KSR's KP60 Documentation

[kseries.rookie]

Alrighty, I figure it's probably about time I put something together for this forum.
I don't want to call it a build thread because it really isn't when you compare to others.. More of me documenting the ownership of this car, the mistakes, the fun and everything else in between.

I've been searching for a KP for quite some time and while there has been few and far between options on the table and mostly were repsprayed/molested which I wasn't too keen on. That being said, I probably would have brought one if something like this didn't pop up..
I decided to chuck something in the buy/sell thread in the hopes that someone had something or knew of something.
Thread below for reference.
 

As can you can see, it was based in Hamilton and I am based in Wellington. I am incredibly grateful for Michael (myk00l) who spent some time getting it WOF ready, giving it a service and preparing it for a long drive home.
Once it was ready for me, I caught a flight up to Hamilton, he picked me up, I checked it out, dropped him off and drove 600kms home without a single hiccup.




It's worth mentioning that I have now owned the car for 12 months so I am writing this retrospectively.
I will update the thread as I have time to do so, but stay tuned for more!

Discuss here 

 

[kseries.rookie]

Immediate plans were to tidy it up a little bit and fix the small amount of rust. I also needed to get my hands on some head rests as these were missing.
Once that was all sorted, all I had to do was give it a really thorough clean on the inside and just drive it around and enjoy the nostalgic feels of cruising in a k series.

I'd like to keep it as original as possible for as long as possible but the inner bogan in me will no doubt eventually make some changes (read: dumpy, modgies, mirror tints, 12a bridgy, camo interior etc).
These will be reversible subtle changes such as suspension upgrade (not slammed on it's ass as I don't want to muck around with the guards) for improved handling so it no longer feels like a boat and some period correct wheels.
Engine is a 2k and a 4 speed manual box, it's the slowest car i've ever driven. Dangerously slow, especially pulling onto the highway..
Ultimately the game plan is to go for an OEM+ KP60, something that you could look at and believe me if I said they were all options you could select when purchasing one brand new.
Note - I don't plan to bring this to brand new spec. It gets driven and I don't want to obsess over making it mint otherwise it will be a never ending unenjoyable story/trailer queen. Quoting ajg193's mentality.. "it's maintained"

The colour is Toyota Peacock, it's stunning in my opinion and only until recently, it was the first KP I had seen in this colour.
In other lights it looks different but I would say it's a turquoise/teal.

I gave it a quick wash with some top of the range frangipani dish washing liquid and nabbed a couple of snaps down the road.





No sound system at all, just the OEM blanking plate.
I will need to look into a hidden sound system. Perhaps a really small amp with blue tooth capabilities under the seat with a small speaker tucked in the factory slots.
I don't want anything crazy, just something to have as background noise. In all fairness, I have been using UE boom placed under the glove box and it has been doing the trick..




I've not seen one with the green and tan combo before. I quite like it

 

[kseries.rookie]

Next on the to do list was the rust. I'm not a real man as I have not welded before so I outsourced the repair.

I rang around 6 or 7 different places to find a panel beaters that would take on a rust repair instead of insurance work..
I found 3 and got quotes. One was astronomical and two were reasonable.. Buy cheap, buy twice and all that but I figured that it didn't really matter if it's show car quality as 99% of it is covered by a rubber seal.. As long as the tainted metal was removed and new stuff was welded in place. Between the two, it came down to when they could fit me in. 

Location = top left corner when you open the boot




No after pictures specifically without the seal on but paint is close enough in colour - you'd barely notice that there was a repair..





 

[kseries.rookie]

At this stage I had racked up over a thousand kms on the weapon, which was more than enough to make me prioritise a suspension upgrade.

I picked up some Cobra Super Lows and Munroe GT rear shocks (shorter)..
I am fortunate enough to have a friend who has done all this stuff a thousand times before so he came on round and we got to work.
After fitting the rear, we came to realise that the front shocks (albeit aftermarket KYBs) were not holding the springs captive (barely, but not captive is not captive). 

I ordered some shortened KYB shocks slapped them in and happy days.
You can scroll up for a ride height difference.



Look at the difference between the paint on a sunny day VS cloudy.. It goes front a light green to a dark blue.

The drivability increased big time and the ride was surprisingly comfortable still. I was very aware that the cheap tyres were going to let me down I did also manage to find a period correct AA badge that had Wellington on it which I put that on, along with a JAF badge but later on decided there was too much going on and removed the AA badge. Who knows, I might try again later on.

