my slowly 1983 AE86 drift rebuild/ 1979 KE35 recovery

[fax0815]

Long time since my last update...
my recent todo-list:
-change steering rack with poly bushes, new inner and T3 outer tie rods with T3 steering arms
(previous owner drove long time with a broken steering boot, rack and pinion rusty and massive play)
-fit an adjustable panhard rod
-build in my recently bought defi gauges
-install a decent crankcase vent, to prevent the oil spillage

I bought new tools as well, man that thing is handy!!!


mostly Suspension parts:


defi gauges + accessories:


I purcased a very mint steering rack some time ago on ebay together with other parts for little money.
During the disasembly of the old rack I noticed a lock kit, that explains the huge lock but also the steering boot failture, they get massive stretch on full lock!
Unfortunatly the T3 steering arms had the wrong cone seat angle and won´t go far enough onto the OEM ball joint. Very strange, cause I thought T3 parts always fit... But I´m optimistic we can find a solution.



I reused the old tie rods for now.

Building a proper loom with all the senders took me almost a day, so I couldn´t built a nice centre console (with space for further gauges/fuses/switches) and ended up with a temorary fit for temp and pressure gauges.
The defi tacho got a -1000rpm offset around 5000rpm compared to the stock tacho.

Who whould you belive in? They´re both getting the same signal....
Yes, I did switch the defis to 4cylinder.



That´s the "new" crank case vent, as far as I can tell it´s working:


I´ve also spend 70€ on a decent wheel alignment.
Some settings were quiet off (5° camber on the left:no

camber: 4° on left 3° the right (as close as we could get them, need better top mounts, the slider fouls the bolts and the sperical bearing just can´t handle the force and wears immediately)
toe: 0
castor: 2,5°

Really noticed a difference in steering, now much less jittery and easier to turn in.

Got some temporary number plates, 5 days 70€! (only way to drive a car like mine on public roads over here)
I´m off to an old WW2 air field, wich has been a Mercedes test track, tomorrow/Saturday, to get some more practise without other road users, curbs, signs, etc.

Broke my exhaust a few ours ago Started on a traffic light during reving in 1st we heard a big bang and suddenly it was incredible loud, with people covering there ears...
Pulled over and it cracked behind the collector, must have had a few dodge repairs in the past on the same place... I just hope we can fix it in the morning!!! I´ve had plans for building a new exhaust, soon. But not right now!!!
It´s impossible to drive it...

Right now it´s impossible to drive it...

View from my window

[fax0815]

That´s what we took out, now that´s an art of welding...

[fax0815]

Had lots of fun and finally all the endless hours of working on the car paid off.
Drive and drifts very good! That´s the only pic atm to prove it.


I noticed a few issues:
-the freshly rebuild diff started to make noises and i found axial play on the pinion shaft, will dissasemble to check whats the problem...

-on my way home the steering felt strange, compared to before If you steer quick it will bounce back almost a a sec. later but in the opposite direction!!!
Felt horrible on open road, when passing other cars for example...

Anyone got an idea what´s wrong? Only thing I can think of are worn bushings at the rear, everything else has been replaced/checked.

-I got alternating idle some times, but it goes away if you give it a rev and let it go back to idle. Any ideas???

easy stuff:
-e-brake doesn´t pull equal
-catch tank is leaking badly

If anyone has any advice regarding the problems above let me know, thanks!

[fax0815]

Wow, just noticed that I haven´t updated for ages, don´t even know where to start...

After the last picture was taken I oviously changed my tires, "run in" the new ones and head back home.
There is also a short low quality video, but its in the night and not really good so I don´t bother posting it.

My engine runs, according to the defis, without any heat issues! Even during drifting water goes only up tp 90°C while oil reaches a max of 105°C. Under normal driving I don´t even need the twin e-fans to keep it cool, thats got to be the huge Koyo radiator...

A few days later I started to work on the issues, found out that most of the rear suspension bushes are totally gone and most likely caused the weired rear axle steering. I found a set of 2nd hand arms with polybushes F/S ection 40€ delivered, is not like that it it could get worse.
Changing the arms without breaking anything wasn´t easy, but in the end I did shear only one screw. Everthing was assembled with plenty of grease and anti seeze spray.



