Last night after finishing Scats taillights in the dark, I went for it with the ghetto roller, and installed the hose replacement. Works like a charm no leaks from the pipe. Unfortunately with those leaks taken care of, it looks like the water pump is indeed leaking. I think I disturbed the seal between the two halves of the pump body. In any case I decided to replace the pump and gaskets. Unfortunately the pump I got from Napa is the wrong one.
I’d gotten tunnel vision with this water pipe thing repeatedy bashing and zapping the thing. Both Dave and Chucky came up with the solution of cutting the pipe and replacing the offending section with hose. Doh! Simple and effective. I was even able to take the pipe to Napa and they found a close match of the curves in a preformed hose, nice! My only concern was retaining the hose onto the cut sections of pipe, usually there are flares of some type to help keep hoses from blowing off fittings. My first attempt was to solder a ring of heavy wire to the end. That met with failure. Perhaps needed to get even more aggresive with the grinding and get it cleaner, but it wasn’t looking promising. A search of the Net came up with a couple solutions. One was to run a bead of weld. I could do that. Another was to find a cheap Chine sheet metal bead roller and mod it. Of course could fork out the dinero for a real pipe bead roller. But the other method using a homebrew tool to “roll” a bead looked interesting. It involves sacrificing a Vice-grip, or suitable China substitute (although even Vice-Grip brand ones are made in China now) and moding the jaws to approximate the action of a bead roller. The simplest I saw was to weld two lumps on one jaw, and a single meshing lump on the opposite jaw. The next was to take a exhaust tubing clamp of the correct side and welding it to one side jaw, and a thick washer to mesh in the groove in the other jaw. From the pictures, that seemed top work pretty well, but the washers were reported to often fail. I then found someones solution to that was to use a woodruf key. Continue reading ‘Ghetto Fab’
Ugh ugh and tripple ugh! Third day of trying to weld this damn pipe, and no success in getting it completely watertight. It looks solid enough but despite trying five times tonight, no success. I’m giving up for tonight and possibly for good on this. I might chance ordering a new one from Toyota and smushing it, or if I get the MR2 supercharged one that the starter is supposedly for maybe it’ll all be moot and fit perfectly, although the Toyota parts diagrams are confusing on that.
Was this all a pipe dream?
So took off that offending pipe again. Can see its leaking at the patch weld. I’m not entirely convinced the water pump is leaking so I’ll wait on taking that apart. Will have to wait till tomorrow to try and reweld.
Damn it, air-cooled engine is sounding hood right about now. My patch still leaks, although much less. Leak is a leak. But with it that much less, realized the water pump is leaking too!
Woke up late after last night’s fun, needed to address the pipe problem. Decided to try for Plan B. 
 I have a another water pipe amid spares, but did not use it because for some reason it’s shape and bends are slightly different and doesn’t clear the relocated starter. I decide at this point to try and mod it to fit. First I set about creating the clearance for the terminal. I grind off most of the bracket. 
 Now to make the clearance this time I decide to use a bit more finesse and use the rickety Blue Sky hydraulic press and pieces of DRMO stuff. It’s more controlable and less traumatic than the hammer so hopefully wont create leaks. So far so good, but trying to bend the pipe is another story. By the time I give up the pipe is pretty well mangled. Ugh, not going well. Continue reading ‘Humble Pie’
So I have the FX all back together and almost ready to fire. Engine oil was filled wed night, no leaks. I filled transaxle oil earlier in the evening, no leaks. So I torqued up the remaining fastners, hooked up the rest of the engine bits, tightened down the 3M Window Weld urethane gooped engine mount, and the final step before putting the battery back in was to fill coolant. Starts OK, but when I reach around 5 liters I hear dribbling water. Nuts! I double check the torque on the water fitting on back of head, perhaps a little loose. The heck? It continues to leak at a good pace. Nuts! I start to take stuff off to get a better look. It’s not leaking from where I initiialy thought it was. I take the starter out and it looks like it’s probably where I hammered the pipe. I pull the pipe out and fill it with water in the sink, sure enough there’s a thin trickle of water from a pinhole where I hammered. Ugh! It’s 2:30AM, I quit for the night. So close. In retrospect I should have filled water early because now with the manifold on it’s more of a pain to work on that pipe. Deal with it tomorrow.
For anyone keeping track, I’ve been in the process of putting the rally FX back together. While I waited for the transmission with LSD installed, I dry fitted the relocation for the starter. In a move that mystifies, Toyota had the starter located on the exhaust side, the exhaust manifold tucking neatly around it, enveloping in it’s loving warm folds.
Try killing, baking, oven! Toyota eventually learned and later generations of Corollas located the starter on the opposite side of the engine, so there exists transmissions that have the mountings on both sides. I happen to have one, among the three(!) spare transmissions I have sitting in the garage. The transmission, along with the LSD install, is having that bellhousing swapped on. Next thing needed for the conversion is a correct starter, I ask for the 4AGZE supercharged MR2 starter. You then need to source a correct cover plate that goes between the engine and transmission. I don’t happen to have a spare one, so I took the existing one and cut a hole for the new starter location and welded a plate over the old opening.
Working on the rally FX, got the head back all shiny and better than new. Had the machine shop clean the intake too, but everything else I’m doing myself. In one of many wanderings in the web, I came across a posting on a homebrew soda blasting rig. 
 Soda is sand/media blasting using baking soda/sodium bicarbonate as the media. It’s the latest rage in the Eastwood catalog, touted for its gentle cleaning and easy cleanup. But instead of shelling out the hundreds of dollars to order one, here is what I tried out. Go to City Mill, buy $3 worth of 1/2″ vinyl hose, goto Safeway and buy about $3 of baking soda. Take hose, cut a slit about 2 inches from end just big enough that tip of airgun will fit in. Insert tip in slit toward the short end of hose, tape. Stick other end of hose in box of baking soda. I got the deluxe kit here and grabbed the cardboard box my Toyota order came in the mail in, and a nice thick plastic bag that happened to be in it too. So here you see it, the soda blaster and blast cabinet, for $6! Too bad I didn’t have any of that Wacky Willy’s freebie hose anymore or it would have been cheaper! Continue reading ‘Soda Works’
Boo, that’ll teach me. I decided to order some factory Toyota parts from a place I found online, pretty decent price for A/C compressor so gave them a try. Unfortunately East coast and UPS Ground is really ground, as opposed to coming to Hawaii where ground magically becomes air. I put the order in last monday, it started its trek Thursday, and it finally made it to CA today, Tuesday. Meanwhile some other parts I ordered at Sand Island Toyota parts on Saturday, came in this afternoon. Factor in my frequent customer discount and shipping and Hawaii wins in this case, no contest.
So the flywheel that went out USPS on wed the 3rd got here on the 6th, the LSD went out USPS on 6th came in today the 9th, ARP headstuds went out UPS on the 3rd got here on 5th, clutch just shipped UPS today expected 11th. I just picked up shiny remachined (& apparently welded) head. The only problem is that first order is the key to almost everything, it has the main gaskets that I can’t proceed with most of the work on the FX until I have them! Damn it!