Snagglepuss Build Thread Lenny's New Whip

[Lenny]

Would you say it was worth fitting the iridiums?

Yes for two reasons so far,

1. They have an additional fine needle on top that is visibilily different looks to be better than standard plugs.

2. They highly recommended them on the Levin forum as an upgrade.

I've not had the car driving on the road since fitting them,

I've just started and rev in the driveway from the response even from 1,000-2,000 is much smoother

I got them for 27.99GBP from this seller in the uk

http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/driven2automotive

So at that price and considering they will last me 10-15,000miles I reckon there worth it mate,

Says they increase mpg, that's what led me to ask you if you felt an increase,

Also says they reduce idle sound,

But I've got 3 holes in my exhaust so didn't notice on that one t be honest

[L666JER]

I'll look into it when I do the service next year, thanks.

[b1g_dav3]

One thing I do like about JDM imports are the badges in Japanese on the interior (seatbelt light for example), was almost tempted to pick up a Supra before Christmas, but I'm scared by parts availability in the UK, America has it so much better >.<

[Lenny]

One thing I do like about JDM imports are the badges in Japanese on the interior (seatbelt light for example), was almost tempted to pick up a Supra before Christmas, but I'm scared by parts availability in the UK, America has it so much better >.<

There's a feww supra's in Ireland aswell,

Best advise check out the Toyota forums to get an idea of parts availability,

You may be surprised at the amount of parts available in your own country when you look.

I'm replacing various parts in my Levin and all are available in Ireland even though the Levin is a JDM only production car.

Supra's a mad car mate :)

[georgen]

Go on Lenny, its more satisfying doing it yourself and saved a few pennies too, on the oil filter front you do only tighten by hand mate, those plugs are good aswell well worth the money. and lastly I loved my old Supra brings back good old memories of going up the road sideways when unleashing the 3.0L turbo motor power through the LSD :)

[Lenny]

Go on Lenny, its more satisfying doing it yourself and saved a few pennies too, on the oil filter front you do only tighten by hand mate, those plugs are good aswell well worth the money. and lastly I loved my old Supra brings back good old memories of going up the road sideways when unleashing the 3.0L turbo motor power through the LSD :)

Thanks George,

That's great to know I don't need to get the filter tightened using any tooling.

Thanks for comment on the spark plugs aswell, I'm really looking forward to getting it on the road now soon,

3.0l turbo is serious power I thought they were twin turbo,

I know of one guy who has a completely standard T bar 1995 supra in red,

Still has the original alloys and everything never modified it at all, apparently he's owned it since brand new he's now retired ex Sargent for the yards.

[georgen]

No mine was the earlier shape with one turbo, when I bought it the turbo boost gauge didnt work so garage sent it to toyota to sort out, when i got it back I noticed it only boosted to about 0.5-0.6 bar, when I questioned it they said thats what it should be as high compression engine with low boost, I soon had the needle bouncing off the top of the gauge, you could actually here it hit lol, It also had a Cat but because of its year did not need it by law so that got smashed out too. the turbo and downpipe used to glow it got that hot, still one of the quickest cars Ive had it was mental. :D

[Lenny]

Update:

Going to be enjoyably busy again tomorrow :)

These Christmas holidays are too long I'm getting bored sitting around, and all this talk on the forums about the sale at Halfords aswell as finding this coolant change guide:

http://s15.zetaboards.com/AE111_Forum/topic/7314482/1/?x=50#new

Caused me to drive down to my local Halfords store today.

I bought

Halfords 5ltr Red for Toyota Coolant/Anti freeze ready mixed

Holts Radiator Speed Flush

2 x 1ltr bottles Halfords Power Steering Fluid

I've also made a funnel out of an empty 2ltr bottle for pouring in the coolant, and got an empty 3ltr bottle for flushing out the old existing power steering fluid,

I had planned to start at it when I got home today,

But I didn't get home until 16:00 and id end up working in the dark,

Thought it best to wait until tomorrow morning instead.

I'll update with pictures tomorrow.

The holts radiator flush is great stuff,

I've used it before on my first car but that time I didn't read the label and I should have.

