Vintage Grumble's 1984 Toyota Corolla AE86

[Vintage Grumble]

FINALLY got me wheel welded up. The F-I-L gave it a bit too much welly tho, blasted the weld rite through the rim (at least i know the crack was well penetrated (dirty)) and caused the outer lip to warp a bit. I managed to hammer it straighter than it was before, and with a lot of grinding/sanding/polishing it came out pretty good. Its still a bit grot, so will start saving for new bands.

 

 

 

I also shot this in retort to Simon's vid of his Carib being all lumpy with VVT switched on. Sounds like balls due to phone, and i'm weeks too late, but hey.

That sounds lolably bad on my laptop.

Regards, VG.

[Vintage Grumble]

FINALLY (AFTER 5+ YEARS) THE 86 AND I MADE IT BACK TO THE TRACK.

 

 

Was a splendid day, had soooooo much fun, made even better by the abundance of other OS members racing.

 

Managed to equal my PB around track two, 1:24, which i'm happy with after quite a long absence. The goal I have set myself is 1:22, not sure if its doable, but will have fun trying. Didn't crash and nothing broke, so counting the outing as a success. The diff acquired a hell of a whine late in the day, which rears its ugly head under light load/normal driving, which was a real cunt on the two hour drive home. Will pop it out and see whats happened, and have a backlash against the backlash.

 

Cant wait to get back on track.

 

Regards, VG.

 

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/25550-vintage-grumbles-ae86/page-19

[Vintage Grumble]

Sooooo I whipped the diff out, to see what was going down. The oil has gone from runny and nearly clear to black and super thick. As the diff was giving me shit, I put nulon oil in it, as I thought there was a good chance it would be coming back out (ironic) and it was the only oil in Whakatane the correct grade. I was meaning to change the oil before the track day, but ran out of time. Really wish I had now, because it seems the oil couldn't handle the jandle. The diff housing was getting up to 80+ deg at the track. The diff has been sweet since I put it back in, but through out the track day it got whinier and whinier, I guess as the oil broke down. Anyways, the crown wheel has some decent wear marks on it, and the pinion looks like its got hot as shit. I don't have a dial gauge handy to check the backlash, but will nick one and check it out tomorrow. 

 

This oil has done less than 1000km.

 

 

 

 

 

Bit pissed about the CW&P, as it was as new when it went in, looks like its done a million k's now, hopefully its not rooted.

 

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm what to do?

 

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/25550-vintage-grumbles-ae86/page-19

[Vintage Grumble]

So, cleaned everything up, and re installed the head, put fresh oil in it and went for a hoon, still sounds horrible, but have worked out how to fix that,

 

 

Will finish all the track days I want to do this year, and try track down another CW&P, as the 4.6 ratio suits it so well. Hopefully it lasts this weekends road trip + track day in Taupo, and next months road trip + track day in Auckland at least, been hanging out to go for a hoon on hampton for soooooooo long.

 

Regards, VG.

[Vintage Grumble]

Gay. Never did another dual sprint, never made it to Hampton, and the diff drove me friggen nuts, so changed back to a 4.3 cw&p, as I couldn't find another 4.6 anywhere. Also used flash oil, so hopefully I don't cook this one. The only other crap i've done, is have one of the head light reflectors re-silvered, (have to open the other light now and fix the adjuster pivot, gah)

 

 

Re-did this section of exhaust, as I hung it too low,

 

 

Pic from only dual sprint I made it to,

 

 

It was such a lovely afternoon the other day, I went for a dort in the hills, so much fun, and so impressed with the car, its a fucking ninja on crack in the twisties. Made myself very car sick also.

 

 

 

Also, I felt bad that my gross Hilux made Dave (and many others, lols) sad, so hopefully this cheers him up.

 

 

Don't buy budget tyres kids.

 

Regards, VG.

 

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/25550-vintage-grumbles-ae86/page-20

[Vintage Grumble]

Went to nat's track day, my first time on Hampton downs, and it was friggen sweet, had so much fun. Will need more hard cone brake pads if I ever go back there, the EBC greens were shitting their pants big time, but apart from that, things went well. 

 

Had a shit ton of fun hooning round in it at nat's, its not much of a tourer, but it sure made up for being hard/loud/smelly and generally uncomfortable in the winding Coro roads.

 

I'm daily-in it until I get a WOF on turdsmell, and while driving to work this morning, I got a puncture, IN MY OIL FILTER!? I started it up after work to go home, luckily I was looking at the oil pressure gauge, noticed it basically had no pressure at all, and shut it down. Opened the bonnet to find oil E V E R Y W H E R E ! ! !  I quickly found a small hole in the filter, which pointed forward spraying oil out the front bumper, which was then blown back into the engine bay/under the car/alllllll over the show. So lucky I noticed the no PSI's, or I could have had an unhappy engine on my hands. It had lost 3 of its 4 liters, but the engine still sounds OK at least, hopefully no real damage has been done.

