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Marks_2_sparks cool corolla


marks_2_sparks

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Well I have been working on this for a few years and I think it is only fair that I show everyone what I think is worth all that effort.

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it is a 1991 AE92 FXGT corolla. i have owned it for the past 5 years over which I have been working on slowly cleaning it up and making it into a clean and very stealthy car.

This year I have been working with a panel beater friend and we cleaned it right back to not quite bare metal and spent almost 6 months getting the panels straight and clean enough for a fresh coat of factory black.

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This is what it was looking like at the start of the year.

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We got fairly stuck in and the only thing we didn't do ourselves was the actual top coats of paint as we wanted to do it in a proper paint booth to get the best result possible. I think it turned out really good.

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Now to the stealthy part.

I have put together a 4agte for this little car.

I have a gze bottom from the early aw11 mr2 with a ported and lightly polished silvertop 20 valve head. That is held together with a cometic headgasket and ARP studs.

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To that I have attached custom made intake and exhaust manifolds which I can thank the fitter welders at work for their input.

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The exhaust is all steam pipe and has been tig welded together. The intake is 316 stainless and the runners to the throttle bodies have been flared out inside the manifold to help with the air flow, so it's not quite a simple log manifold.

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Here is a selection of parts awaiting installation

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Excluding the back end of my cat I have changed those injectors out already for larger 800cc units and not included in that picture is the following.

link g4 storm

Td05 16G turbo charger

Rebuilt E51 mr2 gearbox with new synchros and TRD LSD

All New engine mounts

Greddy blow off valve

AE111 shocks and brakes (twin pot)

Nolathane bushes for suspension (where OEM not available)

I know I'm missing bits but that is the bulk of the go faster bits. I have fitted and all sorts of little things to bring the whole package together over the years.

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The last pic my be a bit dusty but it shows pretty well how I fitted things in there.

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And here is some proof that it actually works. I was back on the dyno and we wound the boost up to 20psi but all it did was lose 7kw as the exhaust is too restrictive. I have already organized parts and a time to have that delt with so before christmas I should have another 20-30kw to play with. That dip in power was an incorrectly set up vvt setpoint which has been fixed. The small spikes in the boost was also a setup issue with the solenoid frequency set to 50hz (25hz is much better)

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And the last post for now, I would have done less but for some reason the picture links stop working after 2-4 in each post.

I have included some of the other parts I have managed to put together for the corolla.

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my dashboard with boost and AFR to replace the battery and oil pressure. I will be fitting a digital EGT above the red warning LED which is where the TEMS display would have gone.

I also managed to find a factory Toyota badge for the steering wheel.

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I even managed to use the factory AC buttons to control the high boost and launch control features, I thought it was a good idea to add a safety key switch hidden away so if I have to let someone else drive it I can turn the fun factor down and prevent them using these features by accident.

That is pretty much where I have gotten to with my car at this point in time. hope you like it.

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  • 6 months later...

It has been a long time since my last post here, probably because I have been busy working on the car. I will update with a bit of copy paste action from my other build thread so its possible I may have a little bit of double up, enjoy.

I have had it on the dyno 5 times in the last few months. It turns out I was running right on the limit of the 2.5 inch exhaust. First run on the dyno after I had changed the injectors and bits around was 180kw down from the original 205. That was no surprise as I was playing it safe until it was checked on the dyno. After tuning it we got it back to 200kw before the power curve flat lined. I put this 5kw loss down to the 2nd resonator I fitted to keep the noise down. Even though it didn't make any noticeable difference and the horrible drone was still there.

So a trip to the exhaust shop and I got the single chamber high flow muffler replaced with a true straight through muffler which not only took 5db off the total noise it also completely got rid of the drone. The next run on the dyno also got the power up to nearly 205kw again with no power gains past 6000ish rpm and no difference from 16 psi to 20 psi except a small amount of low to mid range torque.

This graph is prior to the rear muffler replacement but shows the nature of the power curve.

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So after playing around with all that I decided the best solution to get more power is to get a bigger exhaust. So I have organized a welder friend to assist with making a custom 3 inch stainless system from turbo back and we will see what the difference is. The new car parts are arriving already.

