Cornish Abroad
Fresh Recruit
Hello all,
My name is Jack and I am currently living in Australia. Moved here because I got sick of the English weather, although I do miss Greggs and a cheap pint.
I have been thinking about what car to buy for a while now and was leaning towards a Mazda Familia GTX. Everybody here in Australia drives Holden (Vauxhall) or Ford V8's. They ALL have huge exhaust systems and massive chrome wheels and it makes me sick. I decided that I wanted a little sleeper that would wipe the smug grin off lots of their faces after they have just shelled out around 50k for a motor. Not to mention, we are doing this on a BUDGET so massive expense is not something we will be getting involved in. We will be doing DIY everything including port & polish and will be photographing / documenting everything.
After looking around the market I decided to go for the Starlet GT, a decision that was 90% influenced by this website. After feeling out the market I realised that it was going to cost me around $6,500 for a decent, standard, example. This is not what I wanted. As I am working on this car with a mate, between us we have a decent amount of mechanical experience and love to learn on the job. We ended up choosing a GT that had ALL the extras we wanted. It still has the standard turbo which we are planning on switching out for the TD04L. Other than that, it comes with everything we need. I am planning on stripping the car right out and having 2 seats in the front and having this as a fun little weapon.
When I bought the car for $2000, which is a massive bargain for Australia it had a problem with boost. Every time you put put more than 30% throttle and get near boosting the turbo the whole car would start stuttering something fierce. On the motorway with low revs and 10% throttle the car will run all day. From looking around this forum we are deciding that it might be a coil pack or a vacuum leak somewhere. All the plugs and leads have already been replaced in diagnosing the problem so we are going to run with these ideas at the moment. I also noticed that the EP82 has an OBD that is Toyota Software specific and we are at a loss as to how to get the error code without having to go to the dealer. We have also noticed a lot of old coolant around the engine bay so we are assuming its hard some pretty bad heating problems in the past. Looking at the coolant reservoir we noticed that it doesn't actually lead to anything and the pressure release pipe at the top of the radiator has a bolt squeezed into the end of it instead of going to the header. Another issue we found was that several pipes leading from the fuel injection rail were leading nowhere, although this still needs investigating.
At the moment, we have stripped down the front of the car for ease of use and have pulled the induction system off for a good clean. That car has a catch can but still have a fair bit of oil in the system and IC which worried me at first but I came to realise this might be OK with a turbo. We have also documented the problems that the car has and we are searching for the cheapest way of fixing everything without bodging it. We do need to replace a hand brake (left rear) cable which we are struggling to source. The next thing would be to remedy this little problem we have with boost. Also to mention that the wiring loom is a complete shambles and the car has been treated like a used rubber after a wild night in a brother. With a little TLC we can turn this thing into a beast hopefully. I will keep posted and no doubt will be asking for regular advice.
Great site guys, its really helpful, especially to new people
Right-eee-O!
Jack
My name is Jack and I am currently living in Australia. Moved here because I got sick of the English weather, although I do miss Greggs and a cheap pint.
I have been thinking about what car to buy for a while now and was leaning towards a Mazda Familia GTX. Everybody here in Australia drives Holden (Vauxhall) or Ford V8's. They ALL have huge exhaust systems and massive chrome wheels and it makes me sick. I decided that I wanted a little sleeper that would wipe the smug grin off lots of their faces after they have just shelled out around 50k for a motor. Not to mention, we are doing this on a BUDGET so massive expense is not something we will be getting involved in. We will be doing DIY everything including port & polish and will be photographing / documenting everything.
After looking around the market I decided to go for the Starlet GT, a decision that was 90% influenced by this website. After feeling out the market I realised that it was going to cost me around $6,500 for a decent, standard, example. This is not what I wanted. As I am working on this car with a mate, between us we have a decent amount of mechanical experience and love to learn on the job. We ended up choosing a GT that had ALL the extras we wanted. It still has the standard turbo which we are planning on switching out for the TD04L. Other than that, it comes with everything we need. I am planning on stripping the car right out and having 2 seats in the front and having this as a fun little weapon.
When I bought the car for $2000, which is a massive bargain for Australia it had a problem with boost. Every time you put put more than 30% throttle and get near boosting the turbo the whole car would start stuttering something fierce. On the motorway with low revs and 10% throttle the car will run all day. From looking around this forum we are deciding that it might be a coil pack or a vacuum leak somewhere. All the plugs and leads have already been replaced in diagnosing the problem so we are going to run with these ideas at the moment. I also noticed that the EP82 has an OBD that is Toyota Software specific and we are at a loss as to how to get the error code without having to go to the dealer. We have also noticed a lot of old coolant around the engine bay so we are assuming its hard some pretty bad heating problems in the past. Looking at the coolant reservoir we noticed that it doesn't actually lead to anything and the pressure release pipe at the top of the radiator has a bolt squeezed into the end of it instead of going to the header. Another issue we found was that several pipes leading from the fuel injection rail were leading nowhere, although this still needs investigating.
At the moment, we have stripped down the front of the car for ease of use and have pulled the induction system off for a good clean. That car has a catch can but still have a fair bit of oil in the system and IC which worried me at first but I came to realise this might be OK with a turbo. We have also documented the problems that the car has and we are searching for the cheapest way of fixing everything without bodging it. We do need to replace a hand brake (left rear) cable which we are struggling to source. The next thing would be to remedy this little problem we have with boost. Also to mention that the wiring loom is a complete shambles and the car has been treated like a used rubber after a wild night in a brother. With a little TLC we can turn this thing into a beast hopefully. I will keep posted and no doubt will be asking for regular advice.
Great site guys, its really helpful, especially to new people
Right-eee-O!
Jack
)
