Roman

There are a few tricky bits to getting the factory ECU going. You need to keep the electronic throttle body working, or you get an error code. Which means you need to fit an accellerator pedal angle sensor. Should be able to get one from an Altezza wreck for next to nothing. You also need an electronic speedo signal setup and a few other bits and pieces or you get error codes and possibly limp mode. It's not as straight forward as earlier engines, but doable! Getting the MAF sensor signal to be correct is by far the most critical part of getting these engines working well on factory ECU. There's a powerfc available for the Altezza, cheap and easy plug and play option if you can find one. Not the most elegant ECU option but cheap and as simple as it could possibly be to set it up.

Ahhh yep, oil temps would be helped a bit by having a lot more oil in the system compared to normal? Yeah that's the best feeling, being able to drive back home or load a car on trailer without any breakages hahaha. Look forward to seeing how things come along, will definitely try scab a passenger ride next time.

Rookie your car (with a long wheelbase and narrow track width) is the least affected by the downsides of a locked diff. Mine sledged the front heaps on corner entry, and mid corner or corner exit if you went over a small bump at the front the diff would push the car forwards. Night and day difference after changing away from that. All of this would be even worse in a starlet which has a proportionally wider track / shorter wheelbase. A $400 torsen is well worth the trouble of fitting. My experiences with a variety of diff types agrees pretty much exactly with the sentiments here. http://www.taylor-race.com/pdf/understanding_differentials.pdf

Yeah I definitely agree, but dont want to spend any more money on the car for a while. What's next for yours? How much was the rev limiter on the straight holding you up, might be a few more seconds in it just with a final drive change or 5 speed box perhaps?

Heh yeah car's slowly getting faster as I iron out handling quirks etc. Surely there's a straight through type of muffler that isnt going to rob you of any power? Dave Sentra muffler'd his Mazda now and it's a hell of a lot quieter for no real loss, as there's nothing to impede the flow of gas. Nice! The closest thing I can see which is somewhat comparable to my car: "The quick E30 series cars, which are around 96 rwkw, 1180 kg, and running on R888s do high 1:22s to low 1:23s" So my car's a bit lighter, has a little bit more power but a lot less grip compared to R888s... and less practice So tires and driving practice are likely the areas that will make my car faster for the least amount of money. Happy with the motor and everything else at the moment.

Yeah that sucks, always cool to see your Escort out there giving it death! There's plenty more coming up over summer, would definitely be cool to get a bit of an OS trackday crowd going on

Yeah it was awesome! Great turnout and we had it pretty sweet in terms of timing for the weather. It was a pity we were all in the same group though, was keen to watch some of the other OS cars doorting around too. If anyone's got GPS laptimes or whatever, chuck them up here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/36418-bragging-rights-laptimes-baby/page-1

Dear Rookie Dave, Happy Birthday. P.S. Great to see this car out there today, hope it all went well for you. P.P.S. I did not run any bearings with my lousy wet sump. P.P.P.S. Have you considered putting a muffler on your car, it is very noisy.

Went to a Twilight session at Hampton Downs this afternoon with a few OSers... A++ would attend the shit out of more of those! Got an awesome amount of tracktime for only $75, definitely worthwhile. Unfortunately though the clutch slipping issue came back, but again only after two stints in reasonably quick succession and lots of ruthless gear changes haha. The brakes were fantastic though, new pads worked well. When the car cooled down again the clutch came back right and it drove home fine. So I think I'll stick to road driving for the next while, as I CBF pulling the motor out again just quite yet. The clutch is perfectly fine for the road, just not up to track spec continuous beatdowns. I got about 5 good laps with no traffic or clutch slipping, managed a 1:26.38 as best lap time. Pretty happy with that for starters, there will be a few more seconds to chop away at that with some more practice, better lines and a better clutch!

Bankruptcy and Masochism are two words that come to mind for boat restoration! Even by OS standards! haha

Levering against the pad = levering against the disc. Not keen on that as I've just got new wheel bearings and not keen to be putting a lot of force on them. Sorted now anyway, gonna run down the road to Radium this morning.

Aahhh awesome! http://radum.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=8685 Might go check that place out today. Thanks.

Hey thanks... Yeah there are ones that look like those on Ebay for about 25 bucks + shipping. But probably horribly made by comparison haha. Although I will go have a geez at BNT etc today and see if there's anything similar.

The last set... 1 trackday Hopefully a bit more longevity with non weetbix pads though. But yeah for one reason or another, I've had to pull my front suspension apart maybe 10 times since I've had my car together... So I'd like to make things easier when this happens too. So I get what you're saying. But I need to push the pistons back in for any job relating to brakes / hubs / bearings / struts / whatever.

Should be clearing weather for tomorrow / overcast. Woot! Looking forward to this but wont be beating on the car too hard - It'll be just my luck that the one time I dont bring the car trailer and full set of tools, I'll need them

Hey, I put 4 pot brakes on the front of my car so it's super quick to change pads at a trackday or whatever if need be. And, yes, it is a LOT easier to quickly yank the pads out! BUT It's a giant kick in the balls trying to get the pistons back in, and I dont want to lever against the disc. Does anyone know of a tool similar to this that you could buy from BNT or where ever? Or have any good ideas on how to make something similar for minimal effort For Nissan R33 calipers. Ideas, go! EDIT: Aahhhh nevermind, E-bay is flooded with simple tools which will do the trick. Problem solved haha.