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It took a while to get it back on the dyno as the tuner was chasing a faulty circuit in the dyno but after a re tune I'm only getting an extra 10kw on high boost and the power is almost a flat line from 6000 to red line. We spent some time tweaking and experimenting and the likely culprit is the valve springs are too soft for the boost. At the moment I'm making 210kw on 20psi and 165kw on 12 psi.

Current tune low and high boost

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A bonus is the internal waste gate is controlling boost on high boost and I made a "boost controller" which uses the bov to assist with control on low boost by venting the excess pressure. Take a look at the low boost and how well it holds.

The extra plot on this one is before we added more tension to the waste gate.(just before I put new cams in as per later in the post) it felt horrible, no grunt behind the revs and was very sluggish (compaired to current tune) now that I look at it the low boost run was before we added more tension as well so low boost is probably a bit higher power than shown

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I spent a few hours making a spring compressor which will let me change them without pulling the head off and will save a lot of time provided I don't drop a valve into the cylinder. I'm going to rely on compressed air to hold the valves shut so we will see how that works out.

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Tested it out on the spare head when I was making it to be sure it will work, it is so much easier than the expensive one I have that clamps right around onto the other side of the valve. Only problem was trying to take a picture and operate the compressor while holding the head down, should be even easier with the head on the block and the other hand free from the camera.

I managed to get the valve springs in with minimal fuss which was nice but once I had it all back together there was a concerning tap/knock/rattle coming from somewhere up top. Being the only thing I had touched was the valves I figured I must have mixed up some of the shims and buckets. So only wanting to pull it apart one more time (none really). I decided to cough up and get some new cams for it just to help it sing that little bit better. So I will see how it goes on the dyno next time round.

I put the new cams in and adjusted the clearances as required, none were very far out so it all looks good. I did figure out what the rattle was though.... waste gate chatter. I fixed up the actuator on it and only just remembered. Turns out there was just enough tension and play for it to bounce around which explains why I could hear it out the exhaust and why it stopped once the motor started to make boost. I not taking the cams out though.

So after taking it for a drive I can say the Kelford 194TA cams have given it a right kick in the pants. I have run them in and after a quick blast, Wow! it feels like the first time I drove it home from the dyno. Boost comes on so much sooner and on low boost it will just power into wheel spin in second gear which it never did even with the less grippy old tires.

Skip foward a few weeks and..

Well I had a bad feeling just before it was on the dyno last that the head gasket was leaking again. based on the slightly oily carbon floating in the radiator and the decided lack of coolant in the top tank it was pretty obvious....but what caused it?

The general population agreed it was likely the head was warped. But, we were wrong and it was the block. 2thou out across the width with various high and low spots. So the motor had to come out to get machined.

the machine shop said it was likely the motor was cooked at some point I'm guessing the fact it came out of an AW11 that was an ex demo car that it could have happened early in it's life .

So I have a nice alloy radiator to help keep temperatures in check for those times that I decide to have some fun and throw it around the track or down the quarter and to ensure I'm not the cause of another un-nessecary rebuild in the process.

Now given that I don't want to pull the motor down again anytime soon and there was evidence of the valves touching the pistons (going to say valve float otherwise the motor wouldn't have still been running) I decided to get a few other bits done.

Out with the old....

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some of the new, bumpity bump

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stripping the block for machining and honing

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Balancing of the rotating assembly in preparation of new shiny bits

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The crank was out by 3 grams, the pully was only 1 gram and the flywheel even after it had been setup and lightened in the lathe was out by 50 grams.

while everything is in pieces I also went and got the head cleaned up some what.

intake before

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and after

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exhaust before

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and after

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It looks pretty good and should help the engine go just that bit better when it's all back together.

So The engine build list is now looking like this

Head-

port, polished and blueprinted 20v head

Kelford 194TA cams

Kelford springs

Custom intake manifold, quad throttle bodies

block-

CP 20 valve pistons 9.0 compression

CP rods

fully balanced rotating assembly

ARP main and rod bolts

lightened flywheel (nothing excessive but have yet to confirm the difference, possibly 1-1.5kg less)

I also ordered a new turbo from forced performance, their FP68HTA. Long story short, it looks like a TD05 16g, bolts in where a TD05 does but flows more like a TD06 20g. Just the ticket as I don't want to change my manifolds and exhaust around if I can help it.

and after all of this is done we will see how much power it makes and just what kind of beast it drives like. I know that just changing the cams out gave me the same power for 3psi less boost and made it spool close to 1000rpm sooner.

