DAD

Sweet unicycle dude, any progress with the engine? P.s nice watanabe

Search "cafe racer seat", there's loads of them!

Das racist.

Dents add character, dents are good. Edit: you should see the bad side.

Seat arrived today, thanks AliExpress! Not going to be attached for a while (until after its rereged anyway), but I couldn't help mocking it up.

Cheers man, the photo is quite flattering to it but it looks way better than it did. Colour was a spur of the moment choice but I'm really digging it.

Might pop a vinyl stripe or something on it, having a think and a play with designs at the moment. Not sure it'll stay this colour forever anyway, just a bit neater than the skanky chipped mattyB

Work xmas do and also on call. Sorry team

Progress marches on. Stripped down to frame, removed grime and much of the surface rust, and rustkilled the rest. Bit of paint and it's actually almost looking kinda semi smart now. Just waiting on postie before I can start putting stuff back together.

Noice, good get.

Bodacious spaceped, Starbuck. Have you checked to make sure it's not one of the gimpy supporting characters from the original Transformers cartoon yet?

Currently full of disease, but if that clears I'm keen. So is Megan, and she needs to meet more of you wonderful bastards before nats. Edit: just had the date (yeah the one in the title) pointed out to me. Down to work that weekend. Not sure I can weedle out but will see what I can do. Need mininats time.

Got carried away. Cleaning bits up as they come off, it's all coming up pretty nicely. Got some bits and bobs on order to replaced the buggered bits, so looking forward to Mr Postieman showing up. Plan remains: strip to frame, tidy to wof spec, rebuild/wof & re-vin/ride. Good progress so far.

Fuck a duck, that's mega.

Yep! Belongs to the missus, she's doing similar things with that one, much excite! Nice little thing, dorky eyeball aside.

Been hunting for a bike project for a little while, this one popped up on facebook marketplace in the Hutt valley and was cheapy cheap cheap. I don't have a bike license and have never ridden anything scarier than a farm bike, so I'll be getting this back on the road, then using it to git gud at riding and tinkering with it/aesthetically adjusting it on rainy days. Hoping to get it back legal again while we've still got some sunshine.. Here it is when I picked it up. It's been off the road for about 9 years, and it shows, but it seems like the bones are good, and it kicked over okay. Key is a bent fork, so that's a thing. But carjam clear and numbers match, so allG. See also: Kawaiicatty Mostly surface rust, only proper rot is on the underside of the seat, and that's getting binned. Oh, and the exhausts are rotten, so they'll get replaced at some point. New battery and some fresh fuel and it fired right up, chuffed! Carbs are pretty grotty and seem to stick (a CV thing?), so will get some cheapy mikuni clones or something on Ali and try them instead. Eventual goalz:

So it turns out I'm not very good at keeping project threads up to date. Or using reliable image hosts (facebook? What was I thinking?!). Also can't seem to find the edit button, so the above posts will have to stay as-is for now. I'll try and give a bit of info on the direction the little KP has taken over the past 14 months. May well have missed out some major bits, so please comment in discussion thread if I've missed anything vital! Plenty of stumbling blocks in what I naively assumed would be a reasonably easy project, so hopefully some good points come out that will be useful for others. Bear in mind my only real previous projects were stripping a Saxo for track days and modifying my MR2 with new seats, chopped springs and banded steels... SO! Yes, got some Work Equip 01's from Beaver Shod them in rubber and got them bolted on. Arch gap present to an alarming degree, but this was imminently pre-nats '15 and I owned a socket set and some screwdrivers. Plus I was a little busy trying to get some shonky twin 40 DHLA Dell'ortos running. Had never tuned a carb in my life at this point. Eventually gave up on the rubbish linkage and bought a nice Mangoletsi one from Europe which helped balancing and throttle travel adjustment immensely. Seriously recommend these. Miracle of miracles, I got the car running pretty nicely on the crabs. New exhaust had turned up the previous day and didn't need to change the tune too much. Would cold start okay, idle happily, keep a sensible temp (I think, lol Toyota gauges) and over my (whole) 30 minute test drive was happy throughout the rev range and emitted plenty of doorts. Oh, this was the night before Nats, sweet. Nats started wonderfully, did a 4 hour burn up to Taupo after work the night before, stayed the night there, then set off for a further 4 hours to Coromandel the following morning. Cold starting an over-carbed 4k with a loud exhaust in a motel car park at 6am is a fun game. Got stuck behind a boat trailer on the wiggly Coromandel coastal road for about 40 minutes, meant a lot of partial throttle compared with the all-or-nothing it had been getting up to that point, and that's when I noticed something wasn't right. A bit of hesitancy coming out of corners, a little coughing. Quickly developed to a bigger problem... Plugs were coked to hell. I knew it was rich (safe, bruh), so cleaned them up and set off again. Better, but quickly buggered itself again. Noticed fuel pouring out of the rear carb, forming nice little fuelly waterfalls from the trumpets. Damn. Pulled the carb apart at Beaver's parents place, looked to be a float issue, the pivot for the float had broken and been bodged with a bit of wire at some point. Had worked for a while but the pissing fuel was almost certainly down to that. Abandoned the KP there, it would get shipped back thanks to AA plus (win), and I'd have a fun nats tagging along with Sparkle and Goat. When I finally got it home, I swapped the original carb and some fresh plugs on to see if it would run. No luck, barely ran on a couple of cylinders, rough as fuck. Suspect overfuelling on 3 and 4 had washed the bores or something? Oh well. Was thinking of getting a 5k anyway. 5ks were about $500 at this point for a runner. Not bad. Could rebuild carbs (arguably better suited to a 1.5 than a 1.3 anyway) and swap them over to the BIG BLOCK. Bought one! Oops. Looks like it needs a decat too. Mate back home made me a keyring to celebrate this new direction: Dragged the little green paperweight to Goat's workshop, and things started happening. Massive shout-out to Goat at this point, couldn't have gone any further with the car without his help. There are definite downsides to moving to a new country and not knowing anyone, but one of the major upsides is meeting ultimate GCs that are willing to help out at any point. 4k took about 15 nanoseconds to remove. Pulled off the 4age loom and sent it to that chap on trademe what chops wires. Meanwhile, fitted the SQ engineering waterline and dizzy relocation kits to get things more latitudinal than longitudinal. Lovely quality kits with pimp CNC, nice fittings etc. Shame its all covered up by 20 year old plastics but whatev's. I'd also picked up an A-series bellhousing pattern k50 gearbox to fit the 4age. Transferred the shifter and tailhousing from the starlet k50 so it'd line up with gbox mount, prop, gearstick hole etc. Handy. Got the engine and box sitting in the bay on trademe-special mounts (damn it Jim, I'm a vet, not a fabricator) but ran into a slight snag. The capped off dizzy mount was interfering with the firewall and the heater matrix pipes. Modified the mounting points and moved the engine forward 20mm, and got one of the heater matrix pipes brazed on a little further outboard, and this just about sorted it. Still tight, but no longer interference fit. Obviously this also changed the position of the gearbox, but that would be a problem for another day. Noticed at this point that the clutch cable locator on the gearbox had been chopped off by some enterprising dick somewhere along the line. Ballz. Was having second thoughts about using a k50 behind the XTREME POWER 9000 of the blacktop at this point anyway. Suppose a bracket wouldn't be too hard to fab. Oops^2. T50 is about the same length as a k50, handy. Also came with a beefier and longer corolla prop. The KP prop was too short, (we moved the engine forward 20mm, remember), so I had the corolla prop shortened and balanced to fit. While I was at the engineers shop I had them braze a second, wider pipe into the fuel tank pickup. Now using the wide one as the feed to my Carter low pressure lift pump. This sends the fuel forward through 8mm aluminium lines I routed alongside the 6mm factory ones. When it gets to the engine bay it deposits it into an Ali-Express-Special surge tank with an integrated Bosch 044 that supplies the fuel rail. Return from the surge tank runs through the narrower diameter factory fuel lines and back into the tank through the original (narrow) pickup. Seems to work quite well! Hopefully not all too noisy when the exhaust is on, we'll see. Starting to look pretty good in there now I reckon. One of the big differences between T50 and K50 boxes is the T50 is hydraulic clutch rather than cable. Came at this from a few angles; ended up buying an ae86 master and slave cylinder, as well as some nice braided clutch line, but didn't want to bugger around with the pedalbox too much. A lot of the modified ones out there looked a bit compromised, with big flex forces on the pedal where bits of steel bar had been tacked on to get it actuating the MC. Bought a pedalbox from an EG civic for super cheapz on trademe and the separate clutch pedal actually looks like a promising alternative. The other route seemed to be to fit a Wilwood pedalbox or similar, like Snoozin' is doing for his. Pimp, but didn't want to rush down that route just yet. I'm 6'2" and was worried that a floor mount pedalbox would sit closer to the drivers seat than the factory one, and I already struggle to get my gangly legs wedged in. Hmm. At this point, Nats '16 happened, shotgunned my way around for a stress-free time this year. Found a clone in Horopito, poor thing. Was having a chat with Beaver, Manu, Goat, Ned and Cam, and one of them suggested a cable fork conversion kit from a company in Ireland. Ideal! Some googling revealed that FLOS.IE was the company that did them. GCs to deal with and did me a discount for sending a k50 donor fork for them to molest into one of these: Got myself a Christmas present, an N2 style aluminium rear wing. Nicely modelled here by a goat majestically sunning itself in it's natural habitat: Flippity flip I hate wiring. Spent ages trying to work out why engine was turning over but not firing. Had spark but no injector pulse. Finally found this absolute treasure trove of 4age wiring goodness. Had to re-wire my fuel cutoff relay circuits to incorporate the ECU starter trigger like so: et voila! Much relief. A bit of rust to sort in the heater channel, so loom came back out for now (also to solder and wrap properly, rather than the twist-and-tapes that you can see in the video...) Gave the exhaust bits and bobs a tidy up. It's a 20v manifold (not sure what make, but the bolt spacing is 20v specific), and my original 2" system. What now? Oh yeah, lows. Got some other bling from T3, these are just lovely. Fitted up well (though they sent the wrong bolts with the RCAs). Gave the dust shields and calipers a bit of a spruce before shifting them onto the shiny legs. Have since swapped the brake lines out for some pimp gold (don't judge me) Hel stainless steel braided ones. Don't trust 32 year old brake lines too much, and while it was all apart... No pics unfortunately. As for the rear, figured a good low spring/short travel adjustable damper combo would be the way to go. Integrated shock/coilover units are available, but didn't want to go to the lengths of reinforcing turrets/axle spindle etc, at least not yet. If I eventually go T-series rear end that'll be the time for those fun and games. Seems some people use mk2 escort rear dampers as their short travel shock of choice. With the amount of competition options available for them I thought that'd be a sound choice, so got some GAZ (English company, played with some of their stuff before I came over here) 38-way adjustable shocks for the rear. Should be enough adjustability to get it riding well I hope! Expecting to have to modify the Cobra springs to get them low enough. We'll see. Current ultimate racecar spec as stands: Chassis: Stock kp61 Sprint body T3 adjustable front coilovers Cobra superlow rear springs GAZ adjustable dampers (mk2 escort) Hel braided SS brake lines 13x7 Work Equip 01s A-series to K-series engine mounts Battery relocated to boot. Engine: Stock 4AGE 20v blacktop from a Levin SQ engineering waterline kit SQ engineering Dizzy kit T3 100mm velocity stacks 4-1 20v manifold (unknown brand) with 2" custom exhaust. 1G-GE high torque starter with Niteparts spacer kit Simplified loom Carter Lift pump/engine bay surge tank/Bosch 044 EFI pump setup AE86 radiator Transmission: T50 20-spline FLOS.IE T50 clutch cable conversion kit Exedy 220mm clutch Shortened corolla driveshaft Stock U-code rear end Plans: Sort small rust patches in rain channel Make up gearbox mount Make up driveshaft loop Fit O2 sensor and flanges to exhaust manifold Fit rad and pipes Cert Doorts Other stuff I can't think of right now.

