Tuesday, July 27, 2010

"such as when the injured aging..."

With the awesome discovery of this link, rayswheels.co.jp/omnomnomnom, my long term wheel refurb will now be complete! The wheel nuts and valves are in, they are wrapped in Yokohamas almost finest (family car lol) rubber, and the lightweight TE37's will soon be off for a serious full cleaning, sealing, and the careful application of new GENUINE decals...



Only one wheel has the lightest kerb rash and was on it from the cars previous life, so I can live with that for an otherwise perfect set of 11 year old set of wheels! A set of the blue on white decals are also coming for
Sarahs
Kev's white, Gravel TE37s which have an eventual date with a sandblaster & powdercoater..

Monday, July 26, 2010

new oil pressure sender


 
oem sender / adaptor / new digital sender

I have my sPa Design DG200 series gauges a few years now, and the oil pressure sender didnt survive the trip from old car to tool box to new car very well, so a new one was ordered up from sPa. The sender thread is 1/8NPT (national pipe thread), but the hole in the block and the OEM Toyota pressure sender are as far as I can determine, 1/8BSPT, (british standard pipe, taper) which is a funnily enough a TAPERED thread. The two threads are not compatible for many reasons, and tapered threads are especially important where a few bar of my oil pressure are concerned, so a neat little 1/8" NPT Female to 1/8" BSPT male adaptor was sourced from the helpful folk at ThinkAutomotive, the company behind the MOCAL range of oil coolers and fittings. The adaptor was less than €10 posted, and is of a much higher quality design than some of the LMA fittings that Demon-Tweeks sell. Remember this??  
The adaptor arrived today so I'm delighted that everything screwed in perfectly by hand, so tomorrow I will reinstall it and run the cable, and at last will see something other than an error message on the #2 gauge.


dirty little 4age
  Anyway, sPa also sent me a new block connector, so once the sender and adaptor are in nice and tight into the block, I will wire it in such a a way that the elbow connector is pointing neatly towards the wiring loom and not something awkward like a toasty exhaust header..

not fun through grommets
 

Place your bets now on what max oil pressure I will see :)

Dave

Thursday, July 22, 2010

weekend service

Last weekend saw the long awaited fitment of my new Yokohama rubber, and the new Rays valves on my trusty (and shamefully dirty) TE37's. 
185/55/14 on front
The tracking on my Trueno was pretty bad, 30 minutes toe-out on either side, which led to a fairly smooth inner shoulder on the front Toyo CF1s on the after roughly 25k kilometres/1 year. I do a lot of motorway driving too so this accelerates any tire wear from alignment problems! We had been keeping an eye on this and was on the list of things to do so it was great to finally tick another item off.  
can't see through zenki splitters!!


needs so much more low.. :(
Skilfully using an oldschool set of gauges, and his internal eye-o-meter, Kev set my toe to a pretty much spot on at almost zero toe-in per side, perfect for a road going FR car.
Unfortunately the two outer track rods had been overtightened in the cars previous life, so adjustment was proving difficult. One of them was freed up enough to provide the extra thread or two needed to toe in the wheel, but the drivers side one could not be loosened despite all attempts with various grips and hammers and chisels. 
survived ultimate wallying
Luckily there was a pretty fresh spare rod (with the correct length inner end for a manual rack) sitting in the Garage Hachi treasury, and this was quickly swapped out to get us going again. Here Kev is staking the new securing washer back onto on the new inner track rod end.

leaky coolant/curry/tea FTL
The Yokohama S.Drive in 55 profile with newly corrected toe-in felt really really nice and first testing shows that they are a very nice grippy grippy tyre with a stiff sidewall, but they are quickly showing the limits of my cheapo-lowering-springs + crappy-Monroe-damper set up (also from the cars previous life). Turn in is faster now, but when pushed hard there is a tendency to slightly understeer first and then grip as the weight transfers onto the tyre. I expect the tyres to be even better when the 6kg springs & MCN shortstrokes are up front. Braking performance is awesome too and they are matched well with the brake upgrades, once the pads are warmed up of course. I also got to test them in high speed rain on the motorway home and they really do carve through the water like its not there, there was no aquaplaning through quite heavy standing water to they really give good confidence for Irish roads & weather. I have tried both these and The Toyo T1-R (though on a different car) and I think the Yoko S's are superior! When the coilovers eventually go in I will update again how they perform on my 1st trackday.

185/60/14 on the rear
The C.drive on the rear proved to be a very good choice too, as they are very grippy in both dry and the wet especially, and need to be fairly well provoked to step out in the wet, so I am enjoying the new grip style of my car at the moment! Hopefully they will be durable too. Both tyres were sourced through eiretyre.com.
While the car was on the ramp the LSD oil was also topped up as that halfshaft seal leak gets worse, so expect an axle refresher + Cusco MZ install blog in the future!
Also investigated a leak from a cracked heater feed hose, so a new hose is on the way from Toyota and that will be installed asap, to hopefully end that horrible tea running down my engine block for now..
Dave

Saturday, July 17, 2010

*Special order

Gots me some gunmetal grey Samco hose's to blend in with my grey engine bay in the Trueno....

Monday, July 12, 2010

motor fix Ebisu vid

new vid from the my hero's at motorfix, enjoy

Thursday, July 8, 2010

I can drive again!

5 weeks on crutches are at an end..



well, I still need the crutches but at my cast came off today which means I was in the poor neglected hachi within hours of coming out of the hospital. She felt a bit stiff and tired like myself, tyres are shit and the brakes needed a bit of a scrubbing off, but other than that just a bit dusty from being parked up. So straight up the nearest jet wash.. in the rain. Thats love lol.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

THE FRONT......

...fell off my old '83 Trueno so its going onto of my drift car, which was originally a levin!!!


I have to modify the front panel and drill out the Levin headlamp brackets this weekend but so far I have the flared Trueno wings fitted and I've my late spec Trueno bumper and early splitter sanded, primed and resprayed satin black, lamps now back in....




I'm just getting lots of small jobs done durring the week! I hope to get another good bit of the heavy work done this weekend!! 

I modified an old Bride type v seat rail so that it will work with my Bride Zeta II



Now it justs needs a quick sand and some satin black rattle can pointed at it








Monday, July 5, 2010

* new GH sticker's*

I just picked up our first batch of stickers.
 I'm looking forward to putting one on the drift car when its finished,
for now I tested one out on my windscreen and the underside of my fiberglass Trueno bonnet.....



Sunday, July 4, 2010

** flashback..

Here is a nice shot I took way back in 2007, one of the last rounds of Prodrift ever held at the sorely missed Tipperary International Raceway, aka, the Rosebowl.



A somewhat deep in thought looking Kev walks towards old '83 Ae86, (only #859 off the production line!), which had been driven to and from every Prodrift and D-rift event of 2007, powered by the ever reliable Bumblebee engine which now lives in Sarah's 2 door Levin.

Thursday, July 1, 2010