Bling

Yeah could have been a good plan. Don't really want to invest more than I need to at this stage though. Engine conversion should be pretty easy to get legal at later date though.

Reckon, the gift that keeps on giving. Off to pull the water pump off again, woo.

Still chipping away on this fuck. Removed the carb the other day and had local workshop look it over for me. Main jet is pretty corroded so not sure how well it will run, or for how long, but YOLO. Reason I had it looked at was due to sitting for so long she was a bit gummed up and so wouldn't idle properly and wouldn't start without kick in the dick. Installed the carb today and it now fires off the key no worries, doesn't run that great, but will stay running. Win some lose some, i'm hopeful it's now just down to having a bunch of vacuum lines not connected and no air filter at all. Coolant has started to leak in a couple of places, one of which is behind the water pump, under the carb. So yeah a right PITA to get to. Tomorrows job will be the remove half the front of the engine to remove the water pump to try fix that. It's also leaking on a hose at the rear, so will try find a hose that will sort that. Gave it another tickle up alignment wise and it's looking a lot better. Todays plan was to drive around the block sans windscreen, previously mentioned water leaks killed that idea. Replaced the diff and gearbag fluid recently, neither of which looked that dirty, if I exclude the drain plugs (pics to follow). Had a few leaks on the gearbag, so got up and personal with it to find out why. Speedo drive thread had a massive cut mark on a 45 degree angle, so was never going to seal well. The bracket that holds the speedo drive was also MIA. Read the Toyota manual and noticed there was supposed to be one so made on up to suit. Cleaned the threads as best I could and goo'd everything together with some non setting gasket stuff. So far so good. Nothing much to add really, still on the list is windscreen install and proper alignment. Pretty good odds the wheel arches are both going to need a bash, which is something I wanted to avoid. But at this point I don't care about going beyond the point of no return. So will probably level the car up a bit before alignment and worry about clearance at cert time. Will then discuss best way to go about that as i'm not sure. Pics. Gearbag filler plug, after initially seeing it I figured i'd be welding a nut on it to get it off, but it JUST came off before becoming further chewed up. Quite impressive, not sure what was bashed on this previously. Luckily I had a supply of dirt cheap rockauto sump plugs on hand. So most things got new drain plugs and washers. Fresh fluids, VMX big boy was from when I had a starlet, circa ~12 years ago. I knew i'd need it one day... Gearbag or diff drain plug, I forget which but they both looked similar. Before / after. Carb on car so I could plumb it back up right and on bench. Handy having another car with the same setup, I managed to find a few hoses in the wrong locations. So much unnecessary BS hosing. Will google for a supply of vacuum hose and run hoses between locations that have none. Can get rebuild kits online buy the looks, so if I find it runs like a bag of dicks after connecting up 100% of the vacuum lines, i'll look in to that. So long as it runs good enough to get through cert process, that can be a future problem.

Same tyres on both sized rims? I had RE002 on my ae111 205/40/17 and they stuck like shit on a blanket rail. Tyre quality is probably at least as important as size.

You can't get decent tyres for snow tyre money. Save up and get something decent wet / dry. Snow driving will be like 1% of the time, so not worth dedicating much towards. Even free snow tyres are a bad deal.

Its that naturally occurring oil film on them that stops them rusting in the rain. Just had a bit too much on my plate / no OS car on the road right now. Decent turn out for the weather!

Will try give that a hoon Wednesday. Gave mixture screw a quick look tonight and seemed to flow ok. Will put some cleaner down it and give it another go. Thanks.

Will give that a go, cheers

Thanks will check it out.

Ah, forgot to put those deets in. Engine is Toyota 3AU 1500c, carb is factory. It has a bunch of emissions junk that makes locating things rather frustrating. I'll look into where the idle circuit lives and see about inspecting it, cheers.

So the project hasn't been running for a while, it seemed to run ok when parked up, puhuhu. I have no idea with carbs, so will post some symptoms and maybe someone can point me in right direction. It doesn't appear to like to start by itself, but start ya bastard will get it started and it runs fine. Runs fine about (and above) around 1500rpm, it won't idle and quickly dies. Google suggests, vacuum leak / plugs / a million things. Where is a good place to start? It seems to run fine, just not low in the revs. Fuel seems to be fine as supply is good and it will run forever if I keep the revs up. I daresay it needs a good tune up, but taking it to local garage isn't possible in current state. I'm happy to chequebook this problem as I have zero time and patience currently. I feel like it could just be something gummed up that operates the low idle perhaps. But if vacuum leak is the first port of call, i'll start there. Thanks chaps.

A good plan B then at least. Depends how keen you are, i'd probably give the whole thing a sand. Haven't done a job like that, but have chased my tail trying to feather edges before and giving up and taken the whole thing back to nothing.

Too big to sand the whole lot back to bare plastic?

Probably cheaper to have an upholsterer make you a set locally, at least you know the fitment will be right. There is a place in aussie that does carpet as well as here. You'd have to do own homework on peoples experiences with them though.

