Snoozin's 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61.

[Snoozin]

20210129_194419-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Toyota Fest later this morning. Can't sleep. Too amped. Finishing touches to the detailing this evening, then I sat and looked at it for a bit. 

Man, I am super into this thing. 

[Snoozin]

SOme more things have been done, including all-new loop pile carpet and a nice alloy sealed battery box in the boot but that's not even important.

What is important, is the gearbox, which sucks.

Downshifting is impossible without a big ol' rev match and double clutch to get it from 4th to 3rd, then from 3rd to 2nd. As the car makes a little bit of a racket, it's quite obnoxious. So I sat down with Earle McFarlane (he's had many many experience with T50s and rebuilding them) and ordered a whole load of parts from Japan.

They came in this box. This struck me as odd. Amayama orders are sent to an NZ warehouse then dispatched from there, so I'm guessing this happened locally.

20210325_180028 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

And this is what's in it.

20210325_175701 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

We have;

Synchros for all gears

New selector hub sleeves

Gasket/seal set

Selector hub shift keys

Clippy springy things for above

Bearings a go-go (all bearings I could possibly get, we need to get the 2 countershaft bearings locally)

Some good low km selector hub centers are en route from South Island.

Next, I will rebuild the gearbox - well, Earle will rebuild it and instruct me to do some of the easy bits.

Then I can finally aim for some twisties and give it a good drive, assuming it all plays the game. Looking forward to pissing around with brake bias, making all that stuff work etc.

[Snoozin]

Some updates. 

Waikumete upholsteres made a carpet for me. 2 pieces, like original, and we found a loop pile in maroon! Which was brilliant, as I really wanted a loop pile for that more premium appearance.

20210321_161234 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210321_165710 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I think it turned out pretty well! Did the boot also, but I haven't got a pic of that for some reason.

20210408_210246 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Engine and gearbox came out again. This is minutes before it all lifted out. Very easy.

20210417_114901 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Pulled apart the gearbox with great guidance from Earle McFarlane. 

20210417_121227 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Measured all the clearances, then pulled it apart. Selector hubs are a bit pwnt, there is excessive wear in the shift forks, bearings seem all right but they're all being replaced anyway with all those parts in the post above. So now the mainshaft has been assembled (in my absence) and we are just waiting on the forks to come in from Japanland so we can reassemble.

20210330_125040 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Since the motor was coming out anyway I thought it'd be a good time to get the top end sorted, as it's only ever been a stock head and cams, despite the bottom end being built/hi comp. This is a spare smallport head that I spent a while scrubbing in the shed to get clean.

20210330_125016 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I then thought I'd try cold jet/dry ice blasting as a bit of a test case on the cam boxes to remove the baked on sludge and scum. This is the result. Pretty awesome! I'm going to be using this process to clean some of the undercarriage parts in situ on the Honda.

20210331_084622 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I stripped the head myself, once I learned how to remove the collets from the retainers it was all pretty simple. Here's the head, with all the bits catalogued and in containers, with the Kelford 193B cams and Supertech retainers/springs I bought ages ago for it. It's in with Alan Harris at Harris Performance Engineering (previous Lynn Rogers) for porting, some tickles on the combustion chamber and a port match of the ITB manifold.

I then got to thinking about what audio this car is going to have, even if you can't hear anything inside it really. Initially, I was going to run a modern Bluetooth head unit in the glovebox, and got as far as buying this pretty rad Sony unit that has 50wrms per channel - from a head deck!!! Enough to power anything, speaker wise. But then Ed sent me a link to a Yahoo auction that changed things.

20210422_172330-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210422_172308-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

This is an AD-189T fitting kit/adapter produced by Pioneer in the early 80s. It fits a 'B' type head unit, which is conveniently what the 'component' systems of the early/mid 1980s are. Before the standard DIN size we all know and love today. It replaces an entire middle panel on the dash, replicating the OEM fit where normally there would be a spindle mount head unit (as is the case on my factory dash). I had never, ever seen even a picture of one of these kits before, let alone a NOS one on Yahoo. So I bid on it, because who doesn't love period accessories. And I won it. So then I thought I'd probably better find a head unit to fit.

20210422_172407-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I ended up with this Pioneer KP-717G tape deck. Note - it's a tape deck only, there is no AM/FM radio or anything with this, as was the style of the component systems of the time. This one was listed with a clean bill of health, and some remedial work done to ensure it was operational. The auction was backed up with a video to prove it. It's one of the higher end units in this range, with Dolby NR, adjustable tone controls, all the fruit. It doesn't have an amp on board - luckily Ed has one of the Pioneer GM-4 amps for this to plug into, that will find it's way into my car.

