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KwSs "boring car" - 1997 Carib BZ Touring Project


kws

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9 hours ago, tortron said:

98

During 1998 tariffs on cars imported fully assembled ended as the final step of a long-term New Zealand Government plan for the industry. The remaining four local assemblers — Mitsubishi (June),[6] Nissan (July),[7] Honda (August)[8] and Toyota (October)[5]— all ended local assembly and switched to importing fully built-up vehicles.

I guess that explains why there are some really upspecced 1.8 GLXs out there, with factory rear discs, front lip, fog lights etc. Must be run out specials from when the factory was winding down. My car was built March 1998.

At the time there was a mixture of both Japanese and NZ built Corollas on the market. Seems random where they were built as the basic spec and model was the same, but the Japanese cars had better quality interiors than the local content in the NZ cars (as shown by the original and replacement seats in mine. The original NZ seats had real thin fabric and no bolstering and they all seem to tear at the stitching on the base).

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13 hours ago, Nominal said:

Great write up KWS, always enjoy reading your posts.

On Thames plant, it started with Peugeot's and included Ramblers, Hino, Isuzu, and Renault as well as Toyotas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_New_Zealand#1964_Campbell_Motor_Industries

So I learned this from a bloke whom's Mercedes 230SL I shot for NZCC. He was discussing his car collection, and mentioned he didn't have a nice old Toyota yet. I thought this was kind of strange, given I was shooting a Concours-winning Mercedes... turned out he had an AMC Javelin, Hino Contessa, a few Peugeots, an an Alpine. I said "that's an eclectic collection that seems to have no real theme." Then he explained they were all marques (not specifically vehicles) that had been handled by Campbells. Blew my tiny, misinformed brain!

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The final task on the original Rolla was to stick the Carib suspension into it, and basically revert it back to the car as I bought it, but slightly better.

As mentioned in my last post I had removed all the suspension from the Liftback to swap into the Carib, and left the poor little Liftback a hovercar.

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Well, over the past couple of days I have been working hard swapping the old Carib suspension back into the liftback so it can return to being a driveable, functional car again.

It's a pretty straightforward job, made only slightly complex by having to wrangle a bunch of bits up and over the exhaust. Completely doable solo though, with a little creative thinking.

I started on the rear, as that was always going to be the harder of the ends to work on, since there is a lot more to it, and a bunch of the work has to be done from under the car. The hardest bit was getting the lateral links mounted on the subframe, since they had to be left attached to the knuckles (as inevitably the lower bolt will be seized and its a prick to free it up) and the bolts cannot be fitted with the subframe mounted due to the proximity to the fuel tank. Some creative use of the jack to lift the knuckle up, got the bolts through the subframe and the subframe mounted.

Before fitting the struts I did need to replace the RH rear strut as it failed its WOF for leaking, which it certainly was; it was covered in oil. I ended up removing the spring and transferring the spring and top mount over to one of the shocks that originally came out of this Corolla (good thing I'm lazy and hadn't been to the scrap metal yard yet). Then it was a case of mounting the two struts at the top and swinging the knuckles into them.

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Before I was done with the rear suspension, I had to fit the rear calipers. Another WOF fail was that there was a horrific imbalance, with the RH rear brake only having 30% effectiveness. Upon splitting the caliper from the bracket, it was obvious why.

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A twisted and torn boot, and signs of moisture around the piston. I wound the piston out and removed the old boot. Behind the piston was a bunch of really old grotty fluid.

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The piston was manky as, but cleaned up well. No rust or pitting. It might be stainless?

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I removed the old piston seal and fit a replacement from the kit and after lubricating the seal and piston, carefully wound the piston back in.

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Next was to fit the new boot. I left the piston out a little and slipped the boot over the piston first. I then used a tiny flat blade screwdriver to carefully push the boot into the recess around the opening for the piston. This was followed by the spring clip, making sure it seated properly. I wound the piston out a little further to check the boot had seated correctly.

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Once the piston was wound right back in, the sliders greased, and the pads had some copper grease applied to them (they had been fitted dry previously and were almost jammed solid in their bracket) the caliper was done.

The other caliper was in much better shape, with only a tear in the slider boot.

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So this was also replaced with a new one. Who knew one caliper kit could do so many calipers, albeit bits here and there.

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All that was left was to fit the calipers to the rear knuckles. The last WOF fail for the brakes was to swap the brake hoses for the ones from the Liftback as the Carib ones were cracking.

