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This is for an Isuzu 4ZD1 with a 4ZE1 head. Stock valves are 38mm/44mm, I want to go up to 39mm and 45mm. I will be using Porsche elephant feet swivel adjusters, so there should be some room to adjust them up: https://lnengineering.com/products/oem-911-adjusters.html These will probably be what I buy for the exhaust: https://www.speedfactoryracing.net/products/supertech-tevn-1063-supertech-performance-valves-toyota-2tc-3tc-exhaust-valve-39x8x110mm-ss-blk - I've been told they work but I must be honest, I've been lazy and have not measured my stock valve length. Assuming that the 110mm length is "stock" for a 3TC valve, these guys do a 45mm valve that is 2.54mm longer, so 112.54mm: https://www.euroexportinc.com/45mm-stainless-steel-intake-valve-toyota-2tc-3tc-0-100-length/ I'm not sure if it is an important measurement, but would the distance from the grooves to the end of the valve be 2.54mm longer, or would the grooves be cut 2.54mm further up the stem? I have seen these and will probably use them if I have to cut the valve down.

Haha, perhaps I don't understand what I'm talking about. I'm learning here. To keep the installed height of the spring the same as stock, doesn't the distance between the groove and the spring seat (is that its name?) need to remain the same as stock? So if the groove is further up the valve then the spring is not installed at the same height. Am I going crazy?

Wouldn't that depend on the distance the grooves are cut from the valve face, relative to the stock ones?

Are there any issues with wrecking the hardening process?

I am trying to chase down some 45mm valves with 110mm stems for my engine. It's becoming apparent that they do not exist off the shelf. I can find ones that that are slightly longer or shorter (up to 5mm longer or 2mm shorter). What is the go here? If I have adjustable rocker feet that this make up the difference? Is 5mm longer too long? Cheers

No huge update here. I have been playing around with Sketch Up and had a jam at mocking up the sump bowl: Also received more stuff. This is a booster check valve for using a braided hose. In other news. @EURON8 has been helping me get the 4ZD1 into the engine bay, making mounts, as well as mounting my new intercooler.

I've also been working on how the sump for the 4ZD1 is going to work. There are two main problems: the bowl is super low, like 50mm below the x-member which is already quite low itself, and the wing of the bowl is below the exhaust and is going to get in the way of any decently size down pipe that I need to use. You can see the tight fit here: Here's the bowl sitting low: The x-member is quite snug up under there and it hang down quite a bit. But essentially it's just an empty bowl. My plan is to cut off the wing and weld on a new bowl that is raised, moves the wing to the intake side, increases capacity, and has some baffles to ensure maximum oil pickup. I have never done any of this before, so I'm just reading as much as I can, and @EURON8 is helping me out. Today I started mocking up the new bowl with cardboard. The adept might notice that the bottom of the sumps in these two pictures are different - the pictures above are from the 4ZD1, those below that I'm using for the mock up are from the 4ZE1, which drops much lower at the front meaning I'll have to cut more out to clear the steering rack - another story. It looks like the pickup will just clear, but I might take a few mm out of the tube to bring it up just in case something nasty happens. You'll see I've added in some trapdoors to try and prevent oil starvation. I would appreciate any advice about these in my discussion thread. I think I need to still have some non-doored bypass so the oil can more easily self-level. Also I will probably make sure the baffle over the opening does go all the way up to stop oil slopping over the top.

One thing I have been working on is redesigning the tacho. I was not lucky enough to be the owner of a Gemini with a "tacho dash", mine had a clock instead. Back in the day I did the old A-pillar tacho and kept the clock. You can see them in this picture. Also now I have holes in my A-pillar that I need to fix. Later on I removed the clock and put a tachometer from (I think) a Ford Laser in its spot. It was just hot glued in there and was backlit. It actually looked okay but I always wanted it to have move of a stock look. This is what the tacho dash looks like: The goal was to make something that looked similar, but that also sat back into the dash a bit more so it could be lit in the normal old way with the light coming around the sides. So there are two parts - design the face, and design the mount. The face was easy enough to make in Illustrator, the hardest bit was getting things the right size - since I never had a stock tacho to reference off - and finding a font that was suitable. The one I found was not the same but close. It's the same one used for the tacho in the game My Summer Car. Huge thanks to Brett at Doozi for his patience with me sorting out the colours - still maybe need to print one more as the yellow needs to be slightly more orange. It also has a sheen on the black, but I'm not sure that can be avoided. You don't notice it when it's in the dash anyway. The mount was made in a similar way. I used the same outline and had it laser cut out of acrylic. I also made up some little feet so it can mount at the right level, in line with the speedometer and other gauges. I then glued the feet in place on the back of the dash. This allowed me to take the face off and apply the sticker and screw it back down. Well, actually I put the sticker on before I glued it, but it comes on and off easy enough. It's just using hot glue so I can remove it if I need to make changes. From a prototype, this is how the tacho screws in, pretty self evident. And here it is, getting there: The square at the bottom is for an OLED that will display AFR. Big thanks to Ned for helping (basically doing everything) get that together. Hopefully I can find an old speedo needle somewhere to use as well.

