'76 Toyota Corolla KE30 Project

My Family has owned this Orange (Faded Fire-ball red) Toyota Corolla KE-30 for years! My Great Aunt and Uncle first bought it brand-spanking new back in the 70's and used it as a shopping trolley for more than half it's life. They then passed it on for a fraction of it's value to my Dad when they moved overseas, and after learning to drive in it my little brother has slowly started to modify it.

This Hub is the story of the '76 KE30 Toyota Corolla.

Well it's been a week or two since I last posted here, and I know I still haven't produced the photos as promised, but there have been a few more interesting developments!

1) The stereo/speaker system is now finished. The car ended up with 2 x Sony explod 6x9's in the back parcel shelf and a no-name head unit mounted under the glove-compartment. It sounds pretty nice for the amount of effort we went to, but there is a slight problem!

The battery is not large enough to power both car with lights, heater etc at the same time as the stereo.
Solution: bigger battery. Johnny's working on this one!

2) Wheels! The stock hub-caps were in truth - aweful! maybe awesome if you're Austin Powers or someone straight out of the 70's, but not if you're anyone sensible. They've been gone for a while now, but last week we finally bought these: Cheviot Deepdish Hotwires


Ben is picking these up tonight because he's in Auckland at the moment. Can't wait!

Below you can see the stock coniditon of the car a few years back (around 2005). These day the dizzying hub-caps are gone, the gearstick and gearstick surround have had a make-over, the boot lock has been replaced (due to someone ruining the lock), the high rear stop lights have been removed and the others dimmed with a tint. The most recent and possibly most significant improvement to date is the fitting of speakers into the rear parcel shelf (behind the back seats) and a head unit. Finally some music will be heard within the confines of this little old faded fireball!

(Pics to come...!!!)

Okay, so Johnny managed to get a hold of some cheap 6x9's off a friend and decided he wanted to put them into the back parcel shelf (behind the back seats) of the KE30. Dad's got an old stereo head-unit from his old car that's just sitting around collecting dust so he's planning to hook them up to that.

Another friend gave us some speaker wire, and after we scavanged around the garage found all the bits we needed:

- New Parcel shelf. A sheet of particle board cut to shape (with a jig-saw) and drilled. Eventually painted black.
- Speaker mounts. 2x blocks of wood - pine or something. Cut to size before the shape for the speakers was jig-sawed out. Also painted black.
- Various screws, tools and glues. It's amazing what you're parents have lying around sometimes. I wonder why they hold onto so much "junk" but I guess it comes in handy everynow and then!

So far the speakers are mounted & wired in. They look pretty good with the contrasting black and white on the speakers.
Head-unit still to be mounted - I think it's going in the glove-box because there's no where else to put it!

Photo's still to come...

So we were doing a little bit of work the KE30 in the Garage yesterday afternoon when I noticed oil splattered all over the engine bay, and especially the air filter (it's white - pretty easy to notice something like that). On further inspection, it turns out that the oil-cap on the rocker cover had come off!!!

We don't know how long it had been running like that, but Johnny (current driver - my little brother) had made a few comments such as: "It's getting harder to start for some reason!"

My guess is that the lost oil from the missing cap had something to do with that!

Anyway, so he managed to find an "emergency" cap to use in the mean-time but does any-one have a space 3KH rocker cover oil cap?!?!?