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Moving onto the fronts, this went a lot quicker. It worked out at a smidgen over 5 minutes to install the strut, and mount the knuckle, per side. This is quite simple in comparison.

The front calipers were in decent shape, with only the same issue as the rear pads; they had been fitted dry and were jammed in their bracket. That sure as hell won't help the braking effectiveness.

The only catch was that on the LH front hub I had bent two of the studs trying to remove the hub nut. This meant a quick trip in the rain to Pick A Part to grab a couple of studs from a donor there.

The old studs were a little tweaked

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Compared to a replacement stud

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I used the same method to remove these as I did on the other hubs when I fit the longer studs. A balljoint press to remove the stud, and an open ended nut to pull the replacement through.

With the replacement studs in, the rotor went back on and the front calipers were fitted.

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I used a hand vacuum bleeder to suck fluid through the calipers, which worked fine on the front, but for some reason the rears had nothing coming through. I removed the bleed nipples to look further into it and sure enough, both rear bleed nipples were completely blocked with rust.

I spun them up in the drill and ran them against a wire brush until I could see where the hole should be.

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And then cleaned the hole out with a pin until it was clear

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The actual sealing surface of them was perfect, but I suspect these brakes haven't seen any maintenance in a few years.

Fitting the bleed nipples, I finally had fluid coming from the rear brakes. After bleeding all the brakes, I had a good pedal and a working hand brake.

The only thing left to do was to back the car out of the garage, give the wheels a quick clean (it didn't help much, the brake dust is well baked on), and go out and take some photos.

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The photos were so I could list the car for sale today. Hopefully in about a week I should have a buyer for the car, and it will be on its way to a new home shortly after.


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Even with the worn-out old Carib suspension in it, it drives better than it did when I got the car. It rolls a lot, but doesn't drive like a leaky old boat this time around. It's a much better car than when I got it, even if it's kinda back to standard now.

Not even kidding, I will miss this car. I forgot how fun it is to bash around in it until I was driving it to take these photos. It's a great little car, and it will hopefully do someone well as cheap transport.

I just have to hope the Carib lives up to the little Liftback. I'm sure the 4AGE should keep me entertained.

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1 hour ago, 87creepin said:

Awesome did you get in time for the tards free selling day? And how high do your jacks go? 

Yeah, made a big push yesterday to get in on the free selling. Already up to $425 on the bidding, which I guess is a reasonable start but I hope it makes more!

In the photos above the Quickjacks are at half height. I dont know the exact height, but its high enough for a fatty like me to comfortably roll around under the car on a creeper without getting my gut stuck on things.

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I swear Deferred Maintenance should be the title of all my posts, because sure enough, here we are again.

It was kind of expected though since the seller didn't really know or care what he had and was running it on 91, I couldn't expect he kept up with the maintenance more than just the odd oil change.

I've been collecting various bits and pieces for a while now, getting ready for this lot of work. I need to get the car in for a wheel alignment and then a WOF, so this weekend was a perfect chance to get cracking on it.

The first job of the day was to get the car up on stands and drop the engine oil. The oil level was a bit low, so I topped with the finest thin synthetic 5W40, started the car up and ran it for a bit first to get some heat into the oil, and then drained it. It came out fairly dark, but not jet black and there were no chunks. The filter didn't look too old either, so I suspect it probably had the usual Kiwi "service" of an oil change and nothing else. Better than nothing I guess.

The filter on the 20v is a bit easier to access than the 7AFE as it has a spacer behind it. I'm not sure why, it's not an oil cooler, it's just a passthrough shifting the filter away from the block.

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I poured in 3L of Penrite semi-synthetic 15W40, started the car up to check for leaks, and when there were none moved onto the next job.

The next fluid to change was the gearbox oil. The gearbox shifts OK, with no grinding or crunching but 2nd gear can be a bit stiff. It turns out this fluid may have been changed somewhat recently too, as it was a clean reddish colour and smelt like clean gear oil. Either way, I drained it and replaced it with Penrite 75W90.

Always open the fill plug first, just in case it's seized and you find yourself with a drained box and no way to fill it. The fill plug is on the front of the box, covered in filth. The fill and drain are both 24mm.

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The drain is under the car, on the very bottom of the gear box, kinda in line with where the filler is. Be aware that when you remove the drain plug the fluid will come out with some considerable gusto, especially if you have completely removed the fill plug, so get ready for it to shoot half way across the floor.

