 27, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2014 (edited) The actual rallysprint went well, we were seeded halfway up the field and that's where we finished. The first 7 places were all Evos & WRX's with a Nissan 240RS in there too.- Then an Escort followed by an Alfa A Datsun 240K...!! and a 1200. A sprinter Then an Escort, a BMW and Steve was 15th That's Rob's KE behind us, awaiting scrutiny, which of course was a trying time for both us and the scrutineers! The other cars were immaculate! They generally look like they've been fully restored and never put on a gravel road. We did come in front of a brace of Datsun 1600s, a Galant, a Skyline, an RX3, a TR7 V8 and a lot of other nice machinery. The boys looked good in parts... Try this- http://s170.photobuc...Sprint.mp4.html ...aaand NOW I see how Photobucket degrades the quality compared to the video on my desktop! Edited February 28, 2014 by altezzaclub Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezzaclub Posted February 28, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 The nice thing is that the car came back with nothing needing to be done on it before the Nabiac Sprint next weekend. That it NEEDS to finish with no work needed as the first rally is the following weekend straight afterwards in Bago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
love ke70 Posted March 4, 2014 Report Share Posted March 4, 2014 good work guys, nice to see its hanging together and improving all the time. Why the dramas with the scrutineers? Cheers, Andy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezzaclub Posted March 5, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 Well, scrutineering is like being stopped by the cops because they want to check out your modded Rolla... There's nothing actually illegal, but it does look like there maybe something not right. They don't really like the dashboard with its fence picket, the floor is pretty beaten about, the nav's foot panel didn't look good enough.. in fact, that's the problem, nothing has been made commercially, so it doesn't look like it should. I folded up some angle iron for a navigator's footrest and Steve welded it up, then the new nav asked for a panel instead. I grabbed some 2mm panel from the pile, chopped it up and Steve welded that on top. Its works fine, just enough flex so I can tell what the nav thought of Steve's driving on the last stage, but it doesn't look like a $100 piece of punched alloy. Somehow it didn't get painted either.. The underneath has been beaten to death- Steve has just welded plates under the LCAs, the g'box crossmember and the lower arm mounts of the rear suspension. All those get bent out of shape. What I'd like to do is cut out the complete rear footwell on each side and weld in panels at the height of the front floor. The floor pan is the same as a KE70, and if you look under you'll see the rear floor is down at the bottom of the sill, while the front floor is halfway up the sill. That would make it look less damaged and welded up, but really if anyone is ever building a rally car gut the inside completely and paint it white. Black looks terrible, and makes repairs look worse! When we build the KE70 it will look different!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
love ke70 Posted March 5, 2014 Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 Yeah, I can imagine the star picket creating an issue Trouble is, when I do get pulled over, it is illegal :P What does the bending, are you actually scrubbing the underside or just the gravel? I have never notice the floor being on an angle, interesting stuff... the car is also very low in the rear from the looks of the photos? Is the ke70 build going to be happening soon? :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snot35 Posted March 6, 2014 Report Share Posted March 6, 2014 Rocks, bottoming out, bottoming out on rocks, rough landings.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altezzaclub Posted March 14, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 14, 2014 Well, no photos as I forgot my camera cable so I can't d'load them, but I have a couple off Rich's phone... This was at the Nabiac rallysprint, shamelessly stolen from Dusty Photography on Facebook. He's got over 200 photos of the day on there- here's how it came back after a tree jumped out... ...and a week working on it has us waiting for Steve to get home so we can leave for Bago Rally tonight! More next week when I get back to Orange Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corollaart Posted March 16, 2014 Report Share Posted March 16, 2014 I'm seeing things on facetube its not pretty?? Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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