Month: August 2009

Tonight i had some time before dinner and got stuck into one of the rear trailing arms, preparing them for bigger brakes and the MS123 5stud hubs. After dinner i went back and did the other one in like 10min and took some photos.

Take one stock rear trailing arm:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28152-1/IMG_2822s.jpg[/IMG]

Remove brake lines
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28155-1/IMG_2823s.jpg[/IMG]

Attack with rattlegun:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28161-1/IMG_2825s.jpg[/IMG]
2x 14mm bolts holding the brake calipers on, and 4x 14mm nuts holding the driveshaft to the hub.

Looking in under that driveshaft shows a nice large 27mm nut holding the hub to the driveshaft flange, staked nicely, its probably been like this from factory.
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28167-1/IMG_2827s.jpg[/IMG]

Thankfully the staking has a little taper in the counter clockwise direction and the rattlegun makes damn short work of it:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28170-1/IMG_2828s.jpg[/IMG]
You can see here where the slight deformation in the nut is.

And once you pull off the hub and disc, you get something like this:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28182-1/IMG_2832s.jpg[/IMG]

Ok i cheated there slightly, thats the predone one, which has also had the guts of the handbrake removed for the R33 brake conversion.

Onto the more interesting stuff, the R33 brake upgrade.

Firstly, the obligatory comparison between the R33 disc (underneath) and the MA61 disc (ontop) Its not a huge difference, and to be honest i dont expect it to really add much in the way of braking effort. That said the little twinpot caliper is MUCH lighter and i do expect that to add a touch.
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28185-1/IMG_2833s.jpg[/IMG]

Thickness wise its much the same story, both being 18mm thick.
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28188-1/IMG_2834s.jpg[/IMG]

Where they differ on the other hand is the handbrake area. The R33 is a huge ~190mm ID for the handbrake:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28193-2/IMG_2835s.jpg[/IMG]
Wheras the MA61 is a stonkingly 22mm smaller:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28196-2/IMG_2836s.jpg[/IMG]

This will cause some issues with the handbrake, but from some reading most people have overcome this by simply getting extra material bonded to the shoes, 2-2.5mm extra is what i have read so an extra 5mm OD, and then i assume extending the adjustment for all its worth.
Luckily for me my handbrake shoes are rooted anyway, so theyll need to be done regardless, hopefully the rebonding isnt too expensive over new shoes:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28179-1/IMG_2831s.jpg[/IMG]

Now, onto the bracket. I had a very minor dilemma with the fact that the brake rotor is a 5stud rotor and the hubs are still 4stud until the MS123 ones arrive. However, they are the same stud pattern, so the problem is easily solved with a 2lb mallet. I quickly bashed out 3 of the studs and left the 4th to act as a locator along with the central hub flange.
Slapping on the R33 rotor and securing it with a spare wheel nut and then holding the caliper onto the disc (while juggling the camera) yielded this:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28197-1/IMG_2837s.jpg[/IMG]

The verniers say a 5-6mm backspace to the stock mounts depending on how the caliper is mounted. In addition the disc when just bolted to the hubs on its own fouls on the back of the handbrake, and wont sit completely flat. This would be a bit of dilemma, apart from the fortunate nature of the already backspaced caliper. What i shoudl be able to do is add a 5mm spacer to the underside of the disc (between the hub and the disc) so as to space the handbrake mechanism away from the disc face, and also as a bonus give a completely flat surface for a brake caliper adaptor.

To test this i pulled a couple of 3mm washers out from my box of washers and installed them:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28206-1/IMG_2840s.jpg[/IMG]
Trust me, thats 6mm.

With them installed and the disc over the top, with the trusty random lug nut holding it all together the caliper spacing was about 1mm positively offset:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28212-1/IMG_2842s.jpg[/IMG]

This seems to indicate that i can just create a caliper bracket which bolts to the back of the standard mounts (you can see me testing a bolt clearance in that picture too), as the standard mounts are not threaded (the threading is in the caliper). That bracket will then bolt through the “front” outwards to the R33 caliper and it should all line up.

