Richard's Ke30

[Granny Ke30]

Hello everyone, I have considered making a build thread of some sort for a while and I think it's about time I at least put a photo or two up of my Corolla.

 

This Corolla is different to the Aussie delivered KE30 and it has the Japanese styled diff, tailshaft, brakes, brake booster and dash.

 

My goal with this car is to keep the styling period correct and for it to be a lot of fun to drive. A lot of influence for modifications are also from my brothers RT104 Corona 'Grumpy'.

 

Modifications:

• 3k head 4k block
  
• K50 Gearbox (KE70 variant)
  
• Single 40mm DCOE Weber
  
• Redline Webber manifold
  
• Hurricane 4-1 2 inch extractors
  
• 2-inch full exhaust
  
• 3-inch dump tip
  
• 7kg AJPS XT130 coilovers at the front
  
• AE86 power steering knuckles
  
• Flipped rear leaves
  
• Deleted bump stops
  
• 14x6 SSR Starsharks
  
• Tyres 185/55/14
  
• Ta22 fender mirrors
  
• Sneaky glovebox Kenwood head unit
  
• 5x7 rear speakers (under original toyota speaker covers)
  
• Trispoke steering wheel
  
• Black carpet
  
• Black door cards
  
• Front lip
  
• Gas shocks in rear
  
• Multiple granny rugs
  

When I got it:

 

 

Where it's at:

 

 

 

 

 

To do list:

• LSD with 4.7 T series
  
• Rebuild as a tough 345k
  
• 14x7 SSR Starsharks all around
  
• Small tacho where the clock currently is
  
• Strutbrace
  
• Adjustable cambertops
  

At the moment this is my daily until I get full license and I can drive my Soarer there won't be a great deal of updates.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Granny Ke30

[Granny Ke30]

The story of this Corolla starts from when I was still on my L plates at the age of 16 with the only car I had to drive was my Dad's bright yellow, front wheel drive, front handbrake 1982 Subaru Leone GLF-5.

 

 

Needing to escape the yellow-fwd-ness I had been looking at carsales and various car forums for the last year trying to find a car I would like. It had to be Toyota or Datsun/Nissan, Manual and RWD. Luckily this car managed to pop up at just the right time.

 

Originally owned by a little old lady from the country town Walcha, the Corolla was advertised in a local paper as "a great paddock basher" this made the car come extremely close to being auctioned off to a kid, who would surely destroy it in the paddock. Luckily one of my neighbors was at the auction and when he saw the condition of the little white 1976 York Motors KE30 he knew he had to outbid the kids father in order to save it. As our neighbor wasn't really into the old Toyotas he asked if anyone we knew would have liked to buy it, as my brother and cousin had already owned multiple Coronas. So almost instantly the corolla was bought for $700 and after putting rego on it, I had my first car! :D

 

So after I had first bought the car I slapped on the L-plates found a superviser, it was time for a photo shoot!

 

 

That's the look of a content Corolla owner LOL!

 

Initially after passing the checkup and buying the rego for my Corolla I gave it a much needed clean and vacuum. I also needed to replace the two bald tyres on the back (Granny doing skids?) and fix a stutter that was caused by the points. I had even less experience with cars than I do now and it was probably the first work that I had ever done on a car, with my cousin showing me how it all worked.

 

Around this time was when I learnt how expensive basic things can be on a car just buying rego, insurance, seat covers, filters and coolant/oil/water it was enough to make a 16-year-old very sad, but it didn't matter I had a Corolla (:

 

The car didn't really undergo many modifications during the time of my L-plates but it managed to get me my much needed 120 hours and pass my P's test!

