my slowly 1983 AE86 drift rebuild/ 1979 KE35 recovery

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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.