How To Fit A Celica Diff To A Ke70

[altezzaclub]

This really started off last December, when Steve thought he'd bring me a banjo 4.1 for my birthday. It came from an abandoned KE70 on the roadside, and it turned out the reason it was abandoned was that one wheel bearing had collapsed completely and the oil was like metal-flake paint.

 

So I thanked him politely and declined, running the 4.3 up and down to Walcha at somewhere over 1000km a trip. It started to get whiny, so the next trip was to the local wrecker.

[altezzaclub]

An RA60 was there, I'd taken the rear sway bar of it in the past as it was 30% stiffer than the stock KE70. A check of the VIN showed it had a 3.9, fine for cruising I hoped, and I had that with all its arms and driveshaft for $100.

[altezzaclub]

The Celicas have a couple of ratios in the banjo diffs, and a 3.9 would drop the revs from 3580 to 3250. In reality, the tacho shows 3400 at 100kph, but I know that is really only 96kph anyway.

[altezzaclub]

First up was to remove the KE70 Borg-Warner. Its just 5 bolts on the diff, (4 arms and a panhard) the brake line, (stick a bleed nipple rubber on the line to stop it leaking) the handbrake cables, the two shocks and 4 bolts on the driveshaft. My daughter can do it in 3/4hour.

[altezzaclub]

Side-by-side, we gained 15mm in track and bigger rear brakes.

Edited December 13, 2018 by altezzaclub

[altezzaclub]

The mounts are slightly different in width placement, but the arms take the difference up without a problem. It was less than I thought from reading around the net.

Edited May 2, 2013 by altezzaclub

[altezzaclub]

The top arms are set on a different place on the diff, but as the diff is a different length at the nose, it works out fine..

[altezzaclub]

The Celica coil spring has a little tuck-in as it touches the diff, so the KE70 spring would be sloppy on the fitting.

[altezzaclub]

The brakes are larger in diameter, the slave cylinders larger in diameter, and the shoes are wider. This will take a little more fluid to get them working, but the KE70 pedal is so high it doesn't matter.

[altezzaclub]

The panhard rod would need to be longer than either stock item. The Celica has a shorter rod than the KE70, so they have the chassis mount in a different place.

[altezzaclub]

Once I put the RA60 diff in place I could see the difference in top arm alignment.

[altezzaclub]

Celicas use 14mm bolts, so their mounts have 14mm holes, but the Corolla uses 12mm. Luckily there are old Datsuns with old sway bar mounts on the front suspension, and those washers take a 14mm sway bar hole down to 12mm. I had a few, and then it was off to the wreckers again for a while as there were only two on each car I found, but in the end I had 8.

[altezzaclub]

The diff sits in place quite nicely and the lineup is pretty good

[altezzaclub]

I had to put the Borgie back in to measure the driveshaft, so make sure you make a mark in the chassis by the middle joint of the driveshaft and measure to the nose of the Borgwarner. Then swap diffs and measure from that mark to the banjo diff nose. It should be 8mm shorter, as the banjo is longer in the nose, and that is why their different arm mounts all work in a KE70 .

 

You need the KE70 driveshaft and the last UJ off the RA60 and a driveshaft engineer. Two of the KE70 d'shaft holes line up and two don't, and the Celica has a smaller diameter locating shoulder, so there is no chance of using the KE70 driveshaft.

[altezzaclub]

The KE70 driveshaft doesn't unbolt like the Celica does, so its an engineering job to cut the Celcia rear UJ off and weld it onto the KE70 shaft. That took a week.