20210422_172454-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

This is how it should look when installed in the car, using the AD-189T kit. Fuckin. Awesome. I reckon.

20210422_172612-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210422_172638-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

And this is essentially what the initial system I run will be. Later on I may add some fronts - I have some NOS Pioneer TS167 coaxials, and also dual cones whose code escapes me right now. These TS-X9 are incredible though - I had them wired up to my amp in the house and they produce enough bass you can actually feel it through the floor. How they achieve it, I do not know. Sure it's not sub levels, but it's a beautifully balanced sound that I hope will be loud enough to listen to while pootling along at slow speeds or stuck in traffic.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Hopefully, next updates will include a rowdy cylinder head, a slick shifting T50 and some Phil Collins tapes in the KP-717G.

 

[Snoozin]

Well, we haven't managed to realise the promise of the previous post, but here's the state of play regardless.

First up, gearbox.

The remainder of my spiffy new internals showed up from the motherland, and I trundled up to the sunny Hibiscus Coast to finish assembly under the watchful eye and guiding hands of Mr. McFarlane the T50 whisperer. This is what we ended up with.

20210515_113825-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

All shiny and clean and new! The only things NOT new in this, are the gearsets, main shaft and shifter rods.

20210515_113843-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Pretty neat learning exactly how this all works in a practical sense. Otherwise the gearsets are all in pretty good order, given the hiding this thing appears to have taken over its life.

20210515_113836-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Little bit of a close up of the nice new shift forks and shifter hub/sleeve things

Then we tackled the head. Well, Alan at Harris Performance did. For those that don't know, Harris Performance is what was formerly Lynn Rogers and Alan knows his way around a 4AG head a bit. Pics of head below for perusal.

20210511_115253-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Chambers tidied up, valves deshrouded.

20210511_115249-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210511_115244-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Inlets all looking a bit spiffy!

20210511_153023-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

This is the transition from the T3 ITB manifold to the head. Out of the box, it was super shithouse. Now it isn't, plus the manifold/head have been doweled so it's always fitted up in the right place. Not even sausage hands Richy can fuck this one up (too much, anyway).

20210513_124014-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210513_124023-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Cams and supertech valvetrain all installed. We ended up going 1mm oversized valves, as the ones in the head were past their best before and the extra cost wasn't going to be a big deal over replacing them with stock sized ones.

It's in the final stages now, prior to head assembly I dropped the long block off, and Alan measured the valve to piston clearances to ensure nothing was going to clash and end in tears. Will have a number on CR shortly (expect it'll be around 12:1 or slightly more) and the head will rejoin the block.

Next update, we should have a built long block and I'll be putting all the ancillaries back on it, prepping to put it back in the car hopefully for the last time for the forseeable.

Tell me how it's a fuck up and it's going to explode, here;

 

[Snoozin]

A few things have happened since the above post, like reassembling and putting the engine and box back in the car.

That happened maybe 3 weeks ago, and this weekend we tuned it.

Long story short, it made 148hp at the hubs, it peaks then holds flat until limiter at just over 8k. Feels great in car.

Here's some videos.

This is on the local test track

A quick 3rd gear motorway pulll from about 90km/h.

Huge huge thanks must go to @Lithfor making the trip up to fastidiously tune the car, it drives really nicely, behaves well at all loads/conditions encountered so far and is just generally a pleasure to hoon around in.

[Snoozin]

Well then, I've been tinkering away.

The car was booked in for a WOF check on 19/08, and cert inspection on 27/08. As we all know, everything got fucked up again cos of the Cov, so none of that even happened.

What I did do prior, was get the engine bay in a state ready to cert. Basically, LVVTA rules require the crankcase vent to be routed back into the intake, and my catch can setup/open trumpets was not going to work I'd always intended to run my big ITG filter over top of the trumpets, and the cert man confirmed it was OK to run a cam cover vent straight into the filter backing plate.

I have spare cam covers to allow for this, and the net result was as below. Unfortunately, some bad measuring on my part meant the filter won't fit around the trumpets in situ - meaning I either need to put 50mm trumpets in, or just run without. For the cert purpose I chose to just run without.

20210918_105417-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Anyway, I never got a cert, or a check, or fucking anything because diseases and shit. I'm still at home, not working, not earning, not happy. But I went and got the car anyway, and made some changes with a view to heading out and finally taking some proper photos with my real camera instead of the phone.