If you look close enough, you can see the red bushings...




Also ordered new powerflex bushings for the complete rear swaybar assembly, unfortunatly they turned up too late for my last drift day, so I had to run some improvised bushings with ducktape...

I took the stupid diff out and to the shop that installed the TRD LSD before and he promised to fix it in time. I´m sure one of the new bearings settled causing the preload on the pinion bearing to decrease. All he needed to do was add a few shims to the solid spacer to get the designated preload, easy as... But he failed giving it back to me in the same state as it was before, but I desperatly needed it back in the car for the booked weekend, at least he didn´t charge anything...
Even with the wrong (no) preload and axial play, the diff did well on the drift weekend.
I think I´m going to do repair it myself, all I need is a special tall gear puller.

Well the unequal e-brake turned out to be a lot more difficult than expexted. I ended taking the right one appart as the auto adjustment wasn´t working at all. Really took some time to figure out what´s wrong with it and how it actually works, even my trusty garage couldn´t tell me exactly what to do.

All aftermarket rebuilt kits were out of stock, but a genuine Toyota kit is actually cheaper than all the aftermarket stuff!
Reused the old seals as I need a new piston as well, deep sharp rust marks whould have fu** up the new seal immediatelly. Couldn´t get a new piston in time, so thats definatly a thing to work on in spring
Really no problem as I need to take out the diff AGAIN and therefore brakes need removing anyway!!!

I also had to rebuild the clutch master cylinder, shortly after I installed the TRD pressure plate it started spitting on my trousers! Sandblasted the cylinder and the rear swaybar components and painted everything nicely



Also couldn´t get a propper seat rail to mount the (much nicer) co drivers König bucket seat before the weekend, TBH don´t remember why I didn´t think of cut and weld the OEM rails... It´s not even a genuine AE86 seat just some random E9 seat.



Even with those stupid HID I couln´t see anything at night,as only 1 of 4 adjusting screws worked I decided to take apart the headlights (with the help of my grandma´s oven :wack.
Toyota doesn´t sell any of the plastic clips inside the headlings! Managed to repair it with a tiny piece of plasic a 1mm drill and some wire. All the other adjusing screws were just unhooked. Now everything works perfect and I can, for the fist time actually see something at night





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Quick oil change the night before I was heading to a local drivers/drift training on an old airbase. During the Saturday´s racing line practise the weather was still nice, but on Sunday it got really bad with massive rain. To bad for me, a lot of water in my car caused fogged windows, an my little 12V camping dryer was not capable of all the moist.
By the time for my turn I got it allright.

Funny thing about the "drift training" the organiser offered 318-325 E36´s with welded diffs to people not drifting their own cars (I must have been the first with a prepared drift car entering this training). During the flooded track every other participant couldn´t get the E36 into drift (no ebrake), full expirience of understeering LOL

When I went out on the track with the instructor, it was total different, my AE86 with "tiny 1.6 124hp engine" was going sidewasys like mad, no understeering at all. At the end the instructor had to admit that my car was hell a lot better than any of the other cars... thanks
He obviosly didn´t really like the AE86, maybe cause he was even taller than me and he asked me how I dare to run such a car on public roads.

Well I do and its loads of fun.:cool:

Still had 2 days until my short therm licence plates was going to expire (is that a proper tense???).
So I visited a mate of me, we recently discovered a weired, abdoned industrial area, next to a motorway junction and a railway with awesome loud backround noise and only one unblocked access through a football ground.
Very wide corners, no curbs, but it has a rough tarmac surface and a lot of small bush etc.
If I didn´t know any better this video could have been captured there:






I think you know what´s comming next
It was the first time ever, I was drifting for more than 10minutes without the police showing up. Infact noone, not even random people noticed us.
Awesome!!! But suddenly after maybe 1h of constant abuse (normal engine temp under all conditions) my engine stalled making bad mechanical noises.
I tried to start and it turned over veeery heavy. Only minutes before the belt started squeeking, so we suspected the charger/ lost tension for it. Unfortunatly the screw for tightening the belt sheared of right away, looking at it, classic vibration failure.
Got it fixed by using screws from the rollcage Tried to start again, still that horrible noise, and no attempt to start.
We checked for basic stuff and there was no spark, tried a few thing, but no results. Since it was dark and already 2 in the morning we decided to roll the car outside the premises and parked it in front of the someones house leaving a "note" on the bonnet (no pencil or rough paper avaliable, luckily plenty of ducktape)


"Car is broken!
Collection 20.09
2 phonenumbers
Thanks!"

