The Usual 4age Into Ke55

[cuzzo]

That really sucks. Sorry man.

 

What are you doing with the control arms? You may neeb to be careful as engineers don't like welding or modifying any part of the suspension. ( lucky to even get welded coilovers passed)

 

Also with the pintara diff, its only 25 spline axels. A bit smaller than the 28 spline skyline variant. If your looking at more power in the future. (150-170kw + atw) you may need to upgrade axel size to the 28 splines. Also check if they fit into your pintara housing. They just might with new bearings.

[olskool]

Hopefully it will be ok, but thanks for the heads up, will check on that now. It aint making me stop the conversion though coause like I said I will be able to make a better inlet plenum now.

 

I have a fair bit in store for the diff, but that won't be known to anyone until complete.

[olskool]

Hello everyone, hope you all doing well after Christmas, New Years and the recent Australia Day. What a long weekend, I love it. Anyway, I got a chance to do some more work on my car finally and I am just doing a lot of shopping for it too. Gotta pamper the car too hey! :hmm:

 

Any way, the RA65 struts that I purchased aren't an exact fit. All I had to do was modify the steering lock on the lower control arm so guess what, I DID. Turned out rather well, just gotta get it on the ground to see if it operates well.

 

Heres some pics.

 

The standard one.

 

The standard one is on the left and the custom one is on the right.

 

The custom one.

Edited January 28, 2008 by olskool

[nIsMo86]

Hey olskool,

Good work on the conversion. Can see you've put alot of work into this. I'm looking at doing a 20v blacktop conversion on my girlfriend's ke55. Thanks for all the info. How much would you be after to remake a set of ur custom engine mounts? Which model laser did you get ur rubber mounts from? Also how r you going to mount the gearbox into the car? Does the tunnel need to be cut/widened and shifter relocated etc? Are you making the custom tailshaft urself? Just curious on these things as i'm very keen to get started on my conversion. I'm going with the whole dummy car idea aswell so my girlfriend can keep driving

[beerhead]

Hey, nice work there, coming along very nicely, great fabrication work. I don't really want to sink your boat, but I just in case you didn't know, RA65 struts in any corolla will end up with positive camber due to their stub axle angle, even with XT130 corona arms in the front end. Sigma arms rectify the problem (almost) but it'll put out your steering geometry unless you run enormous RCA's too (steering arms will not rotate along the horizontal plane)

[olskool]

Hey, nice work there, coming along very nicely, great fabrication work. I don't really want to sink your boat, but I just in case you didn't know, RA65 struts in any corolla will end up with positive camber due to their stub axle angle, even with XT130 corona arms in the front end. Sigma arms rectify the problem (almost) but it'll put out your steering geometry unless you run enormous RCA's too (steering arms will not rotate along the horizontal plane)

 

Yeah, I just figured that out :hmm: , was thinking of getting camber adjustable tops, hopefully that will fix the problem. :jamie:

[beerhead]

Damn this is hard to explain properly ;) Here I go :

 

The camber tops fix the camber issue, but the problem is, the closer the camber top is adjusted towards the engine bay the larger the degree of angle of difference that the steering arm sits at in relation to the steering bar/ tie rod ends. As the suspension compresses and rebounds when the wheels aren't pointing straight the wheels will toe in and toe out (bump steer) more due the reduction of steering symmetry caused by stub axle / steering arm angle.

[styler]

ah the joys of strut swaps ;) beerhead feels the pain :bash:

thats why I'm keeping the original ones in my car!

 

there are alternative strut swaps that may give less problems,

maybe search on here and toymods?

[cuzzo]

XT130 struts, ra65 discs and possibly xt130 calipers.

 

i have never done it but i could be looked at the wreckers one day.

 

I know ra65 discs will bolt onto the xt130 strut.

[olskool]

Thanks for the info guys. Its bloody useful but at the same time quite depressing. Looks like I got a fair bit of work ahead of me and plenty more stuffing round as always. :bash:

 

Plans are that once I finish the front end I will work on my inlet plenum and custom extractors. Once all that is done I will be slowly working back from there. Rebuild gearbox, custom tailshaft, diff, and then last but not least (and the most fun ofcourse) WIRING. So I will keep you guys all up to date and again I thank you all for the very helpful info.

 

Shouldn't be too long now my friends, I aint holding back. :( :) :) :bash: :bash:

[beerhead]

Hey, where abouts are you? There's a set of T18 struts down the wreckers atm on a stripped T18. They aren't veneted, but I've heard of a commodore caliper and random rotor combo that works for them.

[olskool]

I am at Tahmoor. Near Picton. It sucks so much though that I spent so much money on this and now I can't really do anything. Thats the bad news but the good news is as follows.

 

I just got my cam covers powder coated and they look HOT ! ! ! I ground back the paint on the writnig and polished it so the writing would stand out. Heres some pics, and then next on the list is custom inlet manifold take 2.

 

[radrollaz]

Looks good olskool, love the cam covers :) I used RA60 struts in my car and it all bolted up but i had positive camber even with camber adjusters, so i got original corolla ke30 steering arms and got them machined out and custom sleeves put in that illongated the holes 3mm which then allowded the RA60 struts to bolt to the Ke30 steering arm. Then with the camber adjusters set as far as possible inward i ended up with -1 degree negetive camber. If you need pics let me know. :(

[olskool]

Looks good olskool, love the cam covers :bash: I used RA60 struts in my car and it all bolted up but i had positive camber even with camber adjusters, so i got original corolla ke30 steering arms and got them machined out and custom sleeves put in that illongated the holes 3mm which then allowded the RA60 struts to bolt to the Ke30 steering arm. Then with the camber adjusters set as far as possible inward i ended up with -1 degree negetive camber. If you need pics let me know. :bash:

 

Pics would be awesome. Thanks heaps Mick, you have just made my day. Now I can get back on track. YAY YAY YAY. :) :) :bash: :( :bash:

[radrollaz]

Hey Olskool here are the pics i mentioned, You can see the difference between Ke30 arm (bottom) and RA60 arm (top). The Ke30 arm has more of an angle on the arm itself and also the hole in the center is in the middle were as the celica arm is straighter and the center hole is more to one side. This causes the celica steering arm to bring the whole strut in more and gives you positive camber as when it all bolts up it sits further in to begin with.The next thing is that the bolt holes on the celica arm are 3mm further apart than the corolla arm, thats why i got a machineing shop to illongate holes and fit sleeves in with a small lip on them like the standard arms have as its important that they locate the strut in place when bolted up. With out those rased lips the strut would have no support and only the bolts to hold it in place.

If you have a look at both arms together you will also see that the corolla arm is thinner and also has a straight angle to it intead of the 45 degree angle of the celica's. If you have a look at both together you will see the differences and then you can see what needs to be done. Hope this helps |blink|