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Bring that catalogue with you on Sunday Steeb! Old barrys love catalogues.

Yeah, I wasn't going to look at the car again for another 9-12 months, but peer pressure (and a repair quote that came in well under what I initially thought) made me do it. Engine builder recommended 1.1mm or thicker headgasket so will see what Toyota can supply. The crank from the donor AE101 GZE was in better condition, so ended up using it, and the rods from that motor instead. Hmmmmm. Guessing these are N/A suited? Let me do some research and get back to you Richy. @Firetruck I don't really want to go too extreme to be honest, keen on having a tidy looking car externally with a couple of small mods to give it more shove. I keep telling myself (maybe poorly judged) that if I wanted to build a foooooly siiiiick MR2 I should have started with a rusty high-km $3000 shell instead of a low-km tidy $12,000 one out of Japan, and then it would be ripe to chuck in a 7A-GTE and Link. As it stands, it still feels a bit sacrilegious going down the path I already have...

Because everyone likes laughing at my misfortune, let's have another look at those big-end bearings. Yeah. The crank was also scored seven ways from Sunday, and the machinists next door were reluctant to skim it, so now it's a big ole paperweight. These were the worst ones but pretty much every single journal was rooted. We did work out the root cause of all this pain - the factory oil pump had eaten itself, apparently a common thing with the 1st gen motors. I never realized the 4A-GE also suffered from this weak point - it's a common thing to occur on the old Mazda B6Ts as well, although those tend to blow the relief valve and spring first. Lots of deep scoring against the cover: Take note of the area around the vivid mark: In the meantime, things got busy... and my wallet got empty. We acquired a donor 4A-GZE bottom end (from an AE101 this time) and Karl attempted to make a good one out of two. The end result: my block, pistons and sump + donor crank and rods = this. He also sourced a brand new oil pump from Toyota and a couple of other bits and pieces. Head has been sent for a skim, as there was a 0.004" bow in the face (eek). Toyota purists may note the AE101 4A-GZE rods are actually weaker than the preceding AW11/AE92 4A-GZE rods, but I was assured that for my application it wouldn't make a shred of difference. Different story if I was planning to go 7A and/or turbo I suppose. The first photo below should answer the age-old question of whether 1st gen 4A-GZE (AW11) blocks were 7-rib or 3-rib. Generic oil filter for the running in period. Better get more than 100,000km out of this shiny new TGP pump! Thanks to fellow oldschool member @Dell'orto I now have a SC12 from an AE101. They look very similar at first glance to the one that came off the AW11 but note the radius of each pulley face; AE101's is slightly smaller. If this translates into a slight boost increase, it won't be a bad thing I'm sure. When I next go back to the workshop I'll dig the verniers out and compare the inner diameter of each pulley, but I'm pretty confident they are different sizes, and the Toyota wizards on the internet also seem to indicate the same. This clutch also arrived. Sadly, Toyota no longer stocks a genuine clutch kit for the AW11 SC Next step is to speak to Mark at Toyota to see if I can find a suitable 1.1mm or thicker MLS head gasket before the engine can be fully reassembled. And do some more overtime in the mines to pay for all this faffing about. Discuss the colossal fail here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/49412-80s-kid-part-ii-eds-aw11-sc-chit-chat/

I did, and it was lush! Comment was more to justify why they were looking at Bookabach.

Cool, thanks Karl! Another member expressed interest in getting a Bookabach or similar in Hanmer town for a small group, and asked if I wanted to join in. I'm not even sure of the cost yet, and there's no ulterior motive apart from perhaps wanting a better night's sleep?

Oh hai, just a question because I know a couple of other people will probably end up in the same boat. If we are not looking to stay at the campground will the cost be any different Karl? Cheers!

Cheers Bart! Wouldn't matter to me if oldschool or not.

Couldn't get the Friday off work, so I'll be arriving in Chch 7:55pm Friday night and flying out at 2pm on Sunday. Does this suit at all?

I'm in, pending availability of a ride to/from Christchurch. Anyone able to pick up/drop off at the airport as well? If any other Aucklanders were umming and ahhing about going, flights via Air NZ are currently $49 each way for the days either side of Hanmer weekend. Choice.

Sounds good. I'll hopefully take the Skyline again, depends if it passes its WOF in between now and then. Be prepared to get asked countless times "boe how much did ur twennydebt conversion cost?" /nah it's not that sort of meet, lewl.

