chasinthemirage

Does anyone have access to Toyota torque specs? 1KD-FTV in a Toyoace flywheel bolt torque setting? Can't get through to anyone in the local Toyota dealership.

Add some yellow and orange stripes plz

Oh man looks so good in that colour!

Monday night I got the horn working, fitted the factory turbo heat shield and went for a blat around the block. The car was idling perfectly with the injector wire re-crimped and clicked back in but was cutting out once it hit boost. The gauges in these things aren't known for being particularly accurate so despite it having a quarter of a tank on the gauge I decided to put some fresh fuel in it before I started looking for issues that may not have actually been there. Last night I adjusted the parking brake, rebled the master cylinder and wheel brakes and treated it to 15L of 98 octane. After letting it warm up for a few minutes I took it for a couple quiet laps around the block to check the brakes and get some heat into the rest of the driveline before giving it a bit of jandal. I took it easy as it's the first time it's been driven properly in a year but the brakes feel good and it pulls cleanly through the rev range. There's still a few things left to sort but it felt damn good to finally hear that wee T3 spool!

As far as I know it's just running the stock 30E fuel pump. Got it sorted, I'm an idiot. Never occurred to me to check the terminals in the injector plug! One of them had pulled out of the plug and was sitting inside the insulating boot. Will need a new plug at some stage but it's running sweet now!

@chris r I'll give it a tap and cross my fingers. Unfortunately the rail sits between the two halves of the inlet manifold. I'm going to remove the throttle body and try to squeeze the rail past but I think I'll end up having to drain the coolant and take the top half of the manifold off to get it out.

Righto, so to follow on from the above post I'd like to get the opinion of someone with some more EFI experience than myself. The whole time I've owned this car its run rough (it wasn't running rough when I test drove it before purchase). It starts and idles but blows quite a lot of blue/black smoke upon startup and has a constant lump in the idle. The one time that I drove it it wouldn't accelerate past about 3500rpm. I have borrowed parts from my other VL in an effort to isolate the fault. One part at a time I have substituted the following: AFM, CAS, distributor rotor, distributor cap, ignition leads. I have also swapped the spark plugs between cylinders without any change. Removing the ignition leads one by one with the car idling showed that the miss is in cylinder number 4 as the engine note doesn't change with this plug disconnected. The miss has remained constant in number 4 cylinder despite swapping the parts. I have also compression tested the engine and found that all six cylinders were within 10psi of each other so I don't think it's a valve issue. One thing I noticed when swapping plugs around was that the number 4 plug was very wet while the other 5 were black and sooty (it hasn't had a good run up to temperature in god knows how long so I'm not worried about the soot). With the car idling I removed the injector plug from number 4 without any change in the idling engine note. I then removed number 1 as its easiest to get to and there was a definite change in the engine note. (Both the removal of the ignition lead and injector plug were done very briefly as I didn't want to risk causing any further issues). This has got me thinking that the number 4 injector is stuck open or leaking and constantly delivering fuel which is causing the miss. What do you fellas reckon? Is there anything else that I should be checking or trying before I commit to removing the inlet manifold so that I can once again take the rail and injectors out? I'm not entirely sure I've gone about this diagnosis in the most straight forward way but hopefully I've explained it well enough. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I'd quite like to drive the thing without worrying about stuffing it!

@DodgySam I think the issues that I'm having are due to over fueling rather than starvation. I checked over a few more things over the weekend, it has compression and spark but the number 4 spark plug is constantly saturated with fuel. I don't think it can really be anything else so I'll pull the rail off again and get the injectors flow tested and cleaned and hopefully that will solve the rough running issue I've been having.

@Mof No way! I'm still yet to see one of the BT1's around, there's apparently one in Lincoln somewhere and there's a couple of them down in Timaru as well. So much pine!

@kws I pined these things for years before finally buying one. I was always put off buy the unique mixture of Holden bogans and RB flatpeakers but they've been great cars. I swapped the rotor too but the fault didn't go away until I started it using the new battery from my other VL. I've got a new one in the back of the car currently so I'll fit that tonight and see how it goes before I worry about anything else.

Hello again. Been an interesting couple of weeks for this thing recently. As I mentioned in my last post I got the car running after sorting the cooling system and it was running on 5. Long story short I ended up swapping the CAS, AFM, coil, distributor cap and leads with my Berlina in an attempt to isolate the fault. None of that fixed the rough running so I borrowed a compression tester off the OSGC that is @h4nd. As it turns out the compression is fine, within 10psi across all six cylinders but it runs like shite until you fit a battery that isn't cooched. Oops. I also finally did something with the diff, I've retained the OE 25 spline single spinner because as average as it is for traction at least it doesn't limit the already small choice of 5x120 wheels any further. I changed the oil, fitted new shoes and wheel cylinders and made some new brake hardlines. I had a few issues with the hardlines leaking but last night I finally got them to seal up and after bleeding the brakes I took it for it's first drive in my almost year long ownership. Here's a potato spec photo to prove it actually left the garage. I need to bleed the brakes again as they are absolutely awful and I didn't manage any doses as it wouldn't rev past about 3500rpm (battery related I think) but I guess slow progress is still progress. Gotta admit though, as much as I want a lush street car this thing has got me pretty beat.

@Lump Thank you, I've got one sorted now though! Cheers anyway!

Thanks dudes, hoping to find one locally though! Otherwise Brian will be back next week and I'll just grab his one

Hey boes, Does anyone have a brake tube flaring tool and a cutter that I could borrow? Finally have all the parts required to finish the brakes on the VL but my workmate who was going to loan me a tool is away sick and I'd like to get it done while I'm an a bit of a roll. Will pay in firm handshakes/cold beverages etc. Thanks, Chaz

No worries at all! Good to see everyone last night!

All sorted now thanks guys

All sorted now thanks guys

G'day you jokers, does anyone have a compression tester that I could borrow? Having some trouble with the VL turbo and I'd like to rule out core engine trouble. Can pay in firm handshakes/beers Fanks, Chaz

@Dell'orto the previous owner has first option on it but I'll let you know if it does/is going up for sale. @igor it sure does, it was actually quite exciting hearing it fire up again!

So this thing has been languishing at my folks place for far too long. I took all the nasty old hoses off the engine eight months, (yes you read that correctly) ago and finally finished assembling everything a few nights back. Overall the cooling system was pretty rough, all the hoses appeared to be OEM and were pretty cooched. When I first got this thing home it was loosing coolant about as fast as I could top it up so I rang around and managed to track down the last Gates cooling hose set in NZ at the time. Long story short I've removed and cleaned the inlet manifold, replaced the injector hoses, fitted a recored radiator, a new thermostat and radiator cap and replaced every coolant hose in the engine bay with the exception of the overflow bottle hoses (foamers may be able to spot the incorrect hose?) Last week sometime I gave the thing a wash, filled it with coolant, disconnected the HT lead and cranked it until I had oil pressure and then kicked it in the guts. It started on the third try which I was quite surprised about. I'm not really that happy with the engine bay and there's still a few things to sort, namely the rough running and the noisy clutch release bearing but at least it's running again and one step closer to being a road legal car or someone else's problem.

What sort of truck is it? Big block, slam and duallies plz

Man this is looking awesome, well done!

It's a pretty cool feature imo!

What does the hatch in the centre of the hood give you access to? Fuel tank?

Anything planned for the next few days/weeks? Keen to catch up with you fellas for a feed/some beers/etc. Promise I'll actually turn up this time (unless I'm working?)