 

 

This is one of the rolla with my brothers two Toyota Corona RT104's

 

Driving between my parents place 70km distance and between school and home the straight roads and 90km speed limit was getting pretty boring and the original tape player with a cassette-aux converter just wasn't cutting it anymore. The problem was I wanted to keep the Corollas interior original and pretty much do the complete opposite to this:

 

 

So with Adrians awesome engineering skills he made a bracket that would be able to support a head unit in the glove box using the original bolt holes within the dash to suit the higher modelled KE30 with a speaker in the dash. I was very pleased with the setup and to this day it's more custom made than anything else on the Corolla.

 

 

For speakers I used some hand-me-down 6x9s and alligator clipped them for a temporary connection on the floor before I could afford some proper 5x7's that would hold in the original speaker mounts.

 

Things were going well, was loving the Corolla and was driving it around 40+kms a day. But of course things couldn't go smoothly for too long... One day when I was checking my oil I noticed I had blown a head gasket it wasn't really too obvious at the start as it wasn't using much water, still had the mind-boggling power I was used to, just the oil slowly became more milky. This was the first piece of engine work that we had really had to do on the Corolla. Initially put in the shed, I Leone'd around for about a month, but once holidays started we began to start on the fixing the head gasket.

 

 

 

 

While waiting for the head gasket to come in and the head to finish the testing in the shop this was a good time for me to start using some fine sandpaper and clean all of the clear coat from my rocker cover

 

The head was crack tested, corrosion tested and reconditioned. Coming back from the shop it looking fresh I definitely made me feel more happy about the price, even the $2 for the box it came in, which I'm sure was a necessary charge...

 

 

 

With the head back on the engine, new head gasket, oil filter, oil and a much needed degrease things were starting to look pretty good!

 

 

With the new head gasket there was definitely a performance increase, I now felt as if I was coming closer the massive output of 41kw which the 3k made in 1976!

 

Enjoying my Corolla running smoothly for about 6 month afterward I began to have a few problem relating to the starter motor my Corolla ended up in the shed again. The massively oversized starter motor with the amazing placement of it on a 3k, we came to the conclusion to switch the most inaccessible starter motor in the world would almost take as much effort as a simple that a 3k to 4k conversion.

 

Since we were going to pull the whole engine and gearbox out at the same time it was the ideal time to install in a K50. We already had a spare 4k around from Adrian's KE70 4AGE conversion so we didn't need to look for one, but finding a K50 was another story though. Eventually we ended up picking one up from Sydney for $150.

 

So we began to pull out the 3k!

 

 

 

The old 3k block

 

This is how a pully block is installed at Walcha... it was 4 man job just trying to install an oversized truck pully on a high ceilinged wool shed, just so we could remove the engine! It was a precise procedure using rope and sticks.

 

 

 

With the engine out and looking at the ugly emissions, carby and rocker cover the decision to make a 3k head 4k block, was made.

 

With the 3k head on the 4k and the K50 attached we lowered it into the rolla bolted everything up made room for the new shifter and started it.

 

All was good for about 130km of driving with the new torquey 4k block, when one day 50kms into the 70km trip home my head gasket decided to blow... Again... This time it was a lot worse I couldn't even drive 100m without using the entire contents of the radiator. After being towed the rolla was back in the shed, where we began to pull the head off again.

 

 

 

From the looks of it, it was the brand new head gasket that we had put on which was the problem. It looks as if it had a split fire ring. We have taken it back for warranty but to this day we still haven't gotten our money back.

 

Edited May 26, 2013 by Granny Ke30

[Granny Ke30]

Desperately trying to get another head gasket for school after the holidays ended, in 3 days, we were left with a wait for new stock. But with a change of luck upon ringing a local engineering shop, they happened to have a single head gasket on there shelves from a previous job, years ago. It happened to be that the spare head gasket was none other than a 3k head gasket :D

 

So the Sunday night before school we sat in the shed and prepared my rolla for the next day. The car started that night and that single head gasket has taken it over 20000kms and counting today.