Because at the time I thought "the longer I leave it the better" wrong

I poured it in to my radiator on Monday drove 52 miles each day with it in and ended up with a blown water pump seal on the Friday

This time I've read the label,

It says to drain out the system,

Close drain,

Pour in the bottle of holts radiator flush,

Top up to full with water,

Run the engine at no more than 2,000rpm for 15-20 minutes

Drain the system,

Close drain,

Fill with water,

Drain system,

Close drain and fill with coolant/anti-freeze

I'll be following those instructions to the letter tomorrow :)

My initial plan for replacing the power steering fluid; was to disconnect the high hose on the resivour which is the return feed,

Insert the return feed in to the plastic bottle and flush the old fluid through with new fluid,

Keep turning the ignition on/off to slowly circulate the fluid through the system

While pouring fresh fluid in t the resivour in small amounts until clean fluid comes out of the return line and in to the plastic bottle.

Sadly though,

There's not enough space in the Levin's engine bay to fit a plastic bottle in place to catch the fluid from the return line.

I've spent 20 minutes examining the engine bay to figure out a way to do it with minimum mess.

One option

Remove the windscreen washer resivour tank which would leave enough space in front of the power steering resivour to lye down the plastic bottle,

But I've recently filled the washer resivour with halfords blue windscreen wash an Id prefer not to have to lose it.

Second option

Instead of using a plastic bottle to catch the return fluid,

I had a look under the kitchen sink and found an "oven pride" kit,

Some of you may not b fermiluar with "oven pride" so I'll explain.

In the oven pride kit; is a bottle of acidic fluid and an oil resistant heavy duty oven tray sized Zip lock bag.

The idea is; you remove the trays from the oven, put them in the zip lock bag, pour in the bottle of acid based cleaner, close the zip lock bag, give it a shake, and leave it overnight to break down the burned in dirt on the grills,

Anyways,

I'll be using the chemical resistant zip lock bag to catch the power steering fluid from the return line in the engine bay,

It will fit where the bottle won't,

End results will be the same but method slightly different.

I'll update the progress before 16:00 tomorrow guys.

[Lenny]

No mine was the earlier shape with one turbo, when I bought it the turbo boost gauge didnt work so garage sent it to toyota to sort out, when i got it back I noticed it only boosted to about 0.5-0.6 bar, when I questioned it they said thats what it should be as high compression engine with low boost, I soon had the needle bouncing off the top of the gauge, you could actually here it hit lol, It also had a Cat but because of its year did not need it by law so that got smashed out too. the turbo and downpipe used to glow it got that hot, still one of the quickest cars Ive had it was mental. :D

I reckon it broke your heart to sell it mate,

Serious power an fuel cost though, although old skool tuning was the best, bleed valve on the turbo and that 3.0 turbo engine was a lot better built compared to the engines of today, the older engines could take the extra pressure

[georgen]

Didnt get a chance to sell it mate, Someone else liked it as much as I did and took it, was put out by fire brigade at 3am and recovered but it took hours for it to cool down enough to identify it, when I went to see it I walked straight past it on the back of the wagon I didn't recognise it, if it wasn't steel it was gone. When I went to the garage I bought it from as I only got one key, they said was there a BMW next to it as another customer had his car taken same night.

[Lenny]

Didnt get a chance to sell it mate, Someone else liked it as much as I did and took it, was put out by fire brigade at 3am and recovered but it took hours for it to cool down enough to identify it, when I went to see it I walked straight past it on the back of the wagon I didn't recognise it, if it wasn't steel it was gone. When I went to the garage I bought it from as I only got one key, they said was there a BMW next to it as another customer had his car taken same night.

Sorry to read that mate,

Id be doing a visualantie mission if anyone touched my motors,

I don't know how Id cope if I had owned a supra and had it stolen from me.

[martyntdci]

did they ever get caught? if so hope they had fingers chopped of, theiving scum

[georgen]

Was a long time ago and touch wood the only motor ive lost, my Sierra 4x4 which I px,d for the Supra had its windows knocked out in the street by 3 drunken teens, that !Removed! me off more but thats it the camera outside seems to had a positive effect and had no bother for years now.