To fill the gearbox I used the flexi pipe that comes with the fluid, and extended it with some extra hose and just let gravity fill the gearbox until it started to dribble out again. Easy.

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It took about 2.3L or so. A 2.5L bottle was plenty.

The last fluid I was curious about was the clutch fluid. I replaced the brake fluid when I replaced the brakes, and the fluid was black and very festy. The clutch fluid was no better.

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I didn't want to drain the whole thing and introduce air into the system, so took to doing a few flushes whilst adding new fluid. It's not so dark now but certainly isn't as clean as the brake fluid.

One of the main jobs I had to get done was the front control arms, and the RH axle. I wanted to remove the arms and replace the bushes with poly bushes. The axle needed to be replaced as the outer CV had decided it wanted to be heard and was singing the song of its (broken) people, both when turning but also when accelerating, which was novel.

The control arms are really easy to get out. Undo the three nuts/bolts on the lower balljoint, remove the nut for the lower swaybar link, and then it's a series of bolts holding the swaybar bracket on and one big bolt through the bushing.

With the control arm out it was easy to pull the axle out and have a good look. I pulled it out and assessed its condition from the safety of the bin. Since I was only doing the outer shaft, I just removed the band from the inner CV boot and split the shaft that way, leaving the fixed section in place.

Needless to say the boot was stuffed

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But the joint was even worse. All the grease that hadn't previously ejected its self everywhere, was turned to a hard putty-like substance. There was also noticeable play when twisting the CV on the shaft. I have no idea how this wasn't identified in the WOF inspection!

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The replacement shaft had good boots, so all I did was clean the old grease out, pack new grease into the inner CV and reassembled it with a new clamp on the boot.

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Next was the fun task of pressing the old control arm bushes out. Thankfully I have a press, and with some creative use of big sockets, It wasn't too bad of a job.

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One side came out easy enough, the other side got a bit stuck and the inner rubber came away from the outer shell. This left me with a metal sleeve stuck in the arm. The easiest way to sort this was to was a reciprocating saw to cut a notch in it and use a chisel to crush the sleeve slightly and knock it out.

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The new poly bush pressed in easy, you just need to make sure its even on both sides when done.

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These are a multipart bush, with the main bush, a tube and washers/spacers on each side.

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And when completed they should look like this

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The front bushing pressed out easily too, but needed some jiggery-pokery to get it into place in the press. I'm not sure this is an officially supported method, so don't try it at home. I wouldn't do this to a metal sleeve bush, but these are an easy press fit rubber bush with no outer sleeve. The strap is only to stop the rear of the arm from coming up.

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The outers for the polybush press in by hand, but I used the press to push the tube through. You could easily use a vice, or if you are a bit rough, a hammer.

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One complete arm.

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Refitting the first arm was something of a nightmare and not a job I want to do again in a hurry. Lining everything up was a real ball-ache, and at one point when the pry bar slipped, a face ache.

The second arm went a bit smoother. There isn't really any trick to it other than not attaching the balljoint to the arm until the very end, and using a dead blow hammer to get the front bush into place. To get the bolt into the rear bush you need the arm as flat as possible in the horizontal plane, but the front bush is also very sensitive to twist and angles. It's a lot of trial and error.

With both fitted though, everything got torqued to spec and I moved on.

I had a quick interlude from big work, mainly because I was at the end of my tether after the control arms and small jobs are easy wins.

The RH side fog light was secured in place with zip ties, and neither worked. I wanted to know why.

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As it turns out, neither were plugged in. Both actually work once the connectors are... connected. The RH side one has a broken mount and cracked lens though. Thankfully all the bits are there though, so I can fix it and the lens isn't letting moisture or dirt in.

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Someone had tried to fix it before, using what I presume is either a cheap superglue or PVA glue. It didn't stick at all. They also failed to key the surface, so the glue was sitting on the surface. On the plus side, it was really easy to remove the old glue. I mixed up a batch of super-strong Araldite, and after keying the surface with a wire bush, slathered it on.

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And some creative taping kept pressure on the joint overnight.

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It seems pretty strong today, but I'll give it a couple of days to fully cure before refitting.

Another small win was to fix the front plate, which was 90 shades of bent out of shape.

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Some swift beating with a plastic hammer made it look somewhat normal again.

