yetchh

Hi mate, you worked for Trevor Hone right?

Put the shoes and drums back on today, my mates at the platers also managed to lose one of the shoe retaining pins which is a cunt, went to a brake place in Nelson yesterday and the closest they had was from a falcon but 4mm to long. Broke it trying to modify it so I barried one up of of a split pin for now.. Also upgraded the oil in the dampers to 40wt and they're much better. Put my other rims on and straight away they hit the innner guard which sucks a bit, after I took them off I put the helper springs on to see what difference they make to the spring rate and it's way better, suits a touch higher also, so I'll clean up the u bolts and put them on.. Looks so much better tho, can't wait to do the front.. Been meaning to do this for about 6 years..

You need to stipulate that should two more cats be imminent they need to be either Burmese or Sphynx.. Also remind her about the damage cats do to the local bird/reptile populations and the purchase of such is only exacerbating the problem and also that cars only damage the local environment when they work..... Good luck and god speed..

So today I installed the cylinders dustboots and springs, hooked up the springs and put the diff back in.. Springs, All together and looking so much better that before and working also, only thing is there needs to be some sort of spacer in the rubber boot as the bolts that hold the boot plate on also hold the cylinder one and so compress the rubber and bend the plate, this was like this before but I bashed the plates flat again, will have to see what I can find.. She's all in and looking very clean, also very low.. After putting it in and being finally happy with the height as will @Valiant I gave it a test and it's very soft, softer than it was which I guess now there's no fiction it's much easier to compress the leaves.. I do have a set of helpers that came off and I painted but the u bolts are an odd size that I can't find, hopefully just the addition of that will change the spring rate enough, that and the additional changes to the damper valves makes it better.. As it is, if I get a couple of people on the back she'd be very low... Now to move onto the front..

After putting the head and axles back in the housing I made some new brake lines and changed the oil in the dampers to 30wt, definitely stiffer.. After changing the oil and putting them back together and in the car I've since discovered thay are still pretty soft, I can do some small adjustments to bound and rebound buy putting a 2mm shim in place of the one you see below and also tightening the nut on the end of the small spring buy 2-3 turns. The other option is to buy a set of adjustable valves from the UK but that's £70 each without freight so if be expecting 400odd landed, maybe not.. New lines It was at this point I discovered the lowering blocks didn't actually fit, the loading pin was too small and the the opposite side the same.. Que another trip over the hill to Alex's armed this time with an actual cake.. End result.. Thanks man, they fit perfect.

That meant I could finally put the spring packs back together.. Dob of 11fc to keep the pads in their place, whoops, a bit blurry.. Ready to assemble with some silicone grease for max slip, 1st one turned out to be a bit of a cunt but once i figured out that trying to put it together without the bolt in, things went a lot easier, just clamped them all together and hold it with zip ties Job done.

Hi, yes still around.. Been slow as I've been waiting for things to arrive that either weren't in the country or painfully slow to access over the break (no surprise) but things are back on track now I have everything. Got the above cylinders sleeved from cbc, $75 each when compared to a new cylinder at 200-300 and still prone to corrosion, it's a fucken good deal and I can't recommend them enough. Also finally found a spring eye bolt from a mate in chch, got the new rubber dust boots for the hand brake actuator and two new springs for the handbrake return.. In the mean time I set about putting the leaves back together but before I did that I had to make the aforementioned antifriction pads, que a trip over the hill to this guy Alex's place armed with some cake, a 250mm rod of uhmw plastic and the best of the factory pads which resulted in some new pads to install.. Top guy that....

Yeah I know cruisers do it as well.. My guess is that most manufacturers do it to suppress the temperature fluctuations diesels create

@Truenotch soz for the spam, I still have a 1kz hangover...

Must be a power thing then, my 185 was rated at 106kw vs I guess the 96kw of the kzj, what were you getting on standard 31's

I'm pretty sure that only works on early 90's hiluxes, I couldn't do it on my kzn185 (if you can I couldn't find the method) @Truenotch is the van quite heavy? I used to get 9.5km/l with mine and that would jump to 13-14km/l towing with me doing 95-100kph..

The start up sounds epic, 500rpm with cold start enrichment for max lumpy idle.. Excellent job bro, should prob have a drive of the imp in its current guise so I can make comparisons..

They kind did, but the surf had a thinner radiator and smaller fan from the start, prado and hilux both had thicker radiators and fans with the prado having a cooler stat but they all still had issues at some point with a lot of it coming back to the the viscous hub/cooling system condition (and diving style) My 1kz managed to do 360km with its original head but I put that down to me being proactive for the last 120km and taking all steps to avert overheating. When I first bought it in 2013, the gauge would move when overtaking a semi trailer on the open road but I never let it get into the red, they don't use speed for cooling, it's all down to the fan and in the end for me it was only my heavy foot with a load on that would cause the gauge to move, that and the low speed thing which I thick is fixable also. The other thing that you should use is a egt gauge that way you know exactly what's going on.