 

As I was still at school and didn't have a job not many modifications came of the Corolla and I drove it every single day on the 20km trip to and from school, and in most free periods ;)

 

Around the time of my 18th birthday and green P's my alternator decided to lose on of the main supporting bolts, whilst I was over 100km from home. Doing a quick dodgy setup I began to limp it home to find that the bolt missing was of course one of the more unique bolt sizes, which I only managed to find at my friends dad's shed (:

 

For my 18th I thought it was a good time to try and scab some car parts off my parents and luckily on Ottomotto around the time was a set of 4 red genuine SSR Starsharks which I quickly jumped on and soon and after they arrive on Australian shores, I was the owner of some new Starsharks. There was one problem though, the starsharks were starting corrode from being near a beach in Japan all of their life. After much scrubbing with many washing detergents and steel wool I managed to bring them to a presentable state. This brought upon the second problem also in which I didn't actually have any tyres for them, or the money for tyres so for now the starsharks just sat in my room.

 

 

 

This wasn't a strange as I had actually collected about half the parts I needed for a few modifications but not all of the parts to actually use. Notable parts were my genuine Toyota fender mirrors and a single 40mm side draft Weber and the manifold for it. I still needed extractors and an exhaust that would line up with the extractors due to the 3k having a joint inlet, exhaust setup.

 

 

Getting keen for new parts on the Corolla (:

 

So for now these parts would sit in my room and collect dust :(

 

Months went on and by the end of year 12 we had few classes and my friends and I would often spend most free periods just driving around town and taking photos of our cars haha. A lot of driving was getting done in my Corolla at this time.

 

 

Unfortunately my friends don't have Corollas as well.

 

Finally after one of my tyres exploded mid-driving I bought 4 new tyres to suit my SSR starsharks and with some slight modifications to my break callipers I now had some real wheels on the rolla.

 

 

 

 

Back at the woolshed my brothers RT104 again and Cainy's RA65 Celica

 

After completing my HSC and signing out of school I started to work, which funded some mods I had wanted to do to my Corolla for a while.

 

The fender mirrors which were laying around in my bedroom for half a year got some love around this time and were installed. The process of installing the mirrors is very emotional, as you watch a drill go through your fender D: The car with fender mirrors looked pretty good, but something was missing the car was too high...

 

Starting with the suspension the rolla's shocks were pretty far gone and it had the handling characteristics of a boat and the height of a monstertruck. I decided something needed to be done with the suspension. It was actually a tough decision as previously I had bought 50mm lowered springs but when searching for some shocks with a shorter stroke I wasn't having much luck. The best deal I managed were some AW11 MR-2 rear shocks from Japan for $400+ without postage. I would have bought them if the owner of the website decided to respond but now I am pretty happy that I didn't. I still have the front springs if anyone is interested in buying them.

 

The solution for the suspension was pretty obvious but we didn't instantly think of it. Adrian had recently swapped his 4AGE KE70 coil overs at the front from 7kg XT130 Struts to 5kg AE86 struts. With there being a spare set of front coil overs near I decided to buy them off him.

 

 

He also had a spare set AE86 power steering knuckles which theoretically should give me more lock with turning so we also installed the knuckles at the same time. For the rear we had always wanted to try flipping rear leaves to see how rough it really is, so as a temporary solution we flipped the top leaf of both of my rear leaves and it pretty much dropped the back on the bump stops. It can get rough but there is no body roll whatsoever, and it looks awesome. Until I can work something out with smaller/progressive bump stops and a stiffer single leaf setup I intend to run flipped leaves.