We hitchhiked our way back home and I got there just in time to get to work at 7:00am with no sleep, nice.
Soon after work I packed every spare part I could get, regarding the ignition problem and when back to the AE86 with my dad an his car. I keep trying very hard but, no resuts, changed rotor, cap, cables, dizzy battery nothing at all.
Also called a mate who is a mechanic, but we couldn´t find the reason.
While I had him on the phone I had this crazy idea to check the engine timing, as soon as I removed the cover I noticed chippings, can´t be good...

Upps, why is the exhaust cam 1/4 advaced at TDC? 100% sure I didn´t install it like that.



Luckily I could persuade a friend, to come and get me with his trailer (arrived at home 3am), I´ve lost a pair of keys and like always the steering lock was in, could get the car of the trailer, but nothing more. Another 2h drive was needed to get my spare keys from my flat. WTF that must have been the lack of sleep causing this...

We got home rolled the car off the street in the driveway and went to bed, almost 3h of sleep, awesome.

Next day we used a very ghettospec way to get the car into my garage, pushed it like this with my mates 190er Merc.:wack:




Next step (haven´t done this for almost 4 months!!!):


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Here we go, that´s the damage, caused by a loose screw behind the cam gear, if you´re also running a 4AGE engine, my piece of advice make sure they´re fitted with locktite or whatever:







I was expecting the worst like bend valves, damaged pistons, sort of things but a quick disassemble revealed, no visible damage to the valves or the pistons. I talked to my engine builder even if its not obvious, he also highly doubt that they haven´t touched each other (1/4 advanced camgear!!!), so he suggested to change the exhaust valves, basicly to avoid breaking valves at a later stage with a lot more damage to the engine. Luckily I got a spare head with my recently bought AE86 (more on that later) so its no big deal.

Right now I,m saving the money and already started buying parts for the engine reassembly next year, its a lot small stuff, at least I´m expecting around 300-400€ to fix this little incident.
Exactly the money I was going to spend on a decent Martelius header and the new exhaust.

Everybody know stuff like this happens, but yeah if it happens its always bad...

But no worries it will be repaired by February.

[fax0815]

Updates ahead:

Collected a few parcels over the last weeks:




Still waiting for my Martelius manifold, Tein adjustable top mounts, and a few other bits and pieces.

I started to rebuild the head (new 2nd hand EX valves) and the block (ARP conrod bolts, cork oil pan seal), but right now it´s just to cold outside to continue. I don´t think -15°C is a good temperature to install a headgasket...

[cannabolic]

what headers did you go for?

Europe is in a frozen phase right now...

[xrgeorg]

Nice bits.

fax0815 Wrote:I don´t think -15°C is a good temperature to install a headgasket...

So right. I got myself a nice heater to continue working and i don´t want to miss it anymore. But these days i was unable to enter my garage because the wooden doors pulled out of shape at -20°C

[fax0815]

R1 all the way!!!

I continued working on the engine in a spare room of my grandparents house.
@xrgeorg: Do you recognize the exhaust system in the right corner?




Installing the engine back into the car was still done at -15°C



Doesnt matter, engine runs, idles smooth and has, so far, no leaks!



Also worked on a propper cold air intake to match my new extractor.





To do until April:

-fit repaired diff, hopefully for the last time!!!
-build/ fit new stainless exhaust system
-replace adjustable top mounts with Tein´s, install T3 steering arms --> wheel alignment
-paint/ fit sideskirts
-adjust bonnet

[Eifelaner]

Sweet Nice heatshield

[T_AE86]

Nice to hear "engine runs".

At -15º ....life exists?