I couldn't work out what they were using it for TBH. Camping or trades, with seats needed 1-2 times a year. Fair enough though, should have got a Transit, separate cabin and drive like a car.

Buy a Hiace without seats in the back, problem solved lol. Are the vans cheaper with seats or something?

Sweet thanks. Handbrake would be handy before I hit the road, so they are potentially centered after I bled the whole lot then. Just saves me having the chock that thing erryday. Will give those methods a hoon.

Oh you guys. Is using drum brakes a couple of times enough to set them in place to adjust the handbrake? I recall moons ago being told to not adjust handbrake till drums had been used. Yes I could google, yes i'm a diddle finger mechanic.

Still chipping away, have had a few jobs that held up other jobs, so progress hasn't been as quick as i'd like. Couldn't put brake master cylinder in till I sorted the clutch and couldn't put fuel tank back in till i'd sorted the brakes... Anyway, a quick run down below. Tried to start it the other week to make sure it still runs, it doesn't. Figured it was probably fuel as it will have been sitting for a while. So I dropped the fuel tank out to find the tube pretty blocked, so that hopefully answers that. Drained the fuel tank, turns out I put quite a bit more fuel in over time than I thought, fill the mower container and any lose containers I had. Took the worst to the dump eco area. Dropped the tank in to Hornby Radiators and they gave it a good clean inside. I grabbed some new hose while that was being done. Got fuel tank back and gave it a quick paint on the top half, only surface rust, but some was a bit pitted so worthwhile doing. Fuel tank. Hoses labelled for future reference, also labelled on car. After getting the insides cleaned. quick tickle up Then a coat of whatever rust paint was lying around. Was blowing a gale, can't beat a brush on product sometimes. Engine fuel supply pipe with some meths in it, sloshed it around a bit and left it overnight. Grabbed some pipe cleaners and it's good as now. Getting a new intank filter thing was too hard basket with my time frame, so I gave it a good clean and chucked it back on. Oh yeah and the new hose: While that was being done I went down to CBC in town and they made me a new clutch cable. The old one had been resting on the exhaust so the cover was pretty toast. No pics because I just wanted it installed. But it was a pretty sweet cable. I had it made 50mm shorter than the one I had, as I couldn't route the one in the car without it hitting exhaust and steering. So with the new cable made I made a bracket to hold it clear of everything. Factory they have a bracket, but it's NLA so I had to just guess it. Asked on a FB group dedicated to these cars but no one could be bothered taking a photo for me of how it's run factory, boo. Anyway, the bracket, which is part of a realtor sign I chopped up. Gave it another tweak with the rivnut tool after this photo and got it compressed a bit more, shes solid as fuck. Bolted to the firewall and installed a P-clip on it to hold the cable. Bolted two clips together to keep the clutch and speedo cable apart and keeps it off the fuel line on firewall from filter. No idea how much of this junk is legit, but none of it's under pressure, it's just done to keep things apart so nothing can rub through. Seems legit enough to me, guess i'll find out soon enough when it gets checked. Just need it together for now and worry about the details later. For those that don't frequent the spam tech thread, I asked about bleeding my new master cylinder and went with this solution. Which when installed worked like this. Didn't leak bugger all when being bled, and I just clamped the pipes with vice grips when done so brake fluid didn't go everywhere. So then I bled the rest of the car, gave up doing it by myself and installed someone in the car to pump for me. It was after I had done this, I realised I had fucked up... I pulled the pads out as I was getting a bit of fluid leaking while trying to bleed the nipples myself (no euphemism). So I thought rather than potentially fuck the pads i'll remove them. I'm sure you can work out the rest... thankfully the pistons are long enough for this rookie mistake to not be an issue. They pushed back in fine with a nipple released. Was going to rebleed the whole system again tomorrow anyway with new fluid. But that is a must now as i'll have air in one side of each caliper. No biggie. Next time I'll have brake pad shaped bits of wood to install. Quake safe on axle stands with enough junk underneath to stop it being able to fall on me. Next up will be work out why the dash sits too high to where the windscreen will struggle to fit on one side. Then book in a windscreen install. Then do my own alignment to the point I can get the brakes bed in a bit. Then book proper alignment. Then not sure... i'll worry about that another day, getting close.

Not the jacking point is it?

Saw this on its way south, didn't recognise the passengers but figured you'd just aged a lot working on this.

So much hate in here, I can't even tune a carb, let alone tune an engine with EFI that wasn't setup for it. Go work on your cars, the lot of ya.

Nevermind, realised it was a slightly different shape.

You got me there.

Good success with Amayama too, hit and miss with what is available, but to be expected with ~40 year old cars. Have got some oddball parts in the past. Pretty sure they have to contact other warehouses / suppliers for some items. Rockauto is better in that it's all in one site with no need for that. Amayama is genuine parts though only IME, which is nice. That part shows as not available though, so not much use. I can get one for my car off rockauto, so that's certainly worth a look. It's not worth the nearly $300 at this point though, i'll just use the trip meter for free.