Jump foward another 2 weeks and...

I got a call today saying my parts were on the counter and the guys had started putting things together. So I shot around and had a look.

ARP 2000 series main studs

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Mmmmm, Tasty brand new pistons.

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Rods all weighed up and ready to go, (everything was within 1 gram out of the box but they got them closer by mixing and matching rods and pistons)

I actually saved a tad over 800 grams from the old rods and pistons to the new ones

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So at the moment the car is sitting on a hoist halfway back together, the aim is to have it finished and checked on the dyno by the end of tomorrow. then it's a case of running the new motor in on low boost and waiting for the new turbo to arrive which should work in with the end of my tuners 2 week holiday and the fact the dyno is out of action getting the rollers balanced (they had them re knurled to improve grip but it's put the balance out somehow). So I will give an update once I get a power run with the new turbo on and tuned

Edited by marks_2_sparks
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  • 2 weeks later...

Fantastic looking machine, ya dont see many this nice . :toast: balancing is a lost art your doing a great job with it tho, did you get the head CC'd after that sexy port work?

Great job on the valve spring tool too :clap:

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I had the engine rebuilt professionally after finding the block was warped and they did check the head displacement. It must have been all right as they didn't come back to me with any remedial work.

The balancing was very noticeable. The new motor is much smoother and quieter so you don't feel the engine revs in the car anymore.

The head work is definitely flowing more air as well. We had lean miss under light load and the wastage pressure has dropped to 8 psi from 12.

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  • 1 year later...

I have not been posting here for ages as I have been using another build thread I have elsewhere. so time to copy and paste from where I left off....

 

Well if you have been following this then you will be wondering what happened to my turbo. Well fear not..... so have I. eventually found that the supplier took payment but never generated a purchase. basically my name never got put to a turbo and I got fed a load of generic information about the batch of turbos of which one of should have been mine. Pity it took 8 months for the truth to come out.

Anyway I have moved on and am now waiting for a Kinugawa TD05 20g with billet comp wheel and 9 blade? (not sure) turbine wheel and a ported internal waste gate (still persevering with internal due to lack of space). I have been thinking long and hard, doing as much homework as possible and this new turbo should be nearly as good as the FP68hta at a fraction of the cost.

I have fitted my nice front seats and they are so much more comfortable than the 400,000k old ones, I no longer feel like I'm crippled after a road trip which has to be a plus.

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I have had a few people ask what car I took them from and I get a bit of a blank look when I say they are factory with a visit to the auto upholsterer.

I also decided to do something about the suspension. Not that there was anything wrong with the stock stuff, it just wasn't really good enough for spirited driving.

so I pulled the old stuff out

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and replaced it with something that looks exactly the same but takes these little knobs...

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and for ease of adjustment in the rear

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I went to the Koni workshop in Auckland and talked to Russell who sorted me out with inserts. I believe the rears are for MR2's (dunno if AW or SW) and the fronts are for a Celica (again dunno which model). They have plenty of adjustment and with the addition of some stiffer springs the corolla is now much flatter and more stable in the corners.

I have also been messing around with the launch control and flat shift a bit more and now have it building 5psi on the line at 3000rpm and flying through the gears. that has made it more interesting to drive and has certainly kept me entertained while trying to sort out the turbo woes.

well fingers crossed that I have a turbo in the next few weeks and hopefully it doesn't end up under the Christmas tree, I think I have waited long enough to finish that part of the project.

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Well good things take time apparently but that was a tad excessive. I finally have a new turbo sitting in my hands.... well I did have. I didn't mess around and it's already fitted.

Upon first inspection it looked pretty much the same as what I had so I was almost disappointed until I opened it up and had a look. Here's some old V new pics

Old compressor cover
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New compressor cover
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Old compressor wheel
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New compressor wheel
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Old turbine wheel
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New turbine wheel
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well enough of the pictures, how does it compare performance wise?