 

Such a little hole, made such a huge mess, lewls.

 

 

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/25550-vintage-grumbles-ae86/page-21

[Vintage Grumble]

Driving home from work, passing a car, 8500rpm's, and then all the loud's in the world. Exhaust snapped off at the collector, lols. Luckily the O2 sensor held the end of the exhaust up, so I drove it home. So loud. So lols.

 

 

http://vid723.photobucket.com/albums/ww239/NZDMAE86/VID_20150310_171324534_zpszbuy55jq.mp4

 

I'll add that to the list of things to do. 

 

Regards, VG.

[Vintage Grumble]

So, after 3 cans of de greaser and 2 of brakleen, I got rid of most of the oil. So then I set about fixing the broken headers. The brake was pretty messy, so thought I better not just weld it up. So I took the opportunity to change the bit of pipe after the collector from 21/4 to 21/2 inch, like the rest of the system.

 

 

Made up a shitty jig.

 

 

Welded it all up, half assedly removed the rust, then slapped some paint on them. Its amazing what a coat of paint can do.

 

 

 

Righteous pipes.

 

Regards, NZDMAE86.

[Vintage Grumble]

 

 

[Vintage Grumble]

Also, bonus stolen pictures for no real reason.

 

 

 

 

Thanks to those who's pictures I've nicked 

 

Regards, VG.

[Vintage Grumble]

Now then, this thing has been running a bit odd, for quite some time. It has a bit of hesitation/turbo lag from about 3500 rpm, to about 4200 rpm. It also seems to be a bit back fiery/poppy if you change gears around that RPM. I happened to find a narrow band whats-it I had laying about, and plugged that in, and it shows the cars going lean through the rev range I mentioned earlier. Because it happens at a specific rev range, that would lead me think its nothing mechanical/physical? Obviously the tune is out, but I don't understand how it could have changed? We can richen up the mixture to sort out the problem, but it bugs me that I don't know the cause of the problem in the first place.

 

Anyone had anything like this happen before?

[Vintage Grumble]

WELL THEN, I constructed a manometer, and attempted to balance me quads. The manometer in question looks like this,

 

 

I hooked them up and they worked well, but very slowly. I put ATF in them, and it was too thick to transfer in a timely fashion, so I watered the ATF down with turps, and that worked a treat. What it showed me was number one was sucking like no ones business. I fucked around with everything over the course of many, many, many hours, and no matter what I did, number one still had waaaay more vacs. So I pretty much gave up trying to balance them at this point, but it annoys me that they are not equal, so I will revisit this problem soon.

 

 

After that, me and the bro-in-law went to give the old girl a bit of a tune up. I then found that the hole (under the bung) I put in the exhaust for the oxy sensor was sweet as for the factory sensor, but 3mm too small for the body of the wide band, so I had to take the headers off and file out the hole. 

 

Then we spent hours and hours trying to get the old Link system working on one of our lap tops. In the end we had to run a VM with XP to get that going. Then we found the serial cable was being a dick, so had to get another. After all that we ran out of time. So months later, we finally got around to having a go at it tonight.

 

The tune was all over the place, but especially lean in the early 3000-4500 RPM range. The whole map was on the lean side, where it used to be very slightly rich. Since it was tuned in 2007, it has had 3 different intakes, and as many different exhaust set ups, so that's to be expected I guess. We smoothed the tune out a lot, and it runs a shit ton better/smoother than before. Plan is to sort out the vacuum imbalance issue, re flash the ECU (as its got a few weird bugs) and then have it dyno tuned again, as i'm pretty happy with the intake/exhaust now.

 

I guess the latest exhaust set up must be working, if its leaned it out as much as it has, so that's neat. Feel much better I know its not leaning out anymore, hopefully i'll get to some track days now!

 

Regards, V "NZDM" G.

[Vintage Grumble]

Found another little problem. I noticed the car was using a bit of water, but couldn't see a leak, so thought the worst. After taking it for a few runs, I noticed a coating of smut on the oil cooler lines, and then found the radiator has a tiny hole in it, that only leaks when its been driven. This may be a good excuse to change to an alloy radiator, as the 30+ year old plastic tank radiator ain't a spring chicken any more.

 

 

 

I've not had a look yet, but fairly sure i'll be able to buy a direct bolt in radiator for it. Any recommendations/warnings of where to get/not get a good alloy radiator would be most welcome.

 

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/25550-vintage-grumbles-ae86/page-22

 

Warmest regards, VG.

[Vintage Grumble]

Bolts straight in, with only two hours of hammering, filing, mount shaving and manipulating. Please excuse the shoddy cell phone shots.