[martyntdci]

nice neighbourhood lol. lenny loving the bzr thread mate, love loads of pics, (only because i carnt read lol)

[georgen]

did they ever get caught? if so hope they had fingers chopped of, theiving scum

No they were not caught

[Lenny]

nice neighbourhood lol. lenny loving the bzr thread mate, love loads of pics, (only because i carnt read lol)

Thanks mate,

Its still off the road until February 14th but I've got a few things happening before then,

I'll update tomorrow with pictures of power steering fluid change and coolant change,

After that will be standard exhaust fitting in January,

Replacement windscreen fitting in january,

Dash vent replacement end of January/early February,

Hopefully some scenic pictures then of it on the road in mid February

And when I say scenic I mean pictures of it at the beach and stuff,

Hopefully not a picture of it burried in a hedge with a VTEC caption

[Lenny]

[Lenny]

Update:

Went out to the Levin today at 11:00am I had planned to get started earlier in the day but as you can see in the first image below taken at 11am it was very cold

Despite the weather though things need to get done,

I decided to begin with the cleaning and replenishment of the cooling system because it was the job that would take the most time to complete and once started it needs to be stuck with until the end,

First I obtained a 14mm socket from the toolbox and attempted to remove the engine coolant sump drain plug,

Not a budge,

I tried soaking it in WD-40 and using a longer wrench but nothing was removing it, so I had to do the best I could without draining the engine from the bottom.

On the top right side of the engine is the coolant pipe that feeds to the bottom of the radiator,

I disconnected it from the engine side by releasing the clamp,

I then diverted the removed hose down towards the ground allowing the contents of the radiator to be released through the hose and on to the ground below the car where I could easily wash it away to the drain.

I then opened the radiator cap to find that after 13 years the radiator cap has decided to shed its spring and internal seal. I gathered the pieces and put them in the toolbox until complete,

As I don't have a hose, I filled a 10ltr watering can with water and began to flush the radiator through by pouring cans of water in through the radiator filler cap.

After four watering cans,

I spotted a build up of some sort on the pipe sleeve exiting the engine which I cleaned using a flat head screwdriver and some WD-40

Looks much better :)

I then put the pipes back in place as standard,

And brought out the holts radiator speed flush

The instructions are very easy to follow,

Flush out the system with water,

Half fill with water,

Pour in the holts bottle,

Top up the system to full using water,

Run the engine at fast idle to normal operating temperature for 10 minutes,

Stop the engine and allow time to cool,

Then drain the system,

To my surprise the second flush after using the holts bottle; the contents was still very red in colour which would have been at this point diluted up to 80% water.

Once drained,

I removed the top hose from the radiator side and inserted the head of a 2ltr plastic bottle to create a funnel for pouring water in to the engine coolant cavity chasing the flush out through the other outlet pipe

Shortly after beginning to pour water in to the home made funnel I noticed the coolant mix was coming out of the pipe on to the clutch slave cylinder below it,

I decided to cover it with a bit of plastic packaging to shelter it from the coolant mixture,

With the system now flushed with the cleaner and drained,

I removed the battery in order to gain access to the nuts beneath it holding the radiator resivour bottle in place.

I missed taking a few pictures here but you get the idea

After cleaning the resivor bottle I took the opportunity to colour in the indented text on the resivour bottle making it easier to check its level at a glance.

I then fitted it back in place,

Refitted he battery,

Reconnected all the hoses,

Filled the system with water, run it for two minutes and drained it again.

I then filled up with the ready mixed coolant,

The system capacity is 5.3ltrs

However due to the engine drain plug not opening for me, I was unable to completely drain the system,

As result I couldn't fit 5ltrs of ready mixed coolant in to the system, I only got 3ltrs in there.

All back together now and I wish I could say "working well" but no as previously mentioned I've found the radiator cap to be broken, so now it heats up and begins to dump the coolant in to the resivour bottle, the resivour bottle begins to overflow and if left running it would boil itself out,

End result, the engine is off until I purchase a blitz 1.3 bar radiator cap next Thursday.