I have taken it for a drive on one of my usual routes so I can have some form of comparison and so far it seems promising. the response seems very similar, threshold is maybe a little bit later but it's hard to tell. When it spools it comes on much faster and stronger than the old one. It also has the same amount of boost/power down low as there is a hill I walk it up in 5th at 70km/h and it still went up without slowing down, the old setup only just held the same speed up that hill

Got the dyno booked for Wednesday so we will see what will happen then. It's been a year of tinkering and I have ended up spending a chunk of money but fingers crossed it should all come together deliver some good results

Edited by marks_2_sparks
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Well I did have the car on the dyno before Christmas and it performed really well. I believe the intercooler may be a limiting factor now but I have reached my power goal for now so no more power mods other than smoothing the boost map out.

green power line is the first tune with 2.5 inch exhaust and factory cams
blue power line is Kelford cams 194TA and valve springs also 3 inch exhaust
Red power line is above mods with new kinugawa "td05 20g" turbo

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That was great for all of an hour, I didn't even get to bring it on to full boost properly. I was trimming the boost map for the cooler air temp off the dyno and for some reason the boost cut chose to go on vacation and not work. So I would have hit some massive number, possibly even 50psi. So the car is currently looking like this

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It looks like I lifted the head pretty well as there was telltale marks right across the old gasket. I also had 0 compression on number 4 but that looks to have been caused by the gasket blowing through to the oil gallery and not re sealing like the rest of the gasket did.

So the damage was not too big in the end, just checking the surfaces are flat still for a new gasket, a new set of rings just to be sure and I should be up and running by this weekend. I have also modified my old low boost controller which uses the BOV to now act as an overall safety valve to limit boost to under 22psi. That way even if the boost cut fails I will still be covered. It is also not required for low boost control anymore as the new turbo doesn't suffer boost creep like the old one.

Anyway moral of the story.. poop happens, don't own a modified car if you cant afford to spend coin on one. though I could have purchased a pretty tidy non turbo supra for what I have spent this year. but then I wouldn't this awesome one of a kind corolla

Edited by marks_2_sparks
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Jeez at this rate I will only be doing 2 updates a year. Well to be honest I have not been doing too much to the corolla, more enjoying it and trying not to break it.

I got the motor back in and running a treat. turns out the head gasket couldn't handle that much boost, no other damage apart from that but I put a new set of rings in and polished the skirts of the pistons as there were a few fine scuff marks.

I also coughed up for a better intercooler and tidied up the engine bay a tad while things were apart

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It's looking pretty tidy now and the air temps have dropped noticeably. after a good drive it would be about 5 deg above ambient. Now it's reading ambient or even slightly below probably because I plumbed the idle control valve into the same port as the temp sensor so there is constant air flow past it.

I plan to go back on the dyno to see what difference the intercooler has made but it's not high on the list because until I get bigger tires under the front I cant use the power it has even now.

Edited by marks_2_sparks
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  • 8 months later...

Well as usual I have been slack updating this, I blame the fact that I got distracted and got another project car for a bit. I got a little carried away as usual so have a look and then I will carry on with the corolla project.

I did have an MR2 years ago and felt like getting another so that's what I did.

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It was completely standard bar an air filter and loud exhaust. Then I got stuck into it and replaced all the suspension and bushes, new exhaust, link g4 plus, Rotrex super charger, Subaru water to air intercooler, TE37 wheels. Removed some rust from the windscreen .

removed the motor

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Got the new shiney bits

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Put together the jigsaw puzzle

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And got this really smooth power curve

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So this is a really fun car to drive, not too much power and so linear you can throw it around without getting into too much trouble .

I would say more but I will be selling this soon to further the corolla and I will be shipping the corolla across the ditch within a year, an expensive at the least so there won't be much more done to the MR2.

 

So because the corolla will be coming over with me I have decided to convert it to be e85 ready, this should also help with the emission testing for compliance and gain a bit more power too... can't complain about that. One of the next things will to confirm what is legal in the way of modifications in VIC compared to NZ as there are a few differences and I want to try and minimize any work required once I get there because I will have enough stuff to worry about without car problems when all my tools are still packed away.