First thing I did was install the Pioneer tape deck with the mounting kit. This thing is wonderful, it's hands down the rarest, weirdest most interesting 'off the shelf' part this car has on it, in my view. Everything fit perfectly, clipped and bolted in to where it needed to.

20210918_131215-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

For the most aesthetic photos, I figured it was best with the blue cam covers, open trumpets and catch can lines reinstated.

I'd ordered some TecArts trumpets way back in March, these finally arrived in June from Japan and I took the opportunity to fit them up.

20210918_164209-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

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20210918_165822-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

These are 100mm long vs the 75mm we tuned on, have that great looking 'merged' bellmouth look to them. I'm smitten. It's also louder.

Gave the interior a bit of a spruce up. Painted the kick panels and some other plastic trim, using an SEM product specifically designed for refinishing plastics. Custom matched by Carcolors on the shore. It's epic stuff! Overall the interior has come up well, it's a really nice light, airy place to be, kind of the vibe I wanted it to have. Black interiors are dime a dozen - it's nice to choose something different and actually have it come together.

20210918_170929-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210918_170940 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

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Final wipe down, and it was ready to tuck under its cover for the night. Nice to just have a cold drink and stare at it for a bit. 

20210918_175516-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

[Snoozin]

The following day (Those were Saturday's updates above), I set about getting my Hayashis out and giving them a wee spritz with the metal polish to bring back the brightness. Then, fit them up

I needed some slip on spacers for these (and some other 13s) to clear the calipers, on wheels with very flat spoke faces and 3-piece bolts it JUST tags the edge of the caliper. No biggy, John van Beek (he with the badassiest Cedric of ever) whipped up some hubcentric spacers for me, I will organise a grub screw and threaded hole in the hub to secure these, just in case I wish to cert later. For now they're perfectly safe, and fit like a glove.

20210919_114316-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

On with the Streets! 13x7 -6 offset for those playing at home. So with the spacer on the front, we are effectively a 7J -11 offset, pretty hefty for a standard Starlet guard but with the 175/60 it  just covers the tread.

20210919_131430-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Realistically it's probably a little tight, although with a test drive it showed no serious signs of rubbing. But to be sure I found some +7 offset 13x7s on Yahoo for next to nothing (rare to find these days with the way prices have gone) so used buy now through Jesse Streeter to get the ball rolling on those.

But here's how it's looking on the Streets. I reckon it just looks so good on 13s, they visually lower and lengthen the proportions of the car. Really enjoy just looking at it, at the mo.

20210919_114754-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210919_115151-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

20210919_130445-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Last job on Sunday was securely mounting the rear speakers. The TS-X9 are one of the top-end Pioneer units of the day, these and the TS-X11 both used cast alloy housings are are absolute nuggets. They sound amazing too - I've had these hooked up to my home amp inside, and for their tiny size, the results are unbelievable. These ones I've had stashed away for a while now, so I knocked up some large plates to bolt through the parcel tray to the speaker to prevent them going anywhere, and also spread the load across the old wooden parcel tray material. It's some sort of almost cardboard crap - I should really make something more sturdy. This still flexes and bounces around a little bit when driving so it may need some sort of additional bracing moving forward. Looks hot though/

20210919_151048-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

None of it is wired yet - although that won't be too long.

Thanks for looking. Even though we're locked at home I'm very chuffed with the car and it's got me in a good mood.

[Snoozin]

This is pretty much the finished car. I took it to Clint for a cert. It didn't fail on too much, just some additional fuel line clips needed, a smidge of camber to be wound in, heat sleeving on a brake line on the diff, some nyloc nuts for the seat bolts, and a couple of other very minor things. 

Anyway here's finally, some proper camera photos of it.

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (369)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (383)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (327)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (350) by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (356)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (311)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (294)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (403)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (58)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (66)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (83)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (48)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (160)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (175)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (238)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (263)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (440)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (408)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (306)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (494)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Thanks for looking, for the past 15 years or so.

[Snoozin]

Those pics were shot for this. It was a compromised shoot, as it was during L4 lockdown and I'm not totally chuffed on the photo results but here we are. I'm a bit embarrassed about it, there's a handful of other cars in the issue that probably should have been cover, instead of a lower cost lower power KP Starlet. But buy it if you feel like you'd be interested in reading the story, I tried my best to get the point across that I didn't really do anything on this car, I just made a bunch of decisions and was lucky enough to have a small group of very talented friends who sacrificed their own time to help me put this thing together.