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It won't ever look perfect on the car because the mounting points are twisted and bent, but since they are moulded into the bumper cover I'm kinda stuck with it, but it's better than it was. You can actually read it now.

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Whilst fiddling around on the front of the car I decided to cut the tie wire and remove the random gopro mount from behind the grille. This also gave me the chance to realign the grille, which wasn't hooked in properly at the bottom.

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The grille looks better now

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It is all in a dire need of a clean, but that will come later.

The next day, before starting the under bonnet work I slid under the back of the car and wire brushed the "surface rust" on the "fuel pipes" that the car failed its WOF on. To be fair, there was a little surface rust under there, but it was on a brake pipe and was minor (less than the fuel pipe on the liftback had). This was followed by some rust convertor, and later in the day, epoxy zinc.

Back in the engine bay, I replaced the ancient fuel filter, which was full of black rubbish. No photos of this because it's a real bastard of a job. Most of the access is through a cutout in the LH wheel well, and a lot of the work is done blind. Not much fun, but it's done.

After that, I pulled the shitty pod filter intake out. It was just a pod filter stuck into the end of the standard intake pipe, resting on the bottom of the stock airbox with a foam pad to stop it from rubbing through (which going by the sealant on the top of the filter, it had done already).

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The intake air temp sensor had been relocated to a bottle cap with a hole poked through it.

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With the intake off, I couldn't help myself but to check out the reason you buy a 20V... the ITB trumpets.

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Very big and trumpety.

Before refitting the standard intake, I removed the bottom of the airbox to clean it and decided it wouldn't be any easier than now to replace the thermostat (which was sticking open).

It turns out the thermostat housing had also been leaking, as shown by this mess on top of the gearbox.

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Removing the housing gave an idea of what was going on. A pinched and torn gasket, and any colour you like as long as it's orange-brown.

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You can see where the housing was leaking once the thermostat is removed. It was just seeping out the side, through the stuffed gasket.

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The poor gasket had seen some shit.

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Some of it was even stuck in the thermostat, obviously jamming it.

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The "coolant" wasn't just like rusty water, there was something thick and slimy in it. I presume it's that old bastard Stop Leak. Ugh. I flushed some coolant through the top hose with the thermostat out, and got more brown mud out of the system. I'll need to run it for a bit and do a couple of flushes I guess. They probably put it in to stop the thermostat housing leaking... instead of, you know, fixing it.

The new thermostat and gasket looking mighty fine. Remember to place the jiggle pin at the top.

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And the freshly cleaned housing goes back on.

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The old thermostat had a date stamp of 97, so probably original.

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Unfortunately this is where it all came a bit unstuck for a bit today. When checking out the hoses and front engine mount I noticed the radiator was looking a bit worse for wear. Sure enough, once removed you can see a whole bunch of fins have rotted away, and there are signs it's been leaking in the past.

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I knew I'd have to replace the radiator eventually, but didn't think it would be this soon. There was no point in reassembling with that radiator though, so in the bin it went, fan and all. I noticed the fan made a grinding noise when spun by hand, so had no desire to keep that. The car has been running cold for ages so it probably hasn't needed the fan.

A quick trip to Pick A Part ended with a clean enough radiator and fan from an AE111 liftback (like mine but 4AFE powered). There were remnants of clean red Toyota coolant in the system, and the sticker said it had been changed a few years back, so that's better than nothing. Some fins are a little out of shape from use, but no signs of leaks and it looks clean inside. I suspect it may have been replaced at some point as it doesn't have any Toyota logos on it like my original one.

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Interestingly, the NZDM AE111/AE112s have a nice plastic fan shroud, whilst the Carib had a metal shroud that was starting to look rubbish due to surface rust. The plugs are the same and as tested, it works fine in my car.

While the radiator was out, once again, there wouldn't be an easier time to replace the front engine mount. I had replaced the rear recently, but there was still quite a bit of shunting coming on and off the throttle.

Hmm, something doesn't look right

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What way should the "forward" arrow be facing? Not backwards? Oh, okay then.

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A couple of bolts and out the mount comes, showing the full horror of fitting a mount backwards. Torn to bits. No wonder the engine flopped about.

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I made sure to fit mine with the arrow pointing forward.

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Now I could refit the radiator and move onto other things, like fitting the intake.

Of course, I couldn't just fit the stock intake and hide all that intake noise away, so I pulled back the guard liner and whipped the big resonator out. The intake now draws air from inside the guard behind the liner, and from the snorkel behind the headlight.

