Jailbait - The Story Of A Returned Ke55...

[corolla_nut]

I thought that it was probably about time that I start a rides thread seeing as though I've had the car for 3 years!!

 

Anyhow...

This is my baby, a 1980 ke55 corolla. Here are the specs so far:

Running Gear

4K 1290cc motor from a ke70 bored out to 1323cc. Completely rebuilt and balanced, complete with a reground cam (23/63?), shaved 3K head, electronic distributor internals from a Magna dizzy built into a corolla distributor housing, regraphed to suit camshaft and compression. Braided fuel lines. Oil catch can, thermo fan with shroud, 3 core radiator. Twin inch and a half SU carburettors , custom linkages. Extractors. 2" exhaust with 2 1/4" muffler and 3 inch tip.

 

 

XT 130 Steering arms. Nolathane front swaybar bushes, AC Delco shockies in front and monroe in the rear. Tailshaft loop. Standard gearbox.

Fairly standard suspension,

 

Body

Dodgy respray by previous owner. Shiteloads of rust and bog. 14" Black hotwires 195/60 R14 Firestone Firehawk tyres all round. "Fully hektik!" TRD Valve caps, that are crap and the TRD labels are off half of them now anyway.

 

Interior

Black reclinable race seats in front, Boss 4 spoke steering wheel, dash mounted tacho. Sony CD player custom mounted under heater controls. TRD round gear knob. Temperature gauge, No centre console, fire extinguisher, killswitch.

 

All locks replaced due to some arseholes stealing it and f@$king the driver's side lock and ignition barrel.

Edited January 26, 2009 by corolla_nut

[greenmac80]

sick man!! superclean!!

 

anyplans to fix bodgy respray? colour choices etc.?

 

alot of work done to that k motor! go well?

[corolla_nut]

We only just returned from Kandos yesterday and before that I decided that I would tidy up the back end. The bloke before me resprayed the car and must have had someone back into him after he painted it as there is a whole tonne of bog, rust and different coloured paint on the left hand rear end of the car. I also had someone back into me while I was at work in 2007. I didn't have the time, skill, tools, know how or common sense to fix it properly, so I bashed it out as best I could, bogged it up, primed it with a spray can of primer and brushed (argh :hmm: ) on some primer which was closely tinted to my paint colour.

But because I hadn't thinned it down it looked a different colour to the rest of the car.

 

So, anyway, I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to fix up the back end.

 

I got a chip of paint off my guard and got the bloke at the paint shop to match it (he did a great job :hmm: )

 

I pulled the bumper, tail lights, boot lid and rubber off and sanded it. This took a lot longer than expected (I was hoping to have it all painted and finished a week before Kandos!).

Naked!!

 

 

Part-way through sanding

 

Some of the rust holes

 

The work"bench"

 

This was supposed to be the etch primer coat! We figured out later on that there was too much pressure from the compressor getting to the spray gun.

It's actually only meant to be a very thin mostly transparent coat to fill in some of the scratches and scuff marks from sanding.

I had to sand this back with some fine grade sandpaper as I had a couple of drips from this being my first time spraying, inexperience and too much air pressure.

The first coat of tinted primer

 

 

All bogged up...

 

 

The grille badge all taped up and ready to be painted. This was very tedious, but I've always liked that badge ever since I got the car and I wanted the paint back on it again. It was originally black and red, but it was mostly chromey coloured plastic before I painted it again.

[corolla_nut]

All painted

 

The final coat

 

The way that etch primer should look!

 

 

Anyhow, I got the job finished. I would've liked more time to get the bodywork perfect, but I'm happy with the spray job. Except for the boot lid. It was too hot in the shed the first time I tried to paint it, so all the paint just fell on it like powder as it dried in the air. I left it till after I finished work that night, but by that stage it was too cold. Had the heater on. We thought the panel was still too cold, so we left the heater on and pushed it aside. Unfortunately the air was too hot on that side and the paint was still powdery on that side. I'm hoping I can polish some of that out.