Final task of the day

Changing the power steering fluid

As previously mentioned; space around the resivour is limited,

Id usually use a bottle and disconnect the high pipe which is the return feed from the pump,

But since space is limited, I used an oven pride plastic bag to catch the old fluid from the return feed and flush it through with the new stuff, I didn't get any pictures of this process as it involved both my hands and Vicki in the drivers seat, starting&stopping the engine.

But here's the old fluid,

Anyone for a cola Mr.Freeze

New fluid is red but goes dark brown over a period of well 13 years in the resivour.

Next update will be Thursday 09th January when I'll be having the cat back standard exhaust fitted.

I'll update with a video of how it sounds aswell as some images of it fitted.

[georgen]

Its a lot easier with a hose Lenny as you can back flush the system, you never get all the water out of the system so for this reason I usually use concentrated anti-freeze but flush the system both ways till running clear, then I would put 50% of the coolant system in neat so approx 2.6ltrs then top up with water,this way you only have clean water in the system and you have put the correct amount of coolant in then topped up, also make sure you squeeze pipes and have heater controls on hot to make sure there are no air locks in the system.

On the power steering front they are a nightmare to clean out, so much infact they only really get done when something on the system fails but I did do one once as my old audi ran a different type of steering fluid than normal, but previous owner didnt know so I emptied the container, then removed the return and with front of the car jacked up so front wheels off the floor turn wheels lock to lock, then started putting new stuff in whilst old coming out, you waste a bit as you keep putting in till what comes out is clear or bright red in your case, the only other way would be to totally remove the entire system and drain, only for the Crazy people that option though.

Keep up the good work.

[Ford Loyalty MK3]

A very intresting read and all the best with your project. :)

Go all the way mate let nothing stop you. B)

[Lenny]

A very intresting read and all the best with your project. :)

Go all the way mate let nothing stop you. B)

Hi David,

Thanks for taking the time to read it mate :)

I'm looking forward to getting it on the road mid February,

Few bits to sort out before then, and if the engine doesn't start giving me jip, I'll invest in it on the enhancent side of things.

[Lenny]

Its a lot easier with a hose Lenny as you can back flush the system, you never get all the water out of the system so for this reason I usually use concentrated anti-freeze but flush the system both ways till running clear, then I would put 50% of the coolant system in neat so approx 2.6ltrs then top up with water,this way you only have clean water in the system and you have put the correct amount of coolant in then topped up, also make sure you squeeze pipes and have heater controls on hot to make sure there are no air locks in the system.

On the power steering front they are a nightmare to clean out, so much infact they only really get done when something on the system fails but I did do one once as my old audi ran a different type of steering fluid than normal, but previous owner didnt know so I emptied the container, then removed the return and with front of the car jacked up so front wheels off the floor turn wheels lock to lock, then started putting new stuff in whilst old coming out, you waste a bit as you keep putting in till what comes out is clear or bright red in your case, the only other way would be to totally remove the entire system and drain, only for the Crazy people that option though.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks mate,

I've to get the timing belt and water pump changed so that will most likely be in May,

I'll purchase a bottle of Toyota for life concentrate and present it to the mechanic along with the timing belt parts,

This way as you said you do it, I'm guaranteed a perfect mix knowing that 2ltrs of water is suck inside,

I must have put in around 20 cans of water in total I too kept flushing until it got clear,

A hose would be the better job, the sun cracked mine to bits last summer because it was all kinked for a few weeks in the sun.

I've been intending to get a replacement but never found a good enough reason to until today but I blew me spare money on the parts from Halfords but it all worked out in the end anyway.

I've not run the engine for long since replacing the coolant because the radiator cap inner plug thing is broken,

Noe when the radiator starts to get hot its dumping coolant to the resivour,

The resivour starts overflowing and dumping it on to the ground,

So the cars locked up until I get my hands on a replacement radiator cap next week.

Thanks for advise on buying concentrate instead of ready mixed.