Those with a keen eye may have also spotted the monsoons. I had thought/was told they were OEM however, this was not the case  
They still look cool but they were made for a slant front 4 door and it doesn't quite fit on the front doors. I might try modify/bend them a bit.. or just not use them.. What do you guys think?




 

[kseries.rookie]

The rear carpet had seen better days and so I decided to replace it.



I grabbed a second hand one that had also seen better days but no holes or rips and cheap enough to give it a go




After some elbow grease



After more elbow grease and fitted



 

[kseries.rookie]

Now that the KP isn't feeling like a boat anymore, I had to address the wheel and tyre situation.

Continuing with the OEM+/Maintained vibe, I wanted to get my hands on a set of KP61 sprint wheels. I managed to get my hands on a pretty run down set but I was optimistic that I could make them look cool again.
I spent several hours cleaning and polishing before the optimism ran out and I gave up and started to look around for somewhere to do it. I actually ended up searching the forum and I found a post from 2009 mentioning a potential lead. I gave him a call surely enough he was still doing it for funzies



They came out pretty neat


I then spent many hours with some sand paper, a couple of different paint brushes and some black engine enamel paint



I wrapped them in some Yokohama A539's, got a wheel alignment and put them on.
So far they have outlasted the mighty 2k engine.



I used to collect stickers back in the days and had an reproduced rego sticker that I had intended to use on a different but I never ended up using it. Same year too which is cool
 

[kseries.rookie]

Interior wise I think I will keep modifications to a minimum at this stage. 
If in the future the scope creeps up, i'll get some period correct front seats and try to match the original pattern as much as possible but for the mean time I did want to do something about the steering wheel.
I picked up a wood grain Kaizen steering wheel which I believe (correct me if I am wrong) is from a late 70s early 80s land cruiser and was an optional wheel from factory. The only issue there is I have had a hard time sourcing a horn button that fits. All the ones I have seen for sale at 51mm inside DIA and by calculations I need a 56mm one. If anyone has a toyota horn that suits, i'd love to hear from you.

I also managed to get my hands on a Wildcat wheel with a Toyota horn button which suits my application perfectly. I love the feeling of the wild cat, it's small, comfortable to wield and period correct. 
Fortunately, the wheel came with the boss kit as well which can be hard to come by. I did have to do some minor modifications to it for the horn to work consistently, gave it a good polish and slapped it on.



Stiffer suspension, excellent tyres and now a smaller steering wheel has made a world of difference in terms of drivability. A+ would trade again

[kseries.rookie]

I want to keep the paint work as original as possible but it was in desperate need of some love.
Off to a groomer it went for a full exterior detail including ceramic coating.
It's hard to tell on camera but wow, what a difference it's made. The paint really pops in the sun




Something else that I had acquired was a WOF. Not just any old WOF but a clean sheet WOF!
I didn't anticipate there being anything major (or minor to be fair) but it's always a sigh of relief when it does pass




 

 

[kseries.rookie]

Few small updates..
Due to failure to locate beige headrests, I picked up dark brown headrests awhile back.. I've always kept an eye out for the correct brown and recently got my hands on some very dirty beige headrests.
The waifu offered to bring them back to life to which I jumped at.. Top is how they came, bottom is scrubbed



Another win that took far too long to find, was locating three of these clips as there was only one present when purchasing the vehicle




I also re-painted the number plates, attached some Toyota backing plates and got my hands on an S front badge albeit faded..








 

[kseries.rookie]

I've just driven this on a 1300 km round trip so I am feeling inspired to talk shit about it but more on that later.
Jeepers, it's been a few WOFs since the last post.. I'll sum up the last couple years..

I did a grass auto cross, it was a hoot

I changed the cluster for a rev gauge one (shout out to Matt for the wiring diagram. that would have taken me far too long to figure out)



 

The inevitable happened, and the 2k just wasn't cutting it anymore so I started to build a 5k (got a cheap van, drove it home and pulled the motor). While I was building it, a well used 5k came up for sale locally and for what it came with, it was too good of a price not to grab. I gave it a birthday, put that in, blew the head gasket driving home from getting it tuned, replaced the head gasket and then had a few months dorting around.

 

 

I was told all the classic yarns when I got it.. bored block, ported 3kb head, oversized valves, massive cam, high compression etc. Which surprisingly, were true. Unfortunately the lifter prolapsed.

With my tail between my legs I ripped the trusty 2k out from under the house, gave it a spray can rebuild and put it back in place. 

