Popular Post ajg193 Posted November 17, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 17, 2020 Not a whole lot to report here. Just been doing a tonne of driving since the engine rebuild. Put over 3000 km on it in the last month and a half. Rebuild included going to far more mild cam, just adds about 500 rpm onto power curve Replaced exhaust manifold with some rush headers as well, no more leaks. Fuel economy is as good as or better than ever Got some new Falken ze912 tyres today, thanks to Chris @CUL8R at Mag and Turbo - should be good for a few more years Here's an adventure picture to compensate you for your time 21 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted November 28, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 28, 2020 I spent 4 hours cleaning the front seats today. They went from disgusting crusty greasy messes that I was on the verge of reupholstering to looking really good apart from a few worn patches I didn't take any pictures until I had already cleaned the dirtiest parts but this gives a bit of an indication Cleaned using wet and dry vacuum cleaner, a mix of washing machine powder and an old toothbrush 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted March 14, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 14, 2021 Not too much news here, dragged the car out to Twin Rivers car show today. It seems that in the last year or so there has been a sudden spike in interest in old Toyotas. Had quite a lot of people stop and look at it. Noone could really identify that the EFI system was custom so it looks like I have succeeded in making a subtle system. One old guy was staring at it and said "It doesn't look like the KP60s I worked on in the 80's but I can't really tell what is different". There were no other Starlets at the show, which was quite a surprise. There were heaps of AE82 GT liftbacks though, I swear none of the 183 of them have died yet. I also got some NOS Bosch ignition leads from RockAuto the other day because they were stupidly cheap: Have to take it for a WoF in a week, should hopefully go through without too much of a problem. Might do an oil change next weekend. Also took it on a late summer high country camping mission a few weeks ago. 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted March 14, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 14, 2021 Here's the Newspaper ad from the clipboard: 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted September 4, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 4, 2021 I decided to give Amayama a go for ordering a part. The Starlet has always had a bit of a clunk in the steering, a few years ago I narrowed it down to the internal bush on the drivers side having a small amount of play. I then promptly did nothing about it due to the part being expensive. Checking on Amayama, I could get the part for $32 including GST and delivery. Toyota wanted $135+GST. the part arrived after a three week journey from Japan. I pulled the rack out of the car, 1960's British car engineers really need to take notes on how to design something. It's stupidly easy to remove the rack, they even make the bolts go in from the bottom on the side where the engine is in the way. I then stripped the rack down and removed the old bushing. The bushing was quite difficult to remove, I ended up heating it slightly and managed to hammer the inner section out with a long piece of pipe. I then ground the outer section out. The bushings are four layers Steel->Rubber->Steel->Teflon. I think the part cross references to a whole load of different models and is still easy enough to get. I then had clean, grease (lithium base molybdenum disulphide) and reassemble the rack. Setting the preloads was interesting. I ended up setting the main pinion depth by feel and used a kitchen scale with a 17mm socket attached to it to push on some vise grips to measure the turning torque for setting the rack guide. I ended up getting it right at the middle of specs so I threw the rack back into the car. It took a couple of tries to get the steering column aligned on the right spline - first the steering wheel was one tooth too far to the right, then it was one tooth too far to the left and finally it was bang on. I took the car for a drive to test it all out. I'm actually blown away by how different the car drives now. There is no more clunking at all and there is no more twitching, and the tracking doesn't change slightly under heavy cornering. I always thought there was something up with the rear suspension but it handles perfectly now. The steering actually feels like something modern. I'm guessing a fair bit of the change in feel is from adjusting the rack guide. Either that or I've just tightened it too much and the rack is going to wear out super fast. Oh, and the other week I was doing a bit of thermodynamic modelling to try and improve the intake air temperature prediction, details and results are over in the DIY EFI thread. The engine behaves a lot better now, nice and smooth around town at low/mid loads. 18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted December 13, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 13, 2021 An itty-bitty 1:43 Starlet just arrived in the mail today, super slow shipping from Japan. It's pretty rare to find a Slant front scale model, this one is made by Hi-Story and there was only one production run for them (this year). The detail on it is crazy, especially the interior. The only thing that lets it down is the wheels, they are slightly lacking in detail and don't actually turn. Oh and the JDM features like mirrors, bumpers and number plate lights. I'll probably just leave it on a shelf forever and let it gather dust. 17 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajg193 Posted December 22, 2021 Author Share Posted December 22, 2021 Over the last few weeks I noticed the diff was starting to make some unusual sounds and was getting worse. I pulled the head out last night, expecting to find rooted pinion bearings or chunks of gears. Fortunately they were all fine, just the carrier bearings were bad. They were the original units that came with the LSD and probably had a hard life. I bought some new bearings and axle seals at Saeco and threw them in after work today. Axle stand test to 120 km/h results were satisfactory, so I took it for a motorway road test. The diff is quieter than it has ever been since I bought the car. Either I got the backlash and associated settings bang on or I messed up. Only problem is now I can hear the gearbox more. Diff shop guy was a GC, swapped the bearings over for free. It's a shame they were out of oil though, had to support repco instead. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted March 13, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 13, 2022 Not a particularly interesting update I had a bit of time to kill today so I figured I'd get around to making a nicer fuel pump blanking plate for the engine. I took measurements of the spacer from the original pump and made a model in FreeCAD and set the milling machine to work I'm not entirely sold on the logo, maybe I'll sand it off and put a smaller one on it in the future. Either way the plate is an improvement. I also cleaned the seatbelt yesterday as it was starting to get a bit gummy and wouldn't retract properly. I couldn't really believe the amount of gunk that came out of it. 23 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted June 23, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 23, 2022 9 years, 2 weeks and 2 days of ownership now. Just passed my 100,000th km in this thing today. Happened to be on the same piece of road that I test drove it too. Trade in value must have just plummeted to near zero. 12 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted August 19, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 19, 2023 I've had issues with trying to get consistent fuelling since day one, mainly due to the fact that the runners are over half a metre long and made of metal so always heating up and cooling down. I don't have a MAF sensor so I was trying to make do with predicting IAT using coolant temperature and flow rates. This works fine at steady state but it takes the engine about 15 minutes to fully stabilise, causing slightly rough running at various times in heavy traffic. I moved my IAT sensor location from the air box to between the injector and cylinder head the other day. After a quick remap the car is a completely different beast, O2 corrections are down to 1-2% from being up to and beyond 15% with old location. It's amazing how fast the temperature responds to throttle inputs. The sensor started out as a closed end GM unit. I wanted to try threading the tip to M8, but the tip immediately broke off. It was full of thermal grease around the thermister. I ended up turning the main thread down and rethreading to M10. I filled the body of the sensor with epoxy to help protect the legs of the thermister. There was a bit of a lug between two runners on the manifold. I mounted it in the mill and made a flat spot then drilled and tapped with tapered M10 thread. The thermister pokes into the air flow about 5-10mm. Hopefully the epoxy doesn't fall apart in the fuel environment. Dodgy injector boots from AliExpress are starting to look a little worse for wear after 60,000 km/6 years. Maybe I'll have to do something about that in the future. To be completely fair I'd be best off changing to ITB with coil on plug ignition 9 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ajg193 Posted September 16, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 16, 2023 Got back from Auckland yesterday and started work on making more plate dies this morning. First set off the press today were for this. I'm too used to the old spacing so these look wrong to me. I will put them through the dishwasher tomorrow evening to age them. Next up is wof prep 23 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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