Lauren's AE86. Pics on page 13.

[craig]

Mark finally got the keys to his new premises. Once he's moved his stuff in, we will be doing the engine swap in here:





Will be nice not to be doing the engine swop on the driveway!

That's awesome! I'd be happy with that

[Polypedates]

I'd be happy with that

All hail RedMR2, master of the understatement

[craig]

I'd be happy with that

All hail RedMR2, master of the understatement

[Steve Horrocks]

I'd be happy with that

All hail RedMR2, master of the understatement

Fpmsl!!

[Lauren]

Went and checked the car over as a few people had suggested that it might have a sticky valve. Started the car after a six week lay up with no issues. It's still obviously running on three cylinders for the most part but it was very nice to drive it again and it was still way quicker than the crappy Yaris.

Also it has character again, unlike the souless Yaris.

Anyway, will stop going on about the Yaris, but as many of you know, boring cars and me just do not mix, so I'm keen to get on with it.

So, took the car up to the new workshop and whipped the cam covers off to check for sticking valves. No sticking valve on No.4 on the exhaust or inlet that I could obviously see, though I didn't have a feeler gauge to check clearances, but could see nothing obvious at all when rotating the engine by hand.

Pic of exhaust cam which is a 256, so I've got a 264/256 setup:



Both cam covers off, yes I know not that interesting:


No issues with having room to work then!

[Lauren]

Okay no updates for a while, as tbh I wasn't sure that people on here were all that interested, but if people do want to hear about it, I will update as I do on other forums.

As some may remember on the MK1 section I had to rebuild my engine in February, see here for the details:

http://www.imoc.co.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... light=4age

Basically I melted a piston, which was a result of a piston ring breaking. We are not sure of the cause, think it was just unlucky really. A compression test that revealed 50psi on number four was the big clue it wasn't right!

So, we swopped in a 4AGE bottom end out of an AW11 and bolted it all back together.

We got it running sweetly and well, I had a great amount of help from friends which made it a lot more fun and speeded up the putting it back together!

This was all great and the engine is still going strong. However, someone off Driftworks asked the question of whether I had fitted a 'spigot' bearing which goes in the rear of the crank and is wear the gearbox input shaft locates. In a transverse setup like the AW11 you don't need this as the input shaft has two bearings. So given I had a bottom end from an AW11 it didn't have one.

This meant I had all the fun of taking the gearbox out. What a game! Perhaps the getting it out wasn't too bad, but it was more the putting it back in again.

Pics of what happened!

Sunday April 1st early afteroon:


New jack. The £20 Aldi one really was crap, so had to buy something that could get the car high enough. This works well enough.



Mark about to give the engine a hug, he loves 4AGE's.



Rear end in the air, don't worry that rear foglight turned out to have broke it's mounting. What a shame, now no longer fitted.



View of the rear of the gearbox:



View the other way with prop dangling down:



Gearbox out:



Mark undoing clutch cover plate bolts:



Off it comes:



We locktited the flywheel bolts as we didn't do it last month when we swopped the engine stuff around.

Arty shot through the hole for the gearstick to the driver's seat:


Alright for some eh?


View from the rear. Flywheel can be seen:


Here you can clearly see the flywheel with no spigot bearing in the middle:



Mark drifting in the spigot bearing:


Yay, spigot bearing fitted!


Pic of the gearbox. End of input shaft where it locates in the bearing can be clearly seen:



Also whilst there I tidied up the exhaust wrap and fixed a small coolant leak where it transpired there was a hose that wasn't done up properly from the engine change back in February! It was really easy to fix but only because the gearbox was out, so result really as I had noticed some coolant being used, but wasn't sure where it was going.

[Lauren]

So after all that hardwork the car was ready for an outing on track at Anglesey on the 7th April.

Unfortunately the car was absolute crap on track. It would just understeer everywhere and I was once again (just like last year) a moving chicane not passing one car.

Steve Horrocks gave me a go in his MK1.5. Now this was more like it! Loved the turbo power, though the lack of an LSD in his example made it faintly ridiculous when you booted it as it would just light up a rear wheel. Anyways this gave me an idea of which more later!

I realised that my suspension and wheel setup would just not do for track. So started planning for those lovely Driftworks CS2's (expensive coilovers) and some 15" wheels. Better start saving I guess!

[Lauren]

Then as usual, more jobs on the list which I'm getting through now.

Well, after 27 years it would seem that my PAS feed hose from the reservoir to the pump had started to disintegrate and had a slight fluid weep.

I trundled off to Toyota and £43+VAT later I had a new hose (that's with 15% discount). Expensive I know, but it's one of those things you'll only replace once, so might as well fit the correct part.

Old hose in Situ, seen going behind the sheathed AC pipe:

Forgot to change the settings on my camera. Heald Green isn't normally blue!