 

 

 

[kseries.rookie]

I have always loved Advan A3As and I managed to I pick up a set of 13x6s. I got the lips fixed, painted the centres and convinced the bro to polish them for me (not a member but cheers mate).
Orange and blue is a sharp contrast, but it's grown on me

Which brings us now back to first sentence of the previous post.
I've just driven this from Wellington to Horopito to Toyota Fest at Hampton downs and back (1300 kms) with a couple of mates. There were a couple of small issues with the KP on the trip but those were quickly and easily rectified. It might be slow, but it got there ha

}





Have a squiz the oldschool.co.nz sticker I got over a decade ago and never used until now.

That's all for now

[kseries.rookie]

After a while of driving the car, I just couldn't shake the dort bug.. The rebuilt 5k was getting closer to be finished, so I made peace with the fact that a cert was on the horizon and started ruining the purity.

Did somebody say... scope creep?
Ahh yes, ye ole' classic.

The ride height as always bothered me.. and this was only amplified when I stupidly photoshopped to sit on the ground. Going for cert so may as well do it properly, I guess? There werent any off the shelf options for coilovers so I had my spindles welded to some Fortune Auto coilovers. The KP has a divorced coil and shock system, which presented me with a choice to either go true coilover and strengthen the rear, which would mean having to go through further compliance hoops or to stay divorced. I ended up going with the latter.
Still using the adjustable height and dampner rear FA shock and an off the shelf spring.

I picked up a AE86 GTS rear housing and slowly started collecting the rest of the bits I need.
It all went to somebody much smarter and handier than I to get shortened (housing, axles and spares), LSD installed. It came back looking like a thicc standard KP diff with adjustable platforms.
I struggled to find rear calipers.. Instead I had the engineer adapting some ke70 drum brakes.
While being bent over a barrel for diff parts and suspension, I added adjustable 4 link arms and roll centre adjusters to marry up to the other new bits.

Install was relatively straight forward.. One out one in.
There was a little bit of playing around with the arms and height adjustment but this will get setup properly by someone who has the tools and technology so I did a "there or thereabouts" height, dampner and pinion angle setup.

Admittedly I was pretty slack with the photos, but a few here to tell the story.. some photos are old and have had since been revised but you get the idea.. and some things still need to be revised such as the wheel stud length for example.








Tactical park on a downslope for increased lows

The tricky part through all of this is that the KP wasn't designed by Toyota to be low so making sure I comply with the virm has had it's ups and downs.. Some of the more tricky parts I think where making sure I had enough travel, enough droop and not having too small of a bump stop. I've been working through all these changes with the certifier and been given the unofficial tick throughout the process but we'll never know until the time comes and what rules may or may not have changed since.

It's quite comical having this suspension and differential married to a 900cc 4 speed but all in good time. It's now properly "off the road" (will provide context later on) but before then I hadn't driven it much, just around the block to see how things are clearance wise and to settle the suspension.. but with the very limited driving it seems to be much stiffer.
 

Those who lurk the certification thread may know what is coming next...
I'm writing this retrospectively so there are a lot of trials and tribulations with things that I won't cover but if anyone wants me to elaborate on something specific, feel free to ask away or tell me I am ruining the purity here..

 

[kseries.rookie]

The inevitable happened.. As a big time K series fanboi, this wasn't an easy decision.. Knowing certification was on the horizon, it just made sense.
The thing is.. and while it's not all about the power, I asked myself - Did I want a 5k with a bunch of work done (increased unreliability risk) to barely scrape 85hp.. or do I just put in a 4AGE that is bone stock with that Toyota reliability stamp and get around 100-105hp?
It made sense to me to take option B.

It sort of happened in a meant to be kind of way. A good friend of mine has a 4age powered KP60 with a recent ish (8000kms ago) stock rebuild and was almost ready to whip out the motor to replace with one he had been building for a few years (all the N/A fruit).
At this time a post was made on the facebook where somebody was wanting a 4 or 5k engine.. After a bit of back and forth, he seemed like a GC and we came to an agreement on price. He ended up buying the rebuilt engine with all the "go fast" bits for a price where we were both happy with.

The new to me motor was originally out of an AE86 (big port) and with it coming from a KP (with loom, ecu etc), I knew I had put myself in the best possible chance of an easy ish install. Couple of wires to the ECU and hey presto.