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The K&N panel filter I picked up cheap used, had a clean and oil and then got fitted.

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Followed by the rest of the intake, including refitting the diagnostic connector where it should be, and not taped to the charcoal canister.

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Spark plugs were next on the list, so off came the cover. The whole valley is coated in old oil that had turned kinda sticky and gooey.

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I suspect it's a mixture of the oil cap leaking due to a very compressed seal, and some hamfisted top-ups.

The spark plugs weren't as gross as I expected, all the spark plug tubes are bone dry, but the spark plugs are the wrong heat range (BKR5) and the EYA variant isn't the recommended plug.

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Not to mention the HUGE gap due to wear

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I measured them at about 1.4mm, when they should be 1.1mm, but thats at the highest point, and the wear slopes away towards the ground strap. They also read quite lean to me, being very white.

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The new replacement plugs I used are BKR6E-11. These are the standard version of the recommended platinum plugs. The only real difference is the shorter service interval, which for me is fine, but the previous owner probably could have done with the platinum plugs.

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The spark plugs leads are looking very tired. One was rubbing, and possibly arcing, on one of the center nuts (the below photo is after I moved it to the correct location, see photo a couple above for where it was).

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Another is wrapped in tape and I'm too scared to find out why

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I gave the valley a quick clean down and moved onto one of the sources of the oil leaks; the distributor oil seal.

I marked the starting location with a paint pen, so I can refit it in the same place. Whether that is the right place or not, I'll find out later when I crack out the timing light.

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There is one bolt holding the distributor in place, and with that removed some careful levering will pop the distributor out. I think mine had been leaking a little...

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The old O-ring practically broke in half when I tried to cut it with a knife. It's also very flat. The new O-ring was carefully placed into the groove after some vigorous cleaning (but taking care not to rotate the distributor). Some rubber grease on the O-ring before assembly, and all should be well.

The final job to do before giving it a quick degrease was to fill and bleed the cooling system. I was going to praise this funnel setup I have, which did a really good job of keeping the system topped up...

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Until it decided, when it was half full of hot coolant, that it no longer wanted to be part of the cooling system and came out of the filler neck, tipped over, and poured coolant everywhere.

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Well, it wouldn't be me if there wasn't coolant on the ground.

The good news is that it bled up OK, no obvious leaks and the temp came up quickly and held steady. Unfortunately, the heater is a bit average, so I will probably need to flush out the heater core. Another day.

Since there was now coolant over EVERYTHING on the LH side of the engine bay, I had to push forward on getting the car out of the garage so I could clean the coolant off before it dried and stained. This did give me a good opportunity to flood everything with degreaser and make it look a bit better.

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Hopefully this will help me identify where leaks are actually coming from, and how old some of the grime was.

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I couldn't help but take it for a quick shakedown around the block. It's still a work in progress, and I'll feel more confident in the suspension once it's been aligned, but the engine does rev out very nicely. Unfortunately the VVT pulley is dead, so there is little to no low/mid-range power, and it feels slow compared to the liftback, but that will be sorted eventually and I'll have all the power back. The ECU will still be learning again too, since the battery was disconnected.

There is also a difference in driving style between the two cars that I will need to get used to. With the 7AFE it's all torque, and it runs out of puff quickly, so you use lots of throttle down low and shift early. The 4AGE is all top end and all about revving the engine hard. Even with a new VVT pulley, I expect there will be minimal power down low, it's just the way it is. It's a screamer.

I have some more cosmetic and interior work to do, and some more parts are on the way (leads, cap and rotor), but I'll book an alignment for next weekend and hopefully have it in for a wof that following week. Other than a couple of bulbs, I've pretty well nailed the old WOF sheet now.

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awesome work

those old plugs are 4afe spec haha, supercheap or repco moran could've just assumed 4afe and given a past owner those

I got around the fuel filter problem by cutting hard lines and fitting a filter that has hose fittings, commonly used in Subarus. A total RFB solution but what can ya do when you accidentally break a hard line :(

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The liftback should be on its way with its new owner tomorrow, so thats good. Just squeezed over the $1K mark, which is what i wanted, but more would've been nice. It will be gone though, which is more important than the money.

It occurred to me that I have no photos of the interior of the Carib. There was none on the listing and I hadnt even seen the interior before hitting buy now. I'll take some better ones later, once I clean everything, but at least its not festy and filthy.