I had a cunning plan for getting the fluid out of the reservoir. This involved using a syringe and some vacuum hose I had lying around:



A quick delve into the recycling and a suitable vessel for temporary storage of power steering fluid was procured:



Got the hose off without too much of a struggle really. That power steering fluid is really horrible stuff, it's all slippery and slimey and stinks (not as bad as gear oil though!):



There was still a little fluid in the reservoir which I caught with a small pan.

New hose popped on dead easy. This is the beauty of OEM parts over finding an appropriate hose to fit I guess:



Pump end:



Reservoir end:


Then it was just a matter of re-using the power steering fluid and job done.

[Lauren]

And then just when you think all is okay we noticed some oil on the drive but was confused as to where it was coming from. Here's the culprit, I think!



This was Chassis Clean's fault for not protecting the dampers properly. Basically they'd masked up the shaft of the damper, leaving glue on the shaft which ruptured the seals. Very annoying!

I sourced some TRD blue replacements from a friend, thanks, Ewan for a good fair price and fitted them in about ten minutes. Sorted!

[Lauren]

Just for fun, I thought I'd set the cam timing the same as John (Vashy) as he had such good results with it.

Mine was originally set at -3 inlet and -4 exhaust.

Now set it to -5 inlet and -7 exhaust.

Is dead easy to do on my HKS cam wheels.

Results are perhaps somewhat qualitative, but the car undoubtedly goes well revving strongly to the limiter as one might expect with the spec of cams (the power range is to 8300rpm).

All good so far, I shall drive it and see how I go.



They go round too:



John made 142bhp with this cam timing and an SAFC.

[Lauren]

Then we fitted a subwoofer, which I was talking about recently. It replaces the spare wheel and is an absolute bargain at £110:



Some re-wiring was required of the 6x9s in the rear shelf. It kicks ar$e now!

[Lauren]

Okay, sensible hat on, I decided to order some KYB's from Fensport to sort out the issue with the front dampers being stupidly bloody hard, just for the meantime.

Whilst, realitically I can afford to buy CS2's at a grand, I'd rather bank the money for the time being and look at spending over the winter period once I've got my winter wheels.

So for £124 including everything, I've bought a pair of KYB inserts for the front. My main reason for this is that my front end is hopelessly underdamped, so it ruins, turn in at speed, the ride is bouncy and over bumpy roads it doesn't feel good and you cannot carry speed for fear of bouncing off the road. I suspect the car has the original dampers in the front, but this with TRD blue springs is not a good combination. The rear end is fairly well resolved with TRD blue dampers and matching springs.

Okay, massive thanks to Si, Tom and of course Mark for their help to fit the new inserts at the front.

Getting the struts out was not particularly difficult. We did wonder if it would be stock or not. We found out that the struts did indeed have inserts of the TRD green variety!

These are part number 45811-TA001

Sorry for the hopelessly blurry pic! Better pics to come.


There was me saying the front was underdamped, but I think it was really over damped as the car would skip everywhere. The TRD Greens are just so stiff. They are also short stroke. I'm really coming to the conclusion that nothing TRD works very well on UK roads. I've still got the TRD blue springs which are pretty short.

So, putting in basically OEM replacements which are long stroke of course, so I'm not convinced how clever that is, but really I'm doing 300 miles a week in the car and am about to do a 1000 mile round trip of Europe in a couple of weeks so I was getting fed up with the really choppy ride which tended to make the car jump around on bumpy A roads.



Installation of the insert wasn't anything difficult really. Here we bolted the axle back to the wheel so we could do up the nut holding the insert into the strut:



Of course now we had a nice short TRD spring and a long stroke damper, the top mount was miles away (literally) from the top of the spring, which made it a right PITA to try and put the strut back in. This was hindered more by the RCA's. In the end my friend came up with a solution which was to compress the springs sufficiently enough so we could get the strut back in. It worked but there were a few frustrating moments!

RCA can be clearly seen here:



The top mounts weren't too clever so we cleaned the bearings up:



After this we re-greased it. They weren't amazing but they are a bit better. I didn't want to spend money on new top mounts when I am planning to fit CS2's in the next six months or so.

Unfortunately my front discs and pads are in desperate need of replacing, so will be doing that next weekend. Those Hawk Racing Pads have just eaten the disc away to pretty much dodgy levels in 20,000 kms! So they will be getting changed before our holiday in two weeks time.

There are still a number of other jobs to do, but the car is getting the propshaft centre bearing changed. We've opted to let a local indie do this as we don't have the pullers and presses needed. We'll also get the gearbox rear oil seal changed at the same time and hopefully have a seat mounting bolt helicoiled as well.

How does it ride? Well, it's now perhaps a little underdamped now, but overall the ride is a lot, lot smoother. It still kicks the back end out with seeming impunity, so all is well as I found out on every wet roundabout on the way home. I did also run it at higher speeds on a bumpy road and I do think it rode them a lot better, this time absorbing the bumps rather than skipping over them. It feels like the tyres are in contact with the road more.

Mark has been in to Toyota and ordered front pads and discs.

Discs £80 pair

Pads £40 pair.