 

Lots to consider.. New set of certification rules to look into, converting from cable clutch to hydraulic, space within the bay, cooling, heating, and more.
More to come soon

[kseries.rookie]

Although it may look a little crusty on the outside, it should be healthy internally after only having around 8000 kms since it was rebuilt. 
The engine was pulled out of a two door slant front, which has some subtle differences to the four door best front but in theory it should still be fine. It was the bug eye that had a much shorter bay therefore less space.

There really isn't a heck of a lot of information (and absolutely no step by step guides) on the internet for this stuff so it's going to be a lot of asking peers, trial and error. Moving from a cable clutch to a hydraulic clutch was first on the list while the bay was empty. Oldscoolautos do a pedal box conversion and with a little bit of bending, hole elongation and a few grunts I managed to get it all lined up and fitting in the bay. This allowed me to know where the master cylinder sits and plan around it moving forward.

Engine mount wise I used the flos engine mounting brackets paired with some AE86 Cusco race mounts.
The brackets came deconstructed, so I had a friend who is handy with a hot glue gun them together for me.
What I like about the flos brackets is that it allows the 4age to sit flat along the bay rather than on a slight angle like factory. This does add complications for the gearbox mount and the shifter will be leaning slightly towards the driver side but it's not a biggie for something a little more aesthetically pleasing.

I had planned to keep them in the raw metal finish but these eventually got hit with a fresh coating of gloss black.

Bolted the box and engine together and in it with for the inaugural test fit. 
Immediately I saw some things I would need to re work/consider. 

Issue #1 - The heater core fouls on the back of the head. I did anticipate this being an issue so prior to the install I was able to remove the interior to get the heater core out. Although it's not a daily, I still want to retain the functionality of a heater.
Relatively easy fix.. Modify the bottom heater core pipe to bend 90 degrees, chuck in a bulkhead fitting on the exhaust side firewall and re mount the heater tap under the dash. I am a little nervous about having a heater tap under the dash as it does introduce another variable for leaks but hopefully with some FT hose clamps i'll be alright.

Issue #2 was that the intake plenum fouled on the brake booster.
Not by a lot but enough to render the brake lines useless. I am faced with a few options to move forward..
1. Revert to standard and sell up
2. Remove the TVIS plate.. That may have give me enough space, just.. but will change the way the engine performs
3. A combination of removing the plate and shaving down the intake runners
4. Look into alternative brake booster/master cylinder options (such as a wilwood pedal box)
5. Remove the intake plenum all together and replace with ITBs..

Each had their own pros and cons but of course, naturally I went with option 4.. because dorts.
As I said, it comes with it's pros and cons. One of those cons is that the internet tells me the factory ECU will struggle with individual throttles.. So lets add aftermarket ECU and wiring job to the ever growing list of things to procure.

I didn't fancy investing further without knowing things will actually work as desired.. Fortunately the m8 that sold me the engine had an SQ engineering manifold, ITBs and trumpets for his new build and was kind enough to let me trying before I buy.
And of course naturally it would have been rude of me to not test fit his G4A headers.

So at this point we've established the 4age ITBs combo fits and I need to fork out for an aftermarket ecu.. It meant the world was my lobster for further outputs.
Coil on plug is an obvious improvement to make but I am not really a fan of the coil plate sitting on top with the plugs on display. I took inspiration from Sean (Kune RE on YT) who used small port covers, made up a centre plate and used Subaru Legacy/WRX coils. I went about sourcing some covers, commissioning Stu (OSGC) to whip me up a centre plate and grabbed some coils from Pick A Part to dummy up.

With the coil on plug conversion under way, the next eyesore to tackle was the distributer. I no longer needed it from a spark perspective but it was required for a camshaft timing perspective. The crank trigger wheel kits you can get off the shelf are a little bit of an eyesore.. I got my hands on a G4A trigger kit and picked up a couple of hall sensors for the crank and camshaft. This should totally negate the need for a distributor so I nabbed a dizzy blank off plate from JSP to seal things off.
This also puts me in a good position for future scope creep and not restricting myself with header options.

With the engine back out, I took the opportunity to give it a little freshen up.. Re plated nuts and bolts, bunch of new gaskets, purchased and vapor blasted the new to me ITBs, new frost plugs and a general scrub and paint.
I stand by my earlier comments in the first few posts that I have no intention of bringing the starlet back to "brand new condition". Used but maintained.. Otherwise I will obsess over it and it will simply never get finished. The car has already been on jack stands for far too long for my liking.






Ignore the idle control valve and the vacuum chamber/box thing.. That was me just messing about with placement.
 

Next on the list is cooling and then into the fuel system.