Just read through from start to finish, looks great! Just make sure you've got plenty of thread engagement on that rear engine hook (i.e a longer bolt than the one that usually lives there) - had a blacktop on a crane yesterday with a hook mounted there with the original bolt, pulled the bolt clean out of the head! Luckily it gave out just as we were lining up the mounts so it didn't have far to drop...

New exhaust getting its final welding as we speak, longest I've driven the Starlet with new carbs is 20mins to the workshop. 8 hour drive to Coro from the Wairarapa ahead of me today, am I doing this Nats thing correctly? Anyone leaving LNI this afternoon?

Bit of an update. Still not running reliably - been busy sorting non-car related stuff over the weekends/evenings. Can get it started now and running but still getting a bit of fuel coming out of the venturis of one carb. Might be as simple as a bit more float tweaking needed, seemed to clear it up on the other carb and there might be less leaking from this one than there was. Don't think I'm going to have exhaust sorted for Nats, so depending how much progress I get next weekend It'll be in one of 2 states: -Big crabs with standard exhaust or -Stock and sad We'll see... Oh, in the meantime, got a full set of these from Beaver: Currently tyre browsing. 175/60/13s are top of my list at the moment.

Lot of potential there for a box of beer. 2zz is a fantastic engine, what rwd boxes will it bolt to?

I love S12s, and yours is coming along fantastically! Shame about the engine, but at least all the fiddly bits of the conversion are done and you just need to swap lumps. Time for a DET?

Thanks for the help guys! Had a bit more of a play today. ajg - is that gasket the triple layer 7k manifold? Picked one of those up a few weeks ago. Managed to Dremel down the outside of the manifold to give enough access to tighten it all down properly, no more air leak. Starts and idles reasonably comfortably (though starts creeping a bit high, will need to work on that), but still leaking fuel from all 4 venturis. Not managed to get it up to temperature yet, the idea of fuel dripping on to hot exhaust isn't one that I enjoy! Top of my list for that is float adjustment - gave them a bit of a tweak earlier but didn't cure it. Will try a bit more tomorrow. If no improvement... I can't imagine the stock mechanical pump would put out too high a pressure for the carbs could it?! Would I need a regulator?

Good to know about the vacuum advance, thanks! Just went out and made the idles a bit richer as suggested and with a bit of coaxing it started! Sounded rough as hell but at least somewhere to work from. From the look/sound of it i suspect I've got a bit of an air leak around the rearmost manifold bolt (tight spot, silly manifold design, difficult to get a good grip on the bolt) so that's the first place to revisit. Also a few backfires through the carbs and dripped a reasonable amount of fuel out of the 4 barrels when I turned it off, suspect mixture/timing causes for that? (Optimistic) plan was to try to get it into a state where I can drive it to someone to fine-tune. Hoping to try to learn enough to get it in the right ballpark, then I should have a reasonable enough level of knowledge to at least understand where the experts are coming from... We'll see!