20211019_154109-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

So, 6-ish weeks ago I took this in to see @cletusfor it's cert as mentioned above, and have been working towards attaining this.

Overall, the initial check went pretty well, and was a good example of why you should probbaly talk to your cert guy prior to undertaking any sort of project of magnitude.

In the interests of transparency and maybe helping other people, it failed on the following:

• Tyre rub on all four corners (fitted the Star Brights for cert and they're just a shade too wide at 6.5J -2 with a 185) - new set of 14x6J -10 SSR Longchamps XR-4 fitted
• Skid plate required for modified or custom fuel tank as it's less than 200mm from the ground - sheeper helped out and we've knocked up a little skid plate to cover
• A few extra fuel and brake line clips required - ew yuck I had to drill holes for rivnuts
• Return spring required on brake pedal - small bracket made up to fit a spring that goes to a small hole drilled in brake pedal webbing
• 2 of the 6xM6 bolts in the Recaro bases were missing so needed to replace those - bolts installed
• Seat rails to floor adaptor M8 bolts required nyloc nuts in lieu of threaded plate - nuts installed
• Heatshielding required for fuel line on diff (close to exhaust at droop) - DEI heatshield sleeve added to the diff, really neat velcro-baced split sleeve that makes life easy
• Camber to be corrected to maximum of -1.5 degrees - realigned by old mate Kieran to comply
• Right rear shock just fouling on 4-link bracket - bracket clearanced with ye olde flapdisk and repainted
• Trim adjustable platform threads on diff to allow bump stop to contact properly - again, ye olde flapdisk came to the party

Here she is on her cert feet which are yet to be restored and shinied up, I've also given my stock KP fender mirrors a lick of factory charcoal and reinstated these.

20211107_195603-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Recheck is tomorrow so wish me luck.

[Snoozin]

Cert achieved!

Next step is to make the exhaust a little quieter and then get a wof

[Snoozin]

So far, this has been going pretty well. Aside from some problems with cracking on the headers, the car has run pretty well. There's a few tune-based things to tidy up but nothing that really affects the drivability. 

All the Pioneer stereo gear is now functional. I use a Bluetooth cassette adaptor off Aliexpress to enable me to retain total tape functionality and play tunes from Spotify. It works much better than expected.

I also went to town on my cert-spec wheels, as I figured it best look pretty good when I do have to take it for a WOF! Results as below.

KP61 Night 21-04-16-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Night 21-04-37-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Night 21-04-44-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Night 21-04-49-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

[Snoozin]

KP61 Hero Contributor-6-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Still running well, clean sheeted it's first WOF after cert and generally been relatively minimal, but happy motoring.

No 13's on it because, I'm lazy. And it drives really nicely on these, but the 13s will find their way back on soon.

I've had the paint (that was done in 2007) colour sanded and corrected and it looks ridiculously good. This shot doesn't really shot it, but it's flat, glossy and much more vibrant. All I have to do now is look after it!

[Snoozin]

Not really an update but this thing is going pretty well so far, I've put 8000km on it (more actually as the speedo/odo wasn't working for at least 500km as we couldn't initially get it to read a pulse from the speed sensor - a moderately long story but it's working mint now).

So what's been happening?

I entered this in 4&Rotary Nats show, because I wanted to tick that box really, nothing more, nothing less. So myself and @oftensideways made the trip up, both trailered - in my case now wanting to get it all grubby due to spending hours cleaning and sprtizing. As it turned out, this was the weekend those hectic rains came in and hit Auckland, so we drove up in generally garbage conditions, and the car was coated in a thick film of schmutz when I got theire (engine bay included) which meant a hurried cleaning mission to get it ready. I reckon we presented pretty well though!

KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-2-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-5-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-3-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-11-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Lots of sweet car yarns and hangs ensured throughout the following day, and when prizegiving rolled in I was pretty humbled to receive the Best Toyota trophy, against what I think were some pretty wild cars (Supercharged LS KE70, a big power JZX100 dripping in all the lush Japanese parts etc). So when I got home I wiped it down and took a few pics - note the addition of the limited edition Momo Heritage Prototipo, with a TRD horn button I've been hoarding for some time.

This is likely as good as the car will ever look.

KP61 Orakei Rd-219-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-230-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-44-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-48-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-111-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-147-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

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KP61 Orakei Rd-137-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-158-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-172-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-175-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-218-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-89-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-239-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

KP61 Orakei Rd-102-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

 

[Snoozin]

Hey good news I've fixed all the broken image links in this post....

Soon I'll update it on everything me and the wee car have been up to.