I tried the 1kd blue hub (brand new from toyota) on mine but didn't even make it halfway up takaka hill with an empty trailer before the guage started moving, went back to the kzn165 hub that I put on and had no more dramas (apart from my driving style) 10000cst oil didn't really help much so I bought 30000cst from acorn models and went about 50/50 with 10000cst, when it came fully on it would sap a bit of power but fuck it moved some air... had the 10 blade fan and also a B&M trans cooler with thermo fan.. The main problem I found with hill towing was low speed and not enough air flowing over the interheater so everything would slowly heat soak, I was about to start spraying water over the cooler to see if that helped but the car got nicked.... Problem solved

If you're gonna tow with a 1kz you need to make sure your cooling is tip top, 3" turbo back helps a lot for cool running as does the prado 82deg stat, check your fan for oil, I added a fairly high weight oil as opposed to the factory 10cst meant that when the fan came on there wasn't much slippage.. I also put in a redline 4 core rad as factory they're average, for the surf anyway.

Dang, I just drove back from chch today..

They get lost in the sands of time...

Wire brushed the housing and gave it two coats of epoxy and two of chassis black, came out looking way better than I expected, the axle seals are about 200mm down the tube and a cunt to change, it was recommended that i upgrade bearings which are slightly grumbly to sealed units which cures both problems, these run a full floating hub which makes it very easy to change in the future without having to pull off the entire assembly, for now I just packed it all full of grease. rear drum cylinders have seen better days so I'll prob just sleeve them and forget about them for the next 60 years.. well, 35 anyway... I still need to buy a set of spring rubbers but to be honest the factory ones are still in pretty good shape and at $200 a set for new ones I might just bang em back in, also priced up two handbrake return springs from the UK at $12 but the $60 shipping killed it. If anyone has a hook up for these springs in NZ it would be much appreciated (look like this) Also after a front eye bolt if anyone has a spare lying around.. up to date, bit of work for something that isn't seen but since I've spent almost nothing on this i think she deserves it

Started painting bits, initially I thought of left my gun in chch so thought I give a reusable spray can a go, bought a jacquard youcan from the warehouse and had a crack.. Was a bit of a pain as I constantly had to clean it and could only put a small amount of paint in it or it would lots pressure too quick (takes 100psi)and splatter paint instead of spraying, good for a small job. Managed to spray one set of springs, brake drums and saddle plates, then found my gun.. Suffice to say it's waaay quicker and cleaner hah. Coat of epoxy then a coat of satin chassis paint.. Gave the head the same treatment, All came up looking good, especially the dampers when you look at them before. Also decided that while all this was out I'd vacuum under there, should really have had it steam cleaned but meh, scraped 60 years of dust and crud from around the arches.. One side...

Bit of an update, took a bunch of bolts and stuff down with me to chch to be cleaned up and plated which worked out mostly good bar the bit where some bolts for lost including one front eye bolt and two handbrake return springs, bit if a cunt especially the eye bolt, also after telling the bloke what I wanted plated some bits got missed which isn't a biggie just a bit annoying that this shit gets missed, also ended up having to have a new driveshaft made as apparently reputable companies have stopped making the smaller 1850 uj's and they all now come from China and have too much radial movement so i either take the risk or for double get a new one with the larger v8 uj's (*sigh) cost me but I seemed to be having bad luck with the things.. Got a lowering kit from chamberlain's and a full set of superpro bushes, bought some more paint and other bits and pieces.. Stripped the diff and gave it some rust treatment, Spent a few hours splitting up the springs and getting them back to good metal, had a fair amount of wear which would go some way to explaining their performance.. The antifriction pads had seen better days, can only find these particular pads in urethane which seems to be a bad choice for such a high wear environment, have ordered a 250mm rod of 50mm uhmwpe to make some better ones.

Fuck yeah bro, what an epic journey.. Know that roller-coaster well so I'm stoked for you.

They do also on my 929 coupe but they are pressed on such a way as to give strength, the kits sold for the mk3 have no gusseting or any strengthening and are just a thinnish extended spring plate to accommodate the bottom shock mount.. For $900 they'd need to be better IMO.

Yeah I've seen that, also read a bit about oil thickness as well. I'll pull them apart and give them a service with 30wt.

There are numerous topics on converting from lever arm socks to telescopic and even a guy on trademe that sells a bolt on kit (it looks very weak with the bottom shock mount hanging off the leaf spring plate) but I think I'll just recon these and see if I can in some way make them offer a little more resistance. I'll get this driveshaft balanced as the other one I had was apparently permanently out of alignment. Hopefully this one will be better. It was also fairly soft in the back which made for a nice ride but if there was a couple of people in the back it dropped quite significantly, will talk to a mate of mine in chch who is a major zephyr Barry and see what I can do spring wise. All in all its good enough to leave under there, a couple of bits of very light surface rust that I'll treat with Lanolin, and clearly the exhaust has seen better days. There is also a fairly large amount of side to side movement in the diff and the bushes feel fairly soft, would like to upgrade to a harder compound rubber in the bushes as opposed to urethane although apparently superpro bushes are a lot better quality than nolathane. (any experiences?) you can also see below where the 16s I had the center moved on have been rubbing against the inner gaurd might just leave them off for the wof but I think it has lots to do with the lateral movement.. I will also be lowering her finally @Valiant..

Pulled the diff and associated hardware out yesterday, was pretty painless as pretty much every nut came off with little to no effort bar the u bolts putting up a small amount of resistance, very grimy which is also to be expected after almost 60 years, guess that helped keep bolt threads reasonably lubed.. The housing had some fairly bad surface rust on it but should be all good with a clean up, I'll change the pinion shaft seal reseal the head, I'll prob have to do the axle seals as a can see evidence of a leak there. Also might have to put a new brake line in as its fairly rusty too..