Lauren's 1985 Kouki Trueno

[Lauren]

Meanhwile:


Bearding news:

Needed to re-make the electrical connections on the starter following 'that' incident in June at Anglesey where the car wouldn't start. To be fair it's only happened once since, but such things need sorting.

Also wanted to wrap the manifold to prevent it slowly cooking passengers' feet.

Plus needed to change the split steering gaiter.

Manifold out and Mark playing the pipes:



More tunes! Apparently it's part of a ritual, a bit like when he was playing the brake master cylinder, but I think this was more of a challenge:



Manifold clear, you can see the oil cooler sandwich plate and lines here, though what we want to get at is the starter just behind it:



Connetors to starter checked and cleaned up:



Meanwhile, manifold is partially wrapped:



Whilst I got busy with the steering gaiter, the old and the new (Toyota parts of course):



Probably a bit too much red lithium grease, but it'll be fine:



Mark in deep concentration (tongue out is a dead give away!) cleaning connectors:



New steering gaiter on:



As much of the manifold as we could wrapped:





Mark re-sheathed the wires to the started:



Mark re-routed the cable so it was further away from the exhaust and cable tied it in place:





Bolting the manifold back up to the cat. Hopefully the wrap will stop the floor getting so hot!

[Lauren]

A bit weird with the spikey bits:

[Aram]

Usually the wrap fits better when you make it wet first.
Otherwise all is looking great.

I have no idea on the spikes.

[Lauren]

My friend said about wetting the wrap, but he didn't, as he thought the wrap was very thick and quite soft. He commented that usually wetting it makes it easier to apply, but didn't think it'd make a difference with this stuff.

It made some burning smell on the way to work this morning!

[Aram]

If it fits it fits.
Smell is normal, but if you see flames start to worry.

One thing, do not spill coolant on it, that will cause fire if it gets hot enough!!

[Lauren]

Thanks for that tip.

Funnily enough we changed the coolant as well yesterdy, just in prep for winter. Thankfully it got nowhere near the exhaust manifold!

I just mentioned that to my fiance, he said 'yes ethylene glycol'.

[Lauren]

Yay, finally got the geo done, well in respect of geo, the only thing you can adjust is the front toe angle!

So, got it set to parallel, ie zero toe in/out.

Took it to Selecta Tyres in Macc as Mark suggested. They liked the car and I got the, 'My mate has one of these, like it, want one etc...' but, they couldn't get their tracking gear on as it's too low, ie not enough gap between the wheel and the arch. So, they suggested Ears Motorsport which is handily down the road.

So off I trotted. Got it in there and to be fair the guys were pretty helpful and came out with their tracking gear and tried it on to see if it would fit. It did, so within 20 minutes it's all done. I must have been there an hour as I got into a lengthy conversation with the guy at the counter about the car as he happened to desperately want one too(!). Still all good banter and I priced up some AD08's for when I do get some 15" wheels. £84 a tyre so not cheap, but then again not cheap tyres really.

Drove it back, typical duffers left right and centre plus some guy who thought it was brilliant that his 4x4 Jeep could nearly keep up in a straight line, still was nice to have a straight steering wheel for the first time since I've had the car! Handling wise, well it never felt bad, reckon it's a bit better. Guys at Ears said that the fronts were parallel with each other, but not with the rear, so they sorted that out. Just chassis clean next month for the underseal and the dreaded MOT to go to then.

[assassin10000]

Your missing a heat shield where the downpipe section goes under the body. That's why the floor is so hot.

If you clean the underbody you could use some alumized adhesive heat shield. My friend did with great results on his turbo drift car, where the floor got hot enough to start melting his shoes.


Andrew

[Lauren]

Didn't realise that, Andrew. I do have a heatshield above the cat, but it's where the downpipe runs close to the passenger footwell.

I will have a look at the aluminium heat shield stuff, seems would be pretty easy to put some of that on. I guess now that we've wrapped it, that ought to help. Only issue is that I'm getting the car fully undersealed in a few weeks. At least it was only an issue for passengers, rather than me!

[assassin10000]

You can apply the shielding after the undersealing . Just clean ONLY the area to have the shielding applied.

Andrew