No chance of me removing the steering rack to give it a clean though Id be badly stuck for something to do, the day that i start feeling the tendancy to remove the steering rack its time to phone the doctor

[Ford Loyalty MK3]

Plenty of maintence, Engineering solutions, future modifications and restoration all in one project. B)

Love it. B)

[Lenny]

Update:

I got an email yesterday from a member on AE111 forum,

To inform me that a 5th member had come forward to join the group purchase scheme for a genuine Toyota Lambda sensor from japan.

This means the group purchase is now going ahead and I should receive the sensor in the coming weeks from japan saving over 120 pounds compared to purchasing through a Toyota dealership in this country.

Moving on from that then since almost all fluids have now been changed; I looked up some information on changing the gearbox fluid in the Levin,

Looks to be a fairly straight forward process; as discussed here:

http://s15.zetaboards.com/AE111_Forum/topic/7012151/1/?x=50#new

As result ive been to Halfords again yesterday morning,

I returned an unused 1ltr bottle of Power Steering Fluid, and purchased two 1ltr bottles of Castrol Syntrans 75W-90 fully synthetic Gear box oil along with some funnels from the DiY store next to Halfords, the funnels were more than 50% cheaper in the DiY store comparing to Halfords price for the same pack.

Almost ready to change the 1.9ltr capacity of the 6 speed Gearbox Sump awaiting one small part from America, Online yesterday and purchased a magnetic gearbox sump plug with copper washer,

I'll get the gearbox oil changed soon after it arrives.

While in halfords yesterday I picked up a can of Comma Air Con Cleaner

According to the reviews on halfords website page; it smells like lemon,

The instructions say; set the A/C to full heat and on recirculation cycle.

Set the can behind the front passenger seat and press the top o the can and immediately evacuate the vehicle :)

Once pressed the can continues to release its full contents unstoppably for a duration of 5 minutes

It says to leave the car running and sealed for 25-30 minutes,

Followed by opening all windows for up to an hour after treatment.

It is said to kill all germs and bad smells inside the A/C system f the car.

I've not got any bad smells but considering the car is now 14 years old I'm confident there would be some germs.

I will update my independent review on this product after I've used it.

Which leads me to the next purchase and reason why I have not yet used the product.

The existing 0.9Bar Radiator cap has broken inside after 13 years of holding in the pressure the internals have fallen apart

As result of breaking; it no longer holds pressure and begins to dump the coolant as the engine becomes hot.

Therefore I can't run the engine until the radiator cap is replaced.

I have taken the opportunity to upgrade the cap to a blitz 1.3bar radiator cap.

The 1.3bar cap holds in 0.4bar more pressure which helps the coolant absorb up to 15 degrees more heat from the engine helping it to cool down quicker.

I've purchased the blitz cap yesterday online, I'm expecting it to arrive around Wednesday/Thursday of next week.

I can then run the engine without losing coolant and get to work with the Comma Air on cleaning.

While on eBay yesterday I had a look for a stainless or chrome resivour for the power steering fluid,

I have recently changed the power steering fluid in the existing resivour and although the fluid inside is as clean as possible; the resivour itself doesn't look very fresh as you can see in the image below

I searched the internet and couldn't find anything available for the AE101 or AE111 trueno/Levin in terms of reivour upgrade,

However I began to search for the same part to fit a Toyota Celica and quickly found that the celica shares the same power steering resivour design as the AE111 trueno/Levin

Thankfully I was at last able to purchase a chrome resivour cover to fit over the existing tank.

Should arrive sometime next week and looks like this:

Today,

I've been to see my mate Stead and purchase a vital final piece of the standard exhaust system; the rubber exhaust bracket mount.

This perticular design of mount is unique to the AE101/AE111 Toyota design and can only be purchased second hand or from Toyota.

Thankfully Stead was able to supply me with the part for a very affordable price which saved me the risk of a torn anal passage that could be injured when going to Toyota parts department to purchase such item.

That's the progress up to date,

Basically in wait now until either the magnetic gearbox sump plug or blits 1.3bar radiator cap arrives in the post.

The standard exhaust system is now pieced together ready for fitting,

I will arrange fitting to take place in the coming weeks and update the progress as it happens.

Thanks for reading.

[nicky87]

looking bud