 

 

So in summary, the Redline and Fenix radiators are identical, apart from the cap and drain bung, no other differences what so ever. I had to hammer the crap out of the steel either side of the radiator for clearance, which was hard on the right side, because of a mount that leads up to the headlight. I had shave down the bottom rubber mounts, and slot the holes in the top mounts, but it fits.

 

Some pics of the problem areas, and how close the original radiator was to the frame for reference. It doesn't look like much, but it was a dick. 

 

 

 

 

And the original,

 

 

Because of the extra thickness of the radiator, I have to space the oil cooler forward about 5/10mm, and then everything should be honky dory. 

 

Regards, V "smack it till it fits" G

[Vintage Grumble]

I finally made it to a round of dual sprints, had a lovely day, with no problems or crashes. I even played with my front sway bar. I went from full soft to full hard (like when I see your mum) and it made me think I was going shit tons faster, but I went no faster at all. Which is odd because it even looks faster in the video's I took.

ALSO, I was lazy, and drove the car to Taupo and back on the semi slicks, and wholy fudge, what a difference good tyres make. I've never driven the car on the road with good tyres (its always had king stars or wang dangs on it) it was like a whole different car. Going through the Rotoma's on semi's has changed my life, so new road tyres is real high on my to do list.

ALSO ALSO, what is too hot for engine oil? Mines still getting to 125c, is this too hot for a good full synthetic in your opinions? I was day dreaming of increasing my sump volume on the drive back, which couldn't hurt I guess.

ANY WAY, here's a little vid of one of my runs, its the only run where i'm chasing a car, so a little less boring than my other runs.

Regards, V "put a 4age in it" G.

Edit: Also I got a new pb, 1:23.8, 0.2 faster! Lewlz.

[Vintage Grumble]

Shit vid of me making a cunt of myself at Nats track day.

 

[Vintage Grumble]

Oh, and the other day Rob/slpery86 dropped in for a visit, we sharned and then went for a spirited tour of the local driving roads, it was rather enjoyable.

 

 

[Vintage Grumble]

As of today, I've owned this old piece for ten years! HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY CAR!! xoxoxox

Regards, VG.

 

[Vintage Grumble]

Well then, i'll be sending the Promesh wheels away soon to be re-lipped (unsure on the terminology) Most likely all the way down to pine engineering, as he seemed to know what he's talking about, and was the cheapest. I just need to decide if I want them to be any wider. They are currently 7.5 and 8", and was thinking about just pushing them out 1/2 and inch all round. At the current height, with the 195 45's tyres there's no rub, but I would also like to run 205 50's as I like the more tyre look on these cars. I guess the 1/2" extra width wont really make much difference to rub, as its not that slammed/its more the width of the tread that matters.

The other thing I was thinking about, is painting the centers gold. They are currently gun metal, and don't look bad, but was wondering peoples thought on going gold. As i'm photoshop impotent, you'll have to use your imagination.

Current look ^

What ya'll reckon?

Also, I got a pair of center caps from murica, so I now have 5x, which I will refurbish and apply to the rims. That 80'sness, yummy.

Chur or nar: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/25550-vintage-grumbles-ae86/&page=24

Regards, VG.

[Vintage Grumble]

So, ain't used this much in the last year and a half, infact it's been sat in the shed the last seven months. Thought I better start using it, so I charged the battery, gave it a quick clean, and obtained a WOF. This morning I felt semi motivated, so set about fixing a few things that have annoyed me for ages. Since I got it back on the road about six years ago, the fuel gauge hasn't read correctly/won't show over 2/3rds full. I whipped out the sender (luckily it has an inspection hatch for the sender) and held the float lever against it's full stop, it still wouldn't show over 2/3rds full. 

I then opened the little box on the sender, and it seemed the wire coil is wearing out, and the little arm that rubs against it wasn't contacting properly, so I gave the little arm a tweak. I teasted it and it now reads darn bloody close to full, not perfect, but much closerer. 

Next I pissed around with the hatch latch, as the hatch has never sat down on it's stoppers properly, and kinda sits on the latch mechanism. Managed to free the latch and adjust it, and by hoki, it now shuts nice and toight, which has the awesome side effects of not letting exhaust stank in, and has banished about 78% of the rattles in the car, huzzah!

The other thing I did a while back was modify my catch can, it used to be empty, so did a shit job at taking oil mist out of the air, so it's now full of steel wool and fancy shapes, and let's no oil mist out at all, rippa.

I have some fittings to connect it to the back of the filter plate, so next time the plates out, I'll slap that in.

Next on the list, is to give it a rangi tune up, as it runs ridiculously rich, so I'll have to acquire the bro in law, so he can muck round with that.

I still haven't sent the rims away to be fixed, fucks sake VG.

P.S. I really like driving this car.