 

I also had issues with the blending. The colour coats went on well, but the primer coats I sprayed all the way to the newspaper which left a line. So i ended up taking the newspaper, only newspapering up the windows and handles, feathered the paint a little more and lightly sprayed over the definite lines.

 

I'm really happy with it now, you can't tell where my sprayjob ends and the other begins :hmm:

 

I've still gotta take a photo of it though :hmm:

 

My next plans for the car are:

- 2" exhaust all the way, including the tip to improve exhaust flow.

- Investigate my vacuum leak further

- Repaint the hotwires

- Clean up the engine bay a little

- Carpet for the boot

- Put the new bailey channels in the rear doors

- Install some kind of cup holder

- Add an extra half a leaf to the springs to eliminate axle tramp

- Take the cam the next one up

 

Thinking about a lightened flywheel and better brakes

Edited January 26, 2009 by corolla_nut

[corolla_nut]

sick man!! superclean!!

 

anyplans to fix bodgy respray? colour choices etc.?

 

alot of work done to that k motor! go well?

 

Yeah the motor goes pretty well, trying to iron out a couple of issues with it at the moment.

I'm hoping to gradually resurrect the body this year piece by piece

 

Thanks :hmm:

[smeetsy1]

nice work!

 

When you take the tape and paper off, can you notice where you've painted it??

[corolla_nut]

Yeah you could. I had to take it all off, then only retape the windows and door handles etc. I then had to feather the paint again and lightly spray over the line that was left. You can't tell now.

 

The idea was that I was going to stop spraying before the newspaper line, but I stuffed up and sprayed up to the line.

 

All fixed now though :hmm:

[Jason KE30]

damn that looks very nice

good job fixin up the rear end! :hmm:

[roladude]

Hey that motor set up is what i want to do to my car except I'm going to keep the 4k head.

Under the bonnet looks hot. Does it have much pickup :hmm:

The whole package looks great well done :hmm:

[swinnei]

hey man nice work,

I hope you didn't bog straight onto the paint because it doesn't stick very well and can crack etc,

bare metal :hmm:

[corolla_nut]

Thanks guys!

Has more pick-up than a standard 4K roladude :hmm:

 

I've been told that bogging over the first coat of primer will help prevent the body from rusting any further as filler is porous?

[swinnei]

Thanks guys!

Has more pick-up than a standard 4K roladude :)

 

I've been told that bogging over the first coat of primer will help prevent the body from rusting any further as filler is porous?

 

Yeah that might be true but it still doesn't like to stick to paint that much, I found this out the hard way.

Anyway good work looks tidy as mate :D

 

Sean

[corolla_nut]

Okay... I didn't wanna know that :D

Thanks, i think lol!

I'll probably get more anal soon and want to weld in new unrusty panels in some of it anyway :)

 

Anyway, here are some photos of the finished job. It really needs a wash and polish though, but I want to leave it as long as possible before i polish it!

 

And some interior bits...

 

My kandos sticker, I had so much fun! Grass motorkhana's are the bomb!

[corolla_nut]

So, it's time for a bit of an update.

We've finally stopped chasing our tails and figured out that the vacuum leak has very little to do with the SU's and the manifold and that it is actually the brake booster that is at fault. It was going to cost me around $400 to get a new one and $150 to get it rebuilt, so we opted for the rebuild, as we know the people we took it to know what they're doing, have a quick turn around and do a great job.

Hopefully it will be done by tomorrow or Friday, ready to chuck into the car in time for the weekend, so we can muck around with the gas analyser on Saturday to get it all tuned up and running beautifully for the Khanacross on Sunday.

I've also had issues with night driving lately as the contacts in the indicator stalk are worn out and half the time when I touch the indicators, the lights will turn off and then you have to fiddle with the stalk to get them back in again.

Luckily I have a spare one of these lying around and I'm looking at replacing it tonight..

 

 

Also looking into some tramp bars at lunchtime as I have huge axle tramp issues, has anyone else fitted these before? I've heard they are much better than adding an extra spring and whilst they don't remove the problem completely, it comes pretty bloody close.

Anyway, should have more of an update soon.

[drc_ke20]

looks 100 times better after the rear end makeover!

nice and clean!