 

 

With the money I was acquiring from work I also bought a set of hurricane 4-1 extractors from eBay so I could install the Weber which had also been sitting in my room for several months collecting dust. The process for installing the Redline manifold and the Hurricane was only the start of the problems I had with the Weber install. Hurricane and Redline thought it would be a good idea if the area in which you bolt up the manifold was different, creating a massive exhaust leak. For a temporary fix I have used wire around the bolt (suggested by a local exhaust shop) which stops most exhaust leaks, but some days it can get pretty fumey. When buying the webber as advertised I assumed that it would have the correct jets, this is not the case though with my Weber being out of tune at the best of times and using a lot of fuel, with a whole lot of no go. The crazy design behind the Weber also means that for when you intend to accelerate the carby would be opened with a push mechanism, unlike the standard pull that is on the Corollas standard carby and accelerate pedal, this at the time was also dodgily setup until the linkage kit (Another $150) arrived. With all of this being done it was time to drive my car with no exhaust past the extractors, down to the exhaust shop in the middle of the night, so I didn't get defected. The next day I got a brand new 2 inch exhaust with a hotdog and a 3-inch dump tip installed on my car, the tow bar was removed in order to tuck the exhaust up higher, which was needed with my new height.

 

Eventually the linkage kit arrived and even though it had the worst instruction (even a diagram of a different product) the linkage was put on thanks to the wizard (Keith) ( http://www.rollaclub...the-girls-ke70/ ), who did it for me while I had to be back at University.

 

Not being much of a fan of brown carpet I ordered some poly-loop pile black carpet from eBay. Whilst the carpet was up I thought it was an ideal time to run some new speaker wire underneath to the rear of the car.

 

 

For speakers I have now installed 2 Fusion 5x7 powerplant 2-way splits in the original speaker mounts. From what I have searched if you want to install speakers in the original speaker mounts and do not want to cut or modify you will get the best audio quality from these speakers.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2014 by Granny Ke30

[Granny Ke30]

The same location that I had the original photo shoot :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^ Grumpy and the Rolla featuring the clothes line. ^ Down the street of the big smoke with my mate Adam and his gen2 Liberty.

 

For an update I have hit 50,000km on the odometer, which is about 30,000km I have done myself over 3ish years.

 

 

I have also changed a few more things on my Corolla starting with a spare lip that my brother had laying around. It was pretty straightforward installing it. I believe it was originally made for a KE70, I just had to paint it and grind it a little bit and it was good to go!

 

^ Held up with a hi-tech juice bottle

 

 

I have also replaced the jets in my single 40mm DCOE weber, now for the jets it holds 130 mains 175 airs and 34mm choke. Although the replacement of my jets did not come soon enough and I had already burnt out on an exhaust valve from running it extremely lean :(. Now having a 3-cylinder KE30 there was only one obvious decision... 3K head 4K block bored out to suit 5K pistons with a ported head lightened flywheel and a big dirty cam!

 

One day my brother Stephen decided to pick up a RT142 Corona for his friend. The Corona was located near Port Macquarie which is about a 3 hour drive from Walcha. Since he would be gone for several hours Keith and I decided it would be a good idea to "borrow" his fresh 4k in his newly acquired KE55 paddock basher as a temporary replacement for my 3 cylinder 34k.

 

So as Stephen left Keith and I pulled the 4k out of the KE55 then pushed it back into the shed engineless without telling a soul. Then we proceeded to put the new motor into my KE30 leaving the original motor out and ready for a rebuild. The best part about this was that we told Stephen that it was just a rocker stuck down on my 34K and that Keith found a way to fix it.

 

 

^ My new 4K :P

 

So for at least a month on Stephen had absolutely no idea that his paddock basher was engineless until he decided to go paddock bashing. I have recorded the incident for your viewing pleasure...

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=hqrb3x7-olA

 

But only 1 week after Keith worked his magic, disaster struck again. Being 19 years old, I had surcome to the peer pressure which resulted in a broken uni joint and a dangling tail shaft... Oops. Eventually I left my Corolla on the side of the road and began to remove the tail shaft of my KE30 paddock basher with my good friend Luke (Thanks for the lift also lol!). Taking it back to my broken-down KE30 at 8PM to find that the Banjo diff in my KE30 has a different stud pattern to that of the borgy in the paddock basher. The end result was 2 bolts in and some Walcha-spec zip ties just for a bit of placebo as I limped home at a groundbreaking 40km of the hour.