I dont see any reason why this should be overly hard.

While i was out there before dinner the angle grinder with a sandpaper disc made very damn short work of the Nissan logos on the calipers:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28221-1/IMG_2845s.jpg[/IMG]
and
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28224-1/IMG_2846s.jpg[/IMG]

So off to source some 5mm spacers i go. Next project is to look at the camber eccentric bolt conversion for the suspension subframe.

I headed out to RallySA yesterday, and came home all geed up to do some work on the car, but without being able to turn on the air compressor and really get stuck into the engine bay i settled for doing this:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28089-2/IMG_2803.jpg[/IMG]
Was basically a matter of sitting there with a few screwdrivers and sockets and figuring out which screw came out of which area to release the whole shebang.
Finally got it all out and this was the pile of screws and bolts to go back in:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28098-2/IMG_2806.jpg[/IMG]

Dash looks half decent, and will get a clean up and sprayed black in the near future:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28092-2/IMG_2804.jpg[/IMG]

And there was a crap load of other stuff which is probably going to be ditched.
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28095-2/IMG_2805.jpg[/IMG]
Unsure about the heater core at the moment, as im not sure if ill be able to reuse that box or if ill need to get a manually controlled one for the manual controls.
The annoying bit was disconnecting the hundreds of wires which go into making the climate control work. So glad all of that is gone.

The old starwars dash is also out:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28101-2/IMG_2807.jpg[/IMG]
Awaiting me playing tracing time with it and the analog dash to figure out what needs to be repinned where in order to make the analog dash work.

I then got stuck into removing the cowl, and looking at what was under there:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28107-2/IMG_2809.jpg[/IMG]
Honestly i was expecting the worst, to see rust at the bottom of that area and lots of crap filling it up.

But it really wasnt bad at all:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28116-2/IMG_2812.jpg[/IMG]
No visible rust and i poked around a bit with a screw driver and couldnt see anything either.

So then without having much more time or stuff to do i got the engine ready for removal:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28086-2/IMG_2802.jpg[/IMG]

And treated the rust on all the under dash bracketry:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28080-2/IMG_2800.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28083-2/IMG_2801.jpg[/IMG]

Seriously, i dont understand why Toyota didnt bother to paint those bars, in every Toyota ive had they have been rusted to all hell.

Sunday rolled around and brought with it some glorious sunshine. In addition to a few other progress bits which i wont post up until they are finished, i got stuck into the drivetrain.
No interim pics, but the engine bay now looks like this:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28122-2/IMG_2814.jpg[/IMG]

With the 5M unceremonially dumped outside. The W box is sitting underneath the front bumper:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28125-2/IMG_2815.jpg[/IMG]

As Gav was around we decided to drop the rear subframe so i can get started on the camber bolt mod for it. After a bit of shifting stuff around and undoing some bolts it came out nicely:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28128-2/IMG_2816.jpg[/IMG]

Toyota wernt kidding around when they wanted to attach the snout of the diff to the subframe
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28131-2/IMG_2817.jpg[/IMG]
8xM10 bolts, 2 in each side AND 4 on top. Makes me wonder what the engineers were thinking when they thought a single snout bolt on the MX83 was a good idea.

In addition the rust conversion from yesterday turned out quite well:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28143-2/IMG_2821.jpg[/IMG]
Its had a second coat and waiting for it to dry.

I bought a present for the car as well:
[IMG]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/28104-2/IMG_2808.jpg[/IMG]
12 cans at $1.50 each, quite worth it I think as the cans seem to do a much better job than the concentrate.

Next on the agenda is finishing off the subframe disassembly, testing the LSD, and starting the subframe mod for the camber adjustment. That should keep me busy until my 5 stud MS123 hubs arrive, and then i can start putting together the rear brake upgrade. While all thats happening ill be waiting on some shocks from the US and on some local suspension stuff for the front.
On the interior front im not going to do a huge amount for now, mainly checking the heater core and starting the manual heater control conversion, and also repinning the dash loom to use the analog dash.

That should keep me busy for now.