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It even has a sweet NO SMOKING "ash tray" that is felt lined and has coin slots in it, and the multibox with a series of little drawers. The big lit up thing is the FIELD MONITOR which is a compass and displays outside temp and weather forecast. The temp isnt working at the moment, so will need to find the sensor and see whats what.

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The fusion headunit will come out and my Pioneer from the liftback will go in instead. A quick check through the front speaker grilles shows it has JVC speakers in the doors.

Couldn't help but take this photo whilst the Carib was parked on the drive. I love the way the tyre pokes out from behind the bumper. The spacers behind the rotors will be helping that fitment.

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2 minutes ago, tortron said:

interested in fusion headunit for my 98

I'll be keeping it for other projects, Soz. Has bluetooth and all the bees and weasels. I just prefer the Pioneer for looks/use.

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With WOF day looming, I had a few more things to get ready, starting with a wheel alignment.

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Typical Corolla alignment. Camber is out on one side, but everything else is in spec, much like when I had the Liftback aligned. I might need to look at some camber bolts for the front. The car drives straight and tracks well, although I have now gained some guard rub in the RH Rear when cornering hard. I will need to find out what's touching and give it some smacks, but I suspect it's just a bit of the guard lip that's been tweaked in the past.

After the alignment I wanted to have a look at the timing. When I refitted the distributor after replacing the seal I noticed the adjustment was hard on the counter-clockwise stop, but didn't really think much of it at the time. It wasn't until a friend with another 20V Carib mentioned his was also run on 91 fuel and had the timing retarded just so it wouldn't knock its head off that it started to click that maybe that's what has happened to mine and why it feels to flat to drive.

Checking the timing marks on the crank is a nightmare on these. Even removing the washer bottle and cleaning the timing cover didn't help. I can just make out the 10deg mark stamped on the timing cover, but I can't see the notch on the edge of the pulley. I'll need to mark it all with paint when I have access next. In the meantime, I just haphazardly wound the distributor back and advanced the timing.

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Unfortunately the combo of old 91 fuel in the tank mixed with new 98, and probably a lot of carbon in the engine meant that it was knocking like crazy under load on the test drive. A quick stop back at home to retard the timing just a little bit, and I had it just on the limits of knocking with this fuel. Once I've been through a tank I should be able to add some more timing back in again, especially if I can check it against the timing marks.

Whilst there I also changed the distributor cap and rotor. I was going to change the leads too, but the leads I bought (advertised for the 20v blacktop) were wrong, so I'll need to find another source.

The old cap and rotor were well used. The rotor has cracking in the plastic near the tip, and the cap is all crusty on the posts.

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Extra timing, like in my friends Carib, has really livened the car up. It actually wants to rev now, whereas before it just felt flat and like revving was asking too much from it.

I took it for the first real drive since I got it, around some fast back roads, and it's a lot of fun to just REVVVVV. The liftback was far more punchy down low but the 7A was asking for a gear change at the same point the 20V is just getting warmed up. The more I drive it, the better it seems to be getting.

This evening I replaced the two bulbs that the car had previously failed the WOF on (rear number plate lamp and front park light), and refit the fog lights.

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No more zip ties holding the light in!

Since I was on a bit of a roll, and I had some spare time, I worked on replacing the barely functional headunit.

It's a Fusion unit with all the bells and whistles, but it never really worked all that well. FM never got reception, and the sound quality was rubbish. It was also jammed in the dash surround and didn't really fit well

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Removing the dash surrounds was easy, since all the screws are missing and it's just held in with clips and hopes and dreams. The top surround the radio is housed in should have at least two screws under the edge below the radio and one on the far RH side under the mirror switch. This is one big panel that goes over the cluster. The surround below the radio with the climate control is just held in with clips.

I didn't know what to expect behind the radio, but with the state of the rest of the car, I figured it couldn't be good. I wasn't let down

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Chocolate blocks. Oh no. But wait, what is that?

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A band expander? On an NZ radio? No wonder FM doesn't work well.

With some further digging, I found this

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Yes, that's a huge bundle of wires leading to the two intact OEM plugs with proper harness adaptors. Yay!

I suspect it had a flashy JDM radio in it when it came to NZ, and the dealer fit a band expander to get the FM radio working on it since the radio frequencies in Japan are different to NZ. The band expander shifts the frequencies so that JDM radios can pick them up.