Heh yeah it's been a while, the car is buried under a mountain of crap in the garage at my Dads place currently... We're just working on clearing it all out so we can get stuck back in this summer. Always on the lookout for soarer parts though, shout out if anyone's got some Z10 junk lying around! Or a 1JZGTE VVTI downpipe/cat converter.

get an f series diff (7.5" crownwheel) and bang in a factory torsen lsd from an altezza. can get them for about 400 bucks. depending on tire size either a 4.1 or 4.3 ratio will be best for a standard rev limit engine.

Hey there are a few tricks you can use that will be helpful... (probably what you were after in the first place haha) -There are two sets of holes for where the shifter bolts on to the gearbox. You can bash out the split pin in on the shifter part that's on the shaft, turn it around 180 degrees and then run the shifter bracket on the further forward set of holes. Definitely do this, it helps a lot! -You can run a W series gearbox spline into the back of the box, these are thicker beefier driveshafts than Altezza ones. But altezza size will be fine and a bit lighter. -They used to sell a TRD sump for these motors, but it effectively just does these mods to factory parts: Take the lower oil pan off, and there's a top tray part that runs around the edge of the bowl. You can hammer one of the corners down shut, and use a bead of sealant around the gaps to close any other gaps. Stops the oil coming back out the top under hard cornering. -Put a spacer (I'll find how thick it needs to be, cant remember) between the oil pickup and the block so it sits lower down. (TRD car does this, although wont apply if you need to cut the bowl shorter for clearance) - Weld a small steel pipe that protrudes upwards and downwards, into the disptick hole in that same metal plate as above. Stops the oil sloshing through there. -You can use a W5* gearbox speedo sender if you want to convert the box to a cable speedo. Probably wont be accurate though! -No distributor to worry about on these engines! The back of the head is reasonably uncluttered. -There's an external oil drain on the exhaust side of the block, from the head back to the sump. But the internal drains are on the intake side. So if you needed to lean the motor slightly one way or the other it shouldnt really matter. -Find a fuel rail from a Caldina single VVTI beams motor if you can, then you get a free FPR on the fuel rail. Runs at a lower pressure than Altezza but doesnt matter if you're running aftermarket ECU. -Take the engine cover off, or run some ducting into and out of it to keep the coilpacks cool. As if your coilpacks are on the fritz they start to pack up first when they get hot.

KPR said it I think. From memory it's the hottest burn so isnt any good for your engine.

Haha, you guys make it sound like a binary decision between owning a road car and a full blown F1 car. A dry sump is never a necessity and with modifications to the standard pan a beams motor can corner at 1.5g+ no sweat. There are many examples of much more powerful cars lapping low 1:40s at Taupo full track with a wet sump. (Sometimes dry sump not allowed in racing classes) There's no way you would have any change short of $15k to get a K24A (with no performance mods) setup RWD in a starlet. To get a 300hp K24A would be 20k easy... Yes there's more scope for modification but that's if you've got any money left after you get the thing going. I would say you could do a beams motor for maybe $5-8k depending on a few things. Rookie it's funny that you're advocating the most expensive possible options for the engine, and every other option is not worth bothering with. Yet vouching for a locked diff because it's the cheapest (and worst) option. Having a proper LSD is like going from carbs to EFI

Oh, is that all a K24 costs these days? Cool. Either option costs a shit tonne more than $2k though... You need dry sump to have any chance of fitting a K24 in a starlet. Custom manifolds etc. $10k minimum in bits I'd say. Guy Lance in Oamaru is doing one, will be awesome when it's going. Spendy project though. Converted it to left hook partially because the exhaust runs down other side of the engine. and makes the steering column a pain.

Lol so the only option you'd ever consider, is the horrifically expensive one? K series are great but Honda tax makes my wallet cry. Then that x100 if wanting to RWD one.

Drag day is coming up so I've been trying to get some sort of baseline idea of how this thing might go. Using some GPS data from trackday (with the previous exhaust setup though), I've got a good idea of how fast it accellerates in a straight line in the 100-180kph range. So with some dubious maths, combining this with some 0-100kph testing looks as though this should currently do about a mid 15 at 140kph. The MR2 had a lot better traction than this car, it could launch from redline no problems! 2 second 60 foot times. The problem that the car has currently, because there's miserable traction the ideal launch rpm is in a torque hole. (1500rpm or so) So if I launch above this speed, it wheelspins. If I launch at or below this speed, it bogs. Both options kill time... bugger. By increasing the amount of traction you are widening the 'launch window' (The rpm range you can launch at, without excessive bogging or wheelspin) It would be nice to have a 'launch window' from 2500-4500rpm perhaps... Hopefully some traction brackets and low psi in the tires will be enough to get it to hook up nicely off the line. Will hopefully get enough runs in without issue to test out my theory.