I guess I spoke (typed?) too soon, and all is not well. It was always the plan to repaint over parts of the chrome on the surrounds. I was concerned about using traditional primer and paint as I knew it would be risky to key up the vacuum metalising, so I decided to use plastidip. I masked it all up nicely and it went on quite well. Unfortunately, when I went to pull the masking off it started to pull the plastidip off too. I then decided to just remove all the plastidip, and guess what came with it? Parts of the metalising. So cool. I'm not super sure on the next step. The guy who removed the chrome did say that he could try and actually chrome them for me, but the results are often mixed as getting it to stick to old plastic can be hard. I might try that anyway. Pretty annoyed though. The other option is to just paint them black.

I've got the trim back from Lucentt and I'm about 70% happy. Most of the issues (I assume) are to do with the prep of the plastic. I made a poor assumption that the vacuumised metal would fill in some nicks and scratches, but it does not. It must be super thin. So there are still some visable scratches where I had sanded off a little bit of the remaining chrome with sandpaper that's way too high grit - again my fault for not knowing. There is a mark in one of the corners that doesn't make sense to me. It looks like it was put down on something while wet (if it's ever wet). I'm debating whether or not to see if the Morrinsville guy can do a better job - I feel like Lucentt weren't really perfectionists. Looks okay from afar: But there are some issues:

I've finally got all the chrome off my test light surround. I'm going to take it to Lucentt today to be coated. I'll be super stoked if it comes out good - hopefully I end up being able to use it as the final version.

One thing I need to figure out is how to get the compression ratio I want. I know I want to use a 4ZE1 (2.6) head on my 4ZD1 (2.3) as they have much larger ports. I know I want to run approximately 8.5:1 compression ratio. There are two different E1 heads, "open" chamber (74cc), and "kidney" chamber (58cc). Bear in mind that I am calculating the following with custom pistons at 0 deck height: If I just bolt on the open chamber head, it will give a 7.8:1 compression ratio with the flat top, 0 desk height pistons. Solution, shave the head down (or add material to the chambers) to 67cc. The kidney head I can buy brand new online. If I bolt that on it will give around 9.5:1 compression, so too high. I can fix this buy specifying a -8cc dish in the pistons. As I write this, I'm leading towards the kidney head as if something goes wrong in the future, I won't have the search out an open chamber head and modify it to get back to where I was. I'm not sure if there is any difference in the casting of the heads, otherwise. Kidney: Open:

Let's do this one more time. This morning I received a full SuperPro bushing kit. And it's missing just one swaybar linkage bushing - who ever packed them put them in loose and the box ripped in transit. Hopefully can get one sent to me asap.

Cheers. It's a conundrum getting this paint off. Lots of things will get paint off of chrome, but I need to be careful that whatever I use doesn't touch any of the now de-chromed plastic! Should have removed the paint first!

Just another post where I bought a thing and did no actual constructive work. Injector Dynamics ID1050x - if you're looking for these, Possum Borne Motorsport seemed to have the best price locally.