 

^ALL THAT POWER!

 

 

The next Sunday I drove down to Tamworth in my fathers 5-Cylinder (V5) Nissan Maxima, to get a new uni-joint bright and early on the Monday morning, and fix my beloved Rolla. $45 later the tailshaft was back in one piece! Originally I had one clip lose with the uni-joint and I still had a rumble, but with a bit of gentle persuasion it now drives like new!

 

So Tommy our proffesional photographer friend from Sydney came up to see the country and with him he brought his photography gear. This is a very good change from the unprofessional phone photos that I was used to seeing and uploading of my car. Tommy also has a website where he takes pictures of cars and many other things, if you like his stuff you should check it out at www.creativebytommy.com.au.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 10, 2013 by Granny Ke30

[Granny Ke30]

Haven't updated in a while but I am currently on University holidays. I intend to have a fair bit of progress on all of my cars... Currently I have stripped my 34K with hopes to build up a tough 345K. With many calculations with the Wizard and reading many forums it should work pretty well!

 

 

^All my problems

 

 

The 4k block is now at the engineer getting bored to suit 5K pistons.

 

Being that time of year again I had rego coming up. To be cautious I thought it would be a good idea to put my Cressidas factory alloys with new tyres on to help raise it up for the inspection. Didn't go so well. So it wasn't really an option.

 

 

It really makes you realise how small KE30s are.

 

Straight after it passed rego I had to go to Coffs Harbour with my brother to meet some rellies. On the way down I noticed the car sounded different but didn't pay too much attention as it was late. The next day I realised that it was was an exhaust leak before the diff. Coming back from Coffs Harbour by the end of the weekend I started to hear a tinging noise coming from the rear of the car as well. After we pulled over at a cafe near Ebor to have a look, we found that the exhaust bolts at the flange before the diff had rattled loose, with the rear part of the exhaust just hanging off the diff and scraping on the ground. We pulled it off, put it in the boot and we were on our way again.

 

 

Once I got home I went to Supercheap grabbed some bolts, a gasket and some exhaust rubbers. $20 later it was as good as new.

 

There have been a few little jobs on my list that I hadn't really bothered about, but being on holidays I thought I should do them.

 

First was to replace to boot rubber. It was pretty much rooted, only held in with duct tape and didn't do anything to stop water coming into the boot. Here's it with the rubbers I grabbed off eBay.

 

 

Second I'd wanted to convert the door cards to black for years. the only problem was I hadn't found any, and I've been looking for years, so I knew I'd just have to dye them myself. Recently purchasing my brothers KE55 as a parts car (So I could technically own the engine I'm borrowing :P) I knew I could dye it's cards and being a KE55 it not only had a spare set of door cards but even had factory arm rests... Much fancier than the alternator belts on the doors with my KE30.

 

 

After removing all the door cards I began to Vinyl dye them all in gloss black.

 

 

I ended up using 2 cans for all 4 cards which came to about $30.

 

Then of course I had to put them into the 30. With relocation of the screw clips it's 100% bolt in as there are holes in the door to suit the arm rests.

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2014 by Granny Ke30

[Granny Ke30]

Reserved.

[Granny Ke30]

Reserved.

[Granny Ke30]

Reserved.

[Granny Ke30]

Reserved.

[Granny Ke30]

Should be enough :P

[Taz_Rx]

Looks great, so glad it didn't end up as a paddock basher!

[azza91]

looks great, can't wait to see more of it mate.

[rian]

That's a cool looking KE30! But I'm sorry to say it's not a JDM car and it never will be.

[B.L.Z.BUB]

That's a cool looking KE30! But I'm sorry to say it's not a JDM car and it never will be.

 

Was waiting for it

 

[rian]

^Sorry but I just can't deal with people misusing the term "JDM".