Obviously the previous owner wanted more features so scrapped the JDM radio, cut the plugs off at the radio end and used the chocolate block to join it to the Fusion harness, whilst plugging the band expander in as it was on the old radio. I mean, it kinda worked. Kinda.

The headunit wasn't secured properly either, they had used the wrong holes in the side of the headunit so the brackets didn't fit and it flopped around all over the place.

I moved the brackets to the headunit out of the Liftback, plugged it in and away it went

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This is what was pulled out and is now redundant

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It fits in the dash well enough, certainly better than the Fusion did

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It was already an improvement in sound quality, but something was still lacking.... sound from the front RH speaker. Nothing.

I removed the door card (which was easy since half the clips are missing) and found this. I knew it had aftermarket JVC speakers in the front doors since I spotted them through the grilles the other day, but didn't know they were held in with wood screws

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Sure enough, the speaker was dead. I noticed when I removed the screw and moved the speaker it would cut in and out. Yay, intermittent connection. No surprise there...

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Argh, no. Twist and tape. A pair of cheap crimpers and some terminals would have sorted this properly

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I was going to crimp terminals on but someone had mangled the small terminal on the speaker, so I chose to solder the wires to the terminals instead. I figure I'll need to do the speaker on the Lh side soon, since that will be twisted and taped too.

I have proper mounting rings that I believe should fit this car, but the speakers are OK as they are for now. I have some nicer Sony ones on the way, so might fit the mounts if I swap to those down the track.

The difference in sound is like night and day now. Much more bass, it's clearer and fading to the front works now, whereas previously it just went quiet. It could do with new rear speakers as they are starting to distort a bit, but that will come down the track.

The last couple of things to do was to fit the rear cargo blind that had been sitting in my lounge for a while

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And the center console arm rest. This is from the RV spec model, and has twin cup holders in the lid

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I'll probably never use it since there is a twin cup holder in the dash, but its cool to have.

There is still some more work to be done, but nothing for the upcoming WOF check. I have completed the old checklist, and everything else is basically new, so hopefully, it'll go through easily.

If the weather is good I'm planning on heading to Pick A Part tomorrow and will be grabbing some screws to secure the dash trim, but also a clock spring so I can change to the three spoke steering wheel as the airbag connector is different.

On a slightly bittersweet note, the Liftback is gone. I'll miss that car, but needs must. I'm finally back down to three cars, which is a happy number for being able to store all of them. Once the Carib has a WOF we will have two useable cars and then I can push forward on the Marina.

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5 hours ago, ajg193 said:

For setting the timing, if you turn hard to the right you can get easy access to the timing mark through the wheel arch.

 

Did you bridge T1 and E1 in the diagnosis port to lock out the timing for adjustment?

Yes, bridged the terminals. 

Tried looking through wheel arch but the marks are on the timing cover, almost behind the pulley, and the notch on the pulley is on the back side so no way you'd see that from the side. Bit of a shit design. 

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3 hours ago, ajg193 said:

Interesting, on the BZ Touring Corollas (as opposed to Carib) there is a little hatch that you can pull off in the wheel arch to let you see the marks with some level of ease

None of that goodness on the Carib, suspect its maybe a E10 (Corolla) vs E11 (Carib) platform difference.

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Removed the center console so I could adjust the hand brake ready for the WOF tomorrow, and uncovered some next level filth.

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A quick vacuum made it look a ton better, but I need to give the interior a good deep clean at some point.

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Hand brake adjusted well, better than it did in the liftback for some reason. Can hold on my steep driveway, and even holds when easing the clutch out. It'll stall before rolling down the slope.

The Carib is ready for its WOF check tomorrow. I'm looking forward to shaking the car down a bit more and eventually hitting the track.

On a side note, I notice the Liftback passed a WOF just after I sold it, which is great news. It lives on for at least another 6 months, providing the buyer with some damn cheap, reliable transport.

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WOF passed, just a mention of a chip in the windscreen out of the drivers vision area, and the cracked fog light lens (which still passes because its not letting moisture in). Great success.

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Also got sick of the guard rub from the RH Rear, so jacked the rear of the car up and had a look. Found a clean spot on the inner lip where it had been rubbing, so took a small sledgehammer to the lip and hammered it in a bit. No more rubbing, so now I can drive the car harder, like it was built for.

Next on the list is to replace the clock spring so I can fit my 3 spoke steering wheel, and replace and rekey the ignition barrel since the previous owner made a mess of it somehow.

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