Oh it starts at 10 and goes until about midday, so maybe not I'm going test driving of Fiestas and Focuses straight after C&C, how about a cruise/coffee in the afternoon instead? Congrats BTW, must feel good man.

Come to Caffeine and Classics on Sunday morning, I'm taking the Skyline.

Definitely. But I've been accused of needlessly prioritizing one car over another before. This seems like the perfect opportunity to take a step back, hide the AW away for a while and focus on one of the other vehicles languishing in the garage. There's also a more selfish reason - I don't want to spend a large sum of money on it right now Having to replace the cambelt and drive belts 80,000km earlier than I'd envisaged was already starting to put it firmly into mothball territory. Then the clutch, now the bearings, etc, tipped it over the threshold.

Shit me dead, what have I got myself into... remember when I jokingly said "what you find next will shock you" and only half meant it? Well, it's not that funny anymore. For starters, this is the old cambelt. Looks perfectly fine from a distance. It's even TGP, which is great. But on closer inspection... this is what freaked Karl out enough to decide the engine was getting pulled. And that squealing accessory belt? This is why. Actually... make that TWO accessory belts both on the verge of crapping themselves. Anyway, here are the two new TGP accessory belts, ribbed for her pleasure. But I'm probably going to have to send them back, read on to find out why. Pulled into the workshop on Saturday morning to drop off a couple spare bottles of supercharger oil, in case the guys needed to top it up before reinstallation. "Guess what?" Karl said when I walked in the door. "Your clutch is fucked as well!" Again it was a case of thinking, "shit me dead, it was going to have to be done eventually but I didn't think it would need to be done this soon..." Then I saw the horrendous scorch marks on the pressure plate and flywheel and it made me cringe, just a little. And the clutch itself? Yeah, there's not much meat left. Even the release bearing has seen better days. With a quickly mounting repair bill looming, I mentioned that I'd noticed the engine had been doing a bit of the old knocky-knocky rattle-rattle on startup, and could sometimes hear a faint rattle at highway speeds in top gear under very light load. Sure, it could have been that release bearing, but being a 4A-G that's done just over 100,000kms I figured that with the engine out of the hole we may as well pull the sump and check the bearings, perhaps whack some new shells in if needed. Cue the next clickbait, shock news moment... Fast forward to this morning and I'm sitting at my desk at work, wishing I'd taken the day off like everyone else, when I get a cheerful call from Karl asking if I'd had a good weekend. Immediately I knew something was up; sure enough his next sentence was "I'm here to ruin your week, we pulled the sump off and you won't believe what happened next!" Yeah, so the number 4 big-end is spun right round like a record, baby. No idea how long it's been that way but I suspect a long time before I even got the car, and now I realize that all of the weird rattling sounds weren't just a screwed release bearing. The only saving grace in all of this is I'm very glad the engine didn't fall to pieces on, say, the Desert Road, the Gentle Annie, or any one of the multitude of back roads I've driven in the last 18 months. Needless to say I can't blame anyone but myself for 1. buying an old car, 2. buying an old car sight unseen out of Japan, 3. trusting the word of the dealer that the cambelt had been done, because clearly it hasn't been done and a whole host of other problems are now making themselves known, and 4. not waiting a little bit longer and buying a different one without all these hidden problems. Huge sigh! In light of all this I've made a decision to park the car up long-term and chip away at it when I feel that the funds deserve to be spent. For now though, I have the fun task of organizing to transport one immobile car and a whole host of parts somewhere safe, and because my brother's TX3 is now occupying the space in the garage that's usually reserved for the AW11 (since he's gone overseas for work) I'll need to find an alternative home for it. And to think this all happened because I failed a WOF. Discuss the colossal fail here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/49412-80s-kid-part-ii-eds-aw11-sc-chit-chat/

Nice score! I did wonder where the supercharged one from Ohaupo ended up, have you put it back on the road? Sounds like it didn't need all that much to get running again. I actually prefer the less garish and more streamlined interior of the later (Mk1a) AW11, but the extremely brash looking Recaros were too good not to install, because, hey, '80s car Unfortunately I received a bit more bad news about the AW this morning, and a project thread update will be along in due course to elaborate. In the meantime however - does anyone know how much work a SC14 upgrade would entail, and how well would the factory ECU cope with it? How about a SC12 from the later 4A-GZE with the smaller pulley?