Anyway there will be another update once I get some progress done.

 

 

 

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  • 7 months later...

Ok , So I have had a very busy few months.

 

First off the car is now running on E85 and I have rewired the engine bay to get rid of the mix and match wiring from the previous owners 16v to 20v conversion. I also took the time to add traction control and boost per gear using gear detection.

 

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I used to slide resistors hooked up to the gear cables to give a variable voltage to the ecu telling it which gear it's in.

 

I also used an old Android phone and connected it to the ecu so I can have a custom dash display

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So this leads to dyno day. I really did want Lith to tune it but he is struggling to get access to a dyno in the wellington region and my usual guys were not comfortable doing a flex fuel tune so I ended up heading out to a local guy just out of town to have a chat and ended up booking it in.

So I showed up bright and early we got the low boost tune on petrol nailed pretty quick but the high boost  tune didn't want to know us. the car was so grumpy with it trying to knock it's self to pieces even with almost all the timing removed.
We ended up tracking it back to most likely bad fuel as a flush out and things were much better. I cant say I have had that before but that seems to be the case this time.

we then drained the tank again and fed it the good stuff and actually got it to start and idle first pop on e85. that was a very good guess on the crank enrichment tables. So carrying on and we got most of the low boost e85 tune done and I believe it was near 180kw on 12 psi but we started chasing our tails as it would be sweet one run and garbage the next. A bit of investigation proved my brand new fuel regulator had failed internally and was acting like a 5th injector under vacuum. So a quick visit to the shops and one brand new regulator and I have it running sweet. better than any previous tunes. with the old tunes I would still get the odd warning from the knock light but this is the first time it has completely behaved.

It would almost seem I have no power gain over the old tune but it is making the same power on less boost and this is a different dyno so I got the emissions checked and another power run on the same dyno as previous runs and it is still on 240kw at the wheels but with more lower end torque and power The butt dyno is picking up that there is a bit more than before especially on low boost but the main reason for this tune up is for future proofing. the engine is plenty strong enough to make more power, it's the turbo running at the limit which is the limiting factor. Traction control and boost per gear has really helped to get it to the ground and unless I gain more traction I really cant use more power than its got now, I can leave 2 black lines in third gear if I lean on the loud pedal so that's kind of hinting its enough power.
 

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Here's a picture of my new drive shafts as well. the MR2 ones were not the best fit and I killed a few CV's over the years so I decided to fix it properly.

 

I also managed a small road trip of around 750ks before I packed the car into the container.

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The might corolla has definitely been a few places over the years and here we are ready to drop it off at the shipping terminal as the adventures will continue 

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I might catch up with a few local toyota members around Melbourne, come and say hi if you spot my car it's not like there will be many like this around and I will try and get to a few car meets once it's on the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by marks_2_sparks
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The slide resistors do work well. if I was to do it again I would try to track down 2 different value resistors as there is a few spots where the voltages are similar like neutral and 5th gear so you can get overlap if you rest your hand on the gear lever. Other than that it worked a treat. I also looked at Reed switches but they were rather fragile and a pain to set up  you also couldn't calibrate them. 

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  • 3 months later...

Respect brother

i wish i had the knowledge and skills to pull things apart and put them back together in monster form.

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You just have to make a start somewhere and work your way up as you learn more. I started with a Haynes manual and some basic tools learning every step of the way. 

 

On a side note I successfully imported this car into Australia and will be getting back into the car scene. It's been a long wait to get it back on the road so I intend to enjoy a few road trips and local events. 

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  • 2 years later...

Ok because you asked I do actually have enough for an update. 

The Mighty corolla is still running fine. I did have a few nervous moments where I was convinced the head gasket was still playing up. Turns out it was a combination of the old radiator not able to keep up with hot weather and Melbourne traffic.  I was getting temperatures over 110deg and climbing with the radiator fans running and once it cooled down at home the top tank would be empty.

Well eventually I remembered I had this problem 10 years ago and the empty radiator was actually a split hose inside the overflow bottle. It could push water out but not suck it back in. So having fixed that I was finally happy that the motor is going to keep on living provided I could stop it over heating on anything over a 30deg day.