If you've been following my thread about plastic chroming: then you'll know I've been trying to dechrome and rechrome my plastic (ABS) tail light surrounds. It's been a bit of a saga, but I have some positive news. Before the lockdown I gave a test part to an electroplater in Onehunga to try and strip the chrome off without damaging the plastic. I never heard anything and assumed that nothing had happened, so I rolled down at lunchtime today and get it and figure something else out. Turns out he'd given it a go and it started to work fairly well. The main issue was that the surrounds have a significant amount of paint on them, as they were fully chromed from the factory but painted over leaving only the edges exposed. The chemicals he was using wouldn't penetrate the paint to get to the chrome, so I need to fully paint stripped and give it back to him. Compare these two images, the first is the back of the surround where the chrome was thinner and had no paint; the second is front that has some paint - you can see where the chrome is starting to come off but the plater dude didn't leave it in the solution long enough because of the paint issue. I'm pretty confident that once I've got all the paint off, it will not be too difficult to get these back to pure plastic. (I'll upload a pic of the back prior to the stripping after I next visit the garage). Any tips on paint stripping that will be safe on plastic? I've heard DOT 4 brake fluid should be okay, as well as oven cleaner with caustic soda. The only other news is that I finally went into work where I had some stuff waiting for me in the in-tray. Nothing totally exciting really, stuff from the wreckers in Aussie: a non-butchered (due to fitting the boss kit) ignition surround and some good condition door handles. Mine were in a bit of a shit condition and the place I got my bumpers restored at wanted $150 per handle to fix and couldn't guarantee how well they would come out - these were $35 each and look pretty good.

It seems that I got prematurely excited about not having to modify the sump. The engine is sitting on the mounts but the sump is just touching the steering rack. That leaves me with two options. Lower the rack by 10-15mm, or cut and shut the sump. I'm leaning towards the second option. This is mainly because the steel bowl of these sumps has a fun tendency to sit super low, around 20mm lower than the bottom of the x-member. Lot of people just deal with it, but my x-member is not much higher than 100mm off the ground, so that's too low for me. Since I'll have to modify the bowl and the pickup, may as well just sort the rest of the sump while I'm at it. The other, less terrible but still annoying issue is that the 'wing' on the bowl does not leave much room for the dump pipe: So if I'm modding all this stuff then I may as well chop the side off. I can make it up on the other side. I've got a fair idea of what I need to do; if only I had a fair idea of how to weld things

I found a workshop manual that clearly lays out the two different sumps. The 4WD one looks to be quite a bit lower. I could potentially space the engine up, wouldn't be difficult. I've also heard, though, that this sump leaves little space for the exhaust, so spacing it up would probably reduce that space.

Engine is now sitting in the garage. I've spoken to a few of the Aussie 4Z engine boys about what I picked up and they are mostly confused. It seems that there is some difference between the Isuzu and Holden 4Z engines. Basically, none of then Aussies have ever seen a 4ZD1 with an alloy sump, they typically have steel sumps. The 4ZE1 (which is essentially the same block but taller and wider bores) usually has an alloy sump. My 4ZD1 has an alloy sump. A normal E1 alloy sump looks like the one in the back of this next picture, and you cut and shut it as shown. My D1 alloy sump is basically flat. Two of the Aussies had never seen a sump like that before, and one thinks it might be similar to very early E1 sumps. Here are some pics: The hopeful part about this is that I might not need to modify the sump, it should clear the steering rack. However, the third Aussie thinks that the bowl might sit too low and I might need to reduce its height and shorten the oil pickup. My thoughts are that that is more difficult that using my other E1 sump (pic 1) and doing the cut and shut. Anyway, need to drop the engine into the car to see how this mystery sump fits around everything. Pic of engine looking nice and grotty. Dude who sold it to me says it wasn't blown when he got the car, but that the fuel pump gave out or something. It turns over by hand super easy which provides some hopefulness.

Hopefully works now. Too good to be true thinking you can copy/paste into the reply box eh?

Ah shit, I was just copying the image and pasting it in the forum, assuming that the forum would auto pull them over. I'll fix that.

Hightailed it down to Whanganui via New Plymouth over the weekend to extract a 4ZD1 engine out of a Trooper. It's 2.3 litre and about 110hp in stock form. Will bolt up to my standard Gem 5-speed and into the bay with the Gem engine mounts. Will probably use the 4ZE1 (2.6) head on it as it has better combustion chambers and way bigger ports. Thanks @alfalfa for helping out.

You know it. I'm having second thoughts about whether or not it's going to work. I need to get the engine sitting in the bay to check the actual space I'm working with. Hopefully can do that after I get it this weekend. The only other update is that I took a piece of chrome plastic trim to an electroplater to attempt to be de-chromed so I can have it re-chromed. This was in March. They haven't tried to do it yet. At least they haven't lost it. Anyone have any suggestions for de/rechroming plastic in Auckland?

Removed the random flow paths

@kyteler Literally the only reason why I did that was so it doesn't just look like a large piece of flat sheet metal. You are right, it will funnel air out the sides that will be more useful going through the radiator. Will close it up, and it makes it easier to put together anyway.