Last time I did this, pads were Hawk Racing from Fensport at £90 and discs were Brembo courtesy of ebay at IIRC about £70.

So overall it works out cheaper from Toyota. I was quite alarmed at how much the pads had eaten into the discs in 20,000 Kms and the amount of dust they produce that has wrecked my front wheels is alarming.

Seeing as the car won't be going near a track this year and not out until it's seemingly yearly outing next summer, I'll be happy to run stock pads this time round.

In respect of the ride quality, well it really has been transformed. If I'm honest, it does feel a little underdamped, so you have to watch for big compressions as it will ground out. But, this only happens if you are a bit mad really. Otherwise it's lovely to be able to float over bumps and ridges which had me bracing myself before. Now you just don't feel it. Handling wise, it doesn't seem to have too much of an effect. The front end doesn't feel quite so tight as obviously stock dampers allow more movement, but settling into higher speed bends doesn't seem to cause any more roll than before, but I would say I can cover a bumpy B road much quicker (and more comfortably to boot now).

[pk_090]

Look what age does to you.... Handling goes out the window, and the "magic carpet" ride becomes the norm.
I am appalled Lauren, Rock solid suspension is where its at!

[Lauren]

LOL!

And yes, age does lots of things to you!

I have to admit, I've done the rock hard ride thing and well let's just say at my age, I've tired of it! I've just got to a point where I'm going to be using it as my daily for the next 6 months or so, so it might as well be a bit more comfortable.

Interestingly, I've not really found a downside with the handling. There still isn't that much roll, ie no more than before as I've kept the TRD springs and it still has an ARB. So all in all it's a winner.

[Lauren]

Well, the car drove for the first time in over two years, albeit round the yard to the contained where it's going to live to see out the winter.

It started easily enough, everything working okay. I admit, I did a couple of doughnuts in the yard, only to be requested to do a few more by the guys over other side of the yard who service trucks. So I did a few more.

To be fair they did give me a hand to get it into the container, though I turned down the offer of using a forklift! Thankfully we found some bits of plate steel lying around and used them as ramps to get it in. Was actually quite easy.

Apologies had some pics I stuck on FB, but can't get them to work on here.

[Lauren]

Via Flickr. Outside the workshop for the first time since August 2012.

Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

Evidence of checking the AE86 was working properly:

Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

And in the container:
Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

[DannyN]

Happy Christmas car... go live in a box!

[Lauren]

Okay, finally got the car out of the container and got some insurance, which it hasn't had for three years!

It was a bit tricky getting it out of the container as the clutch had seized on. So we managed to roll it out, without too much trouble, but slightly scraped some underseal off the chassis rails. That can be fixed I think.

I gave the clutch a go using the starter motor in first gear. That got it free'd off pretty quick and then we drove it around the yard a few times testing the brakes etc:

AE86 lives by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

20 litres of V power went in and then I drove it to RRG Macc' with Mark following in the Yaris full of tools!

The car drove fine, well, it drove like a thirty year old car, which always takes a bit of getting used to. Thankfully the aircon still blows cold, which was nice and everything worked.

We got it up onto the ramps at RRG in an attempt to fix the exhaust leak where the manifold joins to the cat:

AE86 lives by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

Alas, despite Mark taking ages to cut a gasket, it still leaked and being aware that Richard had already done us a massive favour we agreed to leave it with him to address the exhaust leak and do a few other minor things. It needs a rear foglight fitting for the MOT and the washer bottle refitting once a new seal has been fitted where the motor sits in the washer bottle. The advantage of being at RRG was that Paul and Dave were to hand and quickly identified that they could still get a seal for the bottle motor and also hopefully for the exhaust.

AE86 lives by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

Hopefully all will go swimmingly, well as much as one might expect for a car of this age that hasn't been driven for three years. All will be revealed over the next few days I suspect!

[Ben]

Great to see it out and about again. Fingers crossed all goes smoothly

[Lauren]

The AE86 is through the MOT, taxed and insured. Best of all we were able to drive it home without issue.

We had a bit of an oil leak from the cam covers which I noticed hadn't been tightened, but that seems to be sorted now. It's now done 60kms today, don't forget the engine needs to be run in, so not gone mad with it.

What's it like after a three year break? Well it's noisy, diff whine, gearbox whine, various rattles and the usual vibrations at idle, but it is thirty years old so it feels worlds apart compared to the GT86.

It's feather light though, the controls are really light too, so there is something of a recalibration required after doing 70k miles in a GT86!

That said it's thoroughly enjoyable and even the aircon still works. Doubtless there'll be a few snags to iron out but hopefully we'll get it sorted before undertaking longer journeys and JAE. The engine feels keen and though I've not revved it too much, looking forward to getting it on cam which is 5500rpm upwards.

RRG Toyota Macclesfield have been simply brilliant in just taking care of a few final jobs and getting the car MOT'd and even giving it a wash after three years in storage! They really have helped me out, so thank you Richard, Gary and the team.