Snoozin's 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61.

[Snoozin 16,384]

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. 

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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.

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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.