So I tried adding more fans, ducting the air flow, adding water wetter (good stuff) but in the end I had to find a better radiator. 

I tried to purchase several different ones online but as it turns out all the listings on E bay regardless of seller or price ($120-$1,000) was actually the same radiator and there was only one in Australia which was sitting damaged in a warehouse.

So I talked to the PWR guys who I got my water to air unit off and we designed a nice upgrade unit which is dual core and double pass, as well as being as thick as possible. Well it works a treat as the engine doesn't overheat even on a 45deg day in traffic (I suffered horribly but the car was fine)

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The funky pipe layout is needed for the double pass but does fit if you get rid of the overflow and are running a 20v head.

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I also gave the interior a good scrub and clean which is still looking good even after years of daily driving

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So once we are allowed out again I will be taking it on a bit of a road trip and finally sorting out the boost control. I have been tolerating boost spike and it tapering off for years because I never had enough traction for it to matter. Whats the point if you are just spinning the wheels to red line in third gear? 

But now that I have got traction control behaving and the LSD is playing ball with the Motul gear oil It is bugging me that I can't hold a solid 20psi.

I also happened across a whiteline rear sway bar that will be going into to it just to help keep the rear settled on the road. It is pretty good as it is, and I do recall the factory sway bar is already an odd size as I had trouble finding bushings but we will see how it goes.

The only other stuff I have done in the last year is give it a good claybar clean and polish which was in preparation for Sakura picnic which never happened, Hopefully next year. 

Edited by marks_2_sparks
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Is a velly nice update/10 man. I bet the above is just a summary of all the many things you were looking into during this down time. 

Good work, keep at it ++

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  • 1 year later...

It's only been what, two years?

It can be hard to find time to spend time working on a project car and still having time to do things like update a post.

In the past couple of years I have been fighting a suspected head gasket issue on and off. It finally got to the point of where I dusted off the spare head, assembled the whole thing and put it in with new head studs. the old head was the original with 400,000ks on it and had been reused a few times so it was becoming a bit higher compression than ideal. 

It takes a long time to lap 20 valves and set all clearances especially when you have to custom grind shims to suit. a diamond knife block works great on the hardened steel shims.

I got it all changed over with no issues and drove it around on the weekend then on the way home from work on the Monday lost all compression in one cylinder while on boost. sounds very familiar? well I dug down and investigated myself and discovered somehow the exhaust valve on cylinder 4 had lost all clearance and was being held open. I stripped the cams out and checked the shims and springs only to find nothing amiss. Tested clearances again and everything was good. so back together and keep driving, who knows what happened.

I have been working on upgrading the brakes and managed to mix and match a combination that works well

AE111 twin piston calipers

ZZE122 275mm rotors (DBA 759S)

ST215 caliper brackets

DB1209 pads (DBA1209SS) or Winmax 224 if you want race spec pads

you do need to remove the stock heat shield (mine are ae111) and make some spacers to push the rotors out from the hub about 2mm however they are much more substantial than the stock brakes.

Ae111 calipers with machined down rotors

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zre122 rotors (the bigger option ones) and st185 calipers for test fit, they do work and retain the db308 pads, the st215 caliper bracket allows straight bolt in of the ae111 calipers, the st215 pistons would also bolt in.  

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For your sanity, don't lose these little buggers. it took 3 months to get new ones out of Lithuania of all places. Out of stock, discontinued, wont sell separate so forth and so on anywhere else I tried

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I made these spacers out of 0.5mm alloy sheet, quick and easy with basic power tools and tin snips

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And for so long I thought it was my drive shafts binding or my LSD playing up when I was pushing it hard. perhaps I should have taken an extra 2mm off the rotors?

 

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This is the current arrangement of the garage, I have a new daily driver and will be putting club plates on the corolla. time for him to enjoy the easy life of a weekend driver out for a bit of fun.

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That's all for now. I have been working on other little bits but it's mostly maintenance. perhaps the next update will be in less than 2 years?

Edited by marks_2_sparks
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On 7/23/2022 at 12:04 PM, marks_2_sparks said:

ZRE122 280mm rotors (DBA 759S)

ZZE122 (not ZRE), and they're 275mm (not 280)

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