Buttercup The Ke20V Blacktop

[Xon]

Hi All,

 

I've been a member for a while - initially I signed up to buy a KE35 for my girlfriend, but having it sitting in the driveway and puttering around on weekends inspired me to upgrade.

 

So on Saturday I pick up my first Corolla - a 1974 KE20 that's been in one family since new. It's currently unregistered, but after a bit of a once-over I'm hoping to get it registered on Saturday and drive it home.

 

Immediate plans are:

• Rego
  
• Replace the massive racing seats with original seats (have to source some!)
  
• Attach the granny visor
  
• Replace lap sash belts with retractables
  
• Brakes - maybe AE86 strut/brake combo
  

Down the track I might look at a 4AGE swap, but to start with I'll see how the 3K goes.

 

Here's some pics from the gumtree ad:

 

 

 

 

I'm really not against race seats, but these things are so big you have to reach for the seat belt before you close the door, and the two seats nearly meet in the middle!

 

Edited October 12, 2014 by Xon

[Xon]

So I picked up the KE20 on the weekend - and by picked up I mean put it on a tow truck and sent over to my local mechanic to get checked out for rego. It hasn't had plates on it in at least 10 years, but it's still in good condition so hopefully there won't be too much to fix up.

 

Seeing it up on the truck really gave me an appreciation for just how tiny this was, and the previous owner had bit of a moment before it drove away!

 

He was also nice enough to let me know about some seats for sale that were pretty local on gumtree. Funnily enough they are KE20 seats that have been reupholstered and then put in a Morris Minor. From the look of them, I don't think anyone's sat in them since!

 

 

 

 

She's still sitting at the mechanics for now, and I'm just itching to go for a bit of cruise!

[B.L.Z.BUB]

Looks pretty tidy.

[Skellington]

Your car looks nice. Those seats will be perfect. The racing seats just don't fit the look of the car.

[Xon]

Thanks guys, it's not quite as tidy as it looks in the photos, but it's pretty damn good. Only a tiny bit of rust here and there, which is good because I have no welding skills (yet).

 

The racing seats seem like they're pretty good quality, but I want to keep the car pretty original, and they definitely aren't original!

[ke2020]

Nice buy man. I saw this on gumtree. Killer deal.

[Xon]

Nice buy man. I saw this on gumtree. Killer deal.

Thanks mate, it seemed in pretty tidy condition. Once I got it up on a hoist I found a bit of rust underneath, but nothing half a day couldn't fix.

 

The big news is, he's registered and sitting at home, instead of taking up space at my mechanics!

It was a bit of a funny drive home though, since I live in the Blue Mountains there's a massive hill to get up, and the old 3k didn't like that very much. Any time I tried to give it more than about 50% throttle it would go great for a minute or so, then bog down and eventually stall. I'm assuming it's starving somehow, bad float or bad fuel pump or something. Gives me something to do on the weekend anyway!

 

Here's a picture of it's first visit to a petrol station in 12 years :lovin: and a new interior shot with more suitable seats.

 

 

[Xon]

After a bit of work last weekend I found the problem with the ke20 cutting out was because the fuel tank is absolutely full of rust. I guess it sat too long with a bit of fuel in the bottom.

So I've got a por-15 fuel tank restoration kit to put through it this weekend.

To start with though I dumped a shitload of screws in there and shook it round for a while. Here's the result:

 

[Xon]

Finished the last two steps of the tank treatment yesterday and it came up alright. The pics below are after the second step which is an acid treatment and prep before sealing. Just have to wait a week while the sealer cures now.

[Xon]

Couple of shots of the sealer now that it's dry. A couple of mistakes I made for anyone else that's going to try this:

 

1. Don't let the sealer pool in the breather barb next to the filler hole. I drained the excess out of the filler hole, so a bit of sealer formed a nice plug in the breather. Bit of compressed air and a drill cleared it up though

 

2. Don't let sealer leak out the feed line and gunk up the thread. I just wrapped some ductape around the hole, which some sealer leaked around. Wire brush on the dremel cleaned that up.

[asirike20]

thats surely a tank cleaner........

 

your twenny looks overrated...... keep her shiny....

[Xon]

thats surely a tank cleaner........

 

your twenny looks overrated...... keep her shiny....

 

There's three steps, the first cleans, the second stops the rust from rusting, and the third is a sealer to stop any oxygen from getting at the metal. The sealer basically dries as a metal, and is highly resistant to fuel etc (as you'd hope!)

 

And thanks, she's in pretty good condition but there's a few bits to tidy up still.

[Xon]

Done a couple of bits here and there over the last few weeks. Got the fuel tank back in, and she fired up easily and has been running well ever since.

 

On the first drive up a half decent hill, the temperature shot up really quickly (didn't overheat though), so I grabbed a new thermostat and went to change it, only to discover that there was no thermo there, so either it's rusted away completely or someone removed it, and also that half of the inlet on the water pump had wasted away!

So I picked up a NOS water pump on eBay for all of $20 and changed that on the weekend, seems to run pretty well now.

 

Also finally got my nolathane swaybar bushes that I ordered a few weeks ago, and now that they're in I have to admit the ke20 handles pretty bloody well for a 40 year old car on pizza cutter wheels!

 

Oh, I fitted the granny visor I got with the car too. Unfortunately it's more of a lime green, while the car is a butter yellow. Thinking I might try painting it white to see how that looks...

 

Also noticed the engine has a not-great-sounding tick, and blows a bit of smoke, so I've been thinking about engine swaps recently. I'm thinking I might go with a carb'd 4age. The 4a seems like a good solid platform to build on, and I like the sound and ease of using carbs. I also really don't want to give up half my boot to a lift tank, and have to stuff around with all the wiring required. So I'm looking into what's required to make that work at the moment. This is the plan so far:

• 4age conversion kit from Jordanrolla to get it mounted up with a T50
  
• 4age of some kind, preferably a 20v but it sounds like that might be harder to fit
  
• twin webers or twin dellortos w/ redline manifold
  
• some way of blocking injector ports
  
• sort ignition somehow
  
• low pressure electric fuel pump
  

 

Since the 4age doesn't have vacuum advance, most people seem to either lock the dizzy and run no advance, or run a blue top dizzy and an MSD 6-AL to run the timing. One of the things I'm toying with is using the 4age dizzy as a crank angle sensor, and running an MSD distributorless system with coil packs. That should give me very tight control over the timing, as well as really tidying things up a lot in the bay, but will obviously be a bit more expensive...

 

Also on the list are brakes - apparently by changing the steering arm to a ke27 item, it's possible to run AE86 struts and hubs up front which opens up a world of possibilities. I'd like have sort this out before the engine, but need to look into it more.

 

And wheels - thinking maybe some Performance Superlites would look good...

 

All of these things are relying on selling my Liberty though, so I need to tidy up some bits and pieces on that first, which means more time to make plans!

[Xon]

Not 5 minutes after posting that, I found that technotoy sell crank trigger wheels, so that might be an option instead of modifying the stock dizzy, or in the case of a 20v having to relocate AND THEN modify the stock dizzy... Just another option!

[carbonboy]

While you're on the TTT site, get yourself a set of their injector port plugs, I run them in Blue Thing, no dramas with them so far. There's also a bit of ignition info re; carb 4AG in my